Short Poems

When my date's done, and my gray age must die;
Nurse up, great Lord, this my posterity:
Weak though it be; long may it grow, and stand,
Shor'd up by you, (Brave Earle of Westmerland.)

The time the Bridegroom stayes from hence,
Is but the time of penitence.

When my off'ring next I make,
Be thy hand the hallowed Cake:
And thy brest the Altar, whence
Love may smell the Frankincense.

Linnit playes rarely on the Lute, we know;
And sweetly sings, but yet his breath sayes no.

Let not that Day Gods Friends and Servants scare:
The Bench is then their place; and not the Barre.

To John I owed great obligation;
But John unhappily thought fit
To publish it to all the nation;
Sure John and I are more than quit.

Under me are the waves, the wagons thunder, above me;
Kindly the master allows me to pass over as well.

Throughout the world, if it were sought,
Fair words enough a man shall find:
They be good cheap, they cost right nought,
Their substance is but only wind,
But well to say and so to mean,
That sweet accord is seldom seen.

“Fear ye not,” the master exclaimed, “my bow in the heavens;
Like it, so shalt thou into eternity reach.”

On an exalted base, upheaved by the hand of a master,
Here I stand, as he bade, proud in inanimate might.