Promise, and keep your vows,
Or vow ye never—
Love's doctrine disallows
Troth-breakers ever.
You have broke promise twice,
Dear, to undo me,
If you prove faithless thrice
None then will woo ye.
95. TO THE GENEROUS READER.
See and not see, and if thou chance t'espy
Some aberrations in my poetry,
Wink at small faults; the greater, ne'ertheless,
Hide, and with them their father's nakedness.
Let's do our best, our watch and ward to keep;
Homer himself, in a long work, may sleep.
96. TO CRITICS.
I'll write, because I'll give
You critics means to live;
For should I not supply
The cause, th' effect would die.
97. DUTY TO TYRANTS.
Good princes must be pray'd for; for the bad
They must be borne with, and in rev'rence had.
Do they first pill thee, next pluck off thy skin?
Good children kiss the rods that punish sin.
Touch not the tyrant; let the gods alone
To strike him dead that but usurps a throne.
Pill, plunder.
