| |
| SLEEP, next society and true friendship, | |
| Man’s best contentment, doth securely slip | |
| His passions, and the world’s troubles; rock me, | |
| O sleep, wean’d from my 1 dear friend’s company, | |
| In a cradle free from dreams or thoughts, there | 5 |
| Where poor men lie, for kings asleep do fear. | |
| Here sleep’s house by famous Ariosto, | |
| By silver-tongued Ovid, and many moe | |
| —Perhaps by golden-mouthed Spenser too, pardie— | |
| Which builded was some dozen stories high, | 10 |
| I had repair’d, but that it was so rotten, | |
| As sleep awaked by rats from thence was gotten; | |
| And I will build no new, for by my will | |
| Thy father’s house shall be the fairest still | |
| In Exeter. Yet, methinks, for all their wit, | 15 |
| Those wits that say nothing, best describe it. | |
| Without it there is no sense; only in this | |
| Sleep is unlike a long parenthesis. | |
| Not to save charges, but would I had slept | |
| The time I spent in London, when I kept | 20 |
| Fighting and untruss’d gallants’ company, | |
| In which Natta, the new knight, seized on me, | |
| And offered me th’ experience he had bought | |
| With great expense. I found him thoroughly taught | |
| In curing burns. His thing had had more scars | 25 |
| Than T—— himself; like Epps it often wars, | |
| And still is hurt. For his body and state | |
| The physic and counsel—which came too late | |
| ’Gainst whores and dice—he now on me bestows; | |
| Most superficially he speaks of those. | 30 |
| I found by him, least sound, him who most knows. | |
| He swears well, speaks ill, but best of clothes, | |
| What fits summer, what winter, what the spring. | |
| He had living, but now these ways come in | |
| His whole revenues. Where his whore now dwells, | 35 |
| And hath dwelt, since his father’s death, he tells. | |
| Yea, he tells most cunningly each hid cause | |
| Why whores forsake their bawds. To these, some laws | |
| He knows of the duel, and touch his skill 2 | |
| The least jot in that or these, he quarrel will, | 40 |
| Though sober, but ne’er fought. I know | |
| What made his valour undubb’d windmill go, | |
| Within a pint at most; yet for all this | |
| —Which is most strange—Natta thinks no man is | |
| More honest than himself. Thus men may want | 45 |
| Conscience, whilst being brought up ignorant, | |
| They use themselves to vice. And besides those | |
| Illiberal arts forenamed, no vicar knows | |
| Nor other captain less than he; his schools | |
| Are ordinaries, where civil men seem fools, | 50 |
| Or are for being there; his best books, plays, | |
| Where, meeting godly scenes, perhaps he prays. | |
| His first set prayer was for his father, ill 3 | |
| And sick—that he might die; that had, until | |
| The lands were gone he troubled God no more, | 55 |
| And then ask’d him but his right—that the whore | |
| Whom he had kept, might now keep him; she spent, | |
| They left each other on even terms; she went | |
| To Bridewell, he unto the wars, where want | |
| Hath made him valiant, and a lieutenant | 60 |
| He is become; where, as they pass apace, | |
| He steps aside, and for his captain’s place | |
| He prays again—tells God he will confess | |
| His sins; swear, drink, dice, and whore thenceforth less, | |
| On this condition, that his captain die | 65 |
| And he succeed; but his prayer did not. They | |
| Both cashier’d came home, and he is braver now | |
| Than his captain; all men wonder, few know how; | |
| Can he rob? ‘No.’ Cheat? ‘No.’ Or doth he spend | |
| His own? ‘No; Fidus, he is thy dear friend; | 70 |
| That keeps him up.’ I would thou wert thine own, | |
| Or hadst as good a friend as thou art one. | |
| No present want, nor future hope made me | |
| Desire, as once I did, thy friend to be; | |
| But he had cruelly possess’d thee then, | 75 |
| And as our neighbours, the Low-Country men, | |
| Being—whilst they were loyal, with tyranny | |
| Oppress’d—broke loose, have since refused to be | |
| Subject to good kings, I found even so, | |
| Wert thou well rid of him, thou’dst have no moe. | 80 |
| Couldst thou but choose, as well as love, to none | |
| Thou shouldst be second. Turtle and Damon | |
| Should give thee place in songs, and lovers sick | |
| Should make thee only love’s hieroglyphic. | |
| Thy impress should be the loving elm and vine, | 85 |
| Where now an ancient oak with ivy twine. | |
| Destroy’d thy symbol is! O dire mischance! | |
| And O vile verse! And yet our Abraham Fraunce | |
| Writes thus, and jests not. Good Fidus for this | |
| Must pardon me; satires bite when they kiss. | 90 |
| But as for Natta, we have since fallen out; | |
| Here on his knees he pray’d; else we had fought. | |
| And because God would not he should be winner, | |
| Nor yet would have the death of such a sinner, | |
| At his seeking our quarrel is deferr’d. | 95 |
| I’ll leave him at his prayers, and, as I heard, | |
| His last; and, Fidus, you and I do know | |
| I was his friend, and durst have been his foe, | |
| And would be either yet; but he dares be | |
| Neither yet; sleep blots him out and takes in thee. | 100 |
| The mind, you know, is like a table-book; | |
| The old unwiped, new writing never took. | |
| Hear how the ushers’ checks, cupboard and fire, | |
| I pass’d—by which degrees young men aspire | |
| In court. And how that idle and she state | 105 |
| —When as my judgment cleared—my soul did hate; | |
| How I found there—if that my trifling pen | |
| Durst take so hard a task—kings were but men, | |
| And by their place more noted, if they err; | |
| How they and their lords unworthy men prefer; | 110 |
| And, as unthrifts, had rather give away | |
| Great sums to flatterers, than small debts pay. | |
| So they their greatness hide, and greatness show, | |
| By giving them that which to worth they owe. | |
| What treason is, and what did Essex kill, | 115 |
| Not true treason, but treason handled ill; | |
| And which of them stood for their country’s good, | |
| Or what might be the cause of so much blood; | |
| He said she stunk; and men might not have said | |
| That she was old before that she was dead. | 120 |
| His case was hard to do or suffer; loth | |
| To do, he made it harder, and did both. | |
| Too much preparing lost them all their lives; | |
| Like some in plagues kill with preservatives. | |
| Friends, like land soldiers in a storm at sea, | 125 |
| Not knowing what to do, for him did pray. | |
| They told it all the world, where was their wit? | |
| Cuffe’s putting on a sword might have told it. | |
| And princes must fear favourites more than foes, | |
| For still beyond revenge ambition goes. | 130 |
| How since her death with sumpter-horse that Scot | |
| Hath rid, who, at his coming up, had not | |
| A sumpter-dog. But till that I can write | |
| Things worth thy tenth reading (dear Nick), good-night. | |
