Early 17th Century English Poetry

An Epitaph on S.P.

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BY BEN JONSON

A Child of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel

Weep with me, all you that read 

This little story: 

And know, for whom a tear you shed 

Death's self is sorry. 

'Twas a child, that so did thrive 

In grace and feature, 

As heaven and nature seem'd to strive 

Which own'd the creature. 

Years he number'd scarce thirteen 

When fates turn'd cruel, 

Yet three fill'd zodiacs had he been 

The stage's jewel; 

And did act (what now we moan) 

Old men so duly, 

As, sooth, the Parcæ thought him one, 

He play'd so truly. 

So, by error, to his fate 

They all consented; 

But viewing him since (alas, too late) 

They have repented; 

And have sought (to give new birth) 

In baths to steep him; 

But being so much too good for earth, 

Heaven vows to keep him. 

On Shakespeare. 1630

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BY JOHN MILTON

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,

The labor of an age in pilèd stones,

Or that his hallowed relics should be hid   

Under a star-ypointing pyramid? 

Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame, 

What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment 

Hast built thyself a live-long monument. 

For whilst to th’ shame of slow-endeavouring art,   

Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart   

Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book 

Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,   

Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,   

Dost make us marble with too much conceiving; 

And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,

That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

Sonnet 19: When I consider how my light is spent

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BY JOHN MILTON

When I consider how my light is spent, 

   Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, 

   And that one Talent which is death to hide 

   Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent 

To serve therewith my Maker, and present 

   My true account, lest he returning chide; 

   “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?” 

   I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent 

That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need 

   Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best 

   Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state 

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed 

   And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest: 

   They also serve who only stand and wait.”

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

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BY JOHN DONNE

As virtuous men pass mildly away, 

   And whisper to their souls to go, 

Whilst some of their sad friends do say 

   The breath goes now, and some say, No: 

So let us melt, and make no noise, 

   No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; 

'Twere profanation of our joys 

   To tell the laity our love. 

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears, 

   Men reckon what it did, and meant; 

But trepidation of the spheres, 

   Though greater far, is innocent. 

Dull sublunary lovers' love 

   (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit 

Absence, because it doth remove 

   Those things which elemented it. 

But we by a love so much refined, 

   That our selves know not what it is, 

Inter-assured of the mind, 

   Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. 

Our two souls therefore, which are one, 

   Though I must go, endure not yet 

A breach, but an expansion, 

   Like gold to airy thinness beat. 

If they be two, they are two so 

   As stiff twin compasses are two; 

Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show 

   To move, but doth, if the other do. 

And though it in the center sit, 

   Yet when the other far doth roam, 

It leans and hearkens after it, 

   And grows erect, as that comes home. 

Such wilt thou be to me, who must, 

   Like th' other foot, obliquely run; 

Thy firmness makes my circle just, 

   And makes me end where I begun.