Tixall Poetry/On the Death of the Lady Catherin White in Child-Birth, at Rome
On the Death Of
The Lady Catherin White,
in Child-Birth, at Rome.
Ladys, would you have combin'd
Beauty both of face and mind;
Would you marry, hand in hand,
Strict obedience with command;
Snatch the low and high degree
Of greatnes with humilitye;
With chastetye calme appetite,
And with wisdome temper wit:
Would you reade the double story
Of beauty's wrack, and vertue's glory;
Teach lip-rethorik to yeeld
Silent eloquence the field;
Heare the best philosophy,
To dye to live, to live to dye?—
Study in one Epitaph,
What all tongs and voloms have.
Would you lerne your thoughts to move
I' th' upper spheire of hevinly love;
To find your home in banishment,
In warfare peace, in woe content;
No change of minds in change of time;
Not altring harts, though altring clime:
Or would you see, or would you know
The flowres that over graves may grow;
What miracles can silence verse?—
Goe sob and weepe ore yonder herse:
For everye sigh, and everye teare,
There lyes a grace and vertue there.
Beauty both of face and mind;
Would you marry, hand in hand,
Strict obedience with command;
Snatch the low and high degree
Of greatnes with humilitye;
With chastetye calme appetite,
And with wisdome temper wit:
Would you reade the double story
Of beauty's wrack, and vertue's glory;
Teach lip-rethorik to yeeld
Silent eloquence the field;
Heare the best philosophy,
To dye to live, to live to dye?—
Study in one Epitaph,
What all tongs and voloms have.
Would you lerne your thoughts to move
I' th' upper spheire of hevinly love;
To find your home in banishment,
In warfare peace, in woe content;
No change of minds in change of time;
Not altring harts, though altring clime:
Or would you see, or would you know
The flowres that over graves may grow;
What miracles can silence verse?—
Goe sob and weepe ore yonder herse:
For everye sigh, and everye teare,
There lyes a grace and vertue there.