University of Virginia Library

On that Devout, and Industrious GENTELMAN, GEORGE MONTEITH, Merchant in Edinburgh, who departed this Life the 2. day of Juny, 1685.

A Funeral ELEGIE.

Devout and Precious Soul should I in verse,
Attempt they glorious virtues to reherse,
It were a contradiction to expresse,
And bring to numbers what is numberless:
Verses must loss their feet, and Elegies
Give up their running to our melting eyes;
Yet reason sayes, that it can be no Crime
What we may speak in Prose to writ in Rime.
Witness the Sacrid Scriptures, it's no wrong
To vent a Lamentation in a Song.
So rational a grief who utters it,
At once both show's his sorrow, and his witt.
I'l not imploy my Muse to chide stern death,
That with Blood-thirsty haste did cut thy breath,
When thou thy self did chide the fates delay,
Gasping from those sad times to be away.
Nor with Fantastick flight implore the sphears,
To bath thy memory with us in tears.
While we believe that new Jerusalem
Where now thou art, Surmounts both us and them.
Thou now art infranchised, and at large,
And from our Warrs death Seals thee a discharge.
Where clad in Robes of Immortality
Thour't levi'd with the glorious Hierarchy.
For here below thou wer't in each Estate
Humble, active, prudent, just, and temperat,
And with both actions and thy thoughts expence
Did keep thy Conscience still without offence.
Who knew thy vertues well, thy understood
Thou wert an Angel cloath'd with flesh and blood.
Thy birth above the common levell was,
Thy Nuptial tyes in honour did surpasse.
Thou was not troubled with mad Midas itch,
Yet GOD did bliss thy store, and made thee rich.
Thou was a man of business, and yet,
To serve thy Maker was they chief delight.
Wherefore GOD takes thee home, where now thou sings
Grave, wher's they conquest? death where are thy stings?