{
 "id": "john-donne/obsequies-of-the-lord-harrington-brother-to-the-countess-of-bedford",
 "title": "Obsequies of the Lord Harrington, Brother to the Countess of Bedford",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "John Donne",
 "poet_slug": "john-donne",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems, by J. D. with Elegies on the Authors Death",
 "book_slug": "poems-1633",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": "Epicedes and Obsequies Upon the Death of Sundry Personages",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1633,
  "venue": "Poems, by J. D. with Elegies on the Authors Death (1633)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/donnepoems"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/john-donne_poetry",
  "file": "epicedes-and-obsequies.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofjohndonne01donn_1",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemswithelegie00chamgoog",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemswithelegie01chamgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12",
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    "checked_against": "https://archive.org/details/poemsofjohndonne01donn_1",
    "date": "2026-08-20"
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Fair soul, which wast, not only as all souls be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then when thou wast infusèd, harmony,",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "But didst continue so; and now dost bear",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A part in God’s great organ, this whole sphere;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If looking up to God, or down to us,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou find that any way is pervious",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Twixt heaven and earth, and that men’s actions do",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Come to your knowledge, and affections too,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "See, and with joy, me to that good degree",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of goodness grown, that I can study thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And by these meditations refined,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Can unapparel and enlarge my mind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And so can make, by this soft ecstasy,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This place a map of heaven, myself of thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou seest me here at midnight; now all rest;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Times dead-low water, when all minds divest",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Tomorrow’s business; when the labourers have",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Such rest in bed, that their last churchyard grave,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now, when the client, whose last hearing is",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Tomorrow, sleeps; when the condemned man,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who, when he opes his eyes, must shut them then",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Again by death, although sad watch he keep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Doth practice dying by a little sleep;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou at this midnight seest me, and as soon",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As that sun rises to me, midnight’s noon,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All the world grows transparent, and I see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through all, both church and state, in seeing thee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I discern by favour of this light,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Myself, the hardest object of the sight.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "God is the glass; as thou, when thou dost see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Him Who sees all, seest all concerning thee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So, yet unglorified, I comprehend",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All, in these mirrors of thy ways and end.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though God be our true glass, through which we see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All, since the being of all things is He,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet are the trunks which do to us derive",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Things, in proportion, fit by perspective,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Deeds of good men; for by their being here,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But where can I affirm, or where arrest",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My thoughts on his deeds? which shall I call best?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For fluid virtue cannot be looked on,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor can endure a contemplation.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As bodies change, and as I do not wear",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Those spirits, humours, blood I did last year,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, as if on a stream I fix mine eye,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That drop, which I looked on, is presently",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Push’d with more waters from my sight, and gone;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So in this sea of virtues, can no one",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be insisted on; virtues as rivers pass,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet still remains that virtuous man there was.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And as if man feed on man’s flesh, and so",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Part of his body to another owe,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet at the last two perfect bodies rise,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because God knows where every atom lies;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So, if one knowledge were made of all those,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who knew his minutes well, he might dispose",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His virtues into names and ranks; but I",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Should injure nature, virtue, and destiny,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Should I divide and discontinue so",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Virtue, which did in one entireness grow.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For as he that should say spirits are framed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of all the purest parts that can be named,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Honours not spirits half so much as he",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which says they have no parts, but simple be;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So is ’t of virtue, for a point and one",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are much entirer than a million.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And had fate meant to have had his virtues told,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It would have let him live to have been old;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So then that virtue in season, and then this,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We might have seen, and said, that now he is",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Witty, now wise, now temperate, now just.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In good short lives, virtues are fain to thrust,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And to be sure betimes to get a place,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When they would exercise, lack time and space.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So was it in this person, forced to be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For lack of time, his own epitome;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So to exhibit in few years as much",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As all the long-breathed chronicles can touch.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As when an angel down from heaven doth fly,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our quick thought cannot keep him company;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We cannot think, “Now he is at the sun,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now through the moon, now he through th’ air doth run”;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet when he’s come, we know he did repair",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To all ’twixt heaven and earth, sun, moon, and air.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And as this angel in an instant knows,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And yet we know, this sudden knowledge grows",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By quick amassing several forms of things,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which he successively to order brings,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When they, whose slow-paced lame thoughts cannot go",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So fast as he, think that he doth not so.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Just as a perfect reader doth not dwell",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On every syllable, nor stay to spell,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet without doubt he doth distinctly see,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And lay together every A and B;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So, in short-lived good men, is not understood",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Each several virtue, but the compound good;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For they all virtue’s paths in that pace tread,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As angels go, and know, and as men read.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O, why should then these men, these lumps of balm,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sent hither the world’s tempest to becalm,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before by deeds they are diffused and spread,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And so make us alive, themselves be dead?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O soul, O circle, why so quickly be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy ends, thy birth and death closed up in thee?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Since one foot of thy compass still was placed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In heaven, the other might securely have paced,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the most large extent, through every path",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which the whole world or man th’ abridgment hath.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou know’st that though the tropic circles have",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "—Yea, and those small ones which the Poles engrave⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All the same roundness, evenness, and all",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The endlessness of th’ equinoctial;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet, when we come to measure distances,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How here, how there, the sun affected is,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When he doth faintly work, and when prevail,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only great circles, then, can be our scale.