The Poems of Richard Corbet, late bishop of Oxford and of Norwich: 4th editionCorbet, Richard
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The Poems of Richard Corbet, late bishop of Oxford and of Norwich: 4th edition
Corbet, Richard
English poetry
I have my piety too, which, could
It vent itself but as it would,
Would say as much as both have done
Before me here, the friend and son:
For I both lost a friend and father,
Of him whose bones this grave doth gather:
Dear Vincent Corbet, who so long
Had wrestled with diseases strong,
That though they did possess each limb,
Yet he broke them, ere they could him,
With the just canon of his life;
A life that knew nor noise nor strife:
But was by sweetning so his will,
All order and composure still.
His mind as pure, and neatly kept
As were his nourseries, and swept
So of uncleanness or offence,
That never came ill odour thence!
And add his actions unto these,
They were as specious as his trees.
’Tis true, he could not reprehend,
His very manners taught t’ amend,
They were so even, grave, and holy;
No stubbornness so stiff, nor folly
To licence ever was so light,
As twice to trespass in his sight;
His looks would so correct it, when
It chid the vice, yet not the men.
Much from him, I profess, I won,
And more, much more, I should have done,
But that I understood him scant:
Now I conceive him by my want;
And pray, who shall my sorrows read,
That they for me their tears will shed:
For truly, since he left to be,
I feel I’m rather dead than he.
Reader, whose life and name did e’er become
An epitaph, deserv’d a tomb:
Nor wants it here through penury or sloth,
Who makes the one, so it be first, makes both.
JONSON’S Underwoods.
[2] Reg. Prerog. Court Cant. Parker, 49.—Vincent Corbet left his
copyholds in Twickenham and Thistleworth (or Isleworth) to his wife, and
legacies to various others. See page 118.
[3] Wood’s Annals of Oxford, vol. ii. p. 312. ed. Gutch, 4to. 1796.
[4] Heylyn’s Life of Archbishop Laud, p. 68. fol. 1668.
[5] See a curious account of the proceedings on this occasion by an eye
witness, in Leyland’s Collectanea, vol. ii. 626. ed. Hearne, 1770.
[6] One of the ballads written on this occasion is (through the kindness
of my friend John Dovaston, esq.) in a manuscript in my possession,
beginning,
To Oxenford our king is gone
With all his noble peers.—&c.
[7] Miscellaneous State Papers, vol. i. 394. 4to. 1778.
[8] A William Lake, who was M. A. and a fellow of Clare Hall in 1619, had
also a ring bequeathed him by Ruggles, and might have been the author.
See Hawkins’s edition of Ignoramus. Utrum horum mavis accipe.
[9] Biographical Sketches, vol. i. p. 38.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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