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Title: To His Friend----
Author: Henry Vaughan [
More Titles by Vaughan]
I wonder, James, through the whole history
Of ages, such entails of poverty
Are laid on poets; lawyers--they say--have found
A trick to cut them; would they were but bound
To practise on us, though for this thing we
Should pay--if possible--their bribes and fee.
Search--as thou canst--the old and modern store
Of Rome and ours, in all the witty score
Thou shalt not find a rich one; take each clime,
And run o'er all the pilgrimage of time,
Thou'lt meet them poor, and ev'rywhere descry
A threadbare, goldless genealogy.
Nature--it seems--when she meant us for earth
Spent so much of her treasure in the birth
As ever after niggards her, and she,
Thus stor'd within, beggars us outwardly.
Woful profusion! at how dear a rate
Are we made up! all hope of thrift and state
Lost for a verse. When I by thoughts look back
Into the womb of time, and see the rack
Stand useless there, until we are produc'd
Unto the torture, and our souls infus'd
To learn afflictions, I begin to doubt
That as some tyrants use from their chain'd rout
Of slaves to pick out one whom for their sport
They keep afflicted by some ling'ring art;
So we are merely thrown upon the stage
The mirth of fools and legend of the age.
When I see in the ruins of a suit
Some nobler breast, and his tongue sadly mute
Feed on the vocal silence of his eye,
And knowing cannot reach the remedy;
When souls of baser stamp shine in their store,
And he of all the throng is only poor;
When French apes for foreign fashions pay,
And English legs are dress'd th' outlandish way,
So fine too, that they their own shadows woo,
While he walks in the sad and pilgrim shoe;
I'm mad at Fate, and angry ev'n to sin,
To see deserts and learning clad so thin;
To think how th' earthly usurer can brood
Upon his bags, and weigh the precious food
With palsied hands, as if his soul did fear
The scales could rob him of what he laid there.
Like devils that on hid treasures sit, or those
Whose jealous eyes trust not beyond their nose,
They guard the dirt and the bright idol hold
Close, and commit adultery with gold.
A curse upon their dross! how have we sued
For a few scatter'd chips? how oft pursu'd
Petitions with a blush, in hope to squeeze
For their souls' health, more than our wants, a piece?
Their steel-ribb'd chests and purse--rust eat them both!--
Have cost us with much paper many an oath,
And protestations of such solemn sense,
As if our souls were sureties for the pence.
Should we a full night's learned cares present,
They'll scarce return us one short hour's content.
'Las! they're but quibbles, things we poets feign,
The short-liv'd squibs and crackers of the brain.
But we'll be wiser, knowing 'tis not they
That must redeem the hardship of our way.
Whether a Higher Power, or that star
Which, nearest heav'n, is from the earth most far,
Oppress us thus, or angell'd from that sphere
By our strict guardians are kept luckless here,
It matters not, we shall one day obtain
Our native and celestial scope again.
[The end]
Henry Vaughan's poem: To His Friend----
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