Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham

Of an Elegy Made by Mrs Wharton on the Earl of Rochester

Thus mourn the Muses! on the hearse
Not strewing tears, but lasting verse,
Which so preserve the hero’s name,
They make him live again in fame.

Chloris, in lines so like his own,
Gives him so just and high renown,
That she th’afflicted world relieves,
And shows that still in her he lives;
Her wit as graceful, great, and good;
Allied in genius, as in blood.[2]

His loss supplied, now all our fears Are, that the nymph should melt in tears. Then, fairest Chloris! comfort take, For his, your own, and for our sake, Lest his fair soul, that lives in you, Should from the world for ever go. [1] ‘Mrs. Wharton’: the daughter, and co-heiress with the Countess of Abingdon, of Sir Henry Lee, of Ditchley, in Oxfordshire. [2] ‘In blood’: the Earl of Rochester’s mother was Mrs. Wharton’s grand aunt.