THE DIVINE DIRGE Of a dying SWAN, Or a Priestly POEM Entitled by the Author, De anima immortali carmen.  
Written by Fr. Tucker, M. A. of St. John's College in Oxon.   printer's or publisher's device 
April 4 London Printed by Peter Lillicrap. 1661.   

To the Right Honourable and most Reverend Fathers in God, William by Divine Providence, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, His Grace, Accepted Lord Archbishop of York His Grace, Primates and Metropolitans of England, with all the rest of the Reverend Bishops, dignified Persons and Priests in the Church of England.  
Most Reverend Father, and m●st Honoured Lord,  
I Am emboldened to address this Divine Dirge of a dying Swan as his last breath, into your Grace's hands; Nor indeed could I, as I humbly conceive more properly recommend it to any person living, not only because your grace is Primate of the Church and so chief of his Coat, but also because under your graces most happy government he drew his first University breath and breeding, being some time aservant of that College in Oxon where your Grace was the Honoured head: and so truly might be called a St. johns-man born, So I shall not need to insist any further in any Character of his Piety and parts, having had so long a relation to your Grace and Government: In the next place I must be bold to present this small piece to all you my Lords, the Bishops, and others his Fathers, and Brothers in the Church of England: Nor need I otherwise recommend his memmory to your Lordships than that he was one that had the honour to were your girdle and was not only a cannoneer down of Treason and Rebellion in his Pulpit, but in the field, where he durst do, and did as much as any man of his coat. Nay he did not only Preach but proclaim against the horrid murder of his late Sacred Majesty, before the very face of the Actors of the most bloody Tragedy, and he forbore not to tell them of it, when it was done in open congregations, for which he together with his whole family were no little sufferers: but now, O how he would have rejoiced to see this day!  
In fine, my most Honoured Lords, I humbly beseech you through the bowels of Jesus Christ, that you will not only meditate on the souls immortality which I doubt not but my Husband does happily enjoy, and so will your Lordships after him but also an Immortality of our bodies, the poor widows and poor fatherless Children, now all ready to perish if not relieved by your Lordship's most charitable goodness, and so as these shall be obliged to your Lordships for the●r temporal life, they shall pray for all Temporal and eternal good things to be bestowed upon your Lordships. So your Lordships may be pleased to accept this as the widow's mite from,  
My Lords, Your Lordship's most devoted Beadswoman and humble servant Martha Tucker.   

De Anima immortali Carmen.  

