Had with mooming the gods left their willes undon,
They had not so soone herited such a soule:
Or if the mouth Tyme did not glotten up all,
Nor I, nor the world, were depriv'd of my sonne.
Whose brest Venus, with a face dolefull and milde,
Dooth wash with golden teares, inveying the skies;
And when the water of the goddesses eyes
Makes almost alive the marble of my childe;
One byds her leave styll her dollor so extreme,
Telling her — it is not her young sonne Papheme!
To which she makes aunswer with a voice inflamed
(Feeling therewith her venime to be more bitter)
"As I was of Cupid, even so of it, mother;
And a woman's last chylde is the most beloved."
Share this quote
Source, in full
One of "Foure Epytaphes made by the countes of Oxenford, after the death of her young sonne, the lord Bulbecke, &c." Included in John Soothern's The Musyque of the Beautie of his Mistresse Diana (1584). Thomas Park, A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, Scotland, and Ireland, vol. 2 (London: John Scott, 1806), observes that "it so much resembles the style of Soothern, that it may almost be suspected of being tricked out by his incomprehensible pen." (p. 29)