University of Virginia Library

On Mr BEAVMONT. (Written thirty yeares since, presently after his death.)

Beaumont lyes here; and where now shall we have
A Muse like his to sigh upon his grave?
Ah! none to weepe this with a worthy teare,
But he that cannnot, Beaumont, that lies here.
Who now shall pay thy Tombe with such a Verse
As thou that Ladies didst, faire Rutlands Herse?
A Monument that will then lasting be,
When all her Marble is more dust than she.
In thee all's lost: a sudden dearth and want
Hath seiz'd on Wit, good Epitaphs are scant;
We dare not write thy Elegie, whilst each feares
He nere shall match that coppy of thy teares.
Scarce in an Age a Poet, and yet he
Scarce lives the third part of his age to see,
But quickly taken off and only known,
Is in a minute shut as soone as showne.
Why should weake Nature tire her selfe in vaine
In such a peice, to dash it straight againe?
Why should she take such worke beyond her skill,
Which when she cannot perfect, she must kill?
Alas, what is't to temper slime or mire?
But Nature's puzled when she workes in fire:
Great Braines (like brightest glasse) crack straight, while those
Of Stone or Wood hold out, and feare not blowes.
And wee their Ancient hoary heads can see
Whose Wit was never their mortality:
Beaumont dies young, so Sidney did before,
There was not Poetry he could live to more,
He could not grow up higher, I scarce know
If th'art it selfe unto that pitch could grow,
Were't not in thee that hadst arriv'd the hight
Of all that wit could reach, or Nature might.
O when I read those excellent things of thine,
Such Strength, such sweetnesse coucht in every line,
Such life of Fancy, such high choise of braine,
Nought of the Vulgar wit or borrowed straine,
Such Passion, such expressions meet my eye,
Such Wit untainted with obscenity,
And those so unaffectedly exprest,
All in a language purely flowing drest,
And all so borne within thy selfe, thine owne,
So new, so fresh, so nothing trod upon.
I grieve not now that old Menanders veine
Is ruin'd to survive in thee againe;
Such in his time was he of the same peece,
The smooth, even naturall Wit, and Love of Greece.
Those few sententious fragments shew more worth,
Then all the Poets Athens ere brought forth;
And I am sorry we have lost those houres
On them, whose quicknesse comes far short of ours,
And dwell not more on thee, whose every Page
Maybe a patterne for their Scene and Stage.
I will not yeeld thy Workes so meane a Prayse;
More pure, more chaste, more sainted then are Playes,
Nor with that dull supinenesse to be read,
To passe a fire, or laugh an houre in bed.
How doe the Muses suffer every where,
Taken in such mouthes censure, in such eares,
That twixt a whiffe, a Line or two rehearse,
And with their Rheume together spaule a Verse?
This all a Poems leisure after Play,
Drinke or Tabacco, it may keep the Day.
Whilst even their very idlenesse they thinke
Is lost in these, that lose their time in drinke.
Pity then dull we, we that better know,
Will a more serious houre on thee bestow,
Why should not Beaumont in the Morning please,
As well as Plautus, Aristophanes?
Who if my Pen may as my thoughts be free,
Were scurrill Wits and Buffons both to Thee;
Yet these our Learned of severest brow
Will deigne to looke on, and to note them too,
That will defie our owne, tis English stuffe,
And th'Author is not rotten long enough.
Alas what flegme are they, compared to thee,
In thy Philaster, and Maids-Tragedy?
Where's such an humour as thy Bessus? pray
Let them put all their Thrasoes in one Play,
He shall out-bid them; their conceit was poore,
All in a Circle of a Bawd or Whore;
A cozning dance, take the foole away,
And not a good jest extant in a Play.
Yet these are Wits, because they'r old, and now
Being Greeke and Latine, they are Learning too:
But those their owne Times were content t'allow
A thirsty fame, and thine is lowest now.
But thou shalt live, and when thy Name is growne
Six Ages older, shall be better knowne,
When th'art of Chaucers standing in the Tombe,
Thou shalt not share, but take up all his roome.