Or would youth and beauty stay,
Love hath wings, and will away.
Love hath swifter wings than Time,
Change in love to heaven does climb. 10
Gods, that never change their state,
Vary oft their love and hate.

Phyllis! to this truth we owe
All the love betwixt us two.
Let not you and I inquire
What has been our past desire;
On what shepherds you have smiled,
Or what nymphs I have beguiled;
Leave it to the planets too, 19
What we shall hereafter do;
For the joys we now may prove,
Take advice of present love.

TO SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT, UPON HIS TWO FIRST BOOKS OF GONDIBERT.[1]
WRITTEN IN FRANCE.

Thus the wise nightingale that leaves her home,
Her native wood, when storms and winter come,
Pursuing constantly the cheerful spring,
To foreign groves does her old music bring.

The drooping Hebrews' banish'd harps, unstrung,
At Babylon upon the willows hung;
Yours sounds aloud, and tells us you excel
No less in courage, than in singing well;
While, unconcern'd, you let your country know
They have impoverish'd themselves, not you; 10
Who, with the Muses' help, can mock those fates
Which threaten kingdoms, and disorder states.
So Ovid, when from Caesar's rage he fled,
The Roman Muse to Pontus with him led;
Where he so sung, that we, through pity's glass,
See Nero milder than Augustus was.
Hereafter such, in thy behalf, shall be
Th' indulgent censure of posterity.
To banish those who with such art can sing,
Is a rude crime, which its own curse doth bring; 20
Ages to come shall ne'er know how they fought,
Nor how to love, their present youth be taught.

This to thyself.--Now to thy matchless book,
Wherein those few that can with judgment look,
May find old love in pure fresh language told,
Like new-stamp'd coin made out of angel-gold.
Such truth in love as th'antique world did know,
In such a style as courts may boast of now;
Which no bold tales of gods or monsters swell,
But human passions, such as with us dwell. 30
Man is thy theme; his virtue or his rage
Drawn to the life in each elaborate page.
Mars nor Bellona are not named here,
But such a Gondibert as both might fear;
Venus had here, and Hebe, been outshined
By the bright Birtha and thy Rhodalind.
Such is thy happy skill, and such the odds
Betwixt thy worthies and the Grecian gods!
Whose deities in va