And all thy body o'er
Its ruling colours bore:
That which infected with the noxious ill,
But lately helped to kill,
Whose circulation fatal grew,
And through each part a swifter ruin threw,
Now conscious, its own murder would arraign,
And throngs to sally out at every vein.
Each drop a redder than its native dye puts on,
As if in its own blushes 'twould its guilt atone.
A sacred rubric does thy carcass paint,
And death in every member writes the saint.
So Phœbus clothes his dying rays each night,
And blushes he can live no longer to give light.
42
Like their own carcasses, a grave,
Let them with vain expense adorn
Some costly urn,
Which shortly, like themselves, to dust shall turn.
Here lacks no Carian sepulchre,
Which ruin shall ere long in its own tomb inter;
No fond Egyptian fabric built so high
As if 'twould climb the sky,
And thence reach immortality.
Thy virtues shall embalm thy name,
And make it lasting as the breath of fame.
When frailer brass
Shall moulder by a quick decrease;
When brittle marble shall decay,
And to the jaws of time become a prey;
Thy praise shall live, when graves shall buried lie,
Till time itself shall die,
And yield its triple empire to eternity.
