Friend, if you thinke my Papers may supplie
You, with some strange omitted Noueltie,
Which others Letters yet haue left vntould,
You take me off, before I can take hould
Of you at all; I put not thus to Sea,
For two monthes Voyage to _Virginia_,
With newes which now, a little something here,
But will be nothing ere it can come there.
I feare, as I doe Stabbing; this word, State,
I dare not speake of the _Palatinate_, 10
Although some men make it their hourely theame,
And talke what's done in _Austria_, and in _Beame_,
I may not so; what _Spinola_ intends,
Nor with his _Dutch_, which way Prince _Maurice_ bends;
To other men, although these things be free,
Yet (GEORGE) they must be misteries to mee.
I scarce dare praise a vertuous friend that's dead,
Lest for my lines he should be censured;
It was my hap before all other men
To suffer shipwrack by my forward pen: 20
When King IAMES entred; at which ioyfull time
I taught his title to this Ile in rime:
And to my part did all the Muses win,
With high-pitch _Pæans_ to applaud him in:
When cowardise had tyed vp euery tongue,
And all stood silent, yet for him I sung;
And when before by danger I was dar'd,
I kick'd her from me, nor a iot I spar'd.
Yet had not my cleere spirit in Fortunes scorne,
Me aboue earth and her afflictions borne; 30
He next my God on whom I built my trust,
Had left me troden lower then the dust:
But let this passe; in the extreamest ill,
_Apollo's_ brood must be couragious still,
Let Pies, and Dawes, sit dumb before their death,
Onely the Swan sings at the parting breath.
And (worthy GEORGE) by industry and vse,
Let's see what lines _Virginia_ will produce;
Goe on with OVID, as you haue begunne,
With the first fiue Bookes; let your numbers run 40
Glib as the former, so shall it liue long,
And doe much honour to the _English_ tongue:
Intice the Muses thither to repaire,
Intreat them gently, trayne them to that ayre,
For they from hence may thither hap to fly,
T'wards the sad time which but to fast doth hie,
For Poesie is follow'd with such spight,
By groueling drones that neuer raught her height,
That she must hence, she may no longer staye:
The driery fates prefixed haue the day, 50
Of her departure, which is now come on,
And they command her straight wayes to be gon;
That bestiall heard so hotly her pursue,
And to her succour, there be very few,
Nay none at all, her wrongs that will redresse,
But she must wander in the wildernesse,
Like to the woman, which that holy IOHN
Beheld in _Pathmos_ in his vision.
As th' _English_ now, so did the stiff-neckt _Iewes_,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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