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| TELL me, O tell, what kind of thing is wit, | |
| Thou who master art of it. | |
| For the first matter loves variety less; | |
| Less women love ’t, either in love or dress. | |
| A thousand different shapes it bears, | 5 |
| Comely in thousand shapes appears. | |
| Yonder we saw it plain; and here ’tis now, | |
| Like spirits in a place, we know not how. | |
| |
| London that vents of false ware so much store, | |
| In no ware deceives us more. | 10 |
| For men led by the colour, and the shape, | |
| Like Zeuxes’ birds fly to the painted grape; | |
| Some things do through our judgment pass | |
| As through a multiplying glass. | |
| And sometimes, if the object be too far, | 15 |
| We take a falling meteor for a star. | |
| |
| Hence ’tis a wit that greatest word of fame | |
| Grows such a common name. | |
| And wits by our creation they become, | |
| Just so, as titular Bishops made at Rome. | 20 |
| ’Tis not a tale, ’tis not a jest | |
| Admir’d with laughter at a feast, | |
| Nor florid talk which can that title gain; | |
| The proofs of wit for ever must remain. | |
| |
| ’Tis not to force some lifeless verses meet | 25 |
| With their five gouty feet. | |
| All everywhere, like man’s, must be the soul, | |
| And reason the inferior powers control. | |
| Such were the numbers which could call | |
| The stones into the Theban wall. | 30 |
| Such miracles are ceas’d; and now we see | |
| No towns or houses rais’d by poetry. | |
| |
| Yet ’tis not to adorn and gild each part; | |
| That shows more cost than art. | |
| Jewels at nose and lips but ill appear; | 35 |
| Rather than all things wit, let none be there, | |
| Several lights will not be seen, | |
| If there be nothing else between. | |
| Men doubt, because they stand so thick i’ th’ sky, | |
| If those be stars which paint the Galaxy. | 40 |
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| ’Tis not when two like words make up one noise, | |
| Jests for Dutch men, and English boys. | |
| In which who finds out wit, the same may see | |
| In an’grams and acrostics poetry. | |
| Much less can that have any place | 45 |
| At which a virgin hides her face, | |
| Such dross the fire must purge away; ’tis just | |
| The author blush, there where the reader must. | |
| |
| ’Tis not such lines as almost crack the stage | |
| When Bajazet begins to rage. | 50 |
| Nor a tall metaphor in the bombast way, | |
| Nor the dry chips of short-lung’d Seneca. | |
| Nor upon all things to obtrude, | |
| And force some odd similitude. | |
| What is it then, which like the power divine | 55 |
| We only can by negatives define? | |
| |
| In a true piece of wit all things must be; | |
| Yet all things there agree. | |
| As in the ark, join’d without force or strife, | |
| All creatures dwelt; all creatures that had life. | 60 |
| Or as the primitive forms of all | |
| (If we compare great things with small) | |
| Which without discord or confusion lie, | |
| In that strange mirror of the Deity. | |
| |
| But love that moulds one man up out of two, | 65 |
| Makes me forget and injure you. | |
| I took you for myself sure when I thought | |
| That you in anything were to be taught. | |
| Correct my error with thy pen; | |
| And if any ask me then, | 70 |
| What thing right wit, and height of genius is, | |
| I’ll only shew your lines, and say, ’Tis this. | |
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