AN[582] IMPERFECT ODE, BEING BUT ONE STAFF,
SPOKEN BY THE PROLOGUE.
To wrest each hurtless thought to private sense
Is the foul use of ill-bred impudence:
Immodest censure now grows wild,
All over-running.
Let innocence be ne’er so chaste,
Yet at the last
She is defil’d
With too nice-brainèd cunning.
O you of fairer soul,
Control 10
With an Herculean arm
This harm;
And once teach all old freedom of a pen,
Which still must write of fools, whiles’t writes of men!
[582] The “imperfect ode” and the epilogue are not found in some copies of ed. 1.
EPILOGUS.
Your modest silence, full of heedy stillness,
Makes me thus speak: a voluntary illness
Is merely[583] senseless; but unwilling error,
Such as proceeds from too rash youthful fervour,
May well be call’d a fault, but not a sin:
Rivers take names from founts where they begin.
Then let not too severe an eye peruse
The slighter brakes[584] of our reformèd Muse,
Who could herself herself of faults detect,
But that she knows ’tis easy to correct, 10
Though some men’s labour: troth, to err is fit,
As long as wisdom’s not profess’d, but wit.
Then till another’s happier Muse appears,[585]
Till his Thalia feast your learnèd ears,
To whose desertful lamps pleased Fates impart
Art above nature, judgment above art,
Receive this piece, which hope nor fear yet daunteth:
He that knows most knows most how much he wanteth.
[583] Wholly.
[584] Clearly another form of bracks, i.e., cracks, flaws.
[585] A fine compliment to Ben Jonson.