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So though thy circle to thyself express",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All, tending to thy endless happiness,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And we by our good use of it may try,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Both how to live well, young, and how to die;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet since we must be old, and age endures",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His torrid zone at court, and calentures",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of hot ambitions, irreligion’s ice,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Zeal’s agues, and hydroptic avarice",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "—Infirmities, which need the scale of truth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As well as lust and ignorance of youth⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why didst thou not for these give medicines too,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And by thy doing set us what to do?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though as small pocket-clocks, whose every wheel",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Doth each mismotion and distemper feel,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose hands get shaking palsies, and whose string",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(His sinews) slackens, and whose soul, the spring,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Expires, or languishes; whose pulse, the fly,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Either beats not, or beats unevenly;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose voice, the bell, doth rattle or grow dumb,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or idle as men which to their last hours are come,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If these clocks be not wound, or be wound still,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or be not set, or set at every will;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So youth is easiest to destruction,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If then we follow all, or follow none.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet, as in great clocks which in steeples chime,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Placed to inform whole towns to employ their time,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "An error doth more harm, being general,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When small clocks’ faults only on the wearer fall;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So work the faults of age, on which the eye",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of children, servants, or the state rely.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why wouldst not thou, then, which hadst such a soul,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A clock so true, as might the sun control,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And daily hadst from Him, who gave it thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Instructions, such as it could never be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Disorder’d, stay here, as a general",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And great sundial, to have set us all?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O, why wouldest thou be an instrument",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To this unnatural course, or why consent",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To this, not miracle, but prodigy,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That when the ebbs longer than flowings be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Virtue, whose flood did with thy youth begin,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Should so much faster ebb out, than flow in?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though her flood were blown in by thy first breath,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All is at once sunk in the whirlpool death.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which word I would not name, but that I see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Death, else a desert, grown a court by thee.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now I am sure that if a man would have",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Good company, his entry is a grave.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Methinks all cities, now, but anthills be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where, when the several labourers I see,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For children, house, provision taking pain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They’re all but ants, carrying eggs, straw, and grain.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And churchyards are our cities, unto which",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The most repair, that are in goodness rich.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There is the best concourse and confluence,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There are the holy suburbs, and from thence",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Begins God’s city, New Jerusalem,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which doth extend her utmost gates to them.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At that gate, then, triumphant soul, dost thou",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Begin thy triumph. But since laws allow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That at the triumph day the people may",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All that they will ’gainst the triumpher say,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let me here use that freedom, and express",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My grief, though not to make thy triumph less.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By law to triumphs none admitted be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till they as magistrates get victory.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though then to thy force all youth’s foes did yield,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet till fit time had wrought thee to that field,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To which thy rank in this state destined thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That there thy counsels might get victory,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And so in that capacity remove",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All jealousies ’twixt prince and subjects’ love,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou couldst no title to this triumph have;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou didst intrude on death, usurp a grave.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then, though victoriously, thou hadst fought as yet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But with thine own affections, with the heat",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of youth’s desires, and colds of ignorance,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But till thou shouldst successfully advance",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thine arms ’gainst foreign enemies, which are",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Both envy, and acclamation popular",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "—For both these engines equally defeat,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though by a divers mine, those which are great⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till then thy war was but a civil war,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For which to triumph none admitted are;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No more are they who, though with good success,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a defensive war their power express.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before men triumph, the dominion",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Must be enlarged, and not preserved alone.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why shouldst thou, then, whose battles were to win",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thyself from those straits nature put thee in,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And to deliver up to God that state,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of which He gave thee the vicariate,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which is thy soul and body, as entire",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As he who takes indentures doth require;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But didst not stay to enlarge His kingdom too,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By making others, what thou didst, to do;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Why shouldst thou triumph now, when heaven no more",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hath got by getting thee, than it had before;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For heaven and thou, e’en when thou livedst here,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of one another in possession were.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But this from triumph most disables thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That that place which is conquered must be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Left safe from present war, and likely doubt",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of imminent commotions to break out;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And hath he left us so? or can it be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His territory was no more than he?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No, we were all his charge; the diocese",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of every exemplar man the whole world is;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And he was joined in commission",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With tutelar angels, sent to everyone.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But though this freedom to upbraid and chide",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Him who triumph’d were lawful, it was tied",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With this, that it might never reference have",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unto the senate, who this triumph gave;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Men might at Pompey jest, but they might not",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At that authority by which he got",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Leave to triumph, before by age he might;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So though, triumphant soul, I dare to write,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Moved with a reverential anger, thus,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That thou so early wouldst abandon us;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet I am far from daring to dispute",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With that great sovereignty, whose absolute",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Prerogative hath thus dispensed with thee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Gainst nature’s laws, which just impugners be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of early triumphs; and I, though with pain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lessen our loss, to magnify thy gain",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of triumph, when I say, it was more fit",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That all men should lack thee, than thou lack it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though then in our time be not suffered",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That testimony of love unto the dead,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To die with them, and in their graves be hid,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As Saxon wives, and French soldarii did;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And though in no degree I can express",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grief in great Alexander’s great excess,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who at his friend’s death made whole towns divest",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their walls and bulwarks, which became them best;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Do not, fair soul, this sacrifice refuse,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That in thy grave I do inter my Muse,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which, by my grief, great as thy worth, being cast",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Behindhand, yet hath spoke, and spoke her last.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}