To pay my love to thee, and pay it so,
As honest men should what they justly owe,
Were to write better of thy life, then can
The assured'st pen of the most worthy man.
Such was thy composition, such thy mind,
Improv'd from vertue, and from vice refin'd;
Thy youth an abstract of the world's best parts,
Invr'd to arms and exercis'd to arts,
Which, with the vigour of a man, became
Thine and thy countries piramids of fame.
Two glorious lights to guide our hopeful youth
Into the paths of honour and of truth.
These parts (so rarely met) made up in thee,
What man should in his full perfection be:
So sweet a temper into every sence
And each affection breath'd an influence,
As smooth'd them to a calme, which still withstood
The ruffling passions of untamed blood,
Without a wrinckle in thy face, to show
Thy stable breast could a disturbance know.
In fortune humble, constant in mischance;
Expert in both, and both serv'd to advance
Thy name by various trialls of thy spirit,
And give the testimony of thy merit.
Valiant to envy of the bravest men,
And learned to an undisputed pen;
Good as the best in both and great, but yet
No dangerous courage nor offensive wit.
These ever serv'd the one for to defend,
The other, nobly to advance thy friend,
Under which title I have found my name
Fix'd in the living chronicle of fame
To times succeeding: yet I hence must go,
Displeas'd I cannot celebrate thee so.
But what respect, acknowledgement and love,
What these together, when improv'd, improve:
Call it by any name (so it express
Ought like a tribute to thy worthyness,
And may my bounden gratitude become)
LOVELACE, I offer at thy honour'd tomb.
And though thy vertues many friends have bred
To love thee liveing, and lament thee dead,
In characters far better couch'd then these,
Mine will not blott thy fame, nor theirs encrease.
'Twas by thine own great merits rais'd so high,
That, maugre time and fate, it shall not dye.
Sic flevit.
Charles Cotton.