things be free,
    Yet (GEORGE) they must be misteries to mee. 
      I scarce dare praise a vertuous friend that’s dead,
    Lest for my lines he should be censured;
    It was my hap before all other men
    To suffer shipwrack by my forward pen:  20
    When King IAMES entred; at which ioyfull time
    I taught his title to this Ile in rime: 
    And to my part did all the Muses win,
    With high-pitch Paeans to applaud him in: 
    When cowardise had tyed vp euery tongue,
    And all stood silent, yet for him I sung;
    And when before by danger I was dar’d,
    I kick’d her from me, nor a iot I spar’d. 
    Yet had not my cleere spirit in Fortunes scorne,
    Me aboue earth and her afflictions borne; 30
    He next my God on whom I built my trust,
    Had left me troden lower then the dust: 
    But let this passe; in the extreamest ill,
    Apollo’s brood must be couragious still,
    Let Pies, and Dawes, sit dumb before their death,
    Onely the Swan sings at the parting breath. 
    And (worthy GEORGE) by industry and vse,
    Let’s see what lines Virginia will produce;
    Goe on with OVID, as you haue begunne,
    With the first fiue Bookes; let your numbers run 40
    Glib as the former, so shall it liue long,
    And doe much honour to the English tongue: 
    Intice the Muses thither to repaire,
    Intreat them gently, trayne them to that ayre,
    For they from hence may thither hap to fly,
    T’wards the sad time which but to fast doth hie,
    For Poesie is follow’d with such spight,
    By groueling drones that neuer raught her height,
    That she must hence, she may no longer staye: 
    The driery fates prefixed haue the day, 50
    Of her departure, which is now come on,
    And they command her straight wayes to be gon;
    That bestiall heard so hotly her pursue,
    And to her succour, there be very few,
    Nay none at all, her wrongs that will redresse,
    But she must wander in the wildernesse,
    Like to the woman, which that holy IOHN
    Beheld in Pathmos in his vision. 
      As th’ English now, so did the stiff-neckt Iewes,
    Their noble Prophets vtterly refuse, 60
    And of these men such poore opinions had;
    They counted Esay and Ezechiel mad;
    When Ieremy his Lamentations writ,
    They thought the Wizard quite out of his wit,
    Such sots they were, as worthily to ly,
    Lock’t in the chaines of their captiuity,
    Knowledge hath still her Eddy in her Flow,
    So it hath beene, and it will still be so. 
      That famous Greece where learning flourisht most,
    Hath of her muses long since