Classic Poem

I LIKE not tears in tune; nor will I prise
His artificiall grief, that scannes his eyes:
Mine weep down pious beads: but why should I
Confine them to the Muses Rosarie?
I am no Poet here; my penne's the spout
Where the rain-water of my eyes runs out
In pitie of that name, whose fate we see
Thus copi'd out in griefs Hydrographie.
The Muses are not Mayr-maids; though upon
His death the Ocean might turn Helicon.
The sea's too rough for verse; who rhymes upon't,
With Xerxes strives to fetter th' Hellespont.
My tears will keep no channells, know no laws
To guide their streams; but like the waves, their cause,
Run with disturbance, till they swallow me
As a description of his miserie
But can his spacious vertue find a grave
Within th' impostum'd bubble of a wave?
Whose learning if we sound, we must confesse
The sea but shallow, and him bottomlesse.
Could not the winds to countermand thy death,
With their whole card of lungs redeem thy breath?
Or some new Iland in thy rescue peep,
To heave thy resurrection from the deep?
That so the world might see thy safety wrought
With no lesse miracle then thy self was thought.
The famous Stagirite, who in his life
Had Nature as familiar as his wife,
Bequeath'd his widow to survive with thee
Queen Dowager of all Philosophie.
An ominous legacie, that did portend
Thy fate, and Predecessours second end!
Some have affirm'd, that what on earth we find,
The sea can parallel for shape and kind:
Books, arts, and tongues were wanting; but in thee
Neptune hath got an Universitie.
We'll dive no more for pearls. The hope to see
Thy sacred reliques of mortalitie
Shall welcome storms, and make the sea-man prize
His shipwrack now more then his merchandise.
He shall embrace the waves, and to thy tombe
(As to a Royaller Exchange) shall come.
What can we now expect? Water and Fire
Both elements our ruine do conspire;
And that dissolves us, which doth us compound:
One Vatican was burnt, another drown'd
We of the Gown our libraries must tosse,
To understand the greatnesse of our losse,
Be Pupills to our grief, and so much grow
In learning, as our sorrows overflow.
When we have fill'd the rundlets of our eyes,
We'll issue't forth, and vent such elegies,
As that our tears shall seem the Irish seas,
We floating Ilands, living Hebrides.