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.
I21 Cease booteless teares, weepe not for him whose Death
Notes. Although the allusion to Samson in the final couplet positions Ralegh in the increasingly familiar role of militant Protestant hero, this poem, like “I knew thee but by fame and thy brave deedes” makes a claim to Ralegh’s significance as a writer.
Cease booteless teares, weepe not for him whose Death
made way to Heaven; for her that sent him breath,
Long liv’d hee Captive; now at Libertie
this world of wooes turnd to felicitie
What, is hee gon: No, wee enioye him still
5That learned worke,1 (the Laurell of his quill)
shall live and blaze his fame, those only dye
That have no record to posteritie.
The end, the Life, the Evenige crownes the Day
his Night surpast his morning every way,
10For Samson like,2 Dyinge hee vanguisht more
then all his life time hee had done before:
Source. Morgan MS MA 1057, p. 94
Other known sources. Ralegh, Poems 194; PRO SP 46/64, fol. 163
I21
1 That learned worke: Ralegh’s The History of the World (1614). <back>
2 Samson like: Samson died as he pulled down a building upon himself, slaughtering numerous Philistines in the process. “And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life” (Judges 16.30). <back>
Web Marketing & Design
by FourSquare Innovations 
