Francis Beaumont 1584-1616

After 4th May 1609 Francis Beaumont [aged 25] wrote an epitaph to Bridget Harrington [deceased]:

As unthrifts groan in straw for their pawn'd beds,

As women weep for their lost maidenheads,

When both are without hope or remedy,

Such an untimely grief I have for thee.

I never saw thy face, nor did my heart

Urge forth mine eyes unto it whilst thou wert;

But being lifted hence, that, which to thee

Was death's sad dart, proved Cupid's shaft to me.

Whoever thinks me foolish that the force

Of a report can make me love a corse,

Know he that when with this I do compare

The love I do a living woman bear,

I find myself most happy: now I know

Where I can find my mistress, and can go

Unto her trimm'd bed, and can lift away

Her grass-green mantle, and her sheet display;

And touch her naked; and though th' envious mold

In which she lies uncover'd, moist, and cold,

Strive to corrupt her, she will not abide

With any art her blemishes to hide,

As many living do, and, know their need;

Yet cannot they in sweetness her exceed,

But make a stink with all their art and skill,

Which their physicians warrant with a bill;

Nor at her door doth heaps of coaches stay,

Footmen and midwives to bar up my way;

Nor needs she any maid or page to keep,

To knock me early from my golden sleep,

With letters that her honour all is gone,

If I not right her cause on such a one.

Her heart is not so hard to make me pay

For every kiss a supper and a play:

Nor will she ever open her pure lips

To utter oaths, enough to drown our ships,

To bring a plague, a famine, or the sword,

Upon the land, though she should keep her word;

Yet, ere an hour be past, in some new vein

Break them, and swear them double o'er again.

Pardon me, that with thy blest memory

I mingle mine own former misery:

Yet dare I not excuse the fate that brought

These crosses on me, for then every thought

That tended to thy love was black and foul,

Now all as pure as a new-baptiz'd soul:

For I protest, for all that I can see,

I would not lie one night in bed with thee;

Nor am I jealous, but could well abide

My foe to lie in quiet by thy side.

You worms, my rivals, whilst she was alive,

How many thousands were there that did strive

To have your freedom? for their sake forbear

Unseemly holes in her soft skin to wear:

But if you must (as what worms can abstain

To taste her tender body?) yet refrain

With your disordered eatings to deface her,

But feed yourselves so as you most may grace her.

First, through her ear-tips see you make a pair

Of holes, which, as the moist inclosed air

Turns into water, may the clean drops take,

And in her ears a pair of jewels make.

Have ye not yet enough of that white skin,

The touch whereof, in times past, would have been

Enough to have ransom'd many a thousand soul

Captive to love? If not, then upward roll

Your little bodies, where I would you have

This Epitaph upon her forehead grave:

'Living, she was young, fair, and full of wit;

Dead, all her faults are in her forehead writ.'

Francis Beaumont [aged 28]: An Elegy On The Death Of The Virtuous Lady Elizabeth, Countess Of Rutland

I may forget to drink, to eat, to sleep,

Remembering thee: but when I do, to weep

In well-weighed lines, that men shall at thy hearse

Envy the sorrow which brought forth my verse;

May my dull understanding have the might

Only to know her last was yesternight!

Rutland, the fair, is dead! and if to hear

The name of Sidney will more force a tear,

'Tis she that is so dead! and yet there be

Some more alive profess not poetry;

The statesmen and the lawyers of our time

Have business still, yet do it not in rhyme.

Can she be dead, and can there be of those

That are so dull to say their prayers in prose?

It is three days since she did feel Death's hand;

And yet this isle not feel the poet's land?

Hath this no new ones made? and are the old

At such a needful time as this grown cold?

They all say they would fain; but yet they plead

They cannot write, because their muse is dead.

Hear me then speak, which will take no excuse;

Sorrow can make a verse without a muse.

Why didst thou die so soon? O, pardon me,

I know it was the longest life to thee,

That e'er with modesty was called a span,

Since the Almighty left to strive with man;

Mankind is sent to sorrow; and thou hast

More of the business which thou cam'st for past,

Than all those aged women, which, yet quick,

Have quite outlived their own arithmetic.

As soon as thou couldst apprehend a grief,

There were enough to meet thee; and the chief

Blessing of women, marriage, was to thee

Nought but a sacrament of misery;

For whom thou hadst, if we may trust to fame,

Could nothing change about thee but thy name:

A name which who (that were again to do't)

Would change without a thousand joys to boot?

In all things else thou rather led'st a life

Like a betrothed virgin than a wife.

But yet I would have called thy fortune kind,

If it had only tried the settled mind

With present crosses: not the loathed thought

Of worse to come, or past, then might have wrough

Thy best remembrance to have cast an eye

Back with delight upon thine infancy.

But thou hadst, ere thou knew'st the use of tears,

Sorrow laid up against thou cam'st to years;

Ere thou wert able who thou wert to tell,

By a sad war thy noble father fell,

In a dull clime, which did not understand

What 'twas to venture him to save a land.

He left two children, who for virtue, wit,

Beauty, were loved of all; thee and his wit:

Two was too few; yet death hath from us took

Thee, a more faultless issue than his book,

Which now the only living thing we have

From him, we'll see, shall never find a grave

As thou hast done. Alas! 'would it might be

That books their sexes had, as well as we,

That we might see this married to the worth,

And many poems like itself bring forth!

But this vain wish divinity controuls;

For neither to the angels, nor to souls,

Nor anything he meant should ever live,

Did the wise God of nature sexes give.

Then with his everlasting work alone

We must content ourselves, since she is gone;

Gone, like the day thou diedst upon; and we

May call that back again as soon as thee.

Who should have looked to this? Where were you all,

That do yourselves the help of nature call,

Physicians? I acknowledce you were there

To sell such words as one in health would hear:

So died she. Curst be he who shall defend

Your art of hastening nature to its end!

In this you shewed that physic can but be

At best an art to cure your poverty.

Ye're many of you impostors, and do give

To sick men potions that yourselves may live.

He that hath surfeited, and cannot eat,

Must have a medicine to procure you meat;

And that's the deepest ground of all your skill,

Unless it be some knowledge how to kill.

Sorrow and madness make my verses flow

Cross to my understanding; for I know

You can do wonders: Every day I meet

The looser sort of people in the street

From desperate diseases freed; and why

Restore you them, and suffer her to die?

Why should the state allow you colleges,

Pensions for lectures, and anatomies,

If all your potions, vomits, letting blood,

Can only cure the bad, and not the good,

Which only they can do? and I will show

The hidden reason, why you did not know

The way to cure her: You believed her blood

Ran on such courses as you understood;

By lectures you believed her arteries

Grew as they do in your anatomies:

Forgetting that the state allows you none

But only whores and thieves to practise on

And every passage 'bout them I am sure

You understood, and only them can cure;

Which is the cause that both —

Are noted for enjoying so long lives.

But noble blood treads in too strange a path

For your ill-got experience, and hath

Another way of cure. If you had seen

Penelope dissected, or the Queen

Of Sheba; then you might have found a way

To have preserved her from that fatal day.

As 'tis, you have but made her sooner blest,

By sending her to Heaven, where let her rest.

I will not hurt the peace which she would have,

By longer looking in her quiet grave.