Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ELEGY FOR THE PRINCE, by EDWARD HERBERT



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ELEGY FOR THE PRINCE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Must he be ever dead? Cannot we add
Last Line: Which, being his, can therefore never die.
Alternate Author Name(s): Cherbury, 1st Baron Herbert Of; Herbert Of Cherbury, Edward Herbert, 1st Baron; Herbert Of Cherbury, Lord
Subject(s): Death; Dead, The


MUST he be ever dead? Cannot we add
Another life unto that Prince that had
Our souls laid up in him? Could not our love,
Now when he left us, make that body move
After his death one age? And keep unite
That frame wherein our souls did so delight?
For what are souls but love, since they do know
Only for it, and can no further go?
Sense is the soul of beasts, because none can
Proceed so far as t' understand like man:
And if souls be more where they love than where
They animate, why did it not appear
In keeping him alive? Or how is fate
Equal to us, when one man's private hate
May ruin kingdoms, when he will expose
Himself to certain death, and yet all those
Not keep alive this Prince who now is gone,
Whose loves would give thousands of lives for one?
Do we then die in him, only as we
May in the world's harmonic body see
An universally diffused soul
Move in the parts which moves not in the whole?
So though we rest with him, we do appear
To live and stir a while, as if he were
Still quick'ning us. Or do (perchance) we live
And know it not? See we not Autumn give
Back to the earth again what it receiv'd
In th' early Spring? And may not we, deceiv'd,
Think that those powers are dead, which do but sleep,
And the world's soul doth reunited keep?
And though this Autumn gave what never more
Any Spring can unto the world restore,
May we not be deceiv'd, and think we know
Ourselves for dead? Because that we are so
Unto each other, when as yet we live
A life his love and memory doth give,
Who was our world's soul, and to whom we are
So reunite that in him we repair
All other our affections ill-bestow'd:
Since by this love we now have such abode
With him in Heaven as we had here before

He left us dead. Nor shall we question more,
Whether the soul of man be memory,
As Plato thought: we and posterity
Shall celebrate his name, and virtuous grow,
Only in memory that he was so;
And on those terms we may seem yet to live,
Because he lived once, though we shall strive
To sigh away this seeming life so fast,
As if with us 'twere not already past.
We then are dead, for what doth now remain
To please us more, or what can we call pain,
Now we have lost him? And what else doth make
Diff'rence in life and death, but to partake
Nor joy nor pain? O death, couldst not fulfil
Thy rage against us no way but to kill
This Prince, in whom we liv'd, that so we all
Might perish by thy hand at once, and fall
Under his ruin? Thenceforth though we should
Do all the actions that the living would,
Yet we shall not remember that we live,
No more than when our mothers' womb did give
That life we felt not; or should we proceed
To such a wonder that the dead should breed,
It should be wrought to keep that memory,
Which, being his, can therefore never die.





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