Page:Tixall Poetry.djvu/329

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Tixall Poetry.
275
Thus he whose impotency doth permitt
Him send no present, offring vowes that fitt
The expansion of his heart, doth freely dare
Offer himselfe in sacrifice by prayer.


Deare Cosen,

I cannot let my folly appeare to you without my apology. You shall receave my confession, and 1 doe pennance in the same place wher I comitt the fault; which I hope will procure pitty for offering to write to you of you, and upon this occasion. But I want not encouragement of an unqueslion'd wit, who sayth,

But wher the theame confounds us, 'tis a sort
Of glorious meritt proudly to fall short.

Indeed, when I considerd what a loss our family was now at, for want of those heads which are towring in another region, and, I hope, effecting foryou what we doe but bleate of here, I could not but take it to heart; and though lost as ever in the understanding them, willing by imitation to express they lived in my memory, and will. Truth herselfe often told me I made verses with my heart, not my head; which, as she did not, I hope you will not disapprove, because, though ther is nothing of ornament in them, ther can be nothing of stratagem, to which she had ever a strange antipathy, as the same author better expresseth than I ever could, who so much more loved it:

Those that best knew her, knew not whether were,
Her heart more single, or her head more cleare.