All sorts of men, that live on Earth,
Have one beginning and one birth.
For all things there is one Father,
Who lays out all, and all doth gather.
He the warm sun with rays adorns,
And fills with brightness the moon's horns.
The azur'd heav'ns with stars He burnish'd,
And the round world with creatures furnish'd.
But men—made to inherit all—
His own sons He was pleas'd to call,
And that they might be so indeed,
He gave them souls of divine seed.
A noble offspring surely then
Without distinction are all men.
O, why so vainly do some boast
Their birth and blood and a great host
Of ancestors, whose coats and crests
Are some rav'nous birds or beasts!
If extraction they look for,
And God, the great Progenitor,
No man, though of the meanest state,
Is base, or can degenerate,
Unless, to vice and lewdness bent,
He leaves and taints his true descent.
THE OLD MAN OF VERONA OUT OF CLAUDIAN, [EPIGRAMMA II.]
Felix, qui propriis avum transegit in arvis,
Una domus puerum, &c.
Most happy man! who in his own sweet fields
Spent all his time; to whom one cottage yields
In age and youth a lodging; who, grown old,
Walks with his staff on the same soil and mould
Where he did creep an infant, and can tell
Many fair years spent in one quiet cell!
No toils of fate made him from home far known,
Nor foreign waters drank, driv'n from his own.
No loss by sea, no wild land's wasteful war
Vex'd him, not the brib'd coil of gowns at bar.
Exempt from cares, in cities never seen,
The fresh field-air he loves, and rural green.
The year's set turns by fruits, not consuls, knows;
Autumn by apples, May by blossom'd boughs.
Within one hedge his sun doth set and rise,
The world's wide day his short demesnes comprise;
Where he observes some known, concrescent twig
Now grown an oak, and old, like him, and big.
Verona he doth for the Indies take,
And as the Red Sea counts Benacus' Lake.
Yet are his limbs and strength untir'd, and he,
A lusty grandsire, three descents doth see.
Travel and sail who will, search sea or shore;
This man hath liv'd, and that hath wander'd more.
THE SPHERE OF ARCHIMEDES OUT OF CLAUDIAN, [EPIGRAMMA XVIII.]
Jupiter in parvo cum cerneret æthera vitro
Risit, et ad superos, &c.