LITTLE you are; for woman's sake be proud; For my sake next, though little, be not loud.
HE who has suffer'd ship-wrack, feares to saile Upon the seas, though with a gentle gale.
A LONG-LIFE's day I've taken paines
For very little, or no gaines;
The ev'ning's come; here now Ile stop,
And work no more, but shut my shop.
Be bold my booke, nor be abasht, or feare
The cutting thumb-naile, or the brow severe ;
But by the Muses sweare, all here is good,
If but well read, or ill read, understood.
HIS PRAYER TO BEN JOHNSON.
WHEN I a verse shall make,
Know I have praid thee,
For old religion's sake,
Saint Ben, to aid me.
GIVE want her welcome, if she comes; we find Riches to be but burthens to the mind.
WHO with a little cannot be content,
Endures an everlasting punishment.
THE COVETOUS STILL CAPTIVES.
LET's live with that smal pittance that we have ; Who covets more is evermore a slave.
WHEN Lawes full power have to sway, we see Little or no part there of tyrannie.
ILE get me hence,
Because no fence,
Or fort that I can make here,
But love by charmes,
Or else by armes,
Will storme, or starving take here.
COCK calls his wife his hen; when Cock goes too't, Cock treads his hen, but treads her under-foot.
Charles no more to looke,
Then but to read this in my booke;
How Herrick beggs, if that he can-
Not like the Muse, to love the man,
Who by the shepheards, sung long since,
The starre-led birth of Charles the Prince.
THE BAD SEASON MAKES THE POET SAD.
DULL to my selfe, and almost dead to these,
My many fresh and fragrant mistresses;
Lost to all musick now, since every thing
Puts on the semblance here of sorrowing;
Sick is the land to th' heart; and doth endure
More dangerous faintings by her desp❜rate cure.
But if that golden age wo'd come again,
And Charles here rule, as he before did raign;
If smooth and unperplext the seasons were,
As when the sweet Maria lived here;
I sho'd delight to have my curles halfe drown'd
In Syrian dewes, and head with roses crown'd:
And once more yet, ere I am laid out dead,
Knock at a starre with my exalted head.
Thy sooty Godhead I desire
Still to be ready with thy fire;
That sho'd my book despised be,
Acceptance it might find of thee.
LIKE PATTERN, LIKE PEOPLE.
THIS is the height of justice, that to doe
Thy selfe, which thou put'st other men unto.
As great men lead, the meaner follow on,
Or to the good or evill action.
No wrath of men, or rage of seas
Can shake a just man's purposes;
No threats of tyrants, or the grim
Visage of them can alter him ;
But what he doth at first entend,
That he holds firmly to the end.
TO THE MAIDS TO WALKE ABROAD.
COME, sit we under yonder tree,
Where merry as the maids we'l be ;
And as on primroses we sit,
We'l venter, if we can, at wit ;
If not, at draw-gloves we will play,
So spend some minutes of the day;
Or else spin out the thread of sands,
Playing at questions and commands;
Or tell what strange tricks love can do,
By quickly making one of two.
Thus we will sit and talke, but tell
No cruell truths of Philomell,
Or Phillis, whom hard fate forc't on,
To kill her selfe for Demophon;
But fables we'l relate; how Jove
Put on all shapes to get a love;
As now a satyr, then a swan,
A bull but then, and now a man.
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