  WRITTEN THIRTY YEARS SINCE, PRESENTLY AFTER HIS DEATH. [From "Comedies and Tragedies written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen" folio. London. 1647.] Beaumont lies here: And where now shall we have A muse like his to sigh upon his grave? Ah! none to weep this with a worthy tear, But he that cannot, Beaumont that lies here. Who now shall pay thy tomb with such a verse As thou that lady's didst, fair Rutland's herse. A monument that will then lasting be, When all her marble is more dust than she. In thee all's lost: a sudden dearth and want Hath seiz'd on wit, good epitaphs are scant. We dare not write thy elegy, whilst each fears He ne'er shall match that copy of thy tears. Scarce in an age a poet, and yet he Scarce live the third part of his age to see, But quickly taken off and only known, Is in a minute shut as soon as shown. Why should weak Nature tire herself in vain In such a piece, to dash it straight again? Which, when she cannot perfect, she must kill? Alas! what is't to temper slime and mire? But Nature's puzzled when she works in fire. Great brains (like brightest glass) crack straight, while those Of stone or wood hold out, and fear not blows; And we their ancient hoary heads can see Whose wit was never their mortality. Beaumont dies young, so Sidney did before, There was not poetry he could live to more, He could not grow up higher, I scarce know If th' art itself unto that pitch could grow, Were't not in thee that hadst arriv'd the height Of all that wit could reach, or nature might. O when I read those excellent things of thine, Such strength, such sweetness couched in ev'ry line, Such life of fancy, such high choice of brain, Nought of the vulgar wit or borrow'd strain, Such passion, such expressions meet my eye, Such wit untainted with obscenity, And these so unaffectedly exprest, All in a language purely flowing drest, And all so born within thyself, thine own, So new, so fresh, so nothing trod upon: I grieve not now that old Menander's vein Is ruin'd to survive in thee again; Such, in his time, was he of the same piece, The smooth, even, nat'ral wit and love of Greece. Those few sententious fragments shew more worth, Than all the poets Athens e'er brought forth; And I am sorry we have lost those hours And dwell not more on thee, whose ev'ry page May be a pattern for their scene and stage. I will not yield thy works so mean a praise; More pure, more chaste, more sainted than are plays: Nor with that dull supineness to be read, To pass a fire, or laugh an hour in bed. How do the Muses suffer every where, Taken in such mouth's censure, in such ears, That 'twixt a whiff, a line or two rehearse, And with their rheume together spaul a verse? This all a poem's leisure after play, Drink, or tobacco, it may keep the day: Whilst ev'n their very idleness they think Is lost in these, that lose their time in drink. Pity then dull we, we that better know, Will a more serious hour on thee bestow. Why should not Beaumont in the morning please, As well as Plautus, Aristophanes? Who, if my pen may as my thoughts be free, Were scurril wits and buffoons both to thee; Yet these our learned of severest brow Will deign to look on, and to note them too, That will defy our own, 'tis English stuff, And th' author is not rotten long enough, Alas! what phlegm are they compar'd to thee, In thy Philaster, and Maid's-Tragedy? Where's such a humour as thy Bessus? pray Let them put all their Thrasoes in one play, He shall out-bid them; their conceit was poor, All in a circle of a bawd or whore; And not a good jest extant in a play. Yet these are wits, because they'r old, and now Being Greek and Latin, they are learning too: But those their own times were content t'allow A thirsty fame, and thine is lowest now. But thou shalt live, and, when thy name is grown Six ages older, shall be better known, When th' art of Chaucer's standing in the tomb, Thou shalt not share, but take up all his room. John Earle. |
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