No More Learning

MERITS MAKE THE MAN.

Our honours and our commendations be
Due to the merits, not authority.


297. TO VIRGINS.

Hear, ye virgins, and I'll teach
What the times of old did preach.
Rosamond was in a bower
Kept, as Danae in a tower:
But yet Love, who subtle is,
Crept to that, and came to this.
Be ye lock'd up like to these,
Or the rich Hesperides,
Or those babies in your eyes,
In their crystal nunneries;
Notwithstanding Love will win,
Or else force a passage in:
And as coy be as you can,
Gifts will get ye, or the man.

_Babies in your eyes_, see Note to p. 17.


298. VIRTUE.

Each must in virtue strive for to excel;
_That man lives twice that lives the first life well_.


299. THE BELLMAN.

From noise of scare-fires rest ye free,
From murders _Benedicite_.
From all mischances that may fright
Your pleasing slumbers in the night,
Mercy secure ye all, and keep
The goblin from ye while ye sleep.
Past one o'clock, and almost two!
My masters all, good-day to you.

_Scare-fires_, alarms of fire.


300. BASHFULNESS.

Of all our parts, the eyes express
The sweetest kind of bashfulness.


301. TO THE MOST ACCOMPLISHED GENTLEMAN, MASTER EDWARD NORGATE, CLERK OF
THE SIGNET TO HIS MAJESTY. EPIG.

For one so rarely tun'd to fit all parts,
For one to whom espous'd are all the arts,
Long have I sought for, but could never see
Them all concentr'd in one man, but thee.
Thus, thou that man art whom the fates conspir'd
To make but one, and that's thyself, admir'd.


302. UPON PRUDENCE BALDWIN: HER SICKNESS.

Prue, my dearest maid, is sick,
Almost to be lunatic:
AEsculapius! come and bring
Means for her recovering;
And a gallant cock shall be
Offer'd up by her to thee.