AN ELEGIE UPON The much lamented Death of the Right Honourable, THE LORD BROOKE.
WEep not unthristy Mourners: Why so fast
These weak devotions due unto his last?
Hoard up such poor expressions of the eye,
Till either Wife, or Child do chance to die,
Or till thy aged Mothers knell thee call,
To solemnize her petty Funerall.
Tears are wrongs here, for where such sorrows come,
The Land it self should groan, the men be dumb:
The heart should summon down the spirits all,
Till sence benum'd, and apprehension fall,
Congeal'd into a Trance, and each man be
A mournfull Statue unto Memorie:
Or if you needs will weep, as fits the losse
Of such a Friend, so serious a Crosse,
Breathe all the ayre to sighs, the drops o'th year,
At once be all contracted to a Tear.
Then let each Mourner, that hath a desire,
Weep out a part, and weeping so expire.
Pardon's great Lord, and thy diviner Ghost,
If by remembring what in thee we lost,
Out of that honour and love we owe to thee,
We lose our selves in an Hyperbole.
Thus much is just and fit, that all may know
What they unto the name of BROOKE doe owe:
The Commonwealth's a debter to thy fate,
Which destin'd thee a sacrifice to th' State:
But this is the least part, that thou didst die
For us; we wrong thy sacred Memorie
If we confesse no more; thy high-born Soul
Sought by death deaths Cov'nanters to controul,
And to disarm those Engineers of hell,
Whose villanies must write their Chronicle.
It was the Gospels late eclipsed light
For which thou li'st thus low in death and night,
And strov'st to shame and quell each hinderer
In peace by example, by thy sword in war:
For this thy resolution stirr'd thee up
To give truths enemies and thine the cup
Of GODS great wrath, and with th'avenging sword
To fright all superstition from the Word.
This made Romes base abettors toile and quake
When ere they heard what thou didst undertake;
This fil'd their mouths with slanders, and their hearts
Sworn to revenge with poyson'd envious darts
To wound thy pure Profession with the name
Of schisme, and a new-found Brownistick frame:
This made that base inhumane particide
With unexampled treacherie divide
Thy soule from body (and them both from us)
To heav'n with a strange desp'rate Mittimus.
Thus thou didst fall, thus diedst thou, but to live
In heav'n, and here with us, whilst we can give
Or teares, or marble; the portraiture of fame
Upon two pillars reared to thy Name
Shall stand, where shall be read and understood
Thy deaths cause, Gods glory, & the Kingdoms good.
Printed by Robert Austin, and Andrew Coe. 1643.