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INCIPIT JOANNES DONES.
LO here’s a man, worthy indeed to travel | |
| Fat Libyan plains, strangest China’s gravel, | |
| For Europe well hath seen him stir his stumps, | |
| Turning his double shoes to simple pumps; | |
| And for relation, look he doth afford | 5 |
| Almost for every step he took a word. | |
| What had he done, had he ere hugg’d th’ ocean | |
| With swimming Drake or famous Magellan; | |
| And kiss’d that unturn’d 1 cheek of our old mother, | |
| Since so our Europe’s world he can discover. | 10 |
| It’s not that French 2 which made his giant 3 see | |
| Those uncouth islands where words frozen be, | |
| Till by the thaw next year they’re voiced again, | |
| When Papagauts, Andouilets and that train | |
| Should be such matter for a Pope to curse, | 15 |
| As he would make; make! makes ten times worse, | |
| And yet so pleasing as shall laughter move, | |
| And be his vein, his gain, his praise, his love. | |
| Sit not still then, keeping fame’s trump unblown, | |
| But get thee, Coryat, to some land unknown; | 20 |
| From whence proclaim thy wisdom with those wonders | |
| Rarer than summer’s snows or winter’s thunders, | |
| And take this praise of that th’ hast done already; | |
| ’Tis pity e’er thy flow should have an eddy. EXPLICIT JOANNES DONES. | |
