To see a commentary note click a blue square. To see the Latin text click a green square.
Enrolled in the white chorus of saints and
supernals, wearied of the globe and the silly earth, and of whatever it
shames the sun to look upon with a pained eye,
O
immortalized soul of Harry, once mine but now God’s, now the Father of
heaven’s, the only part of Band that remains, but the better part,
Behold, as
much as I may amidst my tears, amidst the sighs of a heart grown sick,
I sorrowfully speak your name, a name not to be spoken, and greet you.
Hail forever
and, alas, farewell forever for your Charles, and receive these
lamentations forever, if ought of Charles will endure forever.
A hoped-for
reader for my verses, not meant thus to be read of in my verses, to be
mourned, to be read of always, if my verses are always to be read.
Whatever
will occur, whether posterity knows my verses, or whether our
descendants do not know them, be sure of this, they will know nothing
of Charles to live, Band, without you.
To endow you with their gifts, Band, the
gods impoverished themselves. Mercury gave you his tongue, Pallas her
brain, Persuasion her face, Phoebus his talent, Clio her genius, Cupid
his cheeks, his mother her loves. Only Jupiter abstained, but alas that
he did not abstain longer! For your enrichment he gave you his heaven.
O most blessed of blessed men for such an endowment, but, in my
unhappiness, o woe, I am the most unhappy of unhappy men, because you,
granted this gift so soon, are the most blessed of blessed men.
Alas, the Sisters, just without justice, fair yet lawless, who
draw out our thread with constant thumb! The things it behooved a young
man a son to offer to his old father, an old father offers for his
youthful son. So I have given to his light ash and insubstantial embers
the rites that should rightly be an old man’s? So will he, who should
have received everything from his father, receive nought but tears and
a tomb? What torments me the more, and gives food to my sorrow, the
tears are countless, the tomb is short. But he has it well. For you
better patrimonies arise, you will fall heir to the expanses of Elysium.
A noble father and a noble father’s
noblest son, each great in his own right, greater for each other: for
you, Francis, would have deservedly been no father, had not the Fates
granted you Francis for a son, and you would not have been worthy of a
father, unless the Fates had given you Francis for a father. You are
your father’s equal in death, son, yet unequal in the manner of your
dying. Ah, your likeness harmed you, but your unlikeness harmed you the
more. You could have borne your father’s death with manly virtue, but
scarce were able at the death of your nation’s father, and thus you die.
You have been summoned to Jove’s heavenly
court also, Walsingham, your nation’s Palladium. Nothing unwitnessed was done in the world that
was barred from your attention. Hence the Spaniard feared you at home
unarmed more than Drake abroad, armed with his mighty fleet. Indignant
that his secrets were open to a mortal, Jupiter bade you become an
immortal. Departing, you were able to do without your nation and your
world, but your nation and your world cannot properly do without you.
Five divinities, Philip, gave you gifts in
life, tears when you fell, and then offerings at your tomb. First Mars,
then Mars’ companion Venus, then Venus’ companion Minerva, then Pan
hers, then Calliope Pan’s. Mars gave you your heart, Venus your face,
Minerva your brain, Pan gave you Arcadia, and Calliope your tunes. Mars
endowed you with arms, Venus with love’s torches, Minerva with wit, Pan
with a pair of pipes, Calliope with tunes. Mars was touched by wrath,
Venus by tears, Minerva by grief, Pan by madness, and Calliope by
sorrow.` Mars gave spears to your tomb, Venus garlands, Minerva
violets, Pan ivy, and Calliope roses. Mars mourns a knight, Venus a
son, Minerva a chick, Pan a shepherd, and Calliope a father.
Why do the shades not return from the
Elysian vales? Sidney is bewitching the sweet Sirens’ ears.
He whom I once happily bore as a father
and a man, I now lament unhappily, deprived of the man, and deprived of
the father, Cornwall, a nymph pregnant with ore-bearing veins, but now
a nymph more pregnant with grief. For me, it is not such a glory to
have given birth to a man preeminent for his merits and his spirits, as
it is a grief to have lost him. Tears would fail me, if my aunt Doris, prodigious at weeping, were not also supplying
her waters. Do you wonder that the dead has no tomb? It is being reserved for Mohun, and for myself.
O terror and yet wonder of the Spanish. O
astonishment and also dread of the Irish nation! O fearful Samson, who
triumph in your death, and work more harm in death than in life!
Revenger of your death and punishment for your killing, by whom
Vengeance is her own revenge! Thus vanquished that the victor desires
thus to be vanquished, and not solely to depart as victor in the way he
thus vanquished. The stout supernals envied his blessed nation for this
alone, that its soil entombed Granville. But the land that gave you a
magnificent triumph also gave you your magnificent tomb.
