Who would express, a thousand tongues must use,
Whose fate 's no less peculiar than thy art;
For as thou could'st all characters impart,
So none could render thine, which still escapes,
Like Proteus, in variety of shapes;
Who was nor this nor that; but all we find,
And all we can imagine, in mankind.
To Sir William D'Avenant, upon his two
first books of Gondibert, finished
before his voyage to America. [1650.
THUS the wise nightingale that leaves her home,
Her native wood, when storms and winter come,
Pursuing constantly the cheerful Spring
To foreign groves does her old music bring:
The drooping Hebrews' banish'd harps unstrung
At Babylon, upon the willows hung;
Yours sounds aloud, and tells us you excel
No less in courage than in singing well;
Whilst unconcern'd you let your country know,
They have impov'rished themselves, not you;
Who with the Muses' help can mock those fates
Which threaten kingdoms, and disorder states.
So Ovid when from Cæsar's rage he fled,
The Roman Muse to Pontus with him led;
Where he so sung, that we through pity's glass,
See Nero milder than Augustus was.
Hereafter such in thy behalf shall be
The indulgent censure of posterity.
To banish those who with such art can sing,
Is a rude crime which its own curse does bring;
Ages to come shall ne'er know how they fought,
their present youth he taught.
Now to thy matchless book,
Wherein those few that can with judgment look,
May find old love in pure fresh language told,
Like new-stampt coin made out of angel-gold.
Such truth in love as the antique world did know,
In such a style as Courts may boast of now.
Which no bold tales of gods or monsters swell,
But human passions, such as with us dwell.
Man is thy theme, his virtue or his rage
Drawn to the life in each elaborate page.
Mars nor Bellona are not named here;
But such a Gondibert as both might fear.
Venus had here, and Hebe, been out-shined
By thy bright Birtha and thy Rhodalind.
Such is thy happy skill, and such the odds
Betwixt thy worthies and the Grecian Gods
Whose deities in vain had here come down,
Where mortal beauty wears the sovereign crown;
Such as of flesh composed, by flesh and blood
(Though not resisted) may be understood.
To my friend Will D'Avenant on his other
Poems.
THOU hast redeem'd us, Will, and future times
Shall not account unto the age's crimes
Dearth of pure wit. Since the great lord of it,
Donne, parted hence, no man has ever writ
So near him in his own way; I would commend
Particulars, but then how should I end
Without a volume? Every line of thine
Would ask, to praise it right, twenty of mine.
Upon the Report of the Printing of the
Dramatical Poems of Master John
THOUGH when all Fletcher writ, and the entire
Man was indulged unto that sacred fire,
His thoughts and his thoughts' dress, appear'd
That 'twas his happy fault to do too much :
Who therefore wisely did submit each birth
To knowing Beaumont, ere it did come forth,
Working again until he said 'twas fit,
And made him the sobriety of his wit.
Though thus he call'd his judge into his fame,
And for that aid allow'd him half the name,
'Tis known that sometimes he did stand alone,
That both the sponge and pencil were his own;
That himself judged himself, could singly do,
And was at last Beaumont and Fletcher too:
Else we had lost his Shepherdess, a piece
Even and smooth, spun from a finer fleece;
Where softness reigns, where passions passions
greet,
Gentle and high, as floods of balsam meet.
Where, dress'd in white expressions, sit bright loves,
Drawn, like their fairest queen, by milky doves;
A piece which Jonson in a rapture bid
Come up a glorified work; and so it did.
Else had his muse set with his friend, the stage
Had miss'd those poems, which yet take the age;
The world had lost those rich exemplars, where
Art, language, wit, sit ruling in one sphere;
Where the fresh matters soar above old themes,
As prophets' raptures do above our dreams;
Where, in a worthy scorn, he dares refuse
All other gods, and makes the thing his muse;
Where he calls passions up, and lays them so,
As spirits, awed by him to come and go;
Where the free author did whate'er he would,
And nothing will'd but what a poet should.
No vast uncivil bulk swells any scene, The strength's ingenious, and the vigour clean; None can prevent the fancy, and see through At the first opening; all stand wondering how The thing will be, until it is; which thence, With fresh delight still cheats, still takes the
The whole design, the shadows, the lights, such
That none can say he shews or hides too much :
Business grows up, ripen'd by just increase,
And by as just degrees again doth cease;
The heats of minutes and affairs are watch'd,
And the nice points of time are met and snatch'd;
Naught later than it should, naught comes before,
Chemists and calculators do err more:
Sex, age, degree, affections, country, place,
The inward substance and the outward face,
All kept precisely, all exactly fit;
What he would write, he was before he writ.
'Twixt Jonson's grave, and Shakespeare's lighter
sound,
His muse so steer'd, that something still was found,
Nor this, nor that, nor both, but so his own,
That 'twas his mark, and he by it was known;
Hence did he take true judgments, hence did strike
All palates some way, though not all alike:
The god of numbers might his numbers crown,
And, listening to them, wish they were his own.
Thus, welcome forth, what ease, or wine, or wit
Durst yet produce: that is, what Fletcher writ!
From Another Set of Verses. [1647
JONSON hath writ things lasting and divine,
Yet his love-scenes, Fletcher, compared to thine,
Are cold and frosty, and express love so,
As heat with ice, or warm fires mix'd with snow;
Thou, as if struck with the same generous darts,
Which burn, and reign, in noble lovers' hearts,
Hast clothed affection in such native tires,
And so described them in their own true fires,
Such moving sighs, such undissembled tears,
Such charms of language, such hopes mix'd with
fears,
Such grants after denial, such pursuits
After despair, such amorous recruits,
That some, who sat spectators, have confest
Themselves transform'd to what they saw exprest;
And felt such shafts steal through their captived
As made them rise parts, and go lovers thence.
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