Death by John Donne

Language, thou art too narrow and too weak / To ease us now; great sorrows cannot speak. / If we could sigh out accents, and weep words, / Grief wears, and lessens, that tears breath affords. / Sad hearts, the less they seem, the more they are / -So guiltiest men stand mutest at the bar- / Not that they know not, feel not their estate, / But extreme sense hath made them desperate. / Sorrow, to whom we owe all that we be, / Tyrant, in the fifth and greatest monarchy, / Was 't that she did possess all hearts before, / Thou hast kill'd her, to make thy empire more? / Knew'st thou some would, that knew her not, lament, / As in a deluge perish th' innocent? / Was 't not enough to have that palace won, / But thou must raze it too, that was undone? / Hadst thou stay'd there, and look'd out at her eyes, / All had adored thee, that now from thee flies; / For they let out more light than they took in, / They told not when, but did the day begin. / She was too sapphirine and clear for thee; / Clay, flint, and jet now thy fit dwellings be. / Alas! she was too pure, but not too weak; / Whoe'er saw crystal ordnance but would break? / And if we be thy conquest, by her fall / Thou hast lost thy end; in her we perish all; / Or if we live, we live but to rebel, / That know her better now, who knew her well. / If we should vapour out, and pine, and die, / Since she first went, that were not misery. / She changed our world with hers; now she is gone, / Mirth and prosperity is oppression; / For of all moral virtues she was all, / That ethics speak of virtues cardinal. / Her soul was paradise; the cherubin / Set to keep it was grace, that kept out sin. / She had no more than let in death, for we / All reap consumption from one fruitful tree. / God took her hence, lest some of us should love / Her, like that plant, Him and His laws above; / And when we tears, He mercy shed in this, / To raise our minds to heaven, where now she is / Who if her virtues would have let her stay / We had had a saint, have now a holiday. / Her heart was that strange bush, where sacred fire, / Religion, did not consume, but inspire / Such piety, so chaste use of God's day, / That what we turn to feast, she turn'd to pray; / And did prefigure here, in devout taste, / The rest of her high Sabbath, which shall last. / Angels did hand her up, who next God dwell, / For she was of that order whence most fell; / Her body's left with us, lest some had said, / She could not die, except they saw her dead; / For from less virtue, and less beauteousness, / The Gentiles framed them gods and goddesses. / The ravenous earth, that now woos her to be / Earth too, will be a Lemnia, and the tree / That wraps that crystal in a wooden tomb / Shall be took up spruce, fill'd with diamond. / And we her sad glad friends all bear a part / Of grief, for all would break a Stoic's heart.