To your retreat, from this World's open Ill.

Of Goodness, therefore, the prime part, the
Will,

Inflamed my powers, to celebrate as far
As their force reach'd, this Thunderbolt of
War.

His wish'd Good, and the true note of his worth

(Yet never, to his full desert, set forth) Being root, and top, to this his plant of fame.

Which cannot furnish with an anagram
Of just offence, any desire to wrest
All the free letters here, by such a test,
To any blame: for equal Heaven avert,
It should return reproach, to praise desert;
How hapless and perverse soever be
The envies and infortunes following me;

SOMERSET, &c.

Whose true and simple only aim at merit Makes your acceptive and still-bettering spirit

My wane view, as at full still; and sus

ever most worthily bounden,

GEO. CHAPMAN.

ALL my year's comforts fall in showers of tears,

That this full spring of man, this VERE of VERES,

Famine should bar my fruits, whose bounty breeds them,

The faithless world love to devour who feeds them.

Now can th' exempt Isle from the World,

no more,

With all her arm'd fires, such a Spring

restore.

The dull Earth thinks not this; though should I sum

The master-martial spirits of Christendom, In his few nerves, my sum, to a thought,

were true.

But who lives now that gives true worth his due ?

'Tis so divine a spark, and loves to live So close in men, that hardly it will give The owner notice of his power or being. Nought glories to be seen that's worth the seeing.

God, and all good Spirits, shun all earthy sight,

And all true worth abhors the guilty light, Infused to few, to make it choice and dear,

And yet how cheap the' chief of all is VERE?

As if his want we could with ease supply. When should from Heaven fall his illus

trious Eye,

We might a bonfire think would fill his sphere,

As well as any other make up VERE. Too much this: why? All know that some one Hour

Hath sent a soul down with a richer dower

Than many ages after, had the Graces
To equal in the reach of all their races.
As when the Sun in his equator shines,
Creating gold and precious mineral mines
In some one soil of earth and chosen vein;
When not 'twixt Gades and Ganges, he
again

Will deign t' enrich so any other mould. Nor did great Heaven's free finger, that extoll'd

The Race of bright Eliza's blessed Reign, Past all fore-Races, for all sorts of men,

Either to other) in the Rule of War; Whose each was all, his three-fork'd fire and star:

Their last, this Vere, being no less circular

In guard of our engaged Isle (were he here)

Than Neptune's marble rampier; but, being there

Circled with danger, danger to us all ;
As round, as wrackful, as reciprocal.
Must all our hopes in war then, safeties
all,

In thee, O Vere, confound their spring and fall?

And thy spirit (fetch'd off, not to be confined

In less bounds than the broad wings of the wind)

In a Dutch citadel, die pinn'd and pined?
O England, let not thy old constant tie
To Virtue, and thy English Valour, lie
Balanced (like Fortune's faithless levity)
'Twixt two light wings: nor leave eternal
Vere

In this undue plight. But much rather bear

Arms in his rescue, and resemble her Whom long time thou hast served (the Paphian Queen)

When (all ashamed of her still-gig-let
Spleen)

She cast away her glasses and her fans
And habits of th' effeminate Persians,
Her Ceston, and her paintings; and in
grace

Of great Lycurgus, took to her embrace
Casque, Lance, and Shield, and swum the
Spartan flood

Eurotas, to his aid, to save the blood
Of so much justice, as in him had fear
To wrack his kingdom. Be, I say, like
her,

In what is chaste and virtuous, as well
As what is loose and wanton, and repel

* Lord Norris, Sir Francis Vere, Sir Horatio Vere.

man:

For to thy fame 'twill be a blasting ban
To let him perish. Battles have been laid
In balance oft with kingdoms; and he
weigh'd

With victory, in battles. Muster then
Only for him up, all thy armed men,
And in thy well-rigg'd Nymphs Maritimal
Ship them, and plough up all the seas of
gall,

Of all thy enemies, in their armed prease;
And, past remission, fly to his release.
'Tis done, as sure as counsell'd: for who can
Resist God, in the right of such a man?
And with such men to be his instruments
As he hath made to live in forts and tents,
And not in soft Sardanapalian styes
Of swinish ease and goatish veneries.
And know, great Queen of Isles, that men
that are

In Heaven's endowments so divinely rare, No Earthy Power should too securely dare

To hazard with neglect, since as much 'tis

Should suffer ruin; with whose loss would

lie

The world itself and all posterity.

For worthy men the breeders are of worth,

And Heaven's brood in them, cast as offal forth,

Will quite discourage Heaven to yield us

more:

Worth's only want makes all Earth's plenty, poor.

But thou hast now a kind and pious
King,

That will not suffer his immortal Spring
To die untimely, if in him it lie

To lend him rescue; nor will therefore I
Let one tear fall more from my Muse's eye
That else has vow'd to pine with him, and
die.

But never was, in best times' most abuses, A Peace so wretched, as to sterve the Muses.

*Genitalia Corpora.