Methinks I see you, crowned with olives, sit,
And strike a sacred horror from the pit.
A day of doom is this of your decree,
Where even the best are but by mercy free:
A day, which none but Jonson durst have wished to see, Here they, who long have known the useful stage,
Come to be taught themselves to teach the age.
As your commissioners our poets go,
To cultivate the virtue which you sow;
In your Lycæum first themselves refined,
And delegated thence to human-kind.
But as ambassadors, when long from home,
For new instructions to their princes come,
So poets, who your precepts have forgot,
Return, and beg they may be better taught:
Follies and faults elsewhere by them are shown,
But by your manners they correct their own.
The illiterate writer, empiric-like, applies
To minds diseased, unsafe, change remedies:
The learned in schools, where knowledge first began,
Studies with care the anatomy of man;
Sees virtue, vice, and passions, in their cause,
And fame from science, not from fortune, draws.
So poetry, which is in Oxford made
An art, in London only is a trade.
There haughty dunces, whose unlearnèd pen
Could ne'er spell grammar, would be reading men.
Such build their poems the Lucretian way;
So many huddled atoms make a play;
And if they hit in order by some chance,
They call that nature which is ignorance.
To such a fame let mere town-wits aspire,
And their gay nonsense their own cits admire.
Our poet, could he find forgiveness here,
Would wish it rather than a plaudit there.
He owns no crown from those Prætorian bands,
But knows that right is in the senate's hands,
Not impudent enough to hope your praise,
Low at the Muses' feet his wreath he lays,
And, where he took it up, resigns his bays.
Kings make their poets whom themselves think fit,
But 'tis your suffrage makes authentic wit.
TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
Though actors cannot much of learning boast,
Of all who want it, we admire it most:
We love the praises of a learned pit,
As we remotely are allied to wit.
We speak our poet's wit; and trade in ore,
Like those who touch upon the golden shore;
Betwixt our judges can distinction make,
Discern how much, and why, our poems take:
Mark if the fools, or men of sense, rejoice;
Whether the applause be only sound or voice.
When our fop-gallants, or our city-folly,
Clap over-loud, it makes us melancholy :
We doubt that scene which does their wonder raise,
And, for their ignorance, contemn their praise.
Judge then, if we who act, and they who write,
Should not be proud of giving you delight.
London likes grossly; but this nicer pit
Examines, fathoms all the depths of wit;
The ready finger lays on every blot;
Knows what should justly please, and what should not. 20
Nature herself lies open to your view;
You judge by her, what draught of her is true,
Where outlines false, and colours seem too faint,
Where bunglers daub, and where true poets paint.
But, by the sacred genius of this place,
By every Muse, by each domestic grace,
Be kind to wit, which but endeavours well,
And, where you judge, presumes not to excel.
Our poets hither for adoption come,
As nations sued to be made free of Rome:
Not in the suffragating tribes to stand,
But in your utmost, last, provincial band.
If his ambition may those hopes pursue,
Who with religion loves your arts and you,
Oxford to him a dearer name shall be
Than his own mother University.
Thebes did his green unknowing youth engage;
He chooses Athens in his riper age.
River is time in water; as it came,
Still so it flows; yet never is the same.
I wake, and so new live; a night's protection
Is a new wonder, whiles a resurrection.
The sun's up; yet myself and God most bright
I can't see; I'm too dark, and He's too light.
Let devout prayér cast me to the ground,
So shall I yet to heaven be nearer found.
Clay, sand, and rock seem of a different birth;
So men; some stiff, some loose, some firm; all earth! 10
By red, green, blue, which sometimes paint the air,
Guilt, pardon, Heaven, the rainbow does declare.
The world's a prison; no man can get out;
Let the atheist storm then; Heaven is round about.
The rose is but the flower of a briar;
The good man has an Adam to his sire.
The dying mole, some say, opens his eyes;
The rich, till 'tis too late, will not be wise.
The sick hart eats a snake, and so grows well;
Repentance digests sin, and man 'scapes hell.
Flies, oft removed, return. Do they want fear,
Or shame, or memory? Flies are everywhere.
Pride cannot see itself by mid-day light;
The peacock's tail is farthest from his sight.
The swallow's a quick arrow, that may show
With what an instant swiftness life doth flow.
The nightingale's a quire, no single note;
O various power of God in one small throat!
The silkworm's its own wonder; without loom
It does provide itself a silken room.
The moon is the world's glass; in which 'twere strange
If we saw her's and saw not our own change.
Herodotus is history's fresh youth;
Thucydides is judgment, age, and truth.
In sadness, Machiavel, thou didst not well,
To help the world to run faster to hell.
The Italian's the world's gentleman, the Court
To which thrift, wit, lust, and revenge resort.
Bogs, purgatory, wolves, and ease, by fame
Are counted Ireland's earth, mistake, curse, shame.
The Indies, Philip, spread not like thy robe;
Art thou the new horizon to the globe?
Down, pickaxe; to the depths for gold let's go;
We'll undermine Peru. Is'nt heaven below?
Who gripes too much casts all upon the ground;
Too great a greatness greatness doth confound.
All things are wonder since the world began ;
The world's a riddle, and the meaning's man.
There's none should places have in Fame's high court
But those that first do win Invention's fort;
Not messengers, that only make report.
To messengers rewards of thanks are due
For their great pains, telling their message true,
But not the honour to invention new.
Many there are that suits will make to wear
Of several patches, stoln both here and there,
That to the world they gallants may appear :
And the poor vulgar, who but little know,
And reverence all that makes a glistering show,
Examine not the same how they came to.
Then do they call their friends and all their kin;
They factions make the ignorant to win,
And with their help into Fame's court get in.
ON THE DEATH OF PRINCE HENRY, SON OF
JAMES THE FIRST.
Methought his royal person did foretell
A kingly stateliness, from all pride clear;
His look majestic seemed to compel
All men to love him, rather than to fear.
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