EPISTLES.

In this world's warfare they whom rugged Fate,
(God's commissary) doth so throughly hate,
As in the Court's squadron to marshal their state;

If they stand armed with seely honesty,
With wishing, prayers, and neat integrity,
Like Indians 'gainst Spanish hosts they be.

Suspicious boldness to this place belongs,
And to have as many ears as all have tongues
Tender to know, tough to acknowledge wrongs.

Believe me, Sir, in my youth's giddiest days,
When to be like the court was a player's praise,
Plays were not so like courts, as courts like plays.

Then let us at these mimic antics jest,
Whose deepest projects and egregious gests
Are but dull morals of a game at chests.

But now 'tis incongruity to smile,

Therefore I end; and bid farewell a while

At court, though from court were the better style.

TO THE COUNTESS OF BEDFORD.

MADAM,

REASON is our soul's left hand, Faith her right; By these we reach divinity,—that's you:

Their loves, who have the blessing of your light, Grew from their Reason; mine from fair Faith grew.

But as, although a squint left-handedness
Be ungracious, yet we cannot want that hand,
So would I (not to increase, but to express
My faith) as I believe, so understand.

Therefore I study you first in your saints,
Those friends, whom your election glorifies;
Then in your deeds, accesses and restraints,
And what you read, and what yourself devise.

But soon, the reasons why you 're loved by all,
Grow infinite, and so pass Reason's reach,
Then back again to implicit Faith I fall,
And rest on what the catholic voice* doth teach;

* Var. faith.

That you are good: and not one heretic
Denies it; if he did, yet you are so; [stick,
For rocks which high-topped and deep-rooted
Waves wash, not undermine, nor overthrow.

In every thing there naturally grows
A balsamum, to keep it fresh and new,
If 't were not injured by extrinsic blows;
Your birth and beauty are this balm in you.

But you of learning and religion

And virtue and such ingredients have made
A mithridate, whose operation

Keeps off or cures what can be done or said.

The

Yet this is not your physie, but your food,

A diet fit for you: for you are here

The first good angel, since the world's frame stood.
That ever did in woman's shape appear.

Tour

F

Since you are then God's masterpiece, and so
His factor for our loves, do as you do:
Make your return home gracious, and bestow
This life on that; so make one fe of two:
For, so. God help me. I would not miss you

there

For all the good which you can do me here.

* Varr, bich to seem, deep-rooted stick.

to sense.

So in

You

Exha

W

TO THE COUNTESS OF BEDFORD.

MADAM,

You have refined me; and to worthiest things,
Virtue, art, beauty, fortune, now I see
Rareness or use, not nature, value brings;
And such, as they are circumstanced, they be.
Two ills can ne'er perplex us, sin to excuse,
But of two good things we may leave or choose.

Therefore at court, which is not Virtue's clime, Where a transcendent height (as lowness me) Makes her not be,* or not show, all my rhyme Your virtues challenge, which there rarest be; For as dark texts need notes, some there must be To usher Virtue, and say, This is she.

So in the country's beauty. To this place You are the season (Madam) you the day, 'Tis but a grave of spices, till your face Exhale them, and a thick, close bud display. Widowed and reclused else, her sweets she en shrines,

As China, when the sun at Brazil dines.

* Var. see.

em busy praise and all appeal

or courts, sense's decree is true;

ne, the magazine, the commonweal,

sory of beauty, in Twicknam is and you;

yo hath seen one, would both; as who hath
been

a paradise, would seek the Cherubin.

ΤΟ

SIR EDWARD HERBERT,

SINCE LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY, BEING AT THE
SIEGE OF JULIERS.

| MAN is a lump, where all beasts kneaded be,
Wisdom makes him an ark where all agree;
The fool, in whom these beasts do live at jar,
Is sport to others, and a theatre :

Nor scapes he so, but is himself their prey ;
All which was man in him, is eat away ;
And now his beasts on one another feed,
Yet couple in anger, and new monsters breed:
How happy is he, which hath due place assigned
To his beasts! and disaforested his mind,
Empaled himself to keep them out, not in;

Can sow, and dares trust corn, where they have

been;