AN ELEGY On the DEATH of The Lord Chief Justice HALES: Who died December 26. 1676.  

BRing your Oblations, Poet-laureat Wits,  
Here is a Subject your best Art befits.  
From me a meaner Offering must suffice;  
Who have no Brain for such a Sacrifice:  
But what needs an Encomium? Silly Verse  
Does but debase this honourable Hearse.  
Is the blessed Saint ascended up to rest?  
His holy Life and his Love-labours ceased?  
Good devout Simeon! Such was his Decease,  
Clasps his Redeemer, and departs in peace.  
What Heart droops not at his departing hence?  
'Tis as the Sun set, his set influence.  
Like that great Light, rejoicing in his Sphere,  
He ran his Circuit profiting every where:  
With an impartial hand turned Justice Scale,  
The poor man's Patron, helped where fees did fail.  
A ruling great Example of the Gown,  
True to himself, his Country and the Crown.  
In all times fixed: so well he kept his ground,  
He seemed the Axe on which the wheel went round.  
High above Praise, his own works well expressed,  
And better prove, He knew most and did best.  
Hence petty grief! Death here wounds a whole nation,  
It calls for more than common lamentation.  
Church and State, put on black! Mourn Friends, mourn all.  
The Loss is vast and Epidemical.  
This worthy Pillar being fallen to ground,  
Where is another Atlas to be found?  
Where such a Healer? where so right an Eye?  
Sage to discern and faithful to apply.   

You of the long Robe, in each Inns-a-Court,  
To Coke's great name add Hales his good report,  
May it prove sem'nal of your Excellence  
In propagating Law and Conscience.  
A thousand Phoenix (if it may be) rise  
Out of his Ashes, good (like him) and wise:  
To build up Justice, Wrongs and Vice assuage,  
And reinforce the beggared bankrupt Age,  
In whom surviving it may yet be said,  
The Oracle of Law still lives, though dead.    

The EPITAPH.  

INgenious Reader, stay and drop a tear,  
England's great Darling and Defence lies here.  
Weep widowed Nation, weep till streams do fall,  
Like a kind Bride: His Love was Conjugal.    

Licenced.  
Jan. 5. 1677. Ro. L'Estrange.   

Printed for the AUTHOR. MDCLXXVII.