Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867.
To the King’s Household on Their Withholding His Allowance of SackBen Jonson (1572–1637)
W
His poet sack, the Household will not pay?
Are they so scanted in their store? or driven,
For want of knowing the poet, to say him nay?
Well, they should know him, would the King but grant
His poet leave to sing his Household true:
He ’d frame such ditties of their store and want,
Would make the very Greencloth to look blue,
And rather wish, in their expense of sack,
So the allowance from the King to use,
As the old bard should no canary lack:
’T were better spare a butt, than spill his muse;
For in the genius of a poet’s verse
The King’s fame lives. Go now, deny his tierce.