Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO THE MEMORY OF HIS DEAR BROTHER, MR THOMAS RANDOLPH, by ROBERT RANDOLPH (1611-1670)


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO THE MEMORY OF HIS DEAR BROTHER, MR THOMAS RANDOLPH, by                    
First Line: In such a solemn train of friends that sing
Last Line: Ill-shap'd abroad, th' art fairly dress'd at home.
Subject(s): Brothers; Randolph, Thomas (1605-1634); Half-brothers


IN such a solemn train of friends that sing
Thy dirge in pious lines, and sadly bring
Religious anthems to attend thy hearse,
Striving t' embalm thy name in precious verse:
I, that should most, have no more power to raise
Trophies to thee, or bring one grain of praise
To crown thy altar, than the orbs dispense
Motion without their sole intelligence.
For I confess that power which works in me
Is but a weak resultance took from thee;
And if some scatter'd seeds of heat divine
Flame in my breast, they are deriv'd from thine.
And these low, sickly numbers must be such,
As when steel moves, the loadstone gives the touch:
So like a spongy cloud that sucks up rain
From the fat soil to send it back again,
There may be now from me some language shown
To urge thy merit, but 'twas first thy own.
For though the donor's influence be past
For new effects, the old impressions last;
As in a bleeding trunk we oft discry
Leaps in the head, and rolling in the eye,
By virtue of some spirits, that alone
Do tune those organs, though the soul be gone.
But since I add unto this general noise
Only weak sounds, and echoes of thy voice,
Be this a task for deeper mouths, while I,
That cannot bribe the fancy, thaw the eye:
And on the grave where they advance thy praise,
Do plant a sprig of cypress, not of bays.
Yet flow these tears not that thy relics sit
Fix'd to their cell a constant anchorite;
Nor am I stirr'd that thy pale ashes have
O'er the dark climate of a private grave
No fair inscription: such distempers flow
From poor lay-thoughts, whose blindness cannot know
That to discerning spirits the grave can be
But a large womb to immortality:
And a fair, virtuous name can stand alone
Brass to the tomb and marble to the stone.
No, 'tis that ghostly progeny we mourn,
Which careless you let fall into the urn:
We had not flow'd with such a lavish tide
Of tears and grief, had not those orphans died,
For what had been my loss, who reading thine,
A brother might have kiss'd in every line?
These that are left posterity must have,
Whom a strict care hath rescu'd from the grave
To gather strength by union; as the beams
Of the bright sun, shot forth in several streams,
And thinly scatter'd, with less fervour pass,
Which cause a flame contracted in a glass.
These, if they cannot much advance thy fame,
May stand dumb statues to preserve thy name:
And like sundials to a day that's gone,
Though poor in use, can tell there was a sun.
Yet (if a fair confession plant no bays,
Nor modest truth conceiv'd a lavish praise)
I could to thy great glory tell this age
Not one envenom'd line doth swell the page
With guilty legends; but so clear from all
That shoot malicious noise, and vomit gall,
That 'tis observ'd in every leaf of thine,
Thou hast not scatter'd snakes in any line.
Here are no remnants tortur'd into rhyme,
To gull the reeling judgments of the time;
Nor any stale reversions patch thy writ,
Glean'd from the rags and frippery of wit.
Each syllable doth here as truly run
Thine, as the light is proper to the sun.
Nay, in those feebler lines which thy last breath
And labouring brains snatch'd from the skirts of death,
Though not so strongly pure, we may descry
The father in his last posterity,
As clearly shown as virgins' looks do pass
Through a thin lawn, or shadows in the glass;
And in thy setting, as the sun's, confess
The same large brightness, though the heat be less.
Such native sweetness flows in every line,
The reader cannot choose but swear 'tis thine.
Though I can tell a rugged sect there is
Of some sly-wits will judge asquint on this,
And from thy easy flux of language guess
The fancy's weak, because the noise is less:
As if that channel which doth smoothly glide
With even streams, flow'd with a shallow tide.
But let a quick-discerning judgment look,
And with a piercing eye untwist thy book
In every loom, I know the second view
Shall find more lustre than the first could do.
For have you seen when gazing on the skies,
With strict survey a new succession rise
Of several stars, which do not so appear
To every formal glance that shoots up there;
So when the serious eye has firmly been
Fix'd on the page, such large increase is seen
Of various fancy, that each several view
Makes the same fruitful book a mart of new.
But I forbear this mention, since I must
Ransack thy ashes and revile thy dust
With such low characters, I mean to raise
Thee to my contemplation, not my praise:
And they that wish thy picture clearly shown
In a true glass, I wish would use thy own:
Where, I presume, howe'er thy virtues come
Ill-shap'd abroad, th' art fairly dress'd at home.





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