Sir PALMES FAIRBONE's Tomb
WESTMINSTER-ABBEY.
Sacred to the immortal memory of Sir PALMES FAIRBONE, Knight, Governor of Tangier; in execution of which command, he was mortally wounded by a shot from the Moors, then befieging the town, in the forty-fixth year of his age. October 24, 1680.
E sacred relics, which your marble keep,
Here, undisturb'd by wars, in quiet sleep :
Discharge the trust, which, when it was below,
Fairbone's undaunted foul did undergo,
And be the town's Palladium from the foe.
Alive and dead these walls he will defend:
Great actions great examples must attend.
The Candian fiege his early valor knew,
Where Turkish blood did his young hands imbrue.
VOL. II.
From thence returning with deserv'd applause,
Against the Moors his well-flesh'd sword hedraws;
The fame the courage, and the same the cause.
His youth and age, his life and death, combine,
As in some great and regular design,
All of a piece throughout, and all divine.
Still nearer heav'n his virtues shone more bright,
Like rising flames expanding in their height;
The martyr's glory crown'd the foldiers fight.
More bravely British general never fell,
Nor general's death was e'er reveng'd so well;
Which his pleas'd eyes beheld before their close,
Follow'd by thousand victims of his foes.
To his lamented loss for time to come
His pious widow confecrates this tomb.
Before his PARADISE LOST.
HREE Poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first, in loftiness of thought furpass'd;
The next, in majesty; in both the last.
The force of nature cou'd no further go;
To make a third, she join'd the former two.
FAIR MAIDEN LADY,
Who dy'd at BATH, and is there interred.
ELOW this marble monument is laid
All that heav'n wants of this celestial maid.
Preserve, O facred tomb, thy trust consign'd; The mold was made on purpose for the mind :
And the wou'd lose, if, at the latter day,
One atom cou'd be mix'd of other clay.
Such were the features of her heav'nly face,
Her limbs were form'd with such harmonious
So faultless was the frame, as if the whole
Had been an emanation of the foul;
Which her own inward symmetry reveal'd;
And like a picture shone, in glass anneal'd.
Or like the fun eclips'd, with shaded light:
Too piercing, else, to be sustain'd by fight.
Each thought was visible that roll'd within :
As thro a crystal cafe the figur'd hours are seen.
And heav'n did this transparent veil provide,
Because she had no guilty thought to hide.
All white, a virgin-saint, she sought the skies:
For marriage, tho it sullies not, it dies.
High tho her wit, yet humble was her mind;
As if the cou'd not, or she wou'd not find
How much her worth tranfcended all her kind.
Yet she had learn'd so much of heaven below,
That when arriv'd, she scarce had more to know:
But only to refresh the former hint;
And read her Maker in a fairer print.
So pious, as she had no time to spare
For human thoughts, but was confin'd to pray'r.
Yet in such charities she pass'd the day,
'Twas wondrous how the found an hour to pray.
A foul so calm, it knew not ebbs or flows,
Which paffion cou'd but curl, not discompose.
A female softness, with a manly mind:
A daughter duteous, and a fister kind:
In fickness patient, and in death refign'd.
OF BURNINGHAM in NORFOLK.
O fair, so young, so innocent, so sweet,
So ripe a judgment, and so rare a wit,
Require at least an age in one to meet.
In her they met; but long they could not stay,
'Twas gold too fine to mix without allay.
Heaven's image was in her so well exprest,
Her very fight upbraided all the reft;
Too justly ravish'd from an age like this,
Now she is gone, the world is of a piece.
|