George Buck.

On Mr BEAUMONT.

(Written thirty years since, presently after his death.)

  Beaumont lyes here; and where now shall we have
  A Muse like his to sigh upon his grave? 
  Ah! none to weepe this with a worthy teare,
  But he that cannot, Beaumont, that lies here. 
  Who now shall pay thy Tombe with such a Verse
  As thou that Ladies didst, faire Rutlands Herse? 
  A Monument that will then lasting be,
  When all her Marble is more dust than she. 
  In thee all’s lost:  a sudden dearth and want
  Hath seiz’d on Wit, good Epitaphs are scant;
  We dare not write thy Elegie, whilst each feares
  He nere shall match that coppy of thy teares. 
  Scarce in an Age a Poet, and yet he
  Scarce lives the third part of his age to see,
  But quickly taken off and only known,
  Is in a minute shut as soone as showne.
  Why should weake Nature tire her selfe in vaine
  In such a peice, to dash it straight againe? 
  Why should she take such worke beyond her skill,
  Which when she cannot perfect, she must kill? 
  Alas, what is’t to temper slime or mire? 
  But Nature’s puzled when she workes in fire: 
  Great Braines (like brightest glasse) crack straight, while those
  Of Stone or Wood hold out, and feare not blowes. 
  And wee their Ancient hoary heads can see
  Whose Wit was never their mortality:
  Beaumont dies young, so Sidney did before,
  There was not Poetry he could live to more,
  He could not grow up higher, I scarce know
  If th’ art it selfe unto that pitch could grow,
  Were’t not in thee that hadst arriv’d the hight
  Of all that wit could reach, or Nature might. 
  O when I read those excellent things of thine,
  Such Strength, such sweetnesse coucht in every line,
  Such life of Fancy, such high choise of braine,
  Nought of the Vulgar wit or borrowed straine,
  Such Passion, such expressions meet my eye,
  Such Wit untainted with obscenity,
  And these so unaffectedly exprest,
  All in a language purely flowing drest,
  And all so borne within thy selfe, thine owne,
  So new, so fresh, so nothing trod upon. 
  I grieve not now that old Menanders