Francis Beaumont - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes

To flatter living fooles is easie slight:
But hard, to do the living-dead men right.
To praise a Landed Lord, is gainfull art:
But thanklesse to pay Tribute to desert.
This should have been my taske: I had intent
To bring my rubbish to thy monument,
To stop some crannies there, but that I found
No need of least repaire; all firme and sound.
Thy well-built fame doth still it selfe advance
Above the Worlds mad zeale and ignorance,
Though thou dyedst not possest of that same pelfe
(Which Nobler soules call durt,) the City wealth:
Yet thou hast left unto the times so great
A Legacy, a Treasure so compleat,
That 'twill be hard I feare to prove thy Will:
Men will be wrangling, and in doubting still
How so vast summes of wit were left behind,
And yet nor debts nor sharers they can finde.
'Twas the kind providence of fate, to lock
Some of this Treasure up; and keep a stock
For a reserve untill these sullen daies:
When scorn, and want, and danger, are the Baies
That Crown the head of merit. But now he
Who in thy Will hath part, is rich and free.
But there's a Caveat enter'd by command,
None should pretend, but those can understand.

Though Poets have a licence which they use
As th' ancient priviledge of their free Muse;
Yet whether this be leave enough for me
To write, great Bard, an Eulogie for thee:
Or whether to commend thy Worke, will stand
Both with the Lawes of Verse and of the Land,
Were to put doubts might raise a discontent
Between the Muses and the –
I'le none of that. There's desperate wits that be
(As their immortall Lawrell) Thunder-free;
Whose personall vertues, 'bove the Lawes of Fate,
Supply the roome of personall estate: