Vpon the Death of a Gentleman.-Richard Crawshaw

  • FAithlesse and fond Mortality,
  • Who will ever credit thee?
  • Fond and faithlesse thing! that thus,
  • In our best hopes beguilest us.
  • What a reckoning hast thou made,
  • Of the hopes in him we laid?
  • For Life by volumes lengthened,
  • A Line or two, to speake him dead.
  • For the Laurell in his verse,
  • The sullen Cypresse o're his Herse.
  • For a silver-crowned Head,
  • A durty pillow in Death's Bed.
  • For so deare, so deep a trust,
  • Sad requitall, thus much dust!
  • Now though the blow that snatcht him hence,
  • Stopt the Mouth of Eloquence,
  • Though shee be dumbe e're since his Death,
  • Not us'd to speake but in his Breath,
  • Yet if at least shee not denyes,
  • The sad language of our eyes,
  • Wee are contented: for then this
  • Language none more fluent is.
  • Nothing speakes our Griefe so well
  • As to speake Nothing, Come then tell
  • Thy mind in Teares who e're Thou be,
  • That ow'st a Name to misery.
  • Eyes are vocall, Teares have Tongues,
  • And there be words not made with lungs;
  • Sententious showers, ô let them fall,
  • Their cadence is Rhetoricall.
  • Here's a Theame will drinke th'expence,
  • Of all thy watry Eloquence,
  • Weepe then, onely be exprest
  • Thus much, Hee's Dead, and weepe the rest.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Indo-Muslim Culture in Hyderabad: Old City Neighborhoods in the 19th Century

Hyderabad city’s culture was Indo-Muslim or Mughlai, terms that need definition here. I use Indo-Muslim in preference to Islamic, Indo-Persian, Persianate, or Islamicate. I prefer Indo-Muslim to the other four commonly-used alternatives because, first, Muslim rather than Islamic emphasizes a civilizational and not a religious culture (Islamicate has the same meaning but probably not to the general reader). Certainly Hyderabad was not an Islamic state: the Nizams never tried to impose Islamic law or to convert people.Second, IndoMuslim puts the emphasis on the Indian location, although undeniably the Bahmani sultanate in the Deccan from the mid-fourteenth century, its five successor Deccani sultanates (Bijapuri, Golconda, Bidar, Berar, and Ahmednagar) from the early sixteenth century, and the Nizams, starting as Mughal governors after the conquests of Bijapuri and Golconda by the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb in 1686 and 1687, modeled their court culture on that of Persia. I use the term Mug...
Read more

Skull Imagery and Skull Magic in the Yoginī Tantras

The Buddhist tantras constitute a unique class of Buddhist literature. While developing from earlier trends in Buddhist thought and practice, they also constituted a serious challenge to Buddhist identity, largely due to the fact that many of them contain passages that appear to transgress the tenets of Buddhist morality.1 Tantric literature also departed, gradually, from the rhetorical norms of Mahayana Buddhism. While early tantras maintained the rhetorical style of the Mahayana sutras, later tantras, and most notably the Yoginī tantras, radically departed from this style.2 This essay will explore one small facet of the vast array of unusual elements that can be found in this literature, namely, the image of the skull, as well as the use of skulls in tantric ritual. Like other elements, this deployment of skulls in the tantras was disquieting to some, evoking as it does the uncanny atmosphere of the charnel ground. Through this exploration, I will argue that skulls are multifaceted...
Read more

Nature of Patisambhidamagga

The Patisambhidāmagga is insistently practical it expounds the way or path of 'discrimination' in its various a spects and tries to show how understanding can be achieved in an empirical sense instead of theorizing it It talks about what happens and how does "Nana"(knowledge)  happen when someone understand or discriminates the actuality or truth which is real in its aspects as taught by Buddha The theory is of course necessary,the understanding or insight,and is  included in this path,as well as the practice in the limited sense of concentration,the calming Jhana a process to Samatha . The pair ,insight(vipassana) and Calming(Samatha) must therefore be coupled(Yuganandha) and function together ,which are presented as fundamental in Buddhist texts , as even mentioned in Anguttara Nikaya Enlightenment as Ananda said ( which is mentioned in detailed in Yuganandha suttanta in Anguttara Nikaya) ,requires both Samatha and Vipassana  and no one has attained Enlightenment wi...
Read more