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 succoured 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 turned,
And so the world had fits; it joyed, it mourned;
And, as men think, that agues physic are,
And the ague being spent, give over care;
So thou sick world, mistake'st thyself to be
Well, when alas! thou'rt in a lethargy.

Her death did wound and tame thee then, and than
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 had'st 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 times are all determined)

But long she'ath 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 slacked,
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 renewed, 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,
Reflect 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, thought 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 laboured 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 killed 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 confessed, 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 to-morrow.

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 strayed,
Or shipwrecked 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 pigmies well may pass
As credible mankind decays so soon,

We are scarce our fathers' shadows cast at noon.
Only death adds to our length: nor are we 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 scattered was.
But 'tis not so: we're not retired, but dampt;
And as our bodies, so our minds, are crampt;
'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 it soon as he.
With new diseases on ourselves we war,
And with new physic, a worse engine far.

Thus man, this world's vice-emperor, in whom
All faculties, all graces are at home;
And if in other creatures they appear,

They are but man's ministers, and legats 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 seem'd to prophesy,
When they call'd virtues by the name of she;
She in whom virtue was so much refin'd,
That for alloy 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 thought, and deeds; and purify
All, by a true religious alchymy;

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 entered, and deprav'd the best :
It seiz'd 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 the universal frame.
The noblest part, man, felt it first; and than
Both beasts and plants, curst 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 the 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