I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,
And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook
The dedicated words which writers use
Of their fair fubje&t, bleffing every book.
Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,
Finding thy worth a limit paft my praise;
And therefore art enforced to feek anew
Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.
And do so, love; yet when they have devised
What ftrained touches rhetoric can lend,
Thou truly fair wert truly fympathifed
In true plain words by thy true-telling friend;
And their grofs painting might be better used
Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abused.
I never faw that you did painting need,
And therefore to your fair no painting set;
I found, or thought I found, you did exceed
The barren tender of a poet's debt:
And therefore have I slept in your report,
That you yourself, being extant, well might show
How far a modern quill doth come too short,
Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
This filence for my fin you did impute,
Which shall be moft my glory, being dumb;
For I impair not beauty being mute,
When others would give life and bring a tomb.
There lives more life in one of your fair eyes
Than both your poets can in praise devise.
Who is it that fays moft? which can say more
Than this rich praise, that you alone are you?
In whose confine immured is the store
Which should example where your equal grew.
Lean penury within that pen doth dwell
That to his fubje& lends not some small glory;
But he that writes of you, if he can tell
That you are you, so dignifies his story,
Let him but copy what in you is writ,
Not making worse what nature made fo clear,
And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,
Making his style admired every where.
You to your beauteous bleffings add a curse,
Being fond on praise, which makes your praises
My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still,
While comments of your praise, richly compiled,
Referve their character with golden quill,
And precious phrafe by all the Mufes filed.
I think good thoughts, whilst other write good words,
And, like unlettered clerk, ftill cry 'Amen'
To every hymn that able spirit affords,
In polish'd form of well-refined pen.
Hearing you praised, I fay 'Tis fo, 'tis true,'
And to the most of praise add something more;
But that is in my thought, whose love to you,
Though words come hindmoft, holds his rank before.
Then others for the breath of words respect,
Me for my dumb thoughts, fpeaking in effect.
Was it the proud full fail of his great verse,
Bound for the prize of all too precious you,
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?
Was it his fpirit, by spirits taught to write
Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?
No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
He, nor that affable familiar ghost
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
As victors, of my filence cannot boast;
I was not fick of any fear from thence:
But when your countenance fill'd up his line,
Then lack'd I matter; that enfeebled mine.
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