Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Ralph Waldo Emerson, comp. (1803–1882). Parnassus: An Anthology of Poetry. 1880.

Ode to Himself

Ben Jonson (1572–1637)

WHERE dost thou careless lie

Buried in ease and sloth?

Knowledge that sleeps, doth die:

And this security,

It is the common moth

That eats on wits and arts, and so destroys them both.

Are all the Aonian springs

Dried up? lies Thespia waste?

Doth Clarius’ harp want strings?

That not a nymph now sings?

Or droop they as disgraced

To see their seats and bowers by chattering pies defaced?

If hence thy silence be,

As ’tis too just a cause,—

Let this thought quicken thee;

Minds that are great and free

Should not on fortune pause;

’Tis crown enough to virtue still, her own applause.