Poetry

parts
Extol, without suspect of surquedry.
For, but thyself, no subject can be found
Worthy thy quill, nor any quill resound
Thy worth but thine; how good it were to see
A poem in thy praise, and writ by thee.

Now if this song be too harsh for rhyme, yet, as
The painters’ bad god made a good devil,
’Twill be good prose, although the verse be evil.
If thou forget the rhyme as thou dost pass,
Then write; then I may follow, and so be
Thy debtor, thy echo, thy foil, thy zany;
I shall be thought⁠—if mine like thine I shape⁠—
All the world’s lion, though I be thy ape.

To Mr. Thomas Woodward

Haste thee, harsh verse, as fast as thy lame measure
Will give thee leave, to him⁠—my pain and pleasure.
I’ve given thee, and yet thou art too weak,
Feet, and a reasoning soul, and tongue to speak.
Tell him all questions, which men have defended,
Both of the place and pains of hell, are ended;
And ’tis decreed, our hell is but privation
Of him, at least in this earth’s habitation.
And ’tis where I am, where in every street
Infections follow, overtake, and meet.
Live I or die, by you my love is sent;
And you’re my pawns, or else my testament.

To Mr. Thomas Woodward

Pregnant again with th’ old twins, Hope and Fear,
Oft have I asked for thee, both how and where
Thou wert; and what my hopes of letters were;

As in our streets sly beggars narrowly
Watch motions of the giver’s hand or eye,
And evermore conceive some hope thereby.

And now thy alms is given, thy letter’s read,
The body risen again, the which was dead,
And thy poor starveling bountifully fed.

After this banquet my soul doth say grace,
And praise thee for ’t, and zealously embrace
Thy love, though I think thy love in this case
To be as gluttons, which say ’midst their meat,
They love that best of which they most do eat.

To Mr. Thomas Woodward

At once from hence my lines and I depart,
I to my soft still walks, they to my heart,
I to the nurse, they to the child of art.

Yet as a firm house, though the carpenter
Perish, doth stand; as an ambassador
Lies safe, howe’er his king be in danger;

So, though I languish, press’d with melancholy,
My verse, the strict map of my misery,
Shall live to see that, for whose want I die.

Therefore I envy them, and do repent,
That from unhappy me, things happy are sent.
Yet as a picture, or bare sacrament,
Accept these lines, and if in them there be
Merit of love, bestow that love on me.

To Mr. Rowland Woodward

Zealously my Muse doth salute all thee,
Enquiring of that mystic trinity
Whereof thou, and all to whom heavens do infuse
Like fire, are made; thy body, mind, and Muse.
Dost thou recover sickness, or prevent?
Or is thy Mind travailed with discontent?
Or art thou parted from the world and me,
In a good scorn of the world’s vanity?
Or is thy devout Muse retired to sing
Upon her tender elegiac string?
Our minds part not, join then thy Muse with mine
For mine is barren thus divorced from thine.

To Mr. Rowland Woodward

Muse not that by thy mind thy body is led:
For by thy mind, my mind’s distempered.
So thy care lives long, for I bearing part
It eats not only thine, but my swoll’n heart.
And when it gives us intermission
We take new hearts for it to feed upon.
But as a lay man’s genius doth control
Body and mind; the Muse being the soul’s soul
Of poets, that methinks should ease our anguish,
Although our bodies wither and minds languish.
Wright then, that my griefs which thine got may be
Cured by thy charming sovereign melody.

To Mr. Christopher Brooke

Thy friend, whom thy deserts to thee enchain,
Urged by this unexcusable occasion,
Thee and the saint of his affection
Leaving behind, doth of both wants complain.
And let the love I bear to both sustain
No blot nor maim by this division;
Strong is this love which ties our hearts in one,
And strong that love pursued with amorous pain.
But though besides thyself I leave behind
Heaven’s liberal, and the thrice fair sun,
Going to where starved winter aye doth won,
Yet Love’s hot fires, which martyr my sad mind,
Do send forth scalding sighs, which have the art
To melt all ice, but that which walls her heart.

To Mr. Edward Guilpin

Even as lame things thirst their perfection, so
The slimy rhymes bred in our vale below,
Bearing with them much of my love and heart,
Fly unto that Parnassus, where thou art.
There thou o’erseest London: here I have been
By staying in London, too much overseen.
Now pleasure’s dearth our city doth posses,
Our theatres are filled with emptiness;
As lank and thin is every street and way
As a woman delivered yesterday.
Nothing whereat to laugh my spleen espies
But bearbaitings or Law exercise.
Therefore I’ll leave it, and in the country strive
Pleasure, now fled from London, to retrieve.
Do thou so too: and fill not like a bee
Thy thighs with honey, but as plenteously
As Russian merchants, thyself’s whole vessel load,
And then at winter retail it here abroad.
Bless us with Suffolk’s sweets; and as that is
Thy garden, make thy hive and warehouse this.

To Mr. Rowland Woodward

If, as mine is, thy life a slumber be,
Seem, when thou read’st these lines, to dream of me.
Never did Morpheus nor his brother wear
Shapes so like those shapes, whom they would appear,
As this my letter is like me, for it
Hath my name, words, hand, feet, heart, mind and wit.
It is my deed of gift of me to thee;
It is my will, myself the legacy.
So thy retirings I love, yea