His first wief bore them every one,
The world might not have myst her--
A very obscure line, at first blush rather hard on Baker, and flatly
contradicted by what follows:
She was a very paragone,
The Lady Buckhurst's syster.
Nothing could be more succinct. Now for Beere:
His widow lives in sober sort,
No matron more discreeter;
She still reteines a good report,
And is a great housekeeper.
Apart from his valiancy as a consort Sir Thomas seems to have done
little in the world but be rich in it. The best that can be said of
him by the epigraphist is contained in what follows:
He made his porter shut his gate
To sycophants and briebors,
And ope it wide to great estates,
And also to his neighbours.
That does not recommend Sir Thomas to me. I suspect himself of
sycophancy, if not of briebory, and it may well be that he shut out
others of his kidney in order that he might have free play with the
great estates. But that is not the poet's fault, who had to say what
he could.
My next example should be styled the Ballad of Extravagant Grief, and
will be found at its highest in the Poetical Works of John Donne. I
can find nothing greater than his--
Death can find nothing after her, to kill
Except the world itself, so great as she,
in "A funerall elegie upon the death of George Sonds Esquire who was
killed by his brother Mr. Freeman Sonds the 7 of August 1658." Freeman
Sonds, a younger son, hit his brother George on the head with a
cleaver as he lay in his bed, and thereafter dispatched him with a
three-sided dagger. He then went in to his father and confessed his
fault. "Then you had best kill me too," said the father; to whom the
son, "Sir, I have done enough." He was hanged at Maidstone, full
of penitence and edifying discourse. The elegy begins in Donne's
circumstantial manner:
Reach me a handkerchief, another yet,
And yet another, for the last is wet.
Nothing could be better; but he must needs outdo his usual outdoings,
call for a bottle to hold his tears, finally require that--
The Muses should be summoned in by force
And spend their all upon the wounded corse--
which presents a rather comic picture to the imaginative reader.
The elegist, reserving blasphemy for his conclusion, now becomes
foolish:
In thy expyring it was made appear
In bloody wounds the Trinity was here.
_Where_ was the Trinity, you ask? In the wounds, naturally, which,
made with a three-edged dagger, showed red triangles. But there were
twelve wounds: therefore--
The gates thro' which thy fertil soul did mount
To blessed Aboad came to the full account
Of Twelve, or four times three; and three
Hath ever in it some great Mysterie.
Obviously. Here is his peroration:
Great God, what can, what shall, man's frailtie thinke
When thy great goodness at this act did winke?
But thou art just, perhaps thou thoughtest it fit;
And Lord, unto thy judgment I submit.