Note 136 — Chapter III
Reading edition
EPITAPH ON THE LADY MARY VILLIERS.
“The Lady Mary Villiers lies
Under this stone: with weeping eyes
The parents that first gave her breath
And their sad friends laid her in earth.
If any of them, reader, were
Known unto thee, shed a tear;
Or if thyself possess a gem,
As dear to thee as this to them,
Though a stranger to this place,
Bewail in theirs thine own hard case:
For thou perhaps at thy return
May’st find thy darling in an urn.”
ANOTHER.
“The purest soul that e’er was sent
Into a clayey tenement
Informed this dust; but the weak mould
Could the great guest no longer hold:
The substance was too pure--the flame
Too glorious that thither came:
Ten thousand Cupids brought along
A grace on each wing that did throng
For place there--till they all opprest
The seat on which they sought to rest.
So the fair model broke for want
Of room to lodge th’ inhabitant.
When in the brazen leaves of Fame
The life, the death of Buckingham
Shall be recorded, if truth’s hand
Incise the story o’er our land,
Posterity shall see a fair
Structure by the studious care
Of two kings raised, that no less
Their wisdom than their power express;
By blinded zeal (whose doubtful light
Made murder’s scarlet robe seem white--
Whose vain deluding phantoms charmed
A clouded sullen soul, and arm’d
A desperate hand, thirsty of blood)
Torn from the fair earth where it stood!
So the majestic fabric fell.
His actions let our annals tell;
We write no chronicle; this pile
Wears only sorrow’s face and style;
Which e’en the envy that did wait
Upon his flourishing estate,
Turned to soft pity of his death,
Now pays his hearse; but that cheap breath
Shall not blow here, nor th’ impure brine
Puddle the streams that bathe this shrine.
These are the pious obsequies
Dropped from his chaste wife’s pregnant eyes,
In frequent showers, and were alone
By her congealing sighs made stone,
On which the carver did bestow
These forms and characters of woe:
So he the fashion only lent,
Whilst she wept all this monument.”