Love's Dialect or; Poeticall Varieties; Digested Into a Miscelanie of various fancies. Composed by Tho. Iordan |
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An Elegie on his beloved friend Mr. Charles Rider, Student in the Art of Limning, or Picture-drawing.
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 | Love's Dialect |  |
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An Elegie on his beloved friend Mr. Charles Rider, Student in the Art of Limning, or Picture-drawing.
If you can weepe, draw neere; but if your eyesDeny to yeeld a liquid Sacrifice,
Laughter perplex yee, may you never be
Worthy to be preserv'd in memory
But amongst Fooles and Iesters, such as know
No season for their mirth, but will allow
Their idle jests, and their more anticke slights
On Funeralls as well as Brydall nights.
Here (you that have the magazin of teares)
Exhaust your thrifty fountains, he that weares
Black with an honest sorrow I advise
To ayde us in our (too sad) obsequies.
There is an Artist dead, who ist that can
Deny but hee's the friend of every man
That maks wise use of knowledg; he was rare
In limning decent Figures; his chaste care
Could nere permit his fancy to encline
To the rude draughts of lustfull Aretine:
But had his eyes beheld the silent feature,
Posture & face, of some excelling creature;
(Pure as her simple Beauty) such a one
Was patterne for his Pencill, or else none.
To be particular, I should appeare
Foe to my selfe, since each word claim's a teare;
But what my full fraught eyes deny to show,
Expect in some large booke in Folio.
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Composed in a weeping Elegie:
But he is dead, that all-devouring death
That scornes to give religious Monarchs breath
An houre beyond his limits, hath thought fit
To use his power on thee; may thy soule sit
In Angells habitations, while we
Deplore thy death, and blesse thy memory.
Since thou wert meritorious, I crave
That I may stick this Lawrel on thy grave,
Where if the bounteous heavens please to raise
Showres like my teares, twill grow a Grove of Bayes.
| Love's Dialect | |