and painters have some near relation,
Compar'd with fancy and imagination;
The one paints shadowed persons (in pure kind),
The other paints the pictures of the mind
In purer verse. And as rare Zeuxes fame
Shin'd, till Apelles art eclips'd the same
By a more exquisite and curious line
In Zeuxeses (with pensill far more fine),
So have our modern poets late done well,
Till thine appear'd (which scarce have paralel).
They like to Zeuxes grapes beguile the sense,
But thine do ravish the intelligence,
Like the rare banquet of Apelles, drawn,
And covered over with most curious lawn.
Thus if thy careles draughts are cal'd the best,
What would thy lines have beene, had'st thou profest
That faculty (infus'd) of poetry,
Which adds such honour unto thy chivalry?
Doubtles thy verse had all as far transcended
As Sydneyes Prose, who Poets once defended.
For when I read thy much renowned pen,
My fancy there finds out another Ben
In thy brave language, judgement, wit, and art,
Of every piece of thine, in every part:
Where thy seraphique Sydneyan fire is raised high
In valour, vertue, love, and loyalty.
Virgil was styl'd the loftiest of all,
Ovid the smoothest and most naturall;
Martiall concise and witty, quaint and pure,
Iuvenall grave and learned, though obscure.
But all these rare ones which I heere reherse,
Do live againe in Thee, and in thy Verse:
Although not in the language of their time,
Yet in a speech as copious and sublime.
The rare Apelles in thy picture wee
Perceive, and in thy soule Apollo see.
Wel may each Grace and Muse then crown thy praise
With Mars his banner and Minerva's bayes.
Fra. Lenton.<10.1>
<10.1> The author of the YOUNG GALLANT'S WHIRLIGIGG, 1629,
and other poetical works. Singer does not give these lines.
In the WHIRLIGIG there is a curious picture of a young gallant
of the time of Charles I., to which Lovelace might have sat,
had he been old enough at the time. But Lenton had no want
of sitters for his portrait.
TO HIS HONOURED AND INGENIOUS FRIEND, COLONEL RICHARD LOVELACE,
ON HIS "LUCASTA."
Chast as Creation meant us, and more bright
Then the first day in 's uneclipsed light,
Is thy LUCASTA; and thou offerest heere
Lines to her name as undefil'd and cleere;
Such as the first indeed more happy dayes
(When vertue, wit, and learning wore the bayes
Now vice assumes) would to her memory give:
A Vestall flame that should for e
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