I am the effort of five kingdoms; four
produce me unwillingly, one gladly. England, Belgium, Spain, France,
and Ireland have contributed something that I might exist: England her
wealth, Belgium her hopes, Spain her fears, the Gallic race their
praises, but Ireland her crime. When all these seeds gather on one, the
tomb of half-divine Norris is born.
Wrath of the gods and you, threats of
Avernus, and Acheron’s envy, and Orcus’ rage, and infamous famine, you
daughter of ancient night, and you maws insatiable by any slaughters,
how long will you rage? Or by what blood-offerings will you be
appeased? Murderous Fury, o Libitina, Death’s
handmaiden, what surcease you will you grant to our deaths and our
evils? How they perish in throngs, and fresher demises outrun our
laments. And now the two Norrises, and Radcliffe, along with Carey’s heart, have sat on the black benches of the
public barge. Until now one survivor has endured, equal to many men,
and he has rendered the loss of the rest more tolerable, and less
lamentable. And you have perceived this, unsparing Fate, and by your
lot have translated to the Styx our property, the consolation of our
grief, Egerton, lest anything of solace or alleviation might stand.
But, o
supreme arbiters of death and of life, you handmaidens of the
Thunderer, if you sigh over anything, if at length sufficient has been
given for our slaughter, for a thousand harms, for a thousand losses,
grant us at least this one relief in our afflictions: the days you have
taken from the son, mercifully grant to the father and the brother.
I do not crave to be borne above the stars
by praises, I whom in soul God has already borne above the stars. As a
saint, what should the honor of incense do but displease me, to whom it
was never welcome in life? When I
hated praise from another man’s mouth, should loathe it not more coming
from my own? So it is right for Jewel to say this much of himself
(Jewel, of whom nought ill can be said): living, learn how to live from
life, and from my death how to die.
Jewel is not valuable in my eyes because
his surname is a word for gems; rather, a gem itself is valuable to me,
because the gem takes its name from Jewel’s.
Dear ring (for the omen of your name gives
a favorable nod), whom God Himself has fitted on His finger, you
enhance my pages’ worth, Deringe, nor do you refuse to go as a ring as
the jewel’s companion. Pardon my beginnings, thus
my tongue does not know how to wound, but is schooled to wag, and born
to please. Enough of praise, do not wish to gain praises, it is
sufficient to have earned them even if you have not possessed them. It
is life enough to have lived for God, your nation, and your family —
alas that you did not live for them enough!
Why should I prepare a monument for you in
death, Foxe? Who prepares for you a better one than your own? A
God-enthused nation, rescued by you from vengeful fires, rescues you
from ash, flames, and the pyre. And as many witnesses as you hymn in
your divine tome, so many witnesses do you have to your praise and your
efforts. As the Saints craved see you as their champion, Foxe, you
abandoned the earth and sought the stars.
You were a laureate, Humphrey, the
university long boasted of your leaves, a proud garland, and with
justice. Although old age defrauds all else of its verdant honor, from
your old age you received strength and foliage. Only its laurel was
absent from Elysium’s groves, and so God translated you to His.
I do not lack the words, passerby, I lack
a tongue; if you supply that, I shall speak although stone. Be not
surprised: piety and the weight of love can animate mute stones with
your sounds. Fitzgeoffrey entrusted his human remains to me, he to whom
God Himself has granted the garments of a celestial. Bedford have him
the clear airs when he was born, Cambridge gave him arts, Cornwall gave
him his livelihood, Exeter his death, and his estate gave him the power
to desire nothing; His ardor, manner of life, sobriety, nobility, and
faith gave him a zeal for heaven. But you, whoever you will be, unless
you are harder than me myself, you will pray that his ashes sleep
softly.
You first brought the Muses to the pulpit,
putting behind you the sinful glade and profane Helicon. With you
leading the way, the Pierian Sisters dedicated their name and their
titles to Christ. O how much sacred speech is indebted to you! And how
much it took from you in life, how much it lost from you in death! O in
what nectar you dipped your tongue! And what an angel perched on your
lips! O what honeyed, and what a Gihon flowing
with a current of milk, issued from your mouth, and with its showers
intoxicated a world ready to drink! Memorable young man, worthy of
heaven, and into heaven received, for the earth was unworthy of such a
gift for itself. Live in my pages (though you yourself ensure that you
live in mine), Smythe, destined to live forever in your own.
