ELEGIES

SACRED

To the Memory of the

AUTHOR:

By feveral of his Friends.

Collected and Published

BY

D. P. L.

Nunquam ego te vitâ frater ambilior

Adfpiciam pofthac; at certè femper amabo.

London, Printed 1660.

Catullus.

ELEGIES.

TO THE MEMORY OF MY WORTHY FRIEND,

COLL. RICHARD LOVELACE.1

love to thee, and pay it So,

O
pay my
As honest men should what they justly owe,

Were to write better of thy life, then can
The assured'st of the most worthy man.

pen

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

These lines may be found, with some verbal variations, in the poems of Charles Cotton, 1689, p. 481-2-3.

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 a1 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,

This reading is adopted from Cotton's Poems, 1689, p. 482. In Lucasta we read no disturbance.

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.

UPON THE POSTHUME AND PRECIOUS POEMS

OF THE NOBLY EXTRACTED GEN

TLEMAN MR. R. L.'

HE rose and other fragrant flowers smell best,

When they are pluck'd and worn in hand or brest,

So this fair flow'r of vertue, this rare bud

Of wit, smells now as fresh as when he stood;
And in these Posthume-Poems lets us know,
He on3 the banks of Helicon did grow.
The beauty of his soul did correspond

With his sweet out-side: nay, it went beyond.

These lines, originally printed as above, were included by Payne Fisher in his collection of Howell's Poems, 1663, 8vo., where they may be found at p. 126. Fisher altered the superscription in his ill-edited book to "Upon the Posthume-Poems of Mr. Lovelace."

2 With-Howell's Poems.

3 That he upon―ibid.
4 If not go beyond—ibid.