ON THE DEATH OF MR. CRASHAW.
71
Ah, mighty God! with shame I speak 't, and grief,
Ah, that our greatest faults were in belief!
And our weak reason were ev'n weaker yet,
Rather than thus our wills too strong for it!
His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might
Be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right;
And I myself a Catholick will be,
So far at least, great Saint! to pray to thee.
Hail, bard triumphant! and some care bestow
On us, the poets militant below!
Oppos'd by our old enemy, adverse Chance,
Attack'd by Envy and by Ignorance;
Enchain'd by Beauty, tortur'd by Desires,
Expos'd by Tyrant-Love to savage beasts and fires.
Thou from low earth in nobler flames didst rise,
And, like Elijah, mount alive the skies.
Elisha-like (but with a wish much less,
More fit thy greatness and my littleness)
Lo! here I beg (I, whom thou once didst prove
So humble to esteem, so good to love)
Not that thy spirit might on me double be,
I ask but half thy mighty spirit for me:
And, when my Muse soars with so strong a wing,
'T will learn of things divine, and first of thee, to sing.
Ah, that our greatest faults were in belief!
And our weak reason were ev'n weaker yet,
Rather than thus our wills too strong for it!
His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might
Be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right;
And I myself a Catholick will be,
So far at least, great Saint! to pray to thee.
Hail, bard triumphant! and some care bestow
On us, the poets militant below!
Oppos'd by our old enemy, adverse Chance,
Attack'd by Envy and by Ignorance;
Enchain'd by Beauty, tortur'd by Desires,
Expos'd by Tyrant-Love to savage beasts and fires.
Thou from low earth in nobler flames didst rise,
And, like Elijah, mount alive the skies.
Elisha-like (but with a wish much less,
More fit thy greatness and my littleness)
Lo! here I beg (I, whom thou once didst prove
So humble to esteem, so good to love)
Not that thy spirit might on me double be,
I ask but half thy mighty spirit for me:
And, when my Muse soars with so strong a wing,
'T will learn of things divine, and first of thee, to sing.
