Poetry

envy,
Bred in thee by a wise melancholy,
That I rejoice, that unto where thou art,
Though I stay here, I can thus send my heart,
As kindly as any enamour’d patient
His picture to his absent love hath sent.

All news I think sooner reach thee than me;
Havens are heavens, and ships wing’d angels be,
The which both gospel and stern threatenings bring.
Guiana’s harvest is nipp’d in the spring,
I fear; and with us, methinks, Fate deals so
As with the Jews’ guide God did; He did show
Him the rich land, but barr’d his entry in;
Our slowness is our punishment and sin.
Perchance, these Spanish businesses being done,
Which, as the earth between the moon and sun,
Eclipse the light which Guiana would give,
Our discontinued hopes we shall retrieve.
But if⁠—as all th’ All must⁠—hopes smoke away,
Is not almighty virtue an India?
If men be worlds, there is in everyone
Something to answer in some proportion
All the world’s riches; and in good men this,
Virtue, our form’s form and our soul’s soul, is.

To Mr. Rowland Woodward

Kindly I envy thy song’s perfection
Built of all th’ elements as our bodies are:
That Little of earth that is in it, is a fair
Delicious garden where all sweets are sown.
In it is cherishing fire which dries in me
Grief which did drown me: and half quenched by it
Are satiric fires which urged me to have writ
In scorn of all: for now I admire thee.
And as air doth fulfil the hollowness
Of rotten walls; so it mine emptiness,
Where tossed and moved it did beget this sound
Which as a lame echo of thine doth rebound
Oh, I was dead; but since thy song new life did give,
I recreated even by thy creature live.

To Mr. Samuel Brooke

O Thou which to search out the secret parts
Of the India, or rather Paradise
Of knowledge, hast with courage and advice
Lately launch’d into the vast sea of arts;
Disdain not in thy constant travelling
To do as other voyagers, and make
Some turns into less creeks, and wisely take
Fresh water at the Heliconian spring.
I sing not, siren-like, to tempt, for I
Am harsh; nor as those schismatics with you,
Which draw all wits of good hope to their crew;
But seeing in you bright sparks of poetry,
I, though I brought no fuel, had desire
With these articulate blasts to blow the fire.

To Mr. I. L.

Of that short roll of friends writ in my heart,
Which with thy name begins, since their depart,
Whether in th’ English provinces they be,
Or drink of Po, Sequane, or Danuby,
There’s none that sometime greets us not, and yet
Your Trent is Lethe; that past, us you forget.
You do not duties of societies,
If from th’ embrace of a loved wife you rise,
View your fat beasts, stretch’d barns, and labour’d fields,
Eat, play, ride, take all joys which all day yields,
And then again to your embracements go.
Some hours on us your friends, and some bestow
Upon your Muse, else both we shall repent;
I that my love, she that her gifts on you are spent.

To Mr. Basil Brooke

Is not thy sacred hunger of science
Yet satisfied? is not thy brain’s rich hive
Fulfill’d with honey, which thou dost derive
From the arts’ spirits and their quintessence?
Then wean thyself at last, and thee withdraw
From Cambridge thy old nurse, and, as the rest,
Here toughly chew, and sturdily digest
Th’ immense vast volumes of our common law.
And begin soon, lest my grief grieve thee too,
Which is, that that, which I should have begun
In my youth’s morning, now late must be done;
And I, as giddy travellers must do,
Which stray or sleep all day, and having lost
Light and strength, dark and tired must then ride post.

If thou unto thy Muse be married,
Embrace her ever, ever multiply;
Be far from me that strange adultery
To tempt thee, and procure her widowhood.
My Muse⁠—for I had one⁠—because I’m cold,
Divorced herself, the cause being in me.
That I can take no new in bigamy,
Not my will only, but power doth withhold.
Hence comes it, that these rhymes which never had
Mother, want matter, and they only have
A little form, the which their father gave;
They are profane, imperfect⁠—O, too bad
To be counted children of poetry,
Except confirm’d and bishoped by thee.

To Mr. I. L.

Blest are your north parts, for all this long time
My sun is with you; cold and dark ’s our clime;
Heaven’s sun, which stay’d so long from us this year,
Stay’d in your north, I think, for she was there;
And hither by kind nature drawn from thence,
Here rages, chafes, and threatens pestilence.
Yet I, as long as she from hence doth stay,
Think this no south, no summer, nor no day.
With thee my kind and unkind heart is run;
There sacrifice it to that beauteous sun.
So may thy pastures with their flowery feasts,
As suddenly as lard, fat thy lean beasts;
So may thy woods oft poll’d, yet ever wear
A green, and⁠—when thee list⁠—a golden hair;
So may all thy sheep bring forth twins; and so
In chase and race may thy horse all outgo;
So may thy love and courage ne’er be cold;
Thy son ne’er ward; thy loved wife ne’er seem old.
But mayst thou wish great things, and them attain,
As thou tell’st her, and none but her, my pain.

To Sir Henry Wotton at His Going Ambassador to Venice

After those reverend papers, whose soul is
Our good and great king’s loved hand and fear’d name;
By which to you he derives much of his,
And, how he may, makes you almost the same,

A taper of his torch, a copy writ
From his original, and a fair beam
Of the same warm and dazzling sun, though it
Must in another