Strode's Longer Elegy

Extract

On Mistress Mary Prideaux: Epitaph 1-8
Happy Grave, thou dost enshrine
That which makes thee a rich mine:
Remember yet, ‘tis but a loane;
And wee must have it back, Her owne,
The very same; Marke mee, the same:
Thou canst not cheat us with a lame
Deformed Carcase; Shee was fayre,
Fresh as Morning, sweete as Ayre.

Bishop Henry King and Canon William Strode seem to have been handled similarly by fate until 1921, when in his essay on the metaphysical poets T. S. Eliot stimulated poetic interest in King by admiring an extended ‘journey’ metaphor that took up only a small portion of ‘The Exequy’. I wonder if something can be done for Strode. In several ways these poets are alike, and for both, their finest work can be found in the elegy.