I'LL not believe't; if fate should be so cross, Nature would not be silent of her loss. Can he be dead, and no portents appear, No pale eclipse of the sun, to let us fear What we should suffer, and before his light Put out the world enveloped in night? What thund'ring torrents the flush'd welkin tare, What apparition kill'd him in the air! When Caesar died, there were convulsion fits, And Nature seem'd to run out of her wits. At that sad object Tiber's bosom swell'd, And scarce from drowning all by Jove withheld; And shall we give this mighty conqueror, That, in a great and a more holy war, Was pulling down the empire which he rear'd, A fall unmourn'd of Nature, and unfear'd? A death (unless the league of heav'n withstood) Less wept than with an universal flood? If I had seen a comet in the air With glorious eye and bright dishevell'd hair, And on a sudden with his gilded train Drop down, I should have said that Sweden's slain, Shot like that star. Or if the earth had shook Like a weak floor, the falling roof had broke, I should have said, the mighty king is gone! Fell'd as the tallest tree in Lebanon. Alas! if he were dead, we need no post, Very instinct would tell us what we lost. And a chill damp (as at the general doom) Creep through each breast, and we should know for whom, His german conquests are not yet complete, And when they are, there's more remaining yet. The world is full of sin; not every land O'ergrown with schism hath felt his purging hand. The Pope is not confounded, and the Turk; Nor was he, sure, design'd for a less work. But if our sins have stopp'd him in the source, In midst career of his victorious course; And heaven would trust the dulness of our sense So far, not to prepare us with portents, 'Tis we that have the loss, and he hath caught His heav'nly garland ere his work be wrought. But I, before I'll undertake to grieve So great a loss, will choose not to believe. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...LAMENT by WILFRID WILSON GIBSON HIS EXCELLENCY GENERAL WASHINGTON by PHILLIS WHEATLEY GRECIAN KINDNESS: A SONG by JOHN WILMOT EPIGRAM: 27. THE FRUIT by THOMAS WYATT DANUBE AND THE EUXINE by WILLIAM EDMONSTOUNE AYTOUN |