The First Anniversary

Well died the world, that we might live to see This world of wit, in his Anatomy. No evil wants his good; so wilder heirs Bedew their fathers’ tombs with forcèd tears, Whose state requites their loss; whiles thus we gain Well may we walk in blacks, but not complain. Yet how can I consent the world is dead, While this Muse lives, which in his spirit’s stead Seems to inform a world, and bids it be, In spite of loss or frail mortality? And thou, the subject of this wellborn thought, Thrice noble maid, could’st not have found nor sought A fitter time to yield to thy sad fate, Than whiles this spirit lives, that can relate Thy worth so well to our last nephews’ eyne, That they shall wonder both at his and thine. Admired match! where strives in mutual grace The cunning pencil, and the comely face; A task which thy fair goodness made too much For the bold pride of vulgar pens to touch. Enough is us to praise them that praise thee, And say, that but enough those praises be, Which, hadst thou lived, had hid their fearful head From th’ angry checkings of thy modest red. Death bars reward and shame; when envy’s gone, And gain, ’tis safe to give the dead their own. As then the wise Egyptians wont to lay More on their tombs than houses; these of clay, But those of brass or marble were; so we Give more unto thy ghost than unto thee. Yet what we give to thee, thou gavest to us, And may’st but thank thyself for being thus. Yet what thou gavest and wert, O happy maid, Thy grace profess’d all due, where ’tis repaid. So these high songs, that to thee suited bin, Serve but to sound thy Maker’s praise in thine, Which thy dear soul as sweetly sings to him Amid the choir of saints, and Seraphim, As any angel’s tongue can sing of thee. The subjects differ, though the skill agree. For as by infant years men judge of age, Thy early love, thy virtues, did presage What high part thou bear’st in those best of songs, Whereto no burden nor no end belongs. Sing on, thou virgin soul, whose lossful gain Thy lovesick parents have bewail’d in vain; Ne’er may thy name be in our songs forgot, Till we shall sing thy ditty and thy note.

When that rich soul which to her heaven is gone, Whom all do celebrate, who know they’ve one —For who is sure he hath a soul, unless It see, and judge, and follow worthiness, And by deeds praise it? he who doth not this, May lodge an inmate soul, but ’tis not his⁠— When that queen ended here her progress time, And, as to her standing house, to heaven did climb Where, loth to make the saints attend her long, She’s now a part both of the choir and song, This world in that great earthquake languished; For in a common bath of tears it bled, Which drew the strongest vital spirits out. But succour’d then with a perplexed doubt, Whether the world did lose, or gain in this —Because, since now no other way there is, But goodness, to see her, whom all would see, All must endeavour to be good as she⁠— This great consumption to a fever turn’d, And so the world had fits; it joy’d, it mourn’d; And as men think that agues physic are, And th’ ague being spent, give over care; So thou, sick world, mistakest thyself to be Well, when, alas! thou’rt in a lethargy. Her death did wound and tame thee then, and then Thou might’st have better spared the sun, or man. That wound was deep, but ’tis more misery, That thou hast lost thy sense and memory. ’Twas heavy then to hear thy voice of moan, But this is worse, that thou art speechless grown. Thou hast forgot thy name thou hadst; thou wast Nothing but she, and her thou hast o’erpast. For, as a child kept from the fount, until A prince, expected long, come to fulfil The ceremonies, thou unnamed hadst laid, Had not her coming thee her palace made. Her name defined thee, gave thee form and frame, And thou forget’st to celebrate thy name. Some months she hath been dead⁠—but being dead, Measures of time are all determined⁠— But long she hath been away, long, long, yet none Offers to tell us who it is that’s gone. But as in states doubtful of future heirs, When sickness without remedy impairs The present prince, they’re loth it should be said, The prince doth languish, or the prince is dead. So mankind, feeling now a general thaw, A strong example gone, equal to law, The cement, which did faithfully compact And glue all virtues, now resolved and slack’d, Thought it some blasphemy to say she was dead, Or that our weakness was discovered In that confession; therefore spoke no more, Than tongues, the soul being gone, the loss deplore. But though it be too late to succour thee, Sick world, yea dead, yea putrefied, since she, Thy intrinsic balm and thy preservative, Can never be renew’d, thou never live, I⁠—since no man can make thee live⁠—will try What we may gain by thy Anatomy. Her death hath taught us dearly, that thou art Corrupt and mortal in thy purest part. Let no man say, the world itself being dead, ’Tis labour lost to have discovered The world’s infirmities, since there is none Alive to study this dissection; For there’s a kind of world remaining still; Though she, which did inanimate and fill The world, be gone, yet in this last long night Her ghost doth walk, that is, a glimmering light, A faint weak love of virtue and of good Reflects from her, on them which understood Her worth; and though she have shut in all day, The twilight of her memory doth stay; Which, from the carcase of the old world free, Creates a new world, and new creatures be Produced; the matter and the stuff of this Her virtue, and the form our practice is. And, though to be thus elemented arm These creatures from home-born