To Master George Sandys
Treasurer for the English Colony in Virginia
Friend, if you thinke my Papers may supplie
You, with some strange omitted Noueltie,
Which others Letters yet haue left vntould,
You take me off, before I can take hould
Of you at all; I put not thus to Sea,
For two monthes Voyage to Virginia,
With newes which now, a little something here,
But will be nothing ere it can come there.
I feare, as I doe Stabbing; this word, State,
10I dare not speake of the Palatinate,
Although some men make it their hourely theame,
And talke what's done in Austria, and in Beame,
I may not so; what Spinola intends,
Nor with his Dutch, which way Prince Maurice bends;
To other men, although these things be free,
Yet (George) they must be misteries to mee.
I scarce dare praise a vertuous friend that's dead,
Lest for my lines he should be censured;
It was my hap before all other men
20To suffer shipwrack by my forward pen:
When King Iames entred; at which ioyfull time
I taught his title to this Ile in rime:
And to my part did all the Muses win,
With high-pitch Pæans to applaud him in:
When cowardise had tyed vp euery tongue,
And all stood silent, yet for him I sung;
And when before by danger I was dar'd,
I kick'd her from me, nor a iot I spar'd.
Yet had not my cleere spirit in Fortunes scorne,
30Me aboue earth and her afflictions borne;
He next my God on whom I built my trust,
Had left me troden lower then the dust:
But let this passe; in the extreamest ill,
Apollo's brood must be couragious still,
Let Pies, and Dawes, sit dumb before their death,
Onely the Swan sings at the parting breath.
And (worthy George) by industry and vse,
Let's see what lines Virginia will produce;
Goe on with Ovid, as you haue begunne,
40With the first fiue Bookes; let your numbers run
Glib as the former, so shall it liue long,
And doe much honour to the English tongue:
Intice the Muses thither to repaire,
Intreat them gently, trayne them to that ayre,
For they from hence may thither hap to fly,
T'wards the sad time which but to fast doth hie,
For Poesie is follow'd with such spight,
By groueling drones that neuer raught her height,
That she must hence, she may no longer staye:
50The driery fates prefixed haue the day,
Of her departure, which is now come on,
And they command her straight wayes to be gon;
That bestiall heard so hotly her pursue,
And to her succour, there be very few,
Nay none at all, her wrongs that will redresse,
But she must wander in the wildernesse,
Like to the woman, which that holy Iohn
Beheld in Pathmos in his vision.
As th' English now, so did the stiff-neckt Iewes,
60Their noble Prophets vtterly refuse,
And of these men such poore opinions had;
They counted Esay and Ezechiel mad;
When Ieremy his Lamentations writ,
They thought the Wizard quite out of his wit,
Such sots they were, as worthily to ly,
Lock't in the chaines of their captiuity,
Knowledge hath still her Eddy in her Flow,
So it hath beene, and it will still be so.
That famous Greece where learning flourisht most,
70Hath of her muses long since left to boast,
Th' vnlettered Turke, and rude Barbarian trades,
Where Homer sang his lofty Iliads;
And this vaste volume of the world hath taught,
Much may to passe in little time be brought.
As if to Symptoms we may credit giue,
This very time, wherein we two now liue,
Shall in the compasse, wound the Muses more,
Then all the old English ignorance before;
Base Balatry is so belou'd and sought,
80And those braue numbers are put by for naught,
Which rarely read, were able to awake,
Bodyes from graues, and to the ground to shake
The wandring clouds, and to our men at armes,
'Gainst pikes and muskets were most powerfull charmes.
That, but I know, insuing ages shall,
Raise her againe, who now is in her fall;
And out of dust reduce our scattered rimes,
Th' reiected iewels of these slothfull times,
Who with the Muses would misspend an hower,
90But let blind Gothish Barbarisme deuoure
These feuerous Dogdays, blest by no record,
But to be euerlastingly abhord.
If you vouchsafe rescription, stuffe your quill
With naturall bountyes, and impart your skill,
In the description of the place, that I,
May become learned in the soyle thereby;
Of noble Wyats health, and let me heare,
The Gouernour; and how our people there,
Increase and labour, what supplyes are sent,
100Which I confesse shall giue me much content;
But you may saue your labour if you please,
To write to me ought of your Sauages.
As sauage slaues be in great Britaine here,
As any one that you can shew me there
And though for this, Ile say I doe not thirst,
Yet I should like it well to be the first,
Whose numbers hence into Virginia flew,
So (noble Sandis) for this time adue.
To my noble friend Master William Browne, of the euill time
Deare friend, be silent and with patience see,
What this mad times Catastrophe will be;
The worlds first Wisemen certainly mistooke
Themselues, and spoke things quite beside the booke,
And that which they haue of said of God, vntrue,
Or else expect strange iudgement to insue.
