The hornèd moon to hang by night
Amongst her spangled sisters bright;
For his mercies aye endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure.”
It is not of the best, but I think will compare favorably with most that is written by young people of fifteen. At Christ’s College, Cambridge, whither he went shortly afterward—his father being hopeful that he would take orders in the Church—he was easily among the first; he wrote Latin hexameters, quarrelled with his tutor (notwithstanding his handsome face had given to him the mocking title of “The Lady”), had his season of rustication up in London, sees all that is doing in theatrics thereabout, but goes back to study more closely than ever.
The little Christmas song,
“It was the winter wild,
While the heaven-born Child,” etc.,
belongs to his Cambridge life; though his first public appearance as an author was in the “Ode to Shakespeare,” attaching with other and various commendatory verses to the second folio edition of that author’s dramas, published in the year 1632.