intrinsic harm —For all assumed unto this dignity So many weedless paradises be, Which of themselves produce no venomous sin, Except some foreign serpent bring it in⁠— Yet because outward storms the strongest break, And strength itself by confidence grows weak, This new world may be safer, being told The dangers and diseases of the old. For with due temper men do then forego, Or covet things, when they their true worth know. There is no health; physicians say that we, At best, enjoy but a neutrality. And can there be worse sickness than to know That we are never well, nor can be so? We are born ruinous; poor mothers cry That children come not right, nor orderly, Except they headlong come and fall upon An ominous precipitation. How witty’s ruin, how importunate Upon mankind! it labour’d to frustrate Even God’s purpose, and made woman, sent For man’s relief, cause of his languishment. They were to good ends, and they are so still, But accessory, and principal in ill; For that first marriage was our funeral; One woman, at one blow, then kill’d us all; And singly, one by one, they kill us now. We do delightfully ourselves allow To that consumption; and, profusely blind We kill ourselves to propagate our kind. And yet we do not that; we are not men; There is not now that mankind which was then, When as the sun and man did seem to strive —Joint-tenants of the world⁠—who should survive; When stag, and raven, and the long-lived tree, Compared with man, died in minority; When if a slow-paced star had stolen away From the observer’s marking, he might stay Two or three hundred years to see it again, And then make up his observation plain; When, as the age was long, the size was great; Man’s growth confess’d, and recompensed the meat; So spacious and large, that every soul Did a fair kingdom and large realm control; And when the very stature, thus erect, Did that soul a good way towards heaven direct. Where is this mankind now? who lives to age Fit to be made Methusalem his page? Alas! we scarce live long enough to try Whether a true-made clock run right, or lie. Old grandsires talk of yesterday with sorrow; And for our children we reserve tomorrow. So short is life, that every peasant strives, In a torn house, or field, to have three lives; And as in lasting, so in length is man, Contracted to an inch, who was a span. For had a man at first in forests stray’d, Or shipwreck’d in the sea, one would have laid A wager, that an elephant or whale, That met him, would not hastily assail A thing so equal to him; now, alas! The fairies and the pygmies well may pass As credible; mankind decays so soon, We’re scarce our fathers’ shadows cast at noon. Only death adds to our length; nor are grown In stature to be men, till we are none. But this were light, did our less volume hold All the old text; or had we changed to gold Their silver, or disposed into less glass Spirits of virtue, which then scatter’d was. But ’tis not so; we’re not retired, but damp’d; And, as our bodies, so our minds are cramp’d. ’Tis shrinking, not close weaving that hath thus In mind and body both bedwarfed us. We seem ambitious God’s whole work to undo; Of nothing He made us, and we strive too To bring ourselves to nothing back; and we Do what we can to do ’t so soon as He. With new diseases on ourselves we war, And with new physic, a worse engine far. This man, this world’s vice-emperor, in whom All faculties, all graces are at home —And if in other creatures they appear, They’re but man’s ministers and legates there, To work on their rebellions, and reduce Them to civility, and to man’s use⁠— This man, whom God did woo, and, loth to attend Till man came up, did down to man descend; This man so great, that all that is, is his, O, what a trifle, and poor thing he is! If man were anything, he’s nothing now. Help, or at least some time to waste, allow To his other wants, yet when he did depart With her whom we lament, he lost his heart. She, of whom th’ ancients seemed to prophesy, When they called virtues by the name of she ; She, in whom virtue was so much refined, That for allay unto so pure a mind She took the weaker sex; she that could drive The poisonous tincture, and the stain of Eve, Out of her thoughts and deeds, and purify All by a true religious alchemy; She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this Thou know’st how poor a trifling thing man is, And learn’st thus much by our Anatomy, The heart being perish’d, no part can be free, And that except thou feed, not banquet, on The supernatural food, religion, Thy better growth grows withered and scant; Be more than man, or thou’rt less than an ant. Then as mankind, so is the world’s whole frame, Quite out of joint, almost created lame; For before God had made up all the rest, Corruption enter’d and depraved the best. It seized the angels, and then first of all The world did in her cradle take a fall, And turn’d her brains, and took a general maim, Wronging each joint of th’ universal frame. The noblest part, man, felt it first; and then Both beasts and plants, cursed in the curse of man. So did the world from the first hour decay; That evening was beginning of the day. And now the springs and summers which we see, Like sons of women after fifty be. And new philosophy calls all in doubt; The element of fire is quite put out; The sun is lost, and th’ earth, and no man’s wit Can well direct him where to look for it. And freely men confess that this world’s spent, When in the planets, and the firmament They seek so many new; they see that this Is crumbled out again to his atomies. ’Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone, All just supply, and all relation. Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot. For every man alone thinks he hath got To be a phoenix, and that then can be None of that kind of which he is, but he. This is the world’s condition now, and now She that should all parts to reunion bow; She that had all magnetic force alone, To draw and fasten sunder’d parts in one; She whom wise nature had invented then, When she observed that every sort of men Did in their voyage in this world’s sea stray, And needed a new compass for their way; She that was best, and first original Of all fair copies, and the general Steward to fate; she whose rich eyes and breast Gilt the West Indies, and perfumed the East; Whose having breathed in this world did bestow Spice on those isles, and bade them still smell so; And that rich Indy, which doth gold inter, Is but as single money coin’d from her; She to whom this world must itself refer, As suburbs, or the microcosm of her; She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this, Thou know’st how lame a cripple this world is; And learn’st thus much by our Anatomy, That this world’s general sickness doth not lie In any humour, or one certain part, But as thou saw’st it, rotten at the heart. Thou seest a hectic fever hath got hold Of the whole substance, not to be controll’d; And that thou hast but one way, not to admit The world’s infection⁠—to be none of it. For the world’s subtlest immaterial parts Feel this consuming wound and age’s darts; For the world’s beauty is decay’d, or gone —Beauty; that’s colour and proportion. We think the heavens enjoy their spherical, Their round proportion, embracing all; But yet their various and perplexed course, Observed in divers ages, doth enforce Men to find out so many eccentric parts, Such diverse downright lines, such overthwarts, As disproportion that pure form; it tears The firmament in eight-and-forty shares, And in these constellations then arise New stars, and old do vanish from our eyes; As though heaven suffered earthquakes, peace or war, When new towers rise, and old demolish’d are. They have impaled within a zodiac The freeborn sun, and keep twelve signs awake To watch his steps; the Goat and Crab control, And fright him back, who else to either pole, Did not these tropics fetter him, might run. For his course is not round, nor can the sun Perfect a circle, or maintain his way One inch direct; but where he rose today He comes no more, but with a cozening line, Steals by that point, and so is serpentine; And seeming weary with his reeling thus, He means to sleep, being now fallen nearer us. So of the stars which boast that they do run In circle still, none ends where he begun. All their proportion’s lame, it sinks, it swells; For of meridians and parallels Man hath weaved out a net, and this net thrown Upon the heavens, and now they are his own. Loth to go up the hill, or labour thus To go to heaven, we make heaven come to us. We spur, we rein the stars, and in their race They’re diversely content to obey our pace. But keeps the earth her round proportion still? Doth not a Teneriffe or higher hill Rise so high like a rock, that one might think The floating moon would shipwreck there and sink? Seas are so deep that whales, being struck today, Perchance tomorrow scarce at middle way Of their wish’d journey’s end, the bottom, die. And men, to sound depths, so much line untie As one might justly think that there would rise At end thereof one of th’ antipodes. If under all a vault infernal be —Which sure is spacious, except that we Invent another torment, that there must Millions into a straight hot room be thrust⁠— Then solidness and roundness have no place. Are these but warts and pockholes in the face Of th’ earth? Think so; but yet confess, in this The world’s proportion disfigured is; That those two legs whereon it doth rely, Reward and punishment, are bent awry. And, O, it can no more be questioned, That beauty’s best proportion is dead, Since even grief itself, which now alone Is left us, is without proportion. She, by whose lines proportion should be Examined, measure of all symmetry, Whom had that ancient seen, who thought souls made Of harmony, he would at next have said That harmony was she, and thence infer That souls were but resultances from her, And did from her into our bodies go, As to our eyes the forms from objects flow; She, who if those great doctors truly said That th’ ark to man’s proportion was made, Had been a type for that, as that might be A type of her in this, that contrary Both elements and passions lived at peace In her, who caused all civil war to cease. She, after whom what form soe’er we see Is discord and rude incongruity; She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this, Thou know’st how ugly a monster this world is; And learn’st thus much by our Anatomy, That here is nothing to enamour thee; And that not only faults in inward parts, Corruptions in our brains, or in our hearts, Poisoning the fountains whence our actions spring, Endanger us; but that if everything Be not done fitly and in proportion, To satisfy wise and good lookers-on —Since most men be such as most think they be⁠— They’re loathsome too, by this deformity. For good, and well, must in our actions meet; Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet. But beauty’s other second element, Colour and lustre, now is as near spent. And had the world his just proportion, Were it a ring still, yet the stone is gone. As a compassionate turquoise, which doth tell, By looking pale, the wearer is not well; As gold falls