And to her thus, raising his thoughtful head, 'Ah, wanton foe! dost thou upbraid The ills which thou thyself hast made? Thou, wicked spirit, stolest me away, Into thy new-found worlds, I know not where, Lo, still in verse, against thee I complain. Which, if the earth but once it ever breeds, The foolish sports I did on thee bestow 'When my new mind had no infusion known, Thou gav'st so deep a tincture of thine own, That ever since I vainly try To wash away the inherent dye: Long work, perhaps, may spoil thy colours quite, But never will reduce the native white. To all the ports of honour and of gain I often steer my course in vain; Thy gale comes cross, and drives me back again, The tinkling strings of thy loose minstrelsy. Whoever this world's happiness would see As they who only heaven desire Do from the world retire. This was my error, this my gross mistake, Thus with Sapphira and her husband's fate, And perish for the part which I retain. The heaven under which I live is fair, Thine, thine is all the barrenness, if thou Mak'st me sit still and sing when I should plough. His long misfortune's fatal end; How cheerfully, and how exempt from fear, To wait on his, O thou fallacious Muse! Kings have long hands, they say, and though I be So distant, they may reach at length to me. However, of all princes thou Shouldst not reproach rewards for being small or slow; Thou! who rewardest but with popular breath, THE DESPAIR. 1 Beneath this gloomy shade, By Nature only for my sorrows made, I'll spend this voice in cries, In tears I'll waste these eyes, So lust of old the deluge punished. Ah, wretched youth, said I; Ah, wretched youth! twice did I sadly cry; 2 When thoughts of love I entertain, I meet no words but Never, and In vain: Which fuels the infernal flame: Never! my time to come must waste; In vain! torments the present and the past: In vain, in vain! twice did I sadly cry; In vain, in vain! the fields and floods reply. 3 No more shall fields or floods do so, For I to shades more dark and silent go: No comfort to my wounded sight, In the sun's busy and impert'nent light. Then down I laid my head, Down on cold earth, and for a while was dead, And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled. 4 Ah, sottish soul! said I, When back to its cage again I saw it fly: Fool! to resume her broken chain, And row her galley here again! Fool! to that body to return, Where it condemned and destined is to burn! Once dead, how can it be Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee, OF WIT. 1 Tell me, O tell! what kind of thing is Wit, Thou who master art of it; For the first matter loves variety less; 2 London, that vends of false ware so much store, For men, led by the colour and the shape, And sometimes, if the object be too far, 3 Hence 'tis a wit, that greatest word of fame, And wits by our creation they become, Nor florid talk, which can that title gain; 4 "Tis not to force some lifeless verses meet All everywhere, like man's, must be the soul, Such miracles are ceased; and now we see 5 Yet 'tis not to adorn and gild each part; Jewels at nose and lips but ill appear; If there be nothing else between. Men doubt, because they stand so thick i̇' th' sky, If those be stars which paint the galaxy. 6 'Tis not when two like words make up one noise, Jests for Dutch men and English boys; In which who finds out wit, the same may see Much less can that have any place At which a virgin hides her face; Such dross the fire must purge away; 'tis just The author blush there where the reader must. 7 'Tis not such lines as almost crack the stage, Nor a tall met'phor in the bombast way, Nor upon all things to obtrude And force some old similitude. What is it then, which, like the Power Divine, We only can by negatives define? |