Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

To William Sidney, on his Birthday

Ben Jonson (1572–1637)

GIVE me my cup, but from the Thespian well,

That I may tell to Sidney, what

This day doth say,

And he may think on that

Which I do tell

When all the noise

Of these forced joys

Are fled and gone,

And he with his best genius left alone,

’Twill be exacted of your name whose son,

Whose nephew, whose grandchild you are;

And men will then

Say you have followed far,

When well begun:

Which must be now: they teach you how;

And he that stays

To live until to-morrow, hath lost two days.

Then

The birthday shines, when logs not burn, but men.