Elegy on the Lord Chancellor by John Donne

Sorrow, who to this house scarce knew the way, / Is, O, heir of it, our all is his prey. / This strange chance claims strange wonder, and to us / Nothing can be so strange as to weep thus. / 'Tis well his life's loud-speaking works deserve, / And give praise too, our cold tongues could not serve; / 'Tis well he kept tears from our eyes before, / That to fit this deep ill we might have store. / O, if a sweet briar climb up by a tree, / If to a paradise that transplanted be, / Or fell'd, and burnt for holy sacrifice, / Yet that must wither which by it did rise, / As we for him dead; though no family / E'er rigg'd a soul for heaven's discovery / With whom more venturers more boldly dare / Venture their states, with him in joy to share, / We lose what all friends loved, him; he gains now / But life by death, which worst foes would allow, / If he could have foes, in whose practice grew / All virtues, whose name subtle schoolmen knew. / What ease can hope that we shall see him beget, / When we must die first, and cannot die yet? / His children are his pictures; O, they be / Pictures of him dead, senseless, cold as he. / Here needs no marble tomb, since he is gone, / He, and about him his, are turn'd to stone.