Terms of use
The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, has graciously contributed images of materials in its collections to Shakespeare Documented under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. Images used within the scope of these terms should cite the Bodleian Libraries as the source. For any use outside the scope of these terms, visitors should contact Bodleian Libraries Imaging Services at imaging@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.
Document-specific information
Creator: [Shakespeare, William]
Title: An epitaph on Elias James
Date: ca. 1640
Repository: Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
Call number and opening: MS. Rawl. Poet. 160, fol. 41
[fol. 41r]
Shine o’re thy hearse; the breath of our Iust praise
Shall to the firmanent thy virutes praise
Then fixe & kindle them into a star
Whose Influeuce may crown they glorious war
Hen:King
IN
Obitum filis domini Rich:
Anderson milites:
Faire peice of Angell gold that wert yet hot
Out of heavens mint & had’st not long since got
Thy Soveraignes Image on thee, & found true
Without allowance for all graines were due
To a young goodnes that the fate hast found
Of misers gold to be intomb’d in ground
Go dainty wormes meat, if such things as they
Got of their food can breed here for we may
Think such a flesh Corrupted in the mold
Without the ayd of balme & Aloes would
A richer mummy make thou ere was sent
From a time worne Egiptian monument
Go pretty soule now cut in heaveen, & set
As a rich diamond in an Ammulet
Which now is broken & the severed Iem
Shines with the stones in new Hierusalem
And if the soule be made of harmony
As tis defin’d in some philosophy
He shall so sing none shall distinguish him
Suppos’d to be some pretty Cherubin . /
AN
Epitaph
When god was pleasd, the world vnwilling yet
Elias James to nature payd his debt
And here reposeth: as he liv'd he dyde
The saying in him strongly verefide
Such life such death then the known truth to tell
he liv’d a godly life and dy’de as well /.
William Shakespeare
