To be vexed at a trifle or two that I writ, Your judgment at once, and my passion you wrong: 10 You take that for fact, which will scarce be found wit: Odds life! must one swear to the truth of a song? What I speak, my fair Chloe, and what I write, shows I court others in verse; but I love thee in prose: The god of us verse-men (you know, child) the sun, If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run; So when I am wearied with wandering all day, Then finish, dear Chloe, this pastoral war; And let us, like Horace and Lydia, agree: For thou art a girl as much brighter than her, As he was a poet sublimer than me. 15 20 25 FOR MY OWN MONUMENT As doctors give physic by way of prevention, Mat, alive and in health, of his tombstone took care; For delays are unsafe, and his pious intention May haply be never fulfilled by his heir. 5 Then take Mat's word for it, the sculptor is paid, That the figure is fine, pray believe your own eye; Yet credit but lightly what more may be said, ΙΟ For we flatter ourselves, and teach marble to lie. Yet, counting as far as to fifty his years, His virtues and vices were as other men's are; High hopes he conceived, and he smothered great fears, In life party-coloured, half pleasure, half care. Nor to business a drudge, nor to faction a slave, 15 In public employments industrious and grave, 20 Now in equipage stately, now humbly on foot, Both fortunes he tried, but to neither would trust; And whirled in the round, as the wheel turned about, He found riches had wings, and knew man was but dust. This verse little-polished, though mighty sincere, And no mortal yet knows too if this may be true. Fierce robbers there are that infest the highway, So Mat may be killed, and his bones never found; False witness at court, and fierce tempests at sea, So Mat may yet chance to be hanged, or be drowned. If his bones lie in earth, roll in sea, fly in air, 25 To fate we must yield, and the thing is the same, 30 And if passing thou giv'st him a smile, or a tear, He cares not yet prithee be kind to his fame. TO A CHILD OF QUALITY FIVE YEARS OLD, MDCCIV, THE AUTHOR THEN BEING FORTY LORDS, knights, and squires, the numerous band, My pen among the rest I took, Lest those bright eyes that cannot read Should dart their kindling fires, and look The power they have to be obeyed. 5 ΙΟ 15 20 Not quality, nor reputation, Forbid me yet my flame to tell, Dear five years old befriends my passion, For, while she makes her silkworms beds She may receive and own my flame, For, though the strictest prudes should know it, She'll pass for a most virtuous dame, And I for an unhappy poet. Then too, alas! when she shall tear The lines some younger rival sends; 'Tis so ordained, (would Fate but mend it!) That I shall be past making love, When she begins to comprehend it. JOSEPH ADDISON FROM AN ACCOUNT OF THE GREATEST OLD Spenser, next, warmed with poetic rage, Through pathless fields, and unfrequented floods, Great Cowley then (a mighty genius) wrote, |