Piety, and Poesy Contracted, In a Poetick Miscellanie of Sacred Poems. By Tho: Jordan |
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On the Death of the most worthily honour'd Mr. John Sidney, who dyed full of the Small Pox.
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 | Piety, and Poesy |  |
On the Death of the most worthily honour'd Mr. John Sidney, who dyed full of the Small Pox.
Sidney is dead, a Man whose name makes surrowsIn his Friends Cheeks, channel'd with Tears for Sorrows,
Within whose Microcosm was combin'd
All Ornaments of Body, and of Minde,
As did exceed th' extent of Heraldry;
Whose well-composed Excellencies, wrought
Beyond the largest scope of humane thought.
Indeed, within his Life's short little Span,
Was all could be contracted in one Man;
And He that would write his true Elegie,
Must not Court Muses, but Divinity.
He's Dead: But Death, I have a Speech, in vain,
Directed unto Thee, where I complain
Upon thy cruel Office, that could find
No way to part his Body and his Mind,
But by a fatal sicknesse, that confounds
The beautious Patient, with so many wounds;
Sure when thou mad'st his Fabrick to shiver,
Thou could'st not chuse but empty all thy Quiver.
What Man (to all odds open) in the Wars,
Dies with such a Solemnity of Scarrs?
Yet his great Spirit gives the Reason why,
Without that Number, Sidney could not die:
And therefore we will Pen it in his Story,
What thou intend'st his Ruine, is his Glory;
So when the Heavenly Globe I've look'd upon,
Have I beheld the Constellation
Of Jupiter, and on all parts descri'd
Th' illuminated Body stellified,
Sprinkled about with Stars, so that you might
Behold his Limbs and Hair, powder'd with Light:
This wee'l apply, that, though we lose him here,
His Soul shall shine in a Cælestial Sphere.
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