Your sometime poet; but if fates do give
Me longer date and more fresh springs to live,
Oft as your field shall her old age renew,
Herrick shall make the meadow-verse for you.
356. UPON JUDITH. EPIG.
Judith has cast her old skin and got new,
And walks fresh varnish'd to the public view;
Foul Judith was and foul she will be known
For all this fair transfiguration.
359. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE PHILIP, EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY.
How dull and dead are books that cannot show
A prince of Pembroke, and that Pembroke you!
You who are high born, and a lord no less
Free by your fate than fortune's mightiness,
Who hug our poems, honour'd sir, and then
The paper gild and laureate the pen.
Nor suffer you the poets to sit cold,
But warm their wits and turn their lines to gold.
Others there be who righteously will swear
Those smooth-paced numbers amble everywhere,
And these brave measures go a stately trot;
Love those, like these, regard, reward them not.
But you, my lord, are one whose hand along
Goes with your mouth or does outrun your tongue;
Paying before you praise, and, cockering wit,
Give both the gold and garland unto it.
Cockering, pampering.
