Classic Poem

I'le not beleive 't; if fate should be so crosse
Nature would not be silent of her losse.
Can he be dead, and no portents appeare?
No pale Ecclipse of th' sun to let us feare
What we should suffer, and before his light
Put out, the world inveloped in Night?
What thundring torrents the flush'd welkin tare?
What apparition kill'd him in the aire?
When Cæsar dy'd there were convulsion fits;
And nature seem'd to run out of her wits.
At that sad object Tybers bosome swell'd,
And scarce from drowning all, by Jove withheld.
And shall we give this mighty Conquerour
That in a great and a more holy warre,
Was pulling downe the Empire which he reard,
A fall unmourn'd of Nature and unfear'd;
A death (unlesse the league of heav'n withstood)
Lesse wept then with an universall flood?
If I had seene a Comet in the aire
With glorious eye, and bright disheveld haire,
And on a suddaine with his gilded traine
Drop downe; I should have said that Sweden's slaine,
Shot like that starre; or if the earth had shooke
Like a weake floore, the falling roofe had broke;
I should have said the mighty King is gone;
Fel'd as the tallest tree in Libanon .
Alasse if he were dead; we need no post,
Very instinct would tell us what we lost.
And a chill damp (as at the generall doome)
Creepe through each brest and we should know for whome.
His German conquests are not yet compleat,
And when they are, there's more remaining yet:
The world is full of sin, nor every Land
O're growne with schisme hath felt his purging hand.
The Pope is not confounded, and the Turke ,
Nor was he sure design'd for a lesse worke.
But if our sinnes have stop'd him in the source,
In mid'st Careere of his victorious course.
And heaven would trust the dulnesse of our sence
So farre, not to prepare us with portents.
'Tis we that have the losse, and he hath caught
His heav'nly garland e're his worke be wrought.
But I, before I'le undertake to greive
So great a losse, will choose not to beleive.