TO SIR HENRY GOODYERE.

WHO makes the past * a pattern for next year, Turns no new leaf, but still the same things reads. Seen things he sees again, heard things doth hear, And makes his life but like a pair of beads.

A palace, when 'tis that which it should be, Leaves growing, and stands such, or else decays; But he which dwells there is not so; for he Strives to urge upward, and his fortune raise.

So had your body her morning, hath her noon, And shall not better; her next change is night: But her fair larger guest, to whom sun and moon Are sparks, and short-lived, claims another right.

The noble soul by age grows lustier,

Her appetite and her digestion mend;
We must not starve, nor hope to pamper her
With woman's milk and pap unto the end.

Provide you manlier diet; you have seen
All libraries, which are schools, camps and

courts;

But ask your garners if you have not been

In harvests too indulgent to your sports.

* Var. last.

Would you redeem it? Then yourself transplant
Awille from beace. Perchance outlandish

ground

Bears no more wit than ours; bat yet more scant
Are those diversions there, which here abound.

To be a stranger hath that benefit,

We can beginnings, but not habits choke :
Go, whither? hence; you get, if you forget;
New faults, till they prescribe in us, are smoke.

Our soul, whose country's Heaven, and God her father,

Into this world, corruption's sink, is sent; Yet so much in her travel she doth gather, That she returns home wiser than she went.

It pays you well, if it teach you to spare,
And make you ashamed to make your hawk's
praise yours,

Which when herself she lessens in the air,
You then first say that high enough she towers.

However, keep the lively taste you hold

Of God; love him as now, but fear him more:
And in your afternoons think what you told
And promised him at morning-prayer before.

Let falsehoood like a discord anger you;
Else be not froward: but why do I touch

Things, of which none is in your practice new, And tables or fruit-trenchers teach as much?

But thus I make you keep your promise, Sir; Riding I had you, though you still stayed there, And in these thoughts, although you never stir, You came with me to Micham, and are here.

TO MR. ROWLAND WOODWARD.

LIKE one, who in her third widowhood doth profess

Herself a nun, tied to retiredness,

So affects my Muse now a chaste fallowness;

Since she to few, yet to too many, hath shown, How love-song weeds and satyric thorns are

grown,

Where seeds of better arts were early sown.

Though to use and love poetry, to me,
Betrothed to no one art, be no adultery;

Omissions of good, ill as ill deeds be.

We are but termors* of ourselves; yet may,
If we can stock ourselves and thrive, uplay
Much, much dear treasure for the great rent-day.

Manure thyself then, to thyself be approved,† And with vain outward things be no more moved, But to know that I love thee and would be loved.

TO SIR HENRY WOTTON.

HERE's no more news than virtue; I

may as well

Tell you Calais, or Saint Michael's tales, as

tell

That vice doth here habitually dwell.

Yet
as, to get stomachs, we walk up and down,
And toil to sweeten rest; so, may God frown,
If but to loathe both, I haunt court and town.

For here no one is from the extremity
Of vice by any other reason free,

But that the next to him still 's worse than he.

*Var. farmers. Ed. 1635.

† Var. improved. Ed. 1633.

Var. Mount, for news. Ed. 1633.