98
COWLEY'S POEMS.
Well: but in love thou dost pretend to reign;
There thine the power and lordship is;
Thou bad'st me write, and write, and write again;
'T was such a way as could not miss.
I, like a fool, did thee obey:
I wrote, and wrote, but still I wrote in vain;
For, after all my expence of wit and pain,
A rich, unwriting hand carried the prize away.
There thine the power and lordship is;
Thou bad'st me write, and write, and write again;
'T was such a way as could not miss.
I, like a fool, did thee obey:
I wrote, and wrote, but still I wrote in vain;
For, after all my expence of wit and pain,
A rich, unwriting hand carried the prize away.
Thus I complain'd, and straight the Muse reply'd,
That she had given me fame.
Bounty immense! and that too must be try'd
When I myself am nothing but a name.
Who now, what reader does not strive
T' invalidate the gift whilst we 're alive?
For, when a poet now himself doth show,
As if he were a common foc,
All draw upon him, all around,
And every part of him they wound,
Happy the man that gives the deepest blow:
And this is all, kind Muse to thee we owe.
Then in rage I took,
And out at window threw,
Ovid and Horace, all the chiming crew;
Homer himself went with them too;
Hardly escap'd the sacred Mantuan book:
I my own offspring, like Agave, tore,
And I resolv'd, nay, and I think I swore,
That I no more the ground would till and sow,
Where only flowery weeds instead of corn did grow.
That she had given me fame.
Bounty immense! and that too must be try'd
When I myself am nothing but a name.
Who now, what reader does not strive
T' invalidate the gift whilst we 're alive?
For, when a poet now himself doth show,
As if he were a common foc,
All draw upon him, all around,
And every part of him they wound,
Happy the man that gives the deepest blow:
And this is all, kind Muse to thee we owe.
Then in rage I took,
And out at window threw,
Ovid and Horace, all the chiming crew;
Homer himself went with them too;
Hardly escap'd the sacred Mantuan book:
I my own offspring, like Agave, tore,
And I resolv'd, nay, and I think I swore,
That I no more the ground would till and sow,
Where only flowery weeds instead of corn did grow.