VERSE, TO HIS FRIEND, M. JOHN WICKS.

Is this a life, to break thy sleep,
To rise as soon as day doth peep?
To tire thy patient ox or ass
By noon, and let thy good days pass,
Not knowing this, that Jove decrees
Some mirth t' adulce man's miseries?
No; 'tis a life to have thine oil
Without extortion from thy soil;
Thy faithful fields to yield thee grain,
Although with some, yet little, pain;
To have thy mind, and nuptial bed,
With fears and cares uncumbered;
A pleasing wife, that by thy side
Lies softly panting like a bride.
This is to live, and to endear
Those minutes Time has lent us here.
Then, while fates suffer, live thou free
As is that air that circles thee,
And crown thy temples too, and let
Thy servant, not thy own self, sweat,
To strut thy barns with sheafs of wheat.
Time steals away like to a stream,
And we glide hence away with them.
_No sound recalls the hours once fled,
Or roses, being withered_;
Nor us, my friend, when we are lost,
Like to a dew or melted frost.
Then live we mirthful while we should,
And turn the iron age to gold.
Let's feast, and frolic, sing, and play,
And thus less last than live our day.
_Whose life with care is overcast,
That man's not said to live, but last;
Nor is't a life, seven years to tell,
But for to live that half seven well;_
And that we'll do, as men who know,
Some few sands spent, we hence must go,
Both to be blended in the urn
From whence there's never a return.

_Adulce_, sweeten.
_Strut_, swell.

671. ONCE SEEN AND NO MORE.

Thousands each day pass by, which we,
Once past and gone, no more shall see.

672. LOVE.

This axiom I have often heard,
_Kings ought to be more lov'd than fear'd_.

673. TO M. DENHAM ON HIS PROSPECTIVE POEM.

Or look'd I back unto the times hence flown
To praise those Muses and dislike our own--
Or did I walk those Paean-gardens through,
To kick the flowers and scorn their odours too--
I might, and justly, be reputed here
One nicely mad or peevishly severe.
But by Apollo! as I worship wit,
Where I have cause to burn perfumes to it;
So, I confess, 'tis somewhat to do well
In our high art, although we can't excel
Like thee, or dare the buskins to unloose
Of thy brave, bold, and sweet Maronian mu