An Elegie on the Death of the Right Honourable Dudley Lord Carleton

by Abraham Cowley

The infernall Sisters, did a Counsell call
Of all the fiends, to the black Stygian Hall;
The dire Tartarean Monsters, hating light,
Begot by dismall Erebus, and Night,
Wheresoe're dispers'd abroad, hearing the Fame
Of their accursed meeting, thither came
Revenge, whose greedy mind no Blood can fill,
And Envie, never satisfied with ill.
Thither blind Boldnesse, and impatient Rage,
Resorted, with Death's neighbour envious Age,
And Messengers diseases, wheresoe're
Then wandring, at the Senate present were:
Whom to oppresse the Earth, the Furies sent
To spare the Guilty, vex the innocent.
The Councell thus dissolv'd, an angry fever,
Whose quenchlesse thirst, by blood was sated never:
Envying the Riches, Honour, Greatnesse, Love,
And Vertue (Loadstone, which all these did move)
Of Noble CARLETON, him she tooke away,
And like a greedy Vulture seis'd her prey:
Weep with me each who either reades or heares,
And know his losse, deserves his Countries teares:
The Muses lost a Patron by his Fate,
Vertue a Husband, and a Prop the State,
Sol's Chorus weepes, and to adorne his Herse
Calliope would sing a Tragicke Verse.
  And had there been before no Spring of theirs,
  They would have made a Helicon with teares.