Proper, well-made.
960. TO HIS BOOK.
If hap it must, that I must see thee lie
Absyrtus-like, all torn confusedly:
With solemn tears, and with much grief of heart,
I'll recollect thee, weeping, part by part;
And having wash'd thee, close thee in a chest
With spice; that done, I'll leave thee to thy rest.
Absyrtus-like, the brother of Medea, cut in pieces by her that his father might be delayed by gathering his limbs.
961. TO THE KING, UPON HIS WELCOME TO HAMPTON
COURT. SET AND SUNG.
Welcome, great Cæsar, welcome now you are
As dearest peace after destructive war:
Welcome as slumbers, or as beds of ease
After our long and peevish sicknesses.
O pomp of glory! Welcome now, and come
To repossess once more your long'd-for home.
A thousand altars smoke: a thousand thighs
Of beeves here ready stand for sacrifice.
Enter and prosper; while our eyes do wait
For an ascendent throughly auspicate:
Under which sign we may the former stone
Lay of our safety's new foundation:
That done, O Cæsar! live and be to us
Our fate, our fortune, and our genius;
To whose free knees we may our temples tie
As to a still protecting deity:
That should you stir, we and our altars too
May, great Augustus, go along with you.
Chor. Long live the King! and to accomplish this,
We'll from our own add far more years to his.
Ascendent, the most influential position of a planet in astrology.
Auspicate, propitious.
962. ULTIMUS HEROUM: OR, TO THE MOST LEARNED,
AND TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE, HENRY,
MARQUIS OF DORCHESTER.
And as time past when Cato the severe
Enter'd the circumspacious theatre,
In reverence of his person everyone
Stood as he had been turn'd from flesh to stone;
E'en so my numbers will astonished be
If but looked on; struck dead, if scann'd by thee.