HYBERNIAE LACHRYMAE, Or, a sad contemplation on the bleeding condition of IRELAND.  

To the Honourable and excellently well accomplish Sir John Clotworthy Knight, and colonel.  
I Shall not here Sir, polish or repeat  
The story of your worth, nor tell how great  
You are in goodness as in fame; how immense  
In your minds fair republic; how propense  
Indulgent nature hath been of her store,  
By enriching you, thus to make others poor:  
These as essential Truths, I might infer,  
From each Comma raise your Character;  
But these soft lays I leave to such soft wits  
Who teach their Muse the trade of parasites,  
To bombast easy greatness with, and please  
Their pampared Patrons with Hyperboles.  
My Muse wears no such mask, nor can her rhyme  
Lackey or hold opinion with the time.  
Invited hither to perform that due  
Tribute of thanks she owes, and owes to you;  
To you best Sir, who have a witness been  
Of what she writes, to you Sir, who have seen  
Those Tragedies she treats of, and have known  
The losses of great Ulster in your own.  
Then since she's thus aspired, she humbly prays  
To let her ivy wait upon your bays.   

Up sad Melpomone, up and condole  
The ruins of a realm, attire thy soul  
In sorrow's dress; O let thy fountains rise  
And over flow the floodgates of thine eyes:  
Fill up thy sanguine cisterns to the brim,  
Spread forth thy expanded arms, and strive to swim  
In thine own tears, that so thou mayst make known  
The grief of others fully as thine own:  
Oh! here's a theme indeed, if Mortals could  
Not now lament, the Rocks and Mountains would,  
The melting Heavens whose influences steep,  
The stubborn stone would teach us how to weep;  
The Blood-imbrued Earth doth blush to see  
Such horrid massacres, and shall not we?  
Sure should we not, we had less sense than those  
Hard hearts who were first Authors of these woes.  
Disastrous State! How beautiful, how fair  
Thy Buildings, and how foul thy Vices were?  
How were thy glorious blossoms turned to dust;  
And blasted with the lighting of thy lust?  
Brimed with excess, how did thy cups o'erflow  
Faster than all thy trickling tears do now?  
How did thy crimes eclipse thee (and crying loud  
For vegeance) mask thy forehead in a cloud?  
Thy greatness but increased thy fall, and that  
Which was thy glory, ushered on thy fate,  
Thy wealth and plenty have but centuplyd  
Thy greater plagues, and made the wound more wide,  
And what should most revive thee, and restore  
Thine health, hath served t' exulcerate the sore.  
Thy stately forests, which did once invite  
The eye t'a feast of wonder and delight,  
Proved but thy funeral Faggots to consume  
Thy glory, and t'exaggerate thy doom,  
Whilst all thy blazing Territories have  
But Torches been, to light thee to thy Grave.  
And shall she perish, and we languish thus?  
And is there none t'help her, or succour us?  
Shall she pine thus unpitied? shall her grief  
Thus daily find a voice, but no relief?  
O happy England! which wilt scarce confess,  
(Lulled within a lethargy) this happiness:  
Thy troubles were but trivial, and thy fears  
But merely Fantasies compared with here.  
'Tis she, 'tis she hath suffered, and drunk up  
Those dregs whereof thou'hast only kised the cup:  
Those puny plagues which partially have met  
In thee, have been so ample, so complete,  
And numerous in her, that nothing more  
Could once be heaped or added to the score.  
But ah! complaints are shadows, and too brief  
T'express or show the substance of thy grief:  
And such whose fancy strives to utter it,  
Show not so much their sorrow as their wit:  
Thou that wert once great Britain's chiefest glory,  
Art now become a gazing stock, a story  
Exiled from human helps, and heavenly smiles  
O'er whelmed, and sepulchred in thine own spoils.  
How doth black fate environ the about?  
That hope cannot get in; nor horror out.  
Famine thou sister of the sword, and son  
Of Death, how many world's hast thou undone?  
How dost thou tyrannize, and keep thy Leets,  
And constant stations in her open streets?  
Oh! how the palefaced sucklings roar for food,  
And from their milk less mother's breast draw blood.  
They cried for bread that had scarce breath to cry,  
And wanting means to live, found means to die.  
The Father gasp: his last, and to his heir  
Bequeathes his pined corpse, the nurse's tear  
And quarter out their Infants, whilst they feast  
Upon the one half, and preserve the rest:  
O cruel Famine! which compels the Mother  
To kill one starved child to feed another.  
Thus is thy glory vanished in a trice,  
And all thy pomp lies buried in abyss:  
Thy joys are turned to sorrows, backed with tears,  
Whilst thou, poor thou, liest pickled up in tears:  
Yet be thou ne'er dismayed with boundless sorrow  
These Nights of grief may find a joyful Morrow.  
Clear then thy clouded countenance, and calm  
Thy discomposed looks; Heaven, Heaven, hath balm  
As well as thunderbolts, and be thou sure  
Thou canst not bleed so fast as he can cure.  
'Tis he, 'tis he can heal thee, and crush those  
That have insulted in thine overthrows.  
And thou proud Prelate (whose ambitiousness  
A triple Diadem can search depress;  
Prostrate at whose proud footsteps, Legions lie,  
And fall as low as Hell to keep thee high)  
Shalt one day be subjected too, with all  
Those Complices triumphant in thy fall  
Sad realm? A day there is when Heavens decree  
Shall call them to account as well as thee;  
And the time will come (if soldiers may divine)  
To work their ruin that have thus wrought thine.  
FINIS.