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ON AN INSCRIPTION IN A COPY OF CAREW'S POEMS, 1661.
A man unknown this volume gave,So long since, to his unknown friend:
Ages ago their lives had end,
And each in some obscurest grave
Lies mixt with earth; none now would care
To ask us who and what they were.
But, though themselves are underground,
Their book is here, all safe and sound;
And he who wrote it (yes, and more
Than a whole hundred years before)
He, the trim courtier, old Carew,
And all the loves he feign'd or knew
Have won from Aphrodite's eye
Some show of immortality.
'Tis ever thus; by Nature's will
The gift outlasts the giver still;
And Love itself lives not so long
As doth the lover's feeblest song.
But doubly hard is that man's case
For whom and for his earnest rhymes
Neither his own nor after times
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Who through a hundred years shall find
No echoing voice, no answering mind;
And, when this tann'd and tawny page
Has one more century of age,
And others buy the book anew
Because they care for old Carew,
Not one who reads shall care or know
What name was his who owns it now;
But all he wrote and all he did
Shall be in such oblivion hid
As hides the blurr'd and broken stones
That cover his forgotten bones.
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