Elegy on the Lady Markham by John Donne

Man is the world, and death the ocean, / To which God gives the lower parts of man, / This sea environs all, and though as yet / God hath set marks and bounds 'twixt us and it, / Yet doth it roar, and gnaw, and still pretend, / And breaks our bank, whene'er it takes a friend. / Then our land waters, tears of passion, vent; / Our waters, then, above our firmament / -Tears which our soul doth for her sins let fall- / Take all a brackish taste, and funeral. / And e'en those tears which should wash sin, are sin. / We, after God's "No," drown the world again. / Nothing but man of all envenom'd things / Doth work upon itself with inborn stings. / Tears are false spectacles; we cannot see, / Through passion's mist, what we are or what she. / In her this sea of death hath made no breach, / But as the tide doth wash the slimy beach, / And leaves embroider'd works upon the sand, / So is her flesh refined by death's cold hand. / As men of China, after an age's stay, / Do take up porcelain, where they buried clay; / So at this grave, her limbec-which refines / The diamonds, rubies, sapphires, pearls and mines, / Of which this flesh was-her soul shall inspire / Flesh of such stuff, as God, when His last fire / Annuls this world, to recompense it, shall / Make and name then th' elixir of this all. / They say the sea, when it gains, loseth too; / If carnal death, the younger brother, do / Usurp the body, our soul, which subject is / To th' elder death by sin, is freed by this. / They perish both, when they attempt the just; / For graves our trophies are, and both death's dust. / So, unobnoxious now, she hath buried both; / For none to death sins, that to sin is loth; / Nor do they die, which are not loth to die; / So hath she this and that virginity. / Grace was in her extremely diligent, / That kept her from sin, yet made her repent. / Of what small spots pure white complains! Alas / How little poison cracks a crystal glass! / She sinn'd but just enough to let us see / That God's word must be true, "All, sinners be. " / So much did zeal her conscience rarify, / That extreme truth lacked little of a lie, / Making omissions acts, laying the touch / Of sin on things that sometime may be such. / As Moses' cherubins, whose natures do / Surpass all speed, by him are winged too; / So would her soul, already in heaven, seem then / To climb by tears the common stairs of men. / How fit she was for God, I am content / To speak, that death his vain haste may repent. / How fit for us, how even and how sweet, / How good in all her titles, and how meet / To have reform'd this forward heresy, / That women can no parts of friendship be, / How moral, how divine, shall not be told, / Lest they that hear her virtues, think her old; / And lest we take death's part, and make him glad / Of such a prey, and to his triumph add.