The trees we set grow slowly, and their shade
Stays for our sons, while we—the planters—fade.
From Man in Glory: translated from Anselm (1652).
1. [ANSELM.]
Here holy Anselm lives in ev'ry page,
And sits archbishop still, to vex the age.
Had he foreseen—and who knows but he did?—
This fatal wrack, which deep in time lay hid,
'Tis but just to believe, that little hand
Which clouded him, but now benights our land,
Had never—like Elias—driv'n him hence,
A sad retirer for a slight offence.
For were he now, like the returning year,
Restor'd, to view these desolations here,
He would do penance for his old complaint,
And—weeping—say, that Rufus was a saint.
From the Epistle-Dedicatory to Flores Solitudinis (1654).