 | Hippolitus |  |
To his most Honoured and most Ingenious Friend, Mr. Edmund Prestwich, upon his happy Translation of Seneca, his Tragedy of Hippolitus.
VVretched Translators! they who only knowHow like the Moon reflections faint to show
To those benighted Ignorants that dare
Not look upon the Sun in his own Sphear;
That their Translations are the Authors Hell
Where nothing but their ghastly shaddows dwell.
Thine's a Pathelion in height and glory
Yet not prodigious nor transitorie.
By this thy Version Seneca doth get,
A better Genius fresher bayes hath met.
What can I say, but thou translat'st him even,
As God would man from Paradise to Heaven;
But sin those coppies blur'd so that but one
True Manuscript could find Translation.
Hippolitus hath such a handsome Mine
Drest by thee; thy Muse, worse than th' Attick queen
Will I'm afraid in this transplanted Grove
Incestuously her own Issue Love.
More for him now, then erst did Phœbus sonne;
When his torn limbs lay like a shatter'd lute
He them patch'd up, with new breath did recruit.
In Miracles yet him thou dost out-doe
Giv'st other life and that Immortall too.
Joves Vengeance damp't his art, that durst controul
The Laws of Fate, bring home a once fled soul.
Thine to doth thee to Heavens envy raise,
But th'art secure from thunder by thy bayes
But why translate, gild, hatch, why not appear
Thy solid self, sad Ingot, neat, not tear,
As when men court the Maidenhead of light,
Desire to see the first, first rayie flight
Of Phœbus shafts, they face about to th' West
There see some cliffe kist by the new-come Guest;
So in the ponent of things past must we
Look for thy day-break, and lo there we see
Thy dawning wit, with early glory play
On this Iberian Mount of Corduba.
And I'm content, 'cause my weake eyes are able
To see thy Sun thus in the water dabble;
But risen to his Zenith, Oh, who can
Stare at thy Halos, when Meridian?
Cromwel Stanhop.
| Hippolitus | |