Works

How fairly Fortune all her gifts imparts;
We win your money, Ann, and you our hearts.

Carteret was welcomed to the shore
First with the brazen cannon's roar;
To meet him next the soldier comes,
With brazen trumps and brazen drums;
Approaching near the town he hears...

To purify their wine, some people bleed
A lamb into the barrel, and succeed;
No nostrum, planters say, is half so good
To make fine sugar as a negro's blood.
Now lambs and negroes both are harmless things,...

I*.
[* In the folio of 1611, these four short pieces are appended to the Sonnets. The second and third are translated from Marot's Epigrams, Liv. III. No. 5, De Diane, and No. 24, De Cupido et de sa Dame. C.]
...

Thy nags, the leanest things alive,
So very hard thou lovest to drive,
I heard thy anxious coachman say
It costs thee more in whips than hay.

Why, when I praise you, Ma'am, why tell me flat,
All flattery you despise?
Self-love, the greatest flatterer, tells you that,
And I am sure he lies.

* * * * *
...

By faith alone, you say, not works,
Man must obtain salvation;
If you are saved, the doctrine needs
No better confirmation.

* * * * *

My Lady Sceptical, for want of proof,...

To John I owed great obligation,
But John unhappily thought fit
To publish it to all the nation:
Sure John and I are more than quit.

Mark! how the Rose, when Phoebus burns,
Averts her blushing face;
Mark! how the Sun-flower fondly turns
To meet his warm embrace:
Like the coy rose, when woo'd by others, be,...

Bury, for practice bold and skill
Deserves to be of note;
He cures by means that well might kill,
He cuts his patient's throat!

* * * * *
...

Well with the purpose does the place agree;
For e'en the very house is crack'd, you see.

Yes, every poet is a fool;
By demonstration, Ned can show it:
Happy could Ned's inverted rule
Prove every fool to be a poet.

Those bless'd structures, plot and rhyme
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?
I hear the noise of my own voice:
The painter's vision is not a lens,...

(WRITTEN IN MDCCXXXVIII.)


DIALOGUE I.

Fr. Not twice a twelvemonth you appear in print,
And when it comes, the court see nothing in 't.
You grow correct, that once with rapture writ,...

The day is done; and, lo! the shades
Melt 'neath Diana's mellow grace.
Hark, how those deep, designing maids
Feign terror in this sylvan place!
Come, friends, it's time that we should go;...

With quiet heart, I climbed the hill,
from which one can see, the city, complete,
hospitals, brothels, purgatory, hell,

prison, where every sin flowers, at our feet....

Go, words of mine! and if you live
Only for one brief, little day;
If peace, or joy, or calm you give
To any soul; or if you bring
A something higher to some heart,
I may come back again and sing...

Than farthest stars more distant,
A mile more,
A mile more,
A voice cries on insistent:
"You may smile more if you will;

"You may sing too and spring too;
But numb at last...

Perplexing case! your pardon, Friends, I pray,
My head so turns, I know not what to say;
However, since I've dared to come before ye,
I'll stop the whirligig,
("Clapping his hand to his forehead_,)...

Patience, little Heart.
One day a heavy, June-hot woman
Will enter and shut the door to stay.

And when your stifling heart would summon...