Valiant to envy of the bravest men,
And learned to an undisputed pen;
Good as the best in both and great, but yet
No dangerous courage nor offensive wit.
These ever serv'd the one for to defend,
The other, nobly to advance thy friend,
Under which title I have found my name
Fix'd in the living chronicle of fame
To times succeeding: yet I hence must go,
Displeas'd I cannot celebrate thee so.
But what respect, acknowledgement and love,
What these together, when improv'd, improve:
Call it by any name (so it express
Ought like a tribute to thy worthyness,
And may my bounden gratitude become)
LOVELACE, I offer at thy honour'd tomb.
And though thy vertues many friends have bred
To love thee liveing, and lament thee dead,
In characters far better couch'd then these,
Mine will not blott thy fame, nor theirs encrease.
'Twas by thine own great merits rais'd so high,
That, maugre time and fate, it shall not dye.
Sic flevit.
Charles Cotton.
<108.1> These lines may be found, with some verbal variations,
in the poems of Charles Cotton, 1689, p. 481-2-3.
<108.2> This reading is adopted from Cotton's Poems, 1689, p. 482.
In LUCASTA we read NO DISTURBANCE.
UPON THE POSTHUME AND PRECIOUS POEMS
OF THE NOBLY EXTRACTED GENTLEMAN MR.
Pages:
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287