TO HIS SON, VINCENT CORBET.
BY RICHARD CORBET, BISHOP OF NORWICH.*
WHAT I fhall leave thee none can tell,
But all shall say I wish thee well:
I wish thee (Vin) before all wealth,
Both bodily and ghoftly health:
Nor too much wealth, nor wit, come to thee,
So much of either may undo thee.
I wish thee learning, not for fhow,
Enough for to inftruct, and know;
Not fuch as gentlemen require,
To prate at table or at fire.
I wish thee all thy mothers graces,
Thy fathers fortunes, and his places.
I wish thee friends, and one at court,
Not to build on, but fupport;
To keep thee, not in doing many
Oppreffions, but from fuffering any.
I wish thee peace in all thy ways,
Nor lazy, nor contentious days;
And, when thy foul and body part,
As innocent as now thou art,
gaze no more on her bewitching face, Since ruine harbours there in every place: For my enchanted foul alike fhe drowns
With calms and tempefts of her smiles and frowns.
I'l love no more those cruel eyes of hers,
Which, pleas'd or anger'd, ftill are murderers.
For if the dart (like lightning) thro' the ayr
Her beams of wrath, fhe kils me with despair;
If the behold me with a pleasing eye,
I furfet with exceffe of joy, and dye.
ETERNITY OF LOVE PROTESTED.
How ill doth he deserve a lover's name,
Whose pale weak flame
Cannot retain
His heat in spight of absence or disdain ;
But doth at once, like paper fet on fire,
Burn and expire!
True love can never change his feat,
Nor did he ever love that could retreat.
That noble flame, which my breft keeps alive,
Nor shall my love dye when my bodye's dead; That shall wait on me to the lower shade,
My very ashes in their urn
Shall, like a hallowed lamp, for ever burn.
BY HENRY KING, BISHOP OF CHICHESTER.
Splendidis longùm valedico nugis.
FAREWE
AREWELL, fond Love, under whofe childish whip
I have ferv'd out a weary prentiship;
Thou that haft made me thy fcorn'd property,
To dote on rocks, but yielding loves to fly :
Go, bane of my dear quiet and content,
Now practise on fome other patient.
Farewell, falfe Hope, that fann'd my warm defire,
Till it had rais'd a wild unruly fire,
Which nor fighs cool, nor tears extinguish can,
Although my eyes out-flow'd the ocean :
Forth of my thoughts for ever, thing of air,
Begun in errour, finifh'd in despair.
Farewell, vain World, upon whofe restless stage
Twixt Love and Hope, I have foold out my age;
Henceforth, ere fue to thee for my redrefs,
Ile wooe the wind, or court the wilderness;
And buried from the dayes discovery,
Study a flow yet certain way to dy.
My woful monument shall be a cell,
The murmur of the purling brook my
My lafting epitaph the rock fhall grone:
Thus when fad lovers ask the weeping stone,
What wretched thing does in that center lie?
The hollow eccho will reply, 'twas I.
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