Desist from hence, doting Astrology! To search for hidden wonders in the sky; Or from the concourse of malignant stars, Foretell diseases, gen'ral as our wars: What barren droughts, forerunners of lean dearth, Threaten to starve the plenty of the earth: What horrid forms of darkness must affright The sickly world, hast'ning to that long night Where it must end. If there no portents are, No black eclipses for the Kalendar, 50 Our times sad annals will rememb'red be I' th' loss of bright Northumberland and Thee: Two stars of Court, who in one fatal year By most untimely set drop'd from their sphere. She in the winter took her flight, and soon As her perfections reach'd the point of noon, Wrapt in a cloud, contracted her wish'd stay Unto the measure of a short-liv'd day. But _Thou_ in Summer, like an early rose, By Death's cold hand nipp'd as _Thou_ didst disclose, 60 Took'st a long day to run that narrow stage, Which in two gasping minutes summ'd thy age. And, as the fading rose, when the leaves shed, Lies in its native sweetness buried, _Thou_ in thy virtues bedded and inhearst, Sleep'st with those odours thy pure fame disperst, Where till that Rising Morn thou must remain, In which thy wither'd flowers shall spring again, And greater beauties thy wak'd body vest, Than were at thy departure here possest. 70 So with full eyes we close thy vault. Content (With what thy loss bequeaths us) to lament, And make that use of thy griev'd funeral, As of a crystal broken in the fall; Whose pitied fractures, gather'd up, and set, May smaller mirrors for thy sex beget; There let them view themselves, until they see The end of all their glories shown in _Thee_. Whilst in the truth of this sad tribute, I Thus strive to canonize thy memory. 80 [_Elegy on Lady Anne Rich._] Properly Lady Rich, who had been Lady Anne Cavendish. Her brother Charles was that leader of the 'Ca'ndishers' in Lincolnshire whose defeat and death at Gainsborough, after repeated victories in the spring and summer of 1643, was one of the first and most serious blows to the Royal cause. Waller wrote epitaphs both on him and on his sister, but the best on her is Sidney Godolphin's (_v. sup._, vol. ii, p. 248). She is one of the candidates for the personage of Waller's 'Amoret', and was not impossibly King's 'A. R.' (_v. sup._, p. 172).] [Line: 4 _MS._ 'arrows'.] [Line: 38 Which] _MS._ 'Once'.] [Line: 48 _MS._ 'hasting'.] [Line: 52 Northumberland] Lady Anne Cecil, first wife of Algernon Percy, tenth Earl.] [Line: 55 winter] December 6, 1637.] _An Elegy upon Mrs. Kirk, unfortunately drowned in Thames._