Commit we then thee to thyself: nor blame Our drooping loves, which thus to thine own fame Leave thee executor; since, but thy own, No pen could do thee justice, nor bays crown Thy vast desert; save that, we nothing can Depute to be thy ashes' guardian. So jewellers no art or metal trust To form the diamond, but the diamond's dust. [_Dr. Donne._] This is also found in some editions of Donne's _Poems_ and in Walton's _Life_, and Hannah took repeated pains to record the variants. I have borrowed those which seemed of importance. King's friendship with Donne (whose executor he was) was peculiarly intimate, as Walton, a friend of both, elaborately testifies. But the greatest of the many great Deans of St. Paul's was certainly 'beyond' King's 'loftiest flights' (or, as Walton read, 'thoughts'), and the Bishop is here below even these.] [Line: 8 pin it] This was literally done.] [Line: 30 Refers to Donne's last sermon at Court, to his long illness, and to the ghastly pallor perpetuated by the famous picture of him in his shroud.] [Line: 37 'High victorious numbers' is not bad, and the whole passage does bare justice to Donne's mastery of the graver epicede, which equalled Jonson's of the lighter.] [Line: 41 beholden] Some versions have the common form 'behold_ing_'.] [Line: 44 'Wit'--in that seventeenth-century sense of which Sir Henry Craik has so well defined the object--'not to excite laughter but to compel attention'--was regarded, and rightly, as Donne's special glory, and the best thing written on his death was Carew's A king who ruled as he thought fit The universal monarchy of Wit. ] [Line: 49 For 'Unto thy hearse' the Walton version reads 'Thy memory'.] _An Elegy upon the most victorious King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus._ [Killed at the battle of Lützen, Nov. 6, 1632.] Like a cold fatal sweat which ushers death, My thoughts hang on me, and my lab'ring breath Stopp'd up with sighs, my fancy, big with woes, Feels two twinn'd mountains struggle in her throes,-- Of boundless sorrow one,--t' other of sin;-- For less let no one rate it, to begin Where honour ends.--In great Gustavus' flame, That style burnt out, and wasted to a name, Does barely live with us. As when the stuff That fed it, fails, the taper turns to snuff, 10 With this poor snuff, this airy shadow, we Of Fame and Honour must contented be; Since from the vain grasp of our wishes fled Their glorious substance is, now He is dead.