It is, to the envious meant A mere upbraiding grief, and torturing punish ment. See now the chapel opens, where the king One in the other's hand, Hearing their charge, and then The solemn choir cries, Joy! and they return, Amen! O happy bands! and thou more happy place, Which time shall not, Or canker'd jealousy, With all corroding arts, be able to untie! The chapel empties, and thou mayst be gone Now, sun, and post away the rest of day: These two, now holy church hath made them one, Do long to make themselves so' another way: There is a feast behind, To them of kind, Which their glad parents taught One to the other, long ere these to light were brought. Haste, haste, officious sun, and send them night Some hours before it should, that these may know All that their fathers and their mothers might Alive, which else would die; For fame keeps virtue up, and it posterity. The ignoble never lived, they were awhile Of life, that fall so; Christians know their birth Alone, and such a race, We pray may grace, Your fruitful spreading vine, But dare not ask our wish in language Fescennine. Yet, as we may, we will,-with chaste desires, You find no cold There; but renewed, say, After the last child born, This is our weddingday. Till you behold a race to fill your hall, A Richard, and a Hierome, by their names Upon a Thomas, or a Francis call; A Kate, a Frank, to honour their grand-dames, And 'tween their grandsires' thighs, Like pretty spies, Peep forth a gem; to see How each one plays his part, of the large pe digree! And never may there want one of the stem, By this sun's noonsted's made So great; his body now alone projects the shade. They both are slipp'd to bed; shut fast the door, Will last till day; Night and the sheets will show The longing couple all that elder lovers know. XCIII. THE HUMBLE PETITION OF POOR BEN; TO THE BEST OF MONARCHS, MASTERS, MEN, KING CHARLES. Doth most humbly show it, To your majesty, your poet: That whereas your royal father, And that this so accepted sum, Those your father's marks, your pounds XCIV. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORD TREASURER OF ENGLAND. AN EPIGRAM. If to my mind, great lord, I had a state,* 3 Those your father's marks, your pounds.] The petition succeeded; the reader has, annexed to our poet's life, a copy of the warrant creating him poet laureat, with a salary of £100. per annum. WHAL. The warrant is dated March 1630, the Petition must therefore be referred to the beginning of that year. If to my mind, great Lord, I had a state.] The learned reader may compare this with the 8th ode of the fourth book of Horace, as it seems to be copied from it. Our poet, as we find by some verses wrote by no well-wisher to him, received forty pounds for this Epigram. Let the reader judge which was greatest, the generosity of the treasurer, or the genius and address of Jonson. WHAL. Whalley has strange notions of copying. Jonson has taken a hint from the opening of the Ode to Censorinus, and that is all. The verses to which Whalley alludes are in the 4to. and 12mo. editions, 1640, in which this Epigram also appears; in Eliot's Poems, they are thus prefixed. |