The Passionate Poet With a Description of the Thracian Ismarus. By T. P. [i.e. Thomas Powell] |
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The Bay. |
 | The Passionate Poet |  |
The Bay.
Lawrels sinewes withered.
Sleeping Fame with worthies dead.
Sleeping Fame with worthies dead.
Was this that Ismarus, or this that tree,
To whom the Lyrick tuned his minstrelsie?
Was this the price of vertue and the breath,
Which it suspir'd amidst a sea of death,
The Poets grace, Apolloes sometimes mynion?
To see the errour of this foole opinion!
And shall the vilest spirit choose his seat,
Where to repose for moysture and for heat;
The whil'st our generall soule shall animate
A saples trunck, and be incorporate
To abstract earth? Such is erotick Loue,
Whose dotage still opinion must approue.
Thou Soule, which ammat'st empiricie,
And makes hir out side seeme sinceritie;
That with thy ignorance and strong conceipt
Maintein'st his life, and dailie dost beget
More bastard Lawreats than the world implores,
Might all the world consist of theators:
Out on thee foole, blind of thy impotence,
Thou dost admire but in a popular sense;
Esteeming more a Pasquils harsher lines,
Then Iliads worth which Chapmans hand refines.
What might perswade opinion, but for thee,
The Lyrick sung to such an out side tree;
Or Poets glory in their Lawracie,
When I awrels haue their veines shrunck vp and drie?
And yet herhaps the seasons are inuerted,
Ours differs from the Lawrels first inserted.
The amorous God admiring Daphnes worth,
Out of hir statua drayn'd the spirit forth.
This season yeelds more Bayes then did the first,
But all things neer the end grow near the worst:
Witnes the withered Bay that wants hir iuice;
Be more of witnes they that are obtuse
To penetrate, and call from monument
The sleeping worth of such whose soules were spent,
In honorable termes to terminate
And yeeld their memory with life to fate;
Y dutie rob'd, and bodyes yet vnpurg'd:
O how accommodate might this be vrg'd!
Once was there such a Sidney. It sufficeth,
That from the graue his onely name reuiueth.
So had this age a Burrowes. O but he
Sleepes with his fame in lasting lethargie.
Norris, and Morgan sleepe, and still the while,
Our better Lawreats studie to compile
Some thing prospectiue, and obserue the time:
Heroes yet neglected in their shrine.
And since it was deni'd me to assoile
The times; I therefore studied to report
Of what was past, vnable ought to wage
With the inuention of this nymble age.
May others make the eares euaporate,
When they vnmask the times and worlds estate:
I will admire, yet neuer will insect,
I am not prone but onely to reflect.
I'le write vnto the dead amongst the liuing,
Take some peculiar theam without corriuing.
Enable all ye Gods as I pretend,
When ye acquite and giue this passion end.
To whom the Lyrick tuned his minstrelsie?
Was this the price of vertue and the breath,
Which it suspir'd amidst a sea of death,
The Poets grace, Apolloes sometimes mynion?
To see the errour of this foole opinion!
And shall the vilest spirit choose his seat,
Where to repose for moysture and for heat;
The whil'st our generall soule shall animate
A saples trunck, and be incorporate
To abstract earth? Such is erotick Loue,
Whose dotage still opinion must approue.
Thou Soule, which ammat'st empiricie,
And makes hir out side seeme sinceritie;
That with thy ignorance and strong conceipt
Maintein'st his life, and dailie dost beget
More bastard Lawreats than the world implores,
Might all the world consist of theators:
Out on thee foole, blind of thy impotence,
Thou dost admire but in a popular sense;
Esteeming more a Pasquils harsher lines,
Then Iliads worth which Chapmans hand refines.
What might perswade opinion, but for thee,
The Lyrick sung to such an out side tree;
Or Poets glory in their Lawracie,
When I awrels haue their veines shrunck vp and drie?
And yet herhaps the seasons are inuerted,
Ours differs from the Lawrels first inserted.
Out of hir statua drayn'd the spirit forth.
This season yeelds more Bayes then did the first,
But all things neer the end grow near the worst:
Witnes the withered Bay that wants hir iuice;
Be more of witnes they that are obtuse
To penetrate, and call from monument
The sleeping worth of such whose soules were spent,
In honorable termes to terminate
And yeeld their memory with life to fate;
Y dutie rob'd, and bodyes yet vnpurg'd:
O how accommodate might this be vrg'd!
Once was there such a Sidney. It sufficeth,
That from the graue his onely name reuiueth.
So had this age a Burrowes. O but he
Sleepes with his fame in lasting lethargie.
Norris, and Morgan sleepe, and still the while,
Our better Lawreats studie to compile
Some thing prospectiue, and obserue the time:
Heroes yet neglected in their shrine.
And since it was deni'd me to assoile
The times; I therefore studied to report
Of what was past, vnable ought to wage
With the inuention of this nymble age.
May others make the eares euaporate,
When they vnmask the times and worlds estate:
I will admire, yet neuer will insect,
I am not prone but onely to reflect.
I'le write vnto the dead amongst the liuing,
Take some peculiar theam without corriuing.
Enable all ye Gods as I pretend,
When ye acquite and giue this passion end.
| The Passionate Poet | |