Unfight, unfeen, espouse a fide
At random, like a prince's bride,
To damn their fouls, and swear and lye for,
And at a venture live and die for.
A godly man, that has ferv'd out his time 25 In holiness, may fet up any crime;
As scholars, when they've taken their degrees,
May set up any faculty they please.
Why should not piety be made,
As well as equity, a trade,
And men get money by devotion,
As well as making of a motion?
B' allow'd to pray upon conditions,
As well as fuitors in petitions?
And in a congregation pray,
No less than Chancery, for pay?
All writers, though of different fancies, Do make all people in romances,
That are diftrefs'd and difcontent,
Make fongs, and fing t' an inftrument,
And poets by their sufferings grow;
As if there were no more to do,
To make a poet excellent,
But only want and discontent.
In foreign universities,
When a king's born, or weds, or dies,
Straight other ftudies are laid by,
And all apply to poetry:
Some write in Hebrew, fome in Greek,
And fome, more wife, in Arabic,
T'avoid the critic, and th'
Of difficulter wit and sense;
And feem more learnedish than those
That at a greater charge compose.
The doctors lead, the ftudents follow;
Some call him Mars, and fome Apollo,
Some Jupiter, and give him th' odds,
What makes all subjects discontent
Against a prince's government,
And princes take as great offence
At fubjects' difobedience,
That neither th' other can abide,
But too much reason on each fide?
No court allows thofe partial interlopers Of Law and Equity, two fingle paupers, T'encounter hand to hand, and trounce Each other gratis in a fuit at once:
For one at one time, and upon free cost, is
Enough to play the knave and fool with justice;
And, when the one fide bringeth custom in,
And th' other lays out half the reckoning,
The devil himself will rather chufe to play
At paltry small game than fit out, they fay;
But when at all there's nothing to be got,
The old wife Law and Juftice, will not trot.
All fmatterers are more brisk and pert
Than those that understand an art;
As little sparkles fhine more bright
Than glowing coals, that give them light.
As he that makes his mark is understood
To write his name, and 'tis in law as good; 90
So he that cannot write one word of sense,
Believes he has as legal a pretence
To fcribble what he does not understand,
As ideots have a title to their land.
All the inventions that the world contains, 95 Were not by reason first found out, nor brains; But pass for theirs who had the luck to light
SURE there are poets which did never dream
Upon Parnaffus, nor did taste the stream
Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose
Those made not poets, but the poets those :
And, as courts make not kings, but kings the court,
So where the Mufes and their train refort,
Parnaffus ftands; if I can be to thee
A poet, thou Parnaffus art to me.
Nor wonder, if (advantag'd in my flight,
By taking wing from thy aufpicious height)
Through untrac't ways and aery paths I flye,
More boundleffe in my fancy than my eye:
My eye, which swift as thought contracts the space
That lies between, and firft falutes the place
Crown'd with that facred pile, fo vaft, fo high,
That, whether 'tis a part of earth, or sky,
Uncertain feems, and may be thought a proud
Afpiring mountain, or defcending cloud,
Paul's, the late theme of fuch a muse + whose flight
Has bravely reach't and foar'd above thy height:
*Born 1615; died 1688.
+ Mr. Waller.
Now shalt thou ftand, though sword, or time, or fire,
Or zeal more fierce than they, thy fall conspire,
Secure, whilst thee the best of poets fings,
Preferv'd from ruin by the beft of kings.
Under his proud furvey the city lies,
And like a mist beneath a hill doth rise;
Whose state and wealth, the business and the crowd,
Seems at this distance but a darker cloud:
And is to him who rightly things esteems
No other in effect than what it seems:
Where, with like hafte, though feveral ways, they run,
Some to undo, and fome to be undone ;
While luxury and wealth, like war and peace,
Are each the others ruine, and increase;
As rivers loft in feas, fome fecret vein
Thence reconveys, there to be loft again.
Oh happiness of sweet retir'd content!
To be at once fecure, and innocent.
Windfor the next (where Mars with Venus dwells,
Beauty with strength) above the valley fwells 40
Into my eye, and doth itself present
With fuch an eafie and unforc't ascent,
That no ftupendious precipice denies
Accefs, no horror turns away our eyes:
But fuch a rise as doth at once invite
A pleasure, and a reverence from the fight:
Thy mighty masters emblem, in whofe face
Sate meeknefs, heightned with majestick grace..
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