BEfore the Birth of time or ere the Sun  
In motion circular his course had run;  
Before the Stars were taken from the womb  
Of night, confined to endless orbs, and bound:  
To natural influence all was a Rude  
And indigested Mass, nothing endued,  
With form or Soul, no organs than were tuned  
Unto the Spheres, for then no Spheres were found  
Nor this dull earth, nor lighter heaven nor Sea  
Had place conservative, nought did obey:  
Or Art's, or nature's Law, no Element  
Had its essential form or Compliment;  
Until the first and mighty movers Hand  
Parted the jarring seeds, the Sea from Land  
The purer fire from air and in a Robe  
Of quantity and figure dressed the Globe:  
On which he placed his vegetable Guests:  
And Sensitives had here asign'd their feasts  
To live and grow for him, who last of all  
Enters the Scene at his Creator's cal●  
The mighty Elohim Consulted than  
To build a stately frame, and called that Man:  
For which endeared Creation and Respect  
This Lovely Microcosm was made erect,  
With upright Speculation, and a Soul  
Was given him past Mortalities' Control  
Whose holy flames and sweet integrity  
Did counterfeit th' almighty's Deity  
Till his too forward will, too free to evil  
Transformed this Heaven born Child to th' Shape of Devil:  
Whose easy, prompt posterity did tract  
His steps so fast, that to eternal wrack:  
Whole general man had run, but that his Maker  
Snatched him from loss and was himself partaker:  
Of what himself had made, God assumed man  
And from th' imperial Throne descending came,  
Disrobed of Glory, and his tire of Light  
To save his new lost boy from the sad night,  
But by the shine he could discern and tell  
There was an immortality in Hell:  
Waiting the soul whom now privation  
Of good had plunged into dimnation.  
Then 'twas; from Salem, the the Land of Peace,  
Came bound for Jericho and Robbed of Grace.  
Was struck to th' heart past reverend Aaron's cure  
The Sacrifice or the Levites power:  
For, (the first covenant broke) dread Sina's Law  
Bound her in thrall and barred up Zions way;  
Till heaven to earth came down, till pity gave  
That Sovereign wine, and Sacred Oil to save:  
The wounded wreteh, who then again his head  
Lifts up, and breathes to him from whom he fled:  
Son of the morning Glorious Lucifer  
When sinned had fallen, the potent Thunderer  
Hurled him from beauty's Palace, to th● Abyss  
Of darkness never to regain that bliss:  
He lost, the Angels missed that privilege  
Allowed this mortal whose high Sacrilege:  
So boldly acted against infinity  
To heaven on earth's paid by th' Deity,  
That God and man in one hypostasy  
Infinite finite that the etternall might  
His at tributes of love and justice write?  
Clear to the now redeemed sin I eye  
Turning him to his best eternity  
Stupendious Mystery I what cause could move  
So great a Change; ah 'twas the God of love.  
Pause here Oraculous Scholeman tell and write  
What kind of love is this great Stageritie  
Go burn thy books, damn thy fond Heresies,  
And learn the God of nature's Deity,  
This ponderous pile, and all those Clement's turn  
Man to a better Paradise than before  
His sin and folly lost, whose soul shall soar  
Above the Spangled Orb embosed with Store  
Of curling stars and cut yond Chyristalin  
Transparent heaven, Through which with wings divine  
'Bove Primum mobile it shall aspire,  
Till it ascend and reach that Sacred Quir,  
Where martyrs Crowned stand and Angels Sing  
Anthems, and hallelujahs to their King.  
This though the Sager Orpheus did not know  
Nor Proclus, nor the sharp Averross show;  
Shall rise a truth, when Heaven and earth shall fall  
To dissolution! th' grand Funeral.  
This busy soul by some was thought to pass  
By Metempsachosis into some Ass  
Or other body as if beasts with men  
Had equal share in death and life again:  
Obsteperous Atheists so may write, and teach  
Phanatique toys, to their desciples preach  
The world's Eternity, man's nobler Spirit,  
A breath let forth, and lost, not to inherit?  
Or future good, or bade, once past and gone  
No more to find a second Station.  
Prodigious Blasphemy! had they but known  
From whence the Soul descended they had shown:  
Whether it moves, and winds, and fain would rise  
To whence it came above the Arched Skies?  
Lest violently it should be hurled beneath  
By th' weight of sin, etternall though in death:  
Mark how the flame of day doth troth, the Ring  
Of aged time and in his progress bring:  
His Chariot nearer Earth, as near his end  
Declining stars do nod, planets descend  
To cheer the Crazy fainting centres heart  
That Shook with Earthquake agues in each part:  
And drooping into Chaos once again  
Groans for a dissolution from its pain?  
Yet when man's tottering body full of days,  
Reclines his Snowwhite head, and in a maze,  
Pants with his struggling throws and groaning dies  
The same again numerical shall rise;  
To Clasp the eternal Soul a Mystery  
Made only clear unto Theology:  
Then fond Astronomer go boar the Stars  
Ransack the Zones, and tell to fools the jars  
Betwixt the Planets, Search the brightest flames  
Of all the constellations, and their names:  
Set down, from fair Orion to the Bear?  
From Cassiopeia to jov' Eagles so hear.  
Erect a subtle figure, then prophesy  
What fate attends thyself, what misery  
Thy Country; tell what famine, Rapes, what wars  
Are hover there, the wise man Rules the stars?  
And thou mayest break thy Epicyles for he  
Laughs at thy jacob's staff, thy Schemes and thee  
His heaven in spired soul to heaven can go  
Without thy Astrolabe, his faith can show  
The way and reach the end, heaven is his home,  
Earth but his Inn, discharging that, he's gone    
FINIS.