sick being stung with mercury, All the world’s parts of such complexion be When nature was most busy, the first week, Swaddling the newborn earth, God seem’d to like That she should sport herself sometimes, and play, To mingle and vary colours every day; And then, as though she could not make enow, Himself his various rainbow did allow. Sight is the noblest sense of any one; Yet sight hath only colour to feed on, And colour is decay’d; summer’s robe grows Dusky, and like an oft dyed garment shows. Our blushing red, which used in cheeks to spread, Is inward sunk, and only our souls are red. Perchance the world might have recovered, If she whom we lament had not been dead. But she, in whom all white, and red, and blue (Beauty’s ingredients) voluntary grew, As in an unvex’d paradise; from whom Did all things’ verdure, and their lustre come; Whose composition was miraculous, Being all colour, all diaphanous, For air and fire but thick gross bodies were, And liveliest stones but drowsy and pale to her; She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this, Thou know’st how wan a ghost this our world is; And learn’st thus much by our Anatomy, That it should more affright than pleasure thee; And that, since all fair colour then did sink, ’Tis now but wicked vanity, to think To colour vicious deeds with good pretence, Or with bought colours to illude men’s sense. Nor in ought more this world’s decay appears, Than that her influence the heaven forbears, Or that the elements do not feel this. The father or the mother barren is; The clouds conceive not rain, or do not pour, In the due birth-time, down the balmy shower; Th’ air doth not motherly sit on the earth, To hatch her seasons, and give all things birth. Spring-times were common cradles, but are tombs, And false conceptions fill the general wombs. Th’ air shows such meteors, as none can see, Not only what they mean, but what they be; Earth such new worms, as would have troubled much Th’ Egyptian Mages to have made more such. What artist now dares boast that he can bring Heaven hither, or constellate anything, So as the influence of those stars may be Imprison’d in an herb, or charm, or tree, And do by touch, all which those stars could do? The art is lost, and correspondence too, For heaven gives little, and the earth takes less, And man least knows their trade and purposes. If this commerce ’twixt heaven and earth were not Embarr’d, and all this traffic quite forgot, She, for whose loss we have lamented thus, Would work more fully, and powerfully on us. Since herbs and roots by dying lose not all, But they, yea ashes too, are medicinal; Death could not quench her virtue so, but that It would be⁠—if not follow’d⁠—wonder’d at; And all the world would be one dying swan, To sing her funeral praise, and vanish then. But as some serpents’ poison hurteth not, Except it be from the live serpent shot, So doth her virtue need her here, to fit That unto us, she working more than it. But she, in whom to such maturity Virtue was grown, past growth, that it must die; She, from whose influence all impression came, But by receivers’ impotencies lame; Who, though she could not transubstantiate All states to gold, yet gilded every state, So that some princes have some temperance; Some counsellors, some purpose to advance The common profit; and some people have Some stay, no more than kings should give, to crave; Some women have some taciturnity; Some nunneries some grains of chastity; She, that did thus much, and much more could do, But that our age was iron, and rusty too, She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this Thou know’st how dry a cinder this world is; And learn’st thus much by our Anatomy, That ’tis in vain to dew, or mollify It with thy tears, or sweat, or blood; nothing Is worth our travail, grief, or perishing, But those rich joys which did possess her heart, Of which she’s now partaker, and a part. But as in cutting up a man that’s dead, The body will not last out, to have read On every part, and therefore men direct Their speech to parts that are of most effect; So the world’s carcase would not last, if I Were punctual in this Anatomy; Nor smells it well to hearers, if one tell Them their disease, who fain would think they’re well. Here therefore be the end; and blessed maid, Of whom is meant whatever has been said, Or shall be spoken well by any tongue, Whose name refines coarse lines, and makes prose song, Accept this tribute, and his first year’s rent; Who till his dark short taper’s end be spent, As oft as thy feast sees this widow’d earth, Will yearly celebrate thy second birth; That is, thy death; for though the soul of man Be got when man is made, ’tis born but then When man doth die; our body’s as the womb, And as a midwife death directs it home. And you, her creatures, whom she works upon, And have your last and best concoction From her example and her virtue, if you In reverence to her do think it due, That no one should her praises thus rehearse, As matter fit for chronicle, not verse; Vouchsafe to call to mind that God did make A last and lasting’st piece, a song. He spake To Moses to deliver unto all That song, because He knew they would let fall The law, the prophets, and the history, But keep the song still in their memory. Such an opinion, in due measure, made Me this great office boldly to invade; Nor could incomprehensibleness deter Me from thus trying to imprison her; Which when I saw that a strict grave could do, I saw not why verse might not do so too. Verse hath a middle nature; heaven keeps souls, The grave keeps bodies, verse the fame enrolls.

