To Master WILLIAM IEFFREYS, Chaplaine to the Lord Ambassa_dour in Spaine_

      My noble friend, you challenge me to write
    To you in verse, and often you recite,
    My promise to you, and to send you newes;
    As ’tis a thing I very seldome vse,
    And I must write of State, if to Madrid,
    A thing our Proclamations here forbid,
    And that word State such Latitude doth beare,
    As it may make me very well to feare
    To write, nay speake at all, these let you know
    Your power on me, yet not that I will showe 10
    The loue I beare you, in that lofty height,
    So cleere expression, or such words of weight,
    As into Spanish if they were translated,
    Might make the Poets of that Realme amated;
    Yet these my least were, but that you extort
    These numbers from me, when I should report
    In home-spunne prose, in good plaine honest words
    The newes our wofull England vs affords. 
      The Muses here sit sad, and mute the while
    A sort of swine vnseasonably defile 20
    Those sacred springs, which from the by-clift hill
    Dropt their pure Nectar into euery quill;
    In this with State, I hope I doe not deale,
    This onely tends the Muses common-weale. 
      What canst thou hope, or looke for from his pen,
    Who liues with beasts, though in the shapes of men,
    And what a poore few are we honest still,
    And dare to be so, when all the world is ill. 
      I finde this age of our markt with this Fate,
    That honest men are still precipitate 30
    Vnder base villaines, which till th’ earth can vent
    This her last brood, and wholly hath them spent,
    Shall be so, then in reuolution shall
    Vertue againe arise by vices fall;
    But that shall I not see, neither will I
    Maintaine this, as one doth a Prophesie,
    That our King Iames to Rome shall surely goe,
    And from his chaire the Pope shall ouerthrow. 
    But O this world is so giuen vp to hell,
    That as the old Giants, which did once rebell, 