[And Death of His Highness Ensuing the Same.] <br /> <br />We must resign! Heaven his great soul does claim <br />In storms, as loud as his immortal fame; <br />His dying groans, his last breath, shakes our isle, <br />And trees uncut fall for his funeral pile. <br />About his palace their broad roots are tossed <br />Into the air: So Romulus was lost. <br />New Rome in such a tempest missed her king, <br />And from obeying fell to worshipping. <br />On Oeta's top thus Hercules lay dead, <br />With ruined oaks and pines about him spread; <br />The poplar, too, whose bough he wont to wear <br />On his victorious head, lay prostrate there. <br />Those his last fury from the mountain rent; <br />Our dying hero from the continent <br />Ravished whole towns, and forts from Spaniards reft, <br />As his last legacy to Britain left. <br />The ocean, which so long our hopes confined, <br />Could give no limits to his vaster mind; <br />Our bounds' enlargement was his latest toil, <br />Nor hath he left us prisoners to our isle. <br />Under the tropic is our language spoke, <br />And part of Flanders hath received our yoke. <br />From civil broils he did us disengage, <br />Found nobler objects for our martial rage: <br />And, with wise conduct, to his country showed <br />Their ancient way of conquering abroad. <br />Ungrateful then, if we no tears allow <br />To him that gave us peace and empire too. <br />Princes, that feared him, grieve, concerned to see <br />No pitch of glory from the grave is free. <br />Nature herself took notice of his death, <br />And, sighing, swelled the sea with such a breath <br />That to remotest shores her billows rolled, <br />The approaching fate of her great ruler told.<br /><br />Edmund Waller<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/upon-the-late-storm/
