[_John King._] Hannah thought this piece in bad taste, and a neglect of the dead Bishop's wishes. As epitaphs go this seems rather severe.] [Line: 8 but a word] _Resurgam_. Orig. note.] [Line: 9 neighbour] In St. Paul's.] [Line: 13 ancestors] The Kings of Devonshire referred to in Introduction.] _Upon the death of my ever desired friend, Doctor Donne, Dean of Paul's._ [Died March 31, 1631.] To have lived eminent, in a degree Beyond our loftiest flights, that is, like thee; Or t' have had too much merit is not safe; For such excesses find no epitaph. At common graves, we have poetic eyes, Can melt themselves in easy elegies; Each quill can drop his tributary verse, And pin it, with the hatchments, to the hearse: But at thine, poem or inscription (Rich soul of wit and language!) we have none; 10 Indeed a silence does that tomb befit, Where is no herald left to blazon it. Widow'd invention justly doth forbear To come abroad, knowing thou art not here, Late her great patron; whose prerogative Maintain'd and cloth'd her so, as none alive Must now presume to keep her at thy rate, Though he the Indies for her dower estate: Or else that awful fire, which once did burn In thy clear brain, now fall'n into thy urn, 20 Lives there to fright rude empirics from thence, Which might profane thee by their ignorance. Who ever writes of thee, and in a style Unworthy such a theme, does but revile Thy precious dust, and wake a learned spirit Which may revenge his rapes upon thy merit. For all a low-pitch'd fancy can devise, Will prove, at best, but hallow'd injuries. Thou, like the dying swan, didst lately sing Thy mournful dirge in audience of the king; 30 When pale looks, and faint accents of thy breath, Presented so to life that piece of death, That it was fear'd and prophesied by all Thou thither cam'st to preach thy funeral. O! hadst thou in an elegiac knell Rung out unto the world thine own farewell; And in thy high victorious numbers beat The solemn measure of thy griev'd retreat, Thou might'st the poet's service now have miss'd, As well as then thou didst prevent the priest: 40 And never to the world beholden be So much as for an epitaph for thee. I do not like the office. Nor is 't fit, Thou, who didst lend our age such sums of wit, Shouldst now reborrow from her bankrupt mine That ore to bury thee, which once was thine. Rather still leave us in thy debt; and know (Exalted soul!) more glory 'tis to owe Unto thy hearse what we can never pay, Than with embased coin those rites defray. 50