’Tis loss to trust a tomb with such a guest, Or to confine her in a marble chest. Alas! what’s marble, jet, or porphyry, Prized with the chrysolite of either eye, Or with those pearls and rubies which she was? Join the two Indies in one tomb, ’tis glass; And so is all, to her materials, Though every inch were ten Escurials; Yet she’s demolish’d; can we keep her then In works of hands, or of the wits of men? Can these memorials, rags of paper, give Life to that name, by which name they must live? Sickly, alas! short-lived, abortive be Those carcase verses, whose soul is not she; And can she, who no longer would be she, Being such a tabernacle stoop to be In paper wrapp’d; or when she would not lie In such an house, dwell in an elegy? But ’tis no matter; we may well allow Verse to live so long as the world will now, For her death wounded it. The world contains Princes for arms, and counsellors for brains, Lawyers for tongues, divines for hearts, and more, The rich for stomachs, and for backs the poor; The officers for hands, merchants for feet, By which remote and distant countries meet; But those fine spirits, which do tune and set This organ, are those pieces which beget Wonder and love; and these were she; and she Being spent, the world must needs decrepit be. For since death will proceed to triumph still, He can find nothing, after her, to kill, Except the world itself, so great as she. Thus brave and confident may nature be, Death cannot give her such another blow, Because she cannot such another show. But must we say she’s dead? may ’t not be said, That as a sunder’d clock is piecemeal laid, Not to be lost, but by the maker’s hand Repolish’d, without error then to stand, Or as the Afric Niger stream enwombs Itself into the earth, and after comes —Having first made a natural bridge, to pass For many leagues⁠—far greater than it was, May ’t not be said, that her grave shall restore Her, greater, purer, firmer than before? Heaven may say this, and joy in ’t, but can we Who live, and lack her here, this vantage see? What is ’t to us, alas! if there have been An angel made a throne, or cherubin? We lose by ’t: and as agèd men are glad Being tasteless grown, to joy in joys they had, So now the sick, starved world must feed upon This joy, that we had her, who now is gone. Rejoice then, nature, and this world, that you, Fearing the last fires hastening to subdue Your force and vigour, ere it were near gone, Wisely bestow’d and laid it all on one; One, whose clear body was so pure and thin, Because it need disguise no thought within; ’Twas but a through-light scarf her mind to enroll, Or exhalation breathed out from her soul; One whom all men, who durst no more, admired; And whom, whoe’er had worth enough, desired; As when a temple’s built, saints emulate To which of them it shall be consecrate. But as, when heaven looks on us with new eyes, Those new stars every artist exercise; What place they should assign to them they doubt, Argue, and agree not, till those stars go out; So the world studied whose this piece should be, Till she can be nobody’s else, nor she; But like a lamp of balsamum, desired Rather to adorn than last, she soon expired. Clothed in her virgin white integrity —For marriage, though it doth not stain, doth dye⁠— To ’scape th’ infirmities which wait upon Woman, she went away before she was one; And the world’s busy noise to overcome, Took so much death as served for opium; For though she could not, nor could choose to die, She hath yielded to too long an ecstasy. He which, not knowing her sad history, Should come to read the book of destiny, How fair, and chaste, humble and high she’d been, Much promised, much perform’d, at not fifteen, And measuring future things by things before, Should turn the leaf to read, and read no more, Would think that either destiny mistook, Or that some leaves were torn out of the book. But ’tis not so; fate did but usher her To years of reason’s use, and then infer Her destiny to herself, which liberty She took, but for thus much, thus much to die. Her modesty not suffering her to be Fellow-commissioner with destiny, She did no more but die; if after her Any shall live, which dare true good prefer, Every such person is her delegate, To accomplish that which should have been her fate. They shall make up that book, and shall have thanks Of fate, and her, for filling up their blanks; For future virtuous deeds are legacies, Which from the gift of her example rise; And ’tis in heaven part of spiritual mirth, To see how well the good play her, on earth.