This Isle is a meere Bedlam, and therein,
We all lye rauing, mad in euery sinne,
And him the wisest most men use to call,
10Who doth (alone) the maddest thing of all;
He whom the master of all wisedome found,
For a marckt foole, and so did him propound,
The time we liue in, to that passe is brought,
That only he a Censor now is thought;
And that base villaine, (not an age yet gone,)
Which a good man would not haue look'd vpon;
Now like a God, with diuine worship follow'd,
And all his actions are accounted hollow'd.
This world of ours, thus runneth vpon wheeles,
20Set on the head, bolt vpright with her heeles;
Which makes me thinke of what the Ethnicks told
Th' opinion, the Pythagorists vphold,
Wander From body to body.
Zeno.
Vpon the three Sonnes of the Lord Sheffield, drowned in Hvmber
Light Sonnets hence, and to loose Louers flie,
And mournfull Maydens sing an Elegie
On those three Sheffields, ouer-whelm'd with waues,
Whose losse the teares of all the Muses craues;
A thing so full of pitty as this was,
Me thinkes for nothing should not slightly passe.
Treble this losse was, why should it not borrowe,
Through this Iles treble parts, a treble sorrowe:
But Fate did this, to let the world to knowe,
10That sorrowes which from common causes growe,
Are not worth mourning for, the losse to beare,
But of one onely sonne, 's not worth one teare.
Some tender-hearted man, as I, may spend
Some drops (perhaps) for a deceased friend.
Some men (perhaps) their Wifes late death may rue;
Or Wifes their Husbands, but such be but fewe.
Cares that haue vs'd the hearts of men to tuch
So oft, and deepely, will not now be such;
Who'll care for loss of maintenance, or place,
20Fame, liberty, or of the Princes grace;
Or sutes in law, by base corruption crost,
When he shall finde, that this which he hath lost,
Alas, is nothing to his, which did lose,
Three sonnes at once so excellent as those:
Nay, it is feard that this in time may breed
Hard hearts in men to their owne naturall seed;
That in respect of this great losse of theirs,
Men will scarce mourne the death of their owne heires.
Through all this Ile their losse so publique is,
30That euery man doth take them to be his,
And as a plague which had beginning there,
So catching is, and raigning euery where,
That those the farthest off as much doe rue them,
As those the most familiarly that knew them;
Children with this disaster are wext sage,
And like to men that strucken are in age;
Talke what it is, three children at one time
Thus to haue drown'd, and in their very prime;
Yea, and doe learne to act the same so well,
40That then olde folke, they better can it tell.
Inuention, oft that Passion vs'd to faine,
In sorrowes of themselves but slight, and meane,
To make them seeme great, here it shall not need,
For that this Subiect doth so farre exceed
All forc'd Expression, that what Poesie shall
Happily thinke to grace it selfe withall,
Falls so belowe it, that it rather borrowes
Grace from their griefe, then addeth to their sorrowes,
For sad mischance thus in the losse of three,
50To shewe it selfe the vtmost it could bee:
Exacting also by the selfe same lawe,
The vtmost teares that sorrowe had to drawe
All future times hath vtterly preuented
Of a more losse, or more to be lamented.
Whilst in faire youth they liuely flourish'd here,
To their kinde Parents they were onely deere:
But being dead, now euery one doth take
Them for their owne, and doe like sorrowe make:
As for their owne begot, as they pretended
60Hope in the issue, which should haue discended
From them againe; nor here doth end our sorrow,
But those of vs, that shall be borne to morrowe
Still shall lament them, and when time shall count,
To what vast number passed yeares shall mount,
They from their death shall duly reckon so,
As from the Deluge, former vs'd to doe.
O cruell Humber guilty of their gore,
I now beleeue more then I did before
The Brittish Story, whence thy name begun
70Of Kingly Humber, an inuading Hun,
By thee deuoured, for't is likely thou
With blood wert Christned, bloud-thirsty till now.
The Ouse, the Done, and thou farre clearer Trent,
To drowne the Sheffields as you gaue consent,
Shall curse the time, that ere you were infus'd,
Which haue your waters basely thus abus'd.
The groueling Boore yee hinder not to goe,
And at his pleasure Ferry to and fro.
The very best part of whose soule, and bloud,
80Compared with theirs, is viler then your mud.
But wherefore paper, doe I idely spend,
On those deafe waters to so little end,
And vp to starry heauen doe I not looke,
In which, as in an euerlasting booke,
Our ends are written; O let times rehearse
Their fatall losse, in their sad Aniuerse.