Philobiblon

I’ve been reading a very handy 1956 thesis – happily available on microfilm – Conventions and Characteristics of the English Funeral Elegy of the Earlier Seventeenth Century, (University of Missouri). And I just had to share what the author, H.H. Hale, describes as the “most graceless” example, Francis Beaumont’s “Elegy on the Lady Markham” a relative of the influential Lucy, Countess of Bedford.

The poet tells his readers that although he never saw Lady Markham in life he fell in love with her corpse, and likes the fact he can now…

Her grassgreene mantle, and her sheet display,
And touc her naked, and though th’ envious mould
In which she lies uncovered, moist and cold,
Strive to corrupt her, she will not abide
With any art her blemishes to hide…”

He directs the worms to gently eat her flesh, to eat into her ear-lobes to form holes for earrings, and finally to eat her epitaph upon her forehead: “Living, she was young, faire, and full of wit / Dead, all her faults are in her forehead writ.”
p. 38-39

Seriously sick!