 | Poems |  |
On M. Jo. Joscelin, dying of a Feaver.
VVhat heat was this wch scorch'd my Joscelins heart?And lick'd that oyle up which each vitall part
Is daily moist'ned with? what heaps of flames
Checquer'd the azure front'spice of his veines
With crimson spots? how did their fervour purle
His sinewes? and his skins faire margent curle
Into a shrivell'd lump? as if that he
Was even growne Ætna's epitome,
And might be licens'd to be canoniz'd
Now for a Saint, since he was sacrific'd
To death in fire, and had even undergone
By frying, with a Feaver, martyrdome,
Which did each part with such continuance burne,
His bed it selfe was ev'n become his urne?
Yet could my teares this priviledge have gain'd,
To have appeas'd that ravenous flame which raign'd
Within him, he had not been yet possest
With the cold sleep, nor gone so soone to rest:
But this accrues yet to his future glorie,
When time shall read the annals of his storie,
'Twill find, it was no abject maladie
That forc'd his active spirit hence, to fly
Into th' Elysian shades, no trembling fit
Of a blood-shaking Ague made him quit,
And render up his tenement of clay,
No slow consumption melted him away,
7
As if h'ad been a corps a yeare agoe:
But that he fell by coaping in a duell
With a more noble feaver, and was fuell
Only for that disease, with which they say,
The world it selfe shall labour i'th last day.
| Poems | |