(By some few hands) my most unlucky wit.
But ah, the sad effects that from it came!
What ought t’ have brought me honour, brought me shame!
Like Aesop’s painted jay, I seem’d to all,
Adorn’d in plumes, I not my own could call:
Rifled like her, each one my feathers tore,
And, as they thought, unto the owner bore.
My laurels thus another’s brow adorn’d,
My numbers they admir’d but me they scorn’d:
Another’s brow that had so rich a store