A web-based edition of early seventeenth-century political poetry from manuscript sources. It brings into the public domain over 350 poems, many of which have never before been published.
Pii17 Wants hee a grave whom heavens doe cover? was hee
Notes. Whether this poem pre-dates or post-dates the far-better known “Heere uninterr’d suspends (though not to save” is impossible to determine. The poem does, however, closely echo the political sentiments of that poem, and opens with a paraphrase of the line from Lucan’s Pharsalia which is sometimes appended in Latin to versions of the more widely copied work.
“On John Felton”
Wants hee a grave whom heavens doe cover?1 was hee
Unfortunate in his Catastrophe?
Because hee did not trust a marble stone
With that which needs not feare oblivion
No, no, his tombe like to his fact is high
5Outspringing ægips pride;2 the deity.
That heaven should be his tombe ’twas thought most meet
Ah, heaven his tombe, the aire his winding sheet3
A roome then it no lesser could suffice
The actor of so great an enterprise
10Which were just or unjust bad or good
Whats that to any blood repayed blood
Whose carcasse for the crawling wormes too good
Doth gorge the Eagells and the faulcons brood
Here felton hung a spectacle of dread
15A pendant sword ore proud ambitions head
Whom here the winds embalme with fragrant sents
To whom sad clouds contribute their laments
And time each night upon his tombe presents
A thousand lights which burnes till day appeare
20And then his requiem sung by winged quiers.
Source. Bodleian MS Eng. Poet. e.14, fol. 76v
Other known sources. Bodleian MS CCC 328, fol. 63v; Beinecke MS Osborn Box 12 no. 5, fol. 20r
Pii17
1 Wants hee a grave...cover: “they obtaine / Heavens coverture, that have no urnes at all” (Lucan N7r). <back>
2 ægips pride: the pride of Egypt; excessive pomp and arrogance. <back>
3 winding sheet: the cloth sheet wrapped around a corpse before burial. <back>
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