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115 For fair conditions, guests that soonest win

Applause; in generality, well fam'd,

If trim behavior, gestures mild, discreet

Endeavors, modest speech, beseeming mirth,

True friendship, active grace, persuasion sweet,

120 Delightful love innated from his birth,

Acquaintance unfamiliar, carriage just,

Offenseless resolution, wish'd sobriety,

Clean-temper'd moderation, steady trust,

Unburthen'd conscience, unfeign'd piety;

125 If these, or all of these, knit fast in one

Can merit praise, then justly may we say,

Not any from this frailer stage is gone

Whose name is like to live a longer day-

Though not in eminent courts or places great

130 For popular concourse, yet in that soil

Where he enjoy'd his birth, life, death, and seat

Which now sits mourning his untimely spoil.

And as much glory is it to be good

For private persons, in their private home,

135 As those descended from illustrious blood

In public view of greatness, whence they come.

Though I, rewarded with some sadder taste

Of knowing shame, by feeling it have prov'd

My country's thankless misconstruction cast

140 Upon my name and credit, both unlov'd

By some whose fortunes, sunk into the wane

Of plenty and desert, have strove to win

Justice by wrong, and sifted to embane

My reputation with a witless sin;

145 Yet time, the father of unblushing truth,

May one day lay ope malice which hath cross'd it,

And right the hopes of my endangered youth,

Purchasing credit in the place I lost it.

Even in which place the subject of the verse

150 (Unhappy matter of a mourning style

Which now that subject's merits doth rehearse)

Had education and new being; while

By fair demeanor he had won repute

Amongst the all of all that lived there,

155 For that his actions did so wholly suit

With worthiness, still memorable here.

The many hours till the day of doom

Will not consume his life and hapless end,

For should he lie obscur'd without a tomb,

160 Time would to time his honesty commend;

Whiles parents to their children will make known,

And they to their posterity impart,

How such a man was sadly overthrown

By a hand guided by a cruel heart,

165 Whereof as many as shall hear that sadness

Will blame the one's hard fate, the other's madness;

Whiles such as do recount that tale of woe,

Told by remembrance of the wisest heads,

Will in the end conclude the matter so,

170 As they will all go weeping to their beds.

For when the world lies winter'd in the storms

Of fearful consummation, and lays down

Th' unsteady change of his fantastic forms,

Expecting ever to be overthrown;

175 When the proud height of much affected sin

Shall ripen to a head, and in that pride

End in the miseries it did begin

And fall amidst the glory of his tide;

Then in a book where every work is writ

180 Shall this man's actions be reveal'd, to show

The gainful fruit of well-employed wit,

Which paid to heaven the debt that it did owe.

Here shall be reckon'd up the constant faith,

Never untrue, where once he love profess'd;

185 Which is a miracle in men, one saith,

Long sought though rarely found, and he is best

Who can make friendship, in those times of change,

Admired more for being firm than strange.

When those weak houses of our brittle flesh

190 Shall ruin'd be by death, our grace and strength,

Youth, memory and shape that made us fresh

Cast down, and utterly decay'd at length;

When all shall turn to dust from whence we came

And we low-level'd in a narrow grave,

195 What can we leave behind us but a name,

Which, by a life well led, may honor have?

Such honor, O thou youth untimely lost,

Thou didst deserve and hast; for though thy soul

Hath took her flight to a diviner coast,

200 Yet here on earth thy fame lives ever whole,

In every heart seal'd up, in every tongue

Fit matter to discourse, no day prevented

That pities not thy sad and sudden wrong,

Of all alike beloved and lamented.

205 And I here to thy memorable worth,

In this last act of friendship, sacrifice

My love to thee, which I could not set forth

In any