I find this age of ours marked with this fate, That honest men are still precipitate

Under base villains, which till the earth can vent This her last brood, and wholly hath them spent, Shall be so; then in resolution shall

Virtue again arise by vice's fall.

But that shall I not see, neither will I
Maintain this, as one doth a prophecy,

That our King James to Rome shall surely go,
And from his chair the Pope shall overthrow.
But O, this world is so given up to hell,
That as the old giants, which did once rebel
Against the gods, so this now living race
Dare sin, yet stand, and jeer Heaven in the face.
But soft, my Muse, and make a little stay,
Surely thou art not rightly in thy way.
To my good Jeffreys was not I about
To write, and see, I suddenly am out;
This is pure satire that thou speak’st, and I
Was first in hand to write an elegy.
To tell my country's shame I not delight,
But do bemoan it I am no Democrite.
O God, though virtue mightily do grieve,
For all this world yet will I not believe
But that she's fair and lovely, and that she
So to the period of the world shall be ;
Else had she been forsaken sure of all,
For that so many sundry mischiefs fall
Upon her daily, and so many take
Arms up against her, as it well might make
Her to forsake her nature, and behind
To leave no step for future time to find,
As she had never been: for he that now
Can do her most disgrace, him they allow

The time's chief champion, and he is the man
The prize and palm that absolutely won.
For where King's closets her free seat hath been,
She, near the lodge, not suffered is to inn,
For ignorance against her stands in state,
Like some great porter at a palace gate.
So dull and barbarous lately are we grown,
And there are some this slavery that have sown,
That for man's knowledge it enough doth make
If he can learn to read an Almanack,

By whom that trash of Amadis de Gaul
Is held an author most authentical;
And things we have like noblemen that be
In little time, which I have hope to see
Upon their foot-cloths, as the streets they ride,
To have their horn-books at their girdles tied;
But all their superfluity of spite

On virtue's handmaid Poesy doth light,
And to extirp her all their plots they lay,
But to her ruin they shall miss the way;

For 'tis alone the monuments of wit

Above the rage of tyrants that do sit,

And from their strength not one himself can save, But they shall triumph o'er his hated grave.

In my conceit, friend, thou didst never see

A righter madman than thou hast of me,

For now as elegiac I bewail

These poor base times, then suddenly I rail
And am satiric; not that I enforce

Myself to be so, but even as remorse
Or hate, in the proud fulness of their height
Master my fancy, just so do I write.

But, gentle friend, as soon shall I behold
That stone of which so many have us told,

I

(Yet never any to this day could make)

The great Elixir, or to undertake

The Rose-Cross knowledge, which is much like that,
A tarrying-iron for fools to labour at,

As ever after I may hope to see

(A plague upon this beastly world for me) Wit so respected as it was of yore.

And if hereafter any it restore,

It must be those that yet for many a year
Shall be unborn, that must inhabit here;
And such in virtue as shall be ashamed
Almost to hear their ignorant grandsires named,
With whom so many noble spirits then lived,
That were by them of all reward deprived.

My noble friend, I would I might have quit
This age of these, and that I might have writ,
Before all other, how much the brave pen
Had here been honoured of the Englishmen ;
Goodness and knowledge held by them in prize;
How hateful to them ignorance and vice;
But it falls out the contrary is true,
And so, my Jeffreys, for this time adieu,

TO MY MOST DEARLY LOVED FRIEND,

HENRY REYNOLDS, ESQUIRE.

Of Poets and Poesie.

My dearly lovéd friend, how oft have we
In winter evenings, meaning to be free,
To some well-chosen place used to retire,

And there, with moderate meat and wine and fire,
Have passed the hours contentedly with chat,
Now talked of this, and then discoursed of that,
Spoke our own verses 'twixt ourselves; if not,
Other men's lines, which we by chance had got,
Or some stage pieces famous long before,
Of which your happy memory had store;
And I remember you much pleased were
Of those who livéd long ago to hear,
As well as of those of these latter times

Who have enriched our language with their rhymes,
And in succession how still up they grew,
Which is the subject that I now pursue:
For from my cradle, you must know that I
Was still inclined to noble poesy,

And when that once Pueriles I had read,
And newly had my Cato construéd,

In my small self I greatly marvelled then,
Amongst all other, what strange kind of men
These poets were; and, pleaséd with the name,
To my mild tutor merrily I came,

(For I was then a proper goodly page,

Much like a pigmy, scarce ten years of age)

Clasping my slender arms about his thigh. "O, my dear master! cannot you," quoth I, Do it if you can,

Make me a poet?

And you shall see I'll quickly be a man."
Who me thus answered, smiling, "Boy," quoth he,
"If you'll not play the wag, but I may see
You ply your learning, I will shortly read
Some poets to you." Phoebus be my speed,
To 't hard went I, when shortly he began,
And first read to me honest Mantuan,
Then Virgil's Eclogues; being entered thus,
Methought I straight had mounted Pegasus,
And in his full career could make him stop
And bound upon Parnassus bi-cliff top.

I scorned your ballad then, though it were done
And had for finis William Elderton.

But soft, in sporting with this childish jest,
I from my subject have too long digrest,
Then to the matter that we took in hand,
Jove and Apollo for the Muses stand.

That noble Chaucer in those former times,
The first enriched our English with his rhymes,
And was the first of ours that ever brake
Into the Muses' treasure, and first spake
In weighty numbers, delving in the mine
Of perfect knowledge, which he could refine
And coin for current, and as much as then
The English language could express to men
He made it do, and by his wondrous skill
Gave us much light from his abundant quill.

And honest Gower, who in respect of him.
Had only sipped at Aganippas' brim,
And though in years this last was him before,
Yet fell he far short of the other's store.