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Blefs'd, who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years, slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day.

Sound fleep by night; study and ease
Together mix'd; sweet recreation;
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.

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ODE.

THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL.

VITAL spark of

I.

heav'nly flame!

Quit, oh quit this mortal frame!
Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying;
Oh the pain, the blifs of dying!
Cease, fond Nature! cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life.

II.

Hark! they whisper; angels say,
Sifter Spirit, come away.
What is this absorbs me quite!

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Steals my fenfes, shuts my fight,

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Drowns my fpirits, draws my breath?

Tell me, my Soul! can this be Death?

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With founds feraphic ring:

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Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!

O Grave! where is thy victory?

Death! where is thy sting?

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OF

DR. JOHN DONNE,

DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S, VERSIFED.

Quid vetat et nofmet Lucili fcripta legentes
Quærere, num illius, nain rerum dura negarit
Verficulos natura magis factos, et euntes
Mailius?

SATIRE II.

VES, thank my stars!

HOR.

as early as I knew

This Town, I had the sense to hate it too;

Yet here, as e'en in hell, there must be still
One giant vice so excellently ill,

That all befide one pities, not abhors,
As who knows Sappho smiles at other whores.

I grant that poetry's a crying fin;

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It brought (no doubt) th' Excife and Army in : Catch'd like the plague, or love, the Lord knows how,

But that the cure is starving all allow.

Yet like the Papist's is the poet's state,

Poor and difarm'd, and hardly worth your hate!

Here lean a bard, whose wit could never give

Himself a dinner, makes an actor live:
The thief condemn'd, in law already dead,
So prompts and faves a rogue who cannot read.

SATIRE II.

SIR, tho' (I thank God for it) I do hate

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Perfectly all this Town, yet there's one state In all ill things so excellently best, That hate towards them breeds pity towards the rest. Tho' poetry, indeed, be such a fin As I think that brings dearth and Spaniards in; Tho' like the pestilence and old-fashion'd love, Ridlingly it catch men, and doth remove Never till it be starv'd out; yet their state Is poor, difarm'd, like Papists, not worth hate: One, (like a wretch, which at bar judg'd as dead, Yet prompts him which stands next, and cannot read,

=

Thus as the pipes of fome carv'd organ move,
The gilded puppets dance and mount above:
Heav n by th' breath th' infpiring bellows blow;
Th' infpiring bellows lie and pant below.

One fings the fair; but fongs no longer move;
No rat is rhym'd to death, nor maid to love:
In Love's, in Nature's, spite the fiege they hold,
And fcorn the flesh, the devil, and all but gold.

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These write to lords, fome mean reward to get, 25
As needy beggars fing at doors for meat:
Those write because all write, and fo have ftill
Excuse for writing, and for writing ill.

Wretched, indeeed! but far more wretched yet
Is he who makes his meal on others wit:
'Tis chang'd, no doubt, from what it was before;
His rank digeftion makes it wit no more:
Sense pass'd thro' him no longer is the fame;
For food digefted takes another name.

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I pass o'er all those confeffors and martyrs
Who live like S-tt-n, or who die like Chatres,

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And faves his life) gives idiot actors means,
(Starving himself) to live by's labour'd scenes.
As in fome organs puppets dance above,
And bellows pant below which them do move,
One would move love by rhymes; but witchcraft's

charms

Bring not now their old fears nor their old harms.
Rams and flings now are filly battery;
Pistolets are the best artillery:

And they who write to lords rewards to get,
Are they not like fingers at doors for meat?
And they who write, because all write, have still
Th' excufe for writing, and for writing ill.
But he is worst who (beggarly) doth chaw
Others' wits' fruits, and in his ravenous maw
Rankly digested, doth those things out-spue
As his own things: and they're his own, 'tis true;
For if one eat my meat, tho' it be known

The meat was mine, th' excrement is his own.

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Outcant old Efdras, or outdrink his heir,
Out-ufure Jews, or Irishmen out-fwear;
Wicked as pages, who in early years
Acts fins which Prifca's confeffor scarce hears.
E'en those I pardon, for whose finful fake
Schoolmen new tenements in hell must make;
Of whose strange crimes no canonist can tell
In what commandment's large contents they dwell.

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One, one man only breeds my just offence, Whom crimes gave wealth, and wealth gave impu

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Time, that at lait matures a clap to pox,
Whose gentle progress makes a calf an ox,

[dence:

And brings all natural events to pass,
Hath made him an Attorney of an Afs.
No young divine, new-benefic'd, can be
More pert, more proud, more positive, than he.
What further could I wish the fop to do
But turn a wit, and scribble verses too?
Pierce the foft lab'rinth of a lady's ear

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With rhymes of this per cent. and that per year?

But these do me no harm, nor they which use
Το...

out-fure Jews,

T' out-drink the fea, t' out-swear the Litany,
Who with fins all kinds as familiar be
As confeffors, and for whose finful fake,

Schoolmen new tenements in hell must make;
Whose strange fins canonifts could hardly tell
In which commandment's large receipt they dweli.
But these punish themselves. The insolence
Of Cofcus only breeds my just offence,
Whom time (which rots all, and makes botches pox,
And plodding on must make a calf an ox)
Hath made a lawyer, which (alas!) of late,
But fcarce a poet, jollier of this state
Than are new-benefic'd minifters: he threws,
Like nets or lime-twigs, wherefo'er he goes,
His title of Barrister on every wench,

And wooes in language of the Pleas and Bench * *

Words, words which would tear

The tender labyrinth of a maid's foft ear,

Or courts a wife, spread out his wily parts,
Like nets, or lime twigs, for rich widows' hearts;
Call himfelf barrifter to ev'ry wench,

t

And wooe in language of the Pleas and Bench ?
Language which Boreas might to Autter hold,
More rough than forty Germans when they fcold.
Curs'd be the wretch, so venal and so vain,
Paltry and proud as drabs in Drury-Lane.
Tis fuch a bounty as was never known,
If Peter deigns to help you to your own:
What thanks, what praife, if Peter but supplies !
And what a folemn face if he denies!

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Grave, as when pris'ners shake the head, and swear
Twas only furetyship that brought 'em there.
His office keeps your parchment fates entire,
He starves with cold to fave them from the fire;
For you he walks the streets thro' rain or duft,
For not in chariots Peter puts his truft :
For you he sweats and labours at the laws,
Takes God to witness he affects your cause,
And lies to ev'ry lord in ev'ry thing,
Like a king's favourite or like a king.
These are the talents that adorn them all,
From wicked Waters e'en to godly * *

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75

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More, more than ten Sclavonians icoldings, more
Than when winds in our ruin'd abbys roar.
When fick with poetry, and poffefs'd with Muse
Thou waft, and mad, I hop'd; but men which chuse
Law practice for meer gain, bold fouls repute
Worse than imbrothell'd strumpets prostitute.
Now like an owl-like watchman he must walk,
His hand still at a bill; now he must talk
Idly, like pris'ners, which whole months will fwear
That only furetyship hath brought them there,
And to ev'ry suitor lie in ev'ry thing,
Like a king's favourite, or like a king:
Like a wedge in a block wring to the bar,
Bearing like affes, and more shameless far
Than carted whores, lye to the grave judge; for
Baitardy abounds not in kings' titles, nor

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