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Title: On The Death Of Lord Hastings
Author: John Dryden [
More Titles by Dryden]
On the Death of Lord Hastings.[1]
Must noble Hastings immaturely die,
The honour of his ancient family;
Beauty and learning thus together meet,
To bring a winding for a wedding-sheet?
Must Virtue prove Death's harbinger? must she,
With him expiring, feel mortality?
Is death, Sin's wages, Grace's now? shall Art
Make us more learned, only to depart?
If merit be disease; if virtue death;
To be good, not to be; who'd then bequeath 10
Himself to discipline? who'd not esteem
Labour a crime? study, self-murder deem?
Our noble youth now have pretence to be
Dunces securely, ignorant healthfully.
Rare linguist, whose worth speaks itself, whose praise,
Though not his own, all tongues besides do raise:
Than whom great Alexander may seem less,
Who conquer'd men, but not their languages.
In his mouth nations spake; his tongue might be
Interpreter to Greece, France, Italy. 20
His native soil was the four parts o' the Earth;
All Europe was too narrow for his birth.
A young apostle; and, with reverence may
I speak it, inspired with gift of tongues, as they.
Nature gave him, a child, what men in vain
Oft strive, by art though further'd, to obtain.
His body was an orb, his sublime soul
Did move on Virtue's and on Learning's pole:
Whose regular motions better to our view,
Than Archimedes[2] sphere, the Heavens did show. 30
Graces and virtues, languages and arts,
Beauty and learning, fill'd up all the parts.
Heaven's gifts, which do like falling stars appear
Scatter'd in others; all, as in their sphere,
Were fix'd, conglobate in his soul; and thence
Shone through his body, with sweet influence;
Letting their glories so on each limb fall,
The whole frame render'd was celestial.
Come, learned Ptolemy[3] and trial make,
If thou this hero's altitude canst take: 40
But that transcends thy skill; thrice happy all,
Could we but prove thus astronomical.
Lived Tycho[4] now, struck with this ray which shone
More bright i' the morn, than others' beam at noon.
He'd take his astrolabe, and seek out here
What new star 'twas did gild our hemisphere.
Replenish'd then with such rare gifts as these,
Where was room left for such a foul disease?
The nation's sin hath drawn that veil, which shrouds
Our day-spring in so sad benighting clouds: 50
Heaven would no longer trust its pledge; but thus
Recall'd it; rapt its Ganymede from us.
Was there no milder way but the small-pox,
The very filthiness of Pandora's box?
So many spots, like naeves on Venus' soil,
One jewel set off with so many a foil;
Blisters with pride swell'd, which through's flesh did sprout
Like rose-buds, stuck i' th' lily-skin about.
Each little pimple had a tear in it,
To wail the fault its rising did commit: 60
Which, rebel-like, with its own lord at strife,
Thus made an insurrection 'gainst his life.
Or were these gems sent to adorn his skin,
The cabinet of a richer soul within?
No comet need foretell his change drew on,
Whose corpse might seem a constellation.
Oh! had he died of old, how great a strife
Had been, who from his death should draw their life!
Who should, by one rich draught, become whate'er
Seneca, Cato, Numa, Caesar, were,-- 70
Learn'd, virtuous, pious, great; and have by this
An universal metempsychosis!
Must all these aged sires in one funeral
Expire? all die in one so young, so small?
Who, had he lived his life out, his great fame
Had swoln 'bove any Greek or Roman name.
But hasty Winter, with one blast, hath brought
The hopes of Autumn, Summer, Spring, to nought.
Thus fades the oak i' the sprig, i' the blade the corn;
Thus without young, this Phoenix dies, new born: 80
Must then old three-legg'd graybeards, with their gout,
Catarrhs, rheums, aches, live three long ages out?
Time's offals, only fit for the hospital!
Or to hang antiquaries' rooms withal!
Must drunkards, lechers, spent with sinning, live
With such helps as broths, possets, physic give?
None live, but such as should die? shall we meet
With none but ghostly fathers in the street?
Grief makes me rail; sorrow will force its way;
And showers of tears, tempestuous sighs best lay. 90
The tongue may fail; but overflowing eyes
Will weep out lasting streams of elegies. But thou, O virgin-widow, left alone,
Now thy beloved, heaven-ravish'd spouse is gone,
Whose skilful sire in vain strove to apply
Medicines, when thy balm was no remedy,--
With greater than Platonic love, O wed
His soul, though not his body, to thy bed:
Let that make thee a mother; bring thou forth
The ideas of his virtue, knowledge, worth; 100
Transcribe the original in new copies, give
Hastings o' the better part: so shall he live
In's nobler half; and the great grandsire be
Of an heroic divine progeny:
An issue, which to eternity shall last,
Yet but the irradiations which he cast.
Erect no mausoleums: for his best
Monument is his spouse's marble breast.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: 'Lord Hastings:' the nobleman herein lamented, was styled Henry Lord Hastings, son to Ferdinand Earl of Huntingdon. He died before his father in 1649, being then in his twentieth year, and on the day preceding that which had been fixed for his marriage.]
[Footnote 2: 'Archimedes:' a famous geometrician, who was killed at the taking of Syracuse, in the 542d year of Rome. He made a glass sphere, wherein the motions of the heavenly bodies were wonderfully described.]
[Footnote 3: 'Ptolemy:' Claudius Ptolemaeus, a celebrated mathematician in the reign of M. Aurelius Antoninus.]
[Footnote 4: 'Tycho:' Tycho Brahe]
[The end]
John Dryden's poem: On The Death Of Lord Hastings
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