Let no profane ignoble foot tread near This hallow'd piece of earth: _Dorset lies here_. A small sad relique of a noble spirit, Free as the air, and ample as his merit; Whose least perfection was large, and great Enough to make a common man complete. A soul refin'd and cull'd from many men, That reconcil'd the sword unto the pen, Using both well. No proud forgetting Lord, But mindful of mean names, and of his word. 10 One that did love for honour, not for ends, And had the noblest way of making friends By loving first. One that did know the Court, Yet understood it better by report Than practice, for he nothing took from thence But the king's favour for his recompense. One for religion, or his country's good, That valu'd not his fortune, nor his blood. One high in fair opinion, rich in praise, And full of all we could have wish'd, but days. 20 He that is warn'd of this, and shall forbear To vent a sigh for him, or lend a tear; May he live long and scorn'd, unpitied fall, And want a mourner at his funeral. [_An Epitaph._] This Dorset was the third earl, Richard. As a very young man he married the famous Lady Anne Clifford, whose ill-luck in husbands may have been partly caused, but must have been somewhat compensated, by her masterful temper. Dorset, who died young, was both a libertine and a spendthrift; but King seems to have thought well enough of him not only to write this epitaph, but to lend him, or guarantee for him, a thousand pounds (quite £3,000 to-day), which he had at any rate not got back thirty years afterwards. The present piece appears, with variants, in Corbet's _Poems_, but King seems to have the better claim. Hannah gives a considerable body of various readings from the Corbet version and one in the Ashmole MS. 38, but it hardly seems worth while to burden the page-foot with them, for the epitaph is mere 'common-form' and of no special interest.] _The Exequy._ Accept, thou Shrine of my dead Saint, Instead of dirges this complaint; And for sweet flowers to crown thy hearse, Receive a strew of weeping verse From thy griev'd friend, whom thou might'st see Quite melted into tears for thee. Dear loss! since thy untimely fate, My task hath been to meditate On thee, on thee: thou art the book, The library, whereon I look, 10 Though almost blind. For thee (lov'd clay) I languish out, not live, the day, Using no other exercise But what I practise with mine eyes: By which wet glasses, I find out How lazily time creeps about To one that mourns; this, only this, My exercise and bus'ness is: So I compute the weary hours With sighs dissolved into showers. 20