Dipp'd in the Lethean lake,
O'er his wakeful temples shake,

Lest he should sleep, and never wake.

3 Nature, (alas!) why art thou so

Obliged to thy greatest foe?
Sleep that is thy best repast,
Yet of death it bears a taste,
And both are the same thing at last.

ON MR JOHN FLETCHER'S WORKS.

So shall we joy, when all whom beasts and worms
Have turn'd to their own substances and forms:
Whom earth to earth, or fire hath changed to fire,
We shall behold more than at first entire;

As now we do to see all thine thy own
In this my Muse's resurrection,

Whose scatter'd parts from thy own race more wounds
Hath suffer'd than Actæon from his hounds;

Which first their brains, and then their belly fed,
And from their excrements new poets bred.

But now thy Muse enragèd, from her urn,
Like ghosts of murder'd bodies, does return
T'accuse the murderers, to right the stage,
And undeceive the long-abused age,

Which casts thy praise on them, to whom thy wit
Gives not more gold than they give dross to it;
Who not content, like felons, to purloin,
Add treason to it, and debase the coin.
But whither am I stray'd? I need not raise
Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise;

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Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built,
Nor needs thy juster title the foul guilt
Of eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,
Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred slain.
Then was wit's empire at the fatal height,
When labouring and sinking with its weight,
From thence a thousand lesser poets sprung,
Like petty princes from the fall of Rome;
When Jonson, Shakespeare, and thyself, did sit,
And sway'd in the triumvirate of wit.

Yet what from Jonson's oil and sweat did flow,
Or what more easy Nature did bestow

On Shakespeare's gentler Muse, in thee full grown
Their graces both appear, yet so that none
Can say, Here nature ends, and art begins;

But mix'd like th' elements, and born like twins,
So interwove, so like, so much the same,
None this mere nature, that mere art can name:
'Twas this the ancients meant; nature and skill
Are the two tops of their Parnassus' hill.

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TO SIR RICHARD FANSHAW,

UPON HIS TRANSLATION OF 'PASTOR FIDO.'

SUCH is our pride, our folly, or our fate,
That few but such as cannot write, translate.
But what in them is want of art or voice,

In thee is either modesty or choice.

While this great piece, restored by thee, doth stand

Free from the blemish of an artless hand,
Secure of fame, thou justly dost esteem
Less honour to create than to redeem.

Nor ought a genius less than his that writ
Attempt translation; for transplanted wit
All the defects of air and soil doth share,
And colder brains like colder climates are:
In vain they toil, since nothing can beget
A vital spirit but a vital heat.

That servile path thou nobly dost decline
Of tracing word by word, and line by line.
Those are the labour'd births of slavish brains,
Not the effect of poetry, but pains;

Cheap vulgar arts, whose narrowness affords
No flight for thoughts, but poorly sticks at words.
A new and nobler way thou dost pursue

To make translations and translators too.
They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame,
True to his sense, but truer to his fame:
Fording his current, where thou find'st it low,
Let'st in thine own to make it rise and flow;
Wisely restoring whatsoever grace

It lost by change of times, or tongues, or place.
Nor fetter'd to his numbers and his times,
Betray'st his music to unhappy rhymes.
Nor are the nerves of his compacted strength
Stretch'd and dissolved into unsinew'd length:
Yet, after all, (lest we should think it thine)
Thy spirit to his circle dost confine.

New names, new dressings, and the modern cast,
Some scenes, some persons alter'd, and outfaced
The world, it were thy work; for we have known
Some thank'd and praised for what was less their own.

That master's hand which to the life can trace

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The airs, the lines, and features of the face,
May with a free and bolder stroke express

A varied posture, or a flatt'ring dress;

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He could have made those like, who made the rest,
But that he knew his own design was best.

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TO THE HON. EDWARD HOWARD,
ON THE BRITISH PRINCES.'

WHAT mighty gale hath raised a flight so strong,
So high above all vulgar eyes, so long?

One single rapture scarce itself confines
Within the limits of four thousand lines:
And yet I hope to see this noble heat
Continue till it makes the piece complete,
That to the latter age it may descend,
And to the end of time its beams extend.
When poesy joins profit with delight,
Her images should be most exquisite;
Since man to that perfection cannot rise,
Of always virtuous, fortunate, and wise;
Therefore the patterns man should imitate
Above the life our masters should create.
Herein if we consult with Greece and Rome,
Greece (as in war) by Rome was overcome;
Though mighty raptures we in Homer find,
Yet, like himself, his characters were blind:
Virgil's sublimed eyes not only gazed,

But his sublimèd thoughts to heaven were raised.
Who reads the honours which he paid the gods.
Would think he had beheld their bless'd abodes;
And that his hero might accomplish'd be,
From divine blood he draws his pedigree.
From that great judge your judgment takes its law,
And by the best original does draw

Bonduca's honour, with those heroes Time
Had in oblivion wrapp'd, his saucy crime:
To them and to your nation you are just,
In raising up their glories from the dust;
And to Old England you that right have done,
To show no story nobler than her own.

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AN OCCASIONAL IMITATION OF A MODERN AUTHOR UPON THE GAME OF CHESS.

A TABLET stood of that abstersive tree,

Where Ethiop's swarthy bird did build her nest;
Inlaid it was with Libyan ivory,

Drawn from the jaws of Afric's prudent beast.
Two kings like Saul, much taller than the rest,
Their equal armies draw into the field;
Till one take th' other pris'ner they contest;
Courage and fortune must to conduct yield.
This game the Persian Magi did invent,

The force of Eastern wisdom to express;
From thence to busy Europeans sent,

And styled by modern Lombards pensive Chess. Yet some that fled from Troy to Rome report, Penthesilea Priam did oblige;

Her Amazons his Trojans taught this sport,

To pass the tedious hours of ten years' siege. There she presents herself, whilst kings and peers Look gravely on whilst fierce Bellona fights; Yet maiden modesty her motions steers,

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Nor rudely skips o'er bishops' heads like knights. 20