_Talbot_ is dead. Like lightning which no part Oth' body touches, but first strikes the heart, This word hath murder'd me. Ther's not in all The stocke of sorrow, any charme can call Death sooner up. For musiqu's in the breath Of thunder, and a sweetnesse even ith' death That brings with it, if you with this compare All the loude noyses, which torment the ayre. They cure (Physitians say) the element Sicke with dull vapors, and to banishment Confine infections; but this fatall shreeke, Without the least redresse, is utter'd like The last dayes summons, when Earths trophies lye A scatter'd heape, and time it selfe must dye. What now hath life to boast of? Can I have A thought lesse darke than th' horror of the grave Now thou dost dwell below? Wer't not a fault Past pardon, to raise fancie 'bove thy vault? Hayle Sacred house in which his reliques sleepe? Blest marble give me leave t' approach and weepe, These vowes to thee! for since great _Talbot's_ gone Downe to thy silence, I commerce with none But thy pale people: and in that confute Mistaking man, that dead men are not mute. Delicious beauty, lend thy flatter'd eare Accustom'd to warme whispers, and thou'lt heare How their cold language tels thee, that thy skin Is but a beautious shrine, in which black sin Is Idoliz'd; thy eyes but Spheares where lust Hath its loose motion; and thy end is dust. Great _Atlas_ of the state, descend with me. But hither, and this vault shall furnish thee With more aviso's, then thy costly spyes, And show how false are all those mysteries Thy Sect receives, and though thy pallace swell With envied pride, 'tis here that thou must dwell. It will instruct you, Courtier, that your Art Of outward smoothnesse and a rugged heart But cheates your self, and all those subtill wayes You tread to greatnesse, is a fatall maze Where you your selfe shall loose, for though you breath Upward to pride, your center is beneath. And 'twill thy Rhetorick false flesh confound; Which flatters thy fraile thoughts, no time can wound This unarm'd frame. Here is true eloquence Will teach my soule to triumph over sence, Which hath its period in a grave, and there Showes what are all our pompous surfets here. Great Orator! deare _Talbot_! Still, to thee May I an auditor attentive be: And piously maintaine the same commerce We held in life! and if in my rude verse I to the world may thy sad precepts read: I will on earth interpret for the dead. _Elegie, 3._