Classic Poem

Is Henry dead? alas! and do I live
To sing a screech-owl's note that he is dead?
If any one a fitter theme can give,
Come, give it now, or never to be read.
But let him see it do of horror taste,
Anguish, destruction: could it rend in sunder
With fearful groans
The senseless stones,
Yet should we hardly be enforc'd to wonder,
Our former griefs would so exceed their last.
Time cannot make our sorrows ought completer;
Nor add one grief to make our mourning greater.

England was ne'er engirt with waves till now;
Till now it held part with the Continent.
Aye me! some one in pity show me how
I might in doleful numbers so lament,
That any one which lov'd him, hated me,
Might dearly love me for lamenting him.
Alas! my plaint
In such constraint
Breaks forth in rage, that though my passions swim,
Yet are they drowned ere they landed be:
Imperfect lines! O happy! were I hurl'd
And cut from life as England from the world.

O happier had we been! if we had been
Never made happy by enjoying thee!
Where hath the glorious eye of heaven seen
A spectacle of greater misery?
Time, turn thy course, and bring again the spring;
Break Nature's laws; search the records of old,
If aught befell
Might parallel
Sad Britain's case: weep, rocks, and Heaven behold
What seas of sorrow she is plunged in,
Where storms of woe so mainly have beset her,
She hath no place for worse, nor hope for better.

Britain was whilom known (by more than fame)
To be one of the Islands Fortunate.
What frantic man would give her now that name,
Lying so rueful and disconsolate?
Hath not her wat'ry zone in murmuring
Fill'd every shore with echoes of her cry?
Yes, Thetis raves,
And bids her waves
Bring all the nymphs within her emperie
To be assistant in her sorrowing.
See where they sadly sit on Isis' shore,
And rend their hairs as they would joy no more.

Isis, the glory of the Western world,
When our heroi (honour'd Essex) died,
Strucken with wonder, back again she hurl'd,
And fill'd her banks with an unwonted tide:
As if she stood in doubt, if it were so,
And for the certainty had turn'd her way.
Why do not now
Her waves reflow?
Poor nymph, her sorrows will not let her stay;
Or flies to tell the world her country's woe;
Or cares not to come back, perhaps, as showing
Our tears should make the flood, not her reflowing.

Sometimes a tyrant held the reins of Rome,
Wishing to all the city but one head,
That all at once might undergo his doom,
And by one blow from life be severed.
Fate wish'd the like on England, and 'twas given:
O miserable men, enthrall'd to Fate!)
Whose heavy hand
That never scann'd
The misery of kingdoms ruinate,
Minding to leave her of all joys bereaven,
With one sad blow (alas! can worser fall?)
Hath given this little Isle her funeral.

O come, ye blessed imps of Memory,
Erect a new Parnassus on his grave!
There tune your voices to an elegy,
The saddest note that e'er Apollo gave.
Let every accent make the stander-by
Keep time unto your song with dropping tears,
Till drops that fell
Have made a well
To swallow him which still unmoved hears!
And though myself prove senseless of your cry,
Yet gladly should my light of life grow dim,
To be entomb'd in tears are wept for him.

When last he sicken'd, then we first began
To tread the labyrinth of woe about:
And by degrees we further inward ran,
Having his thread of life to guide us out.
But Destiny no sooner saw us enter
Sad Sorrow's maze, immured up in night,
(Where nothing dwells
But cries and yells
Thrown from the hearts of men depriv'd of light,)
When we were almost come into the centre,
Fate (cruelly) to bar our joys returning,
Cut off our thread, and left us all in mourning.