Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Ben Jonson. 15731637194. A Part of an Ode to the Immortal Memory and Friendship of that noble pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison
IT is not growing like a tree | |
In bulk, doth make man better be; | |
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, | |
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere: | |
A lily of a day | 5 |
Is fairer far in May, | |
Although it fall and die that night; | |
It was the plant and flower of light. | |
In small proportions we just beauties see; | |
And in short measures, life may perfect be. | 10 |
Call, noble Lucius, then for wine, | |
And let thy looks with gladness shine: | |
Accept this garland, plant it on thy head, | |
And think—nay, know—thy Morison ‘s not dead. | |
He leap’d the present age, | 15 |
Possest with holy rage | |
To see that bright eternal Day | |
Of which we Priests and Poets say | |
Such truths as we expect for happy men; | |
And there he lives with memory—and Ben | 20 |
Jonson: who sung this of him, ere he went | |
Himself to rest, | |
Or tast a part of that full joy he meant | |
To have exprest | |
In this bright Asterism | 25 |
Where it were friendship’s schism— | |
Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry— | |
To separate these twy | |
Lights, the Dioscuri, | |
And keep the one half from his Harry. | 30 |
But fate doth so alternate the design, | |
Whilst that in Heav’n, this light on earth must shine. | |
And shine as you exalted are! | |
Two names of friendship, but one star: | |
Of hearts the union: and those not by chance | 35 |
Made, or indenture, or leased out to advance | |
The profits for a time. | |
No pleasures vain did chime | |
Of rimes or riots at your feasts, | |
Orgies of drink or feign’d protests; | 40 |
But simple love of greatness and of good, | |
That knits brave minds and manners more than blood. | |
This made you first to know the Why | |
You liked, then after, to apply | |
That liking, and approach so one the t’other | 45 |
Till either grew a portion of the other: | |
Each stylèd by his end | |
The copy of his friend. | |
You lived to be the great surnames | |
And titles by which all made claims | 50 |
Unto the Virtue—nothing perfect done | |
But as a CARY or a MORISON. | |
And such the force the fair example had | |
As they that saw | |
The good, and durst not practise it, were glad | 55 |
That such a law | |
Was left yet to mankind, | |
Where they might read and find | |
FRIENDSHIP indeed was written, not in words, | |
And with the heart, not pen, | 60 |
Of two so early men, | |
Whose lines her rules were and records: | |
Who, ere the first down bloomèd on the chin, | |
Had sow’d these fruits, and got the harvest in. |