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Death might have tyth’d her sex, but for this one,
Nay, have ta’n half to have let her alone;
Such as their wrinkled temples to supply,
Cement them up with sluttish Mercury,
Such as undress’d were able to affright,
A valiant man approaching him by night;
Death might have taken such, her end deferred,
Until the time she had been climaterd;
When she would have bin at threescore years and three,
Such as our best at three and twenty be,
With envy then, he might have overthrown her,
When age nor time had power to cease upon her.

But when the unpittying Fates her end decreed,
They to the same did instantly proceed,
For well they knew (if she had languish’d so)
As those which hence by natural causes go,
So many prayers, and tears for her had spoken,
As certainly their Iron laws had broken,
And had wak’d heav’n, who clearly would have show’d
That change of Kingdoms to her death it ow’d;
And that the world still of her end might think,
It would have let some Neighbouring mountain sink.
Or the vast Sea it in on us to cast,
As Severn did about some five years past:
Or some stern Comet his curl’d top to rear,
Whose length should measure half our Hemisphere.
Holding this height, to say some will not stick,
That now I rave, and am grown lunatic:
You of what sex so e’er you be, you lie,
‘Tis thou thy self is lunatic, not I.

I charge you in her name that now is gone,
That may conjure you, if you be not stone,
That you no harsh, nor shallow ryhmes decline,
Upon that day wherein you shall read mine.
Such as indeed are falsely termed verse,
And will but sit like mothes upon her hearse;
Nor that no child, nor chambermaide, nor page,
Disturbe the Rome, the whilst my sacred rage,
In reading is; but whilst you hear it read,
Suppose, before you, that you see her dead,
The walls about you hung with mournful black,
And nothing of her funeral to lack,
And when this period gives you leaue to pause,
Cast up your eyes, and sigh for my applause.