Ben Jonson

A child of Queen Elizabeth’s Chapel

WEEP with me, all you that readThis little story;And know, for whom a tear you shedDeath’s self is sorry.‘Twas a child that so did thriveIn grace and feature,As Heaven and Nature seem’d to striveWhich own’d the creature.Years he number’d scarce thirteenWhen Fates turn’d cruel,Yet three fill’d zodiacs had he beenThe stage’s jewel;And did act (what…

Madame,

And almost every vice, almightie gold,That which, to boote with hell, is thought worth heaven,And for it, life, conscience, yea soules are given,Toyles, by grave custome, up and downe the Court,To every squire, or groome, that will reportWell, or ill, only, all the following yeere,Just to the waight their this dayes-presents beare;While it makes huishers…

Lucy, you brightness of our sphere, who are

If works, not th’ author’s, their own grace should look,Whose poems would not wish to be your book?But these, desir’d by you, the maker’s endsCrown with their own. Rare poems ask rare friends.Yet satires, since the most of mankind beTheir unavoided subject, fewest see;For none e’er took that pleasure in sin’s senseBut, when they heard…

Rhyme, the rack of finest wits,

True conceit,Spoiling senses of their treasure,Cozening judgment with a measure,But false weight;Wresting words from their true calling,Propping verse for fear of fallingTo the ground;Jointing syllabes, drowning letters,Fast’ning vowels as with fettersThey were bound!Soon as lazy thou wert known,All good poetry hence was flown,And art banish’d.For a thousand years togetherAll Parnassus’ green did wither,And wit vanish’d.Pegasus…

GENIUS.

To give our Age the day so much desir’d.What all the minutes, houres, weekes, months, and yeares,That hang in file upon these silver haires,Could not produce, beneath the Britaine stroke,The Roman, Saxon, Dane, and Norman yoke,This point of Time hath done. Now London, reareThy forehead high, and on it strive to weareThy choisest gems; teach…

The trawl of unquiet mind drops astern

(bifurcated banners at a tourney)light alchemizes the brass on the bridgeinto sallow goldnow the short northernautumn day closes quicklythe thin coast(of grey Norway is it, or of Russia?)distinguished only as a formal changein the pattern of clouds on our port sideon the deck the strung lights illuminate nomovement but the sullen swill of waterin the…