TO THE MEMORY OF MY WORTHY FRIEND, COLONEL RICHARD LOVELACE by CHARLES COTTON

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 than can
Th' assured'st pen of the most worthy man:
Such was thy composition, such thy mind
Improv'd to Virtue, and from Vice refin'd.
Thy Youth, an abstract of the World's best parts,
Enur'd to Arms, and exercis'd in Arts;
Which with the vigour of a man became
Thine, and thy Country's pyramids of flame;
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 sense,
And each affection breath'd an influence,
As smooth'd them to a calm, which still withstood
The ruffling passions of untamed blood,
Without a wrinkle in thy face to show
Thy stable breast could a disturbance know.
In fortune humble, constant in mischance,
Expert of both, and both serv'd to advance
Thy name, by various trials 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
Fixed in the living Chronicle of Fame,
To times succeeding; yet I hence must go
Displeas'd I cannot celebrate thee so.
But what respect, acknowledgment, and love,
What these together, when improv'd, improve;
Call it by any name (so it express
Ought like a tribute to thy worthiness,
And may my bounden gratitude become,)
Lovelace I offer at thy honour'd tomb.

And though thy Virtues many Friends have bred
To love thee living, and lament thee dead,
In characters far better couched than these,
Mine will not blot thy Fame nor theirs increase;
'Twas by thine own great merits rais'd so high,
That, maugre Time and Fate, it shall not die.

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