Bound to a crag by a harsh chain, this
maiden sensed no help on the barren shore. Bare of breast, her hands
worn by the restraining iron, her face by tears, her feet by fetters,
her heart by fear, the sad Church, alas, was exposed to sea monsters,
so that with her own death she might atone for sins not her own. But at
length, Whitaker, as a new Perseus you took pity and came to the rescue
of this girl, given up for lost. You smote the fierce whales, freeing
her roughened limbs from their bonds, her breast from fear. And now,
greatest victor, you enlarge the starry choirs, the Roman Gorgon
finally defeated.
God wished you to be obscure in life,
Grenham, nor to be shown to the world before you were snatched away.
While you lived, He ungratefully denied you the light of the world.
Now, behold, it shines with the light of you in death. Not otherwise,
often when envious clouds obscure Phoebus with black darkness through
lengthy days, he, lavish with his rays, nevertheless shines forth his
gold, now about to sink beneath western waters., You lived for god
before, Grenham, but you were dead to the world. Now, dead, you live
for the world and for God.
Melt into tears, my eyes, melt into sighs,
my breast, melt into groans, my breast, and into heartache, my bowels,
since, alas, Bellott has gone into thin air, and only the empty name of
so great a man survives. The flower of his family and splendor of his
race, the consolation of my life, and the hope of my dwindling family,
has fallen. But I complain of private matters, why not touch on the
public loss, a wounding conjoined to my own? Pardon me, my nation,
though the Parcae have not pardoned you. It is enough that I have
already lamented my own ills: since they arecon joined to yours, which
this mutual stroke has injured, it is fitting for you to lament my
loss, and I yours. Yet neither is to be mourned overmuch, my pious
nation, since his goods are conjoined to our ills. For previously
Bellott lived for you, and for me — now he is allowed to live for
himself, and for God.
Alas, the tears! Does bitter sorrow begin
once more to worm its way into my bosom? Does another crop of
complaints grow again, must a new water of a sad ocean be sailed? Does
some exiled descendant of Agenor’s stock sow the dragon’s teeth, a
deadly seed, in my fields, a dire growth of future lamentation, whence
a lush crop of armed evils grows? O what funeral torches has Pandora
let loose in the world from her fatal box? Laying bare Tartarus, how
many, o how many Furies does the Avenger release? Most especially
diseases, that accursed race, against which an unequal Podalirus opposes his helpless arts! Hence so many deadly
banes and tears range the world, Hell’s countless plagues combine into
one, while everything hangs by an uncertain thread. Hence we see
gaffers and lads survive men snatched off by the Fates; afflicted by
baldness, old age lives, while the many with the full head of hair dies.
I had scarce
begun to leave off lamenting Risdon’s cruel fate, and with my tears I was mourning my lost
affection, and behold, new deaths to be sung followed upon his pious
demise — what en ending you make for my sorrows, Libitina! And you fall, o Nelder (if I am to say that
being gathered to the home of the celestials and gaining heaven is to
have fallen), you Clarian flower,
offspring of Phoebus, marrow of Suasion. You were a man whose virtue
shone the brightness of Sirius, like the Great Bear
driving her rosy car around the polestar, before fate’s darkling
clouds enveloped its golden splendor, you were a man who, if a person
could look upon your bier dry-eyed, I would think his eyes to be
hardened with adamant, and to have exchanged his brain-matter for hard
whetstones. Certainly I, who seem the sole survivor of so many deaths
of my friends, so as to lead a life in death (while the cruelty of
fickle fate, treacherous to me, rolls together six hundred troubles of
this wretched life), look on it with wet eyes, and perish in the
looking.
In my
sadness I would speak more words for my dear friend, but, alas, sorrow
chokes my voice, and kills my Muse.
Now, now I understand that the Parcae are
unsparing, fair Mohun, since they are unwilling to spare you. But I
would have thought that they were not unwilling, but unable to spare
you: a law graven on solid adamant forbids. If anything could sway
death, you could, if death could be sparing, it would spare you. For if
nobility and pedigree had any power, the pedigree of the house of
Killigrew would have that power. If beauty or comeliness had the power,
chil death (no matter how frigid) would have been warmed by your eyes.
If piety, if bright faith, if virtue had the power, who would come
before you in virtue, faith, and piety? Each one by itself could not,
yet all together perhaps could; all were combined in one, and yet they
could not.
Part of Brina is earthen, part celestial
spirit: the one yielded to the soil, the other to the sky. The Italian
ground which bore him also banished him; England cherished him, and
Exeter covers him. No man was more
skilled at applying his arts to maladies, or more ready to care for
those in pain. Now a heavenly home, his true nation, receives this man
exiled from his ancestral home by his love of piety. It is doubtful
whether the glory of the Italians is greater for having borne him, or
their crime for having banished him.
Offspring either of Phoebus or of Dousa
(for this is quite controversial, unless they are both gods), Belgian
Sidney (what more might I say?), either to be associated with him, or
yourself, or your father, or with nobody, alive the darling, and dead
the despair of the learned world, at once the world’s delight and its
sorrow, what greater thing could Jupiter give the world, unless he gave
it you as an immortal? It is a miracle that a man such as yourself
lived in our age, but a greater miracle that you were able to die.
While England swells with pride and boasts
of her bard, and by herself challenges the whole world’s embrace, and
you, Tasso, fall tacit, and you, Bartas, triumph no
more, and while bashfulness overcomes you, Ariosto, our bold populace
does not just excite the envy of all men, but jealousy invades heaven
and grips the gods. The supernals have stolen Spenser from you,
England, since they had no equal poet. How great he was, that our
nation deserved to have not just kingdoms, but also the gods as rivals!
Spenser sleeps here, Chaucer’s inferior in
antiquity, his neighbor in the tomb, his superior in art.
As often as Tarlton present his present
face (not without teeth) for inspection in a crowded theater, all the
welkin resounded with the spectators’ terrific laughter, and Jove’s
high court heard the applause. The heavens were stupefied with
amazement, the inhabitants of the heavens were stupefied, and its
native throng of gods. Those in Elysium’s vale made ready to return to
earth, Tarlton, to hear your witticisms. Fearing lest Jupiter, his
court abandoned, spend all his days like Bellerophon, alack!, Atropos commanded a cruel crime, and
then bore Tarlton off to the Many. For if you
had not sought the gods, Tarlton, they would have sought you, a crew
flocking to your sweet jokes.
When black Death, obeying Jove’s imperial
decree, extinguished Nashe’s vital fires, first she stealthily stole
the lad’s armed tongue and his terrible pen, those twin thunderbolts.
Death attacked him defenseless and burst in on him unarmed, and thus
bore off the trophy from the bested bard. But if he had had his pen or
his tongue, cruel Death herself would have feared to die.
Happy shades, and you surviving spirit who
are a new divinity, whom the gods have now appointed their
fellow-citizen, and you genius, lately the patron of our Trefusis, now
Jove’s fellow banqueter and a patrician of heaven, with your gentle
presence steal into our sacred rites, and accept the slender gifts of
my poverty-stricken Muse: slender gifts indeed, and a poor little Muse.
She did what she could, she could not do what she wished to do.
They all approved Case with their pebbles
of reckoning. Minerva’s pebble approved his tongue, Apollo contributed
his pebble to his books, Aesculapius his to his art, Virtue blessed his
life with hers, and with hers Fidelity his morals. But o the
unspeakable deed and a crime to hear of! For, whitened by all their
pebbles, with her dire one Death alone made him black.
Firstborn hope of your father, first
solace of your mother, now the greatest sorrow of them both, he gave
you life as his son, she gave you light, and both gave you the glory of
a distinguished pedigree. In life he gave you morality, and she a sense
of shame, and, sorrowing, they both give tears to your tomb. After both
he and she had given you their all, God gave you heaven’s realms for
the dwelling.
I cover him whom I did not wish to cover,
him who I would rather lose, alas, I retain. Him I would rather lack, I
enjoy. I speak, who desires to be silent. I weigh him down, whom I
would rather be weighing on me. I am called the tomb of Arthur Hele
(how I regret it!) — how I grieve enjoying this honor to my
unhappiness! Do you wish to know his father and mother? They are both
pious and wellborn. Do you wish to know his homeland? This land of
Devonshire was his. Do you wish to know his life and death? Learn it in
a few brief words: his life was consecrated to the Muses, his death to
God.
I was a Fitzgeoffrey while you lived,
Jeffrey, and part of my name was contained in yours. The fatal gods
have taken from you, the Parcae have stolen from me a half of myself.
He who lies here gave orders in life that
his name be concealed, so that he who wishes to learn this too would
have to pay.
What a handsome home! It is nice and
large: one must regret that no master inhabits such an elegant dwelling.
I not surprised, Rhadamanthus, that Scaevola lies here, haled before your bar.
I am surprised that Scaevola lies here silent.
My Muse had made an ending, lo, she
thought sufficient had been given to the goddess of death, and,
wearied, she had doffed her funeral gown now had almost removed the sad
cypress, a deathly wreath, from her temples
with their crushed locks, when Rumor brought the news of Latewar’s
death and, alas, she only sighed and swooned. Phoebus stood by her, and
supported his sister with his hands and his words, though scarce able
to stand himself. Both sadly sought their Aonian haunts, hiding their
heads in shades and sadness. And then at your death the grieving Muses
fell silent, Latewar, who in your lifetime were often wont to speak.
A book’s last word is the last of all
things, unknown only to God and the minds of the angels.
