KEEP station, Nature, and rest, Heaven, sure On thy supporters' shoulders, lest, past cure, Thou dash'd in ruin fall, by a grief's weight Will make thy basis shrink, and lay thy height Low as the centre. Hark! and feel it read Through the astonish'd Kingdom, Henry's dead. It is enough; who seeks to aggravate One strain beyond this, prove[s] more sharp his fate Than sad our doom. The world dares not survive To parallel this woe's superlative. O killing Rhetoric of Death! two words Breathe stronger terrors than plague, fire, or swords Ere conquer'd. This were epitaph and verse, Worthy to be prefix'd in Nature's hearse, Or Earth's sad dissolution; whose fall Will be less grievous, though more general: For all the woe ruin e'er buried Sounds in these fatal accents, Henry's dead. Cease then, unable Poetry; thy phrase Is weak and dull to strike us with amaze Worthy thy vaster subject. Let none dare To copy this sad hap, but with despair Hanging at his quill's point. For not a stream Of ink can write, much less improve, this theme. Invention highest wrought by grief or wit Must sink with him, and on his tombstone split; Who, like the dying Sun, tells us the light And glory of our Day set in his Night. |