Lovelace is dead! then let the world return
To its first chaos, mufled in its urn;
The stars and elements together lye,
Drench'd in perpetual obscurity,
And the whole machine in confusion be,
As immethodick as an anarchie.
May the great eye of day weep out his light,
Pale Cynthia leave the regiment of night,
The galaxia, all in sables dight,
Send forth no corruscations to our sight,
The Sister-Graces and the sacred Nine,
Statu'd with grief, attend upon his shrine,
Whose worth, whose loss, should we but truly rate,
'Twould puzzle our arithmetic to state
Th' accompt of vertu's so transcendent high,
Number and value reach infinity.
Did I pronounce him dead! no, no! he lives,
And from his aromatique cell he gives
Spice-breathed fumes, whose odoriferous scent
(In zephre-gales which never can be spent)
Doth spread it self abroad, and much out-vies
The eastern bird in her self-sacrifice;
Or Father Phoebus, who to th' world derives
Such various and such multiformed lives,
Took notice that brave Lovelace did inspire
The universe with his Promethean fire,
And snatcht him hence, before his thread was spun,
En'ving that here should be another Sun. T. L.<113.1>
<113.1> Thomas Lovelace, one of the poet's brothers.