Lady, your art or wit could ne'er devise To shame me more than in this night's surprise. Why, I am quite unready, and my eye Now winking like my candle, doth deny To guide my hand, if it had aught to write; Nor can I make my drowsy sense indite Which by your verses' music (as a spell Sent from the Sybellean Oracle) Is charm'd and bound in wonder and delight, Faster than all the leaden chains of night. 10 What pity is it then you should so ill Employ the bounty of your flowing quill, As to expend on him your bedward thought, Who can acknowledge that large love in nought But this lean wish; that fate soon send you those Who may requite your rhymes with midnight prose? Meantime, may all delights and pleasing themes Like masquers revel in your maiden dreams, Whilst dull to write, and to do more unmeet, I, as the night invites me, fall asleep. 20 [_To a Lady._] Malone MS. 22, at fol. 34, has a first draft of this poem, in which ll. 1-10 appear thus: Doubtless the Thespian Spring doth overflow His learned bank: else how should ladies grow Such poets as to court th' unknowing time In verse, and entertain their friends in rhyme? Or you some Sybil are, sent to untie The knotty riddles of all poetry, Whilst your smooth numbers such perfections tell As prove yourself a modern oracle. ll. 11-20 follow as in the text.] [Line: 8 'Sybellean', though an incorrect, is a rather pretty form and good to keep. It will be remembered that as a girl's name 'Syb_e_lla' or 'Sib_e_lla' is not unknown, beside 'Sybilla' and 'Sybil'.] [Line: 20 This outrageous assonance may have been meant in character--the poet being too much 'in the arms of Porpus' to notice it.] [There follows in the original a piece called _The Pink_, but in the Errata acknowledgement is made that King did not write it. It is therefore omitted here.] _To his Friends of Christ Church upon the mislike of the Marriage of the Arts acted at Woodstock._ But is it true, the Court mislik'd the play, That Christ Church and the Arts have lost the day; That _Ignoramus_ should so far excel, Their hobby-horse from ours hath born the bell? Troth! you are justly serv'd, that would present Ought unto them, but shallow merriment; Or to your marriage-table did admit Guests that are stronger far in smell than wit. Had some quaint bawdry larded ev'ry scene, Some fawning sycophant, or courted quean; 10 Had there appear'd some sharp cross-garter'd man Whom their loud laugh might nickname Puritan, Cas'd up in factious breeches and small ruff, That hates the surplice, and defies the cuff: Then sure they would have given applause to crown That which their ignorance did now cry down.