Nay, he, befriending me above my merit,

Unseen of any heaved my wingèd spirit

T' a higher court than the Star chamber is,

Where souls may surfeit with immortal bliss;

And taught my fancy, in those quiet slumbers,

What, waking, I have folded up in numbers;

40To tell the brood of critics that there are

Some few, or if not some, yet one, that dare

(Backèd by your thrice-sacred worths) expose

These lines and letters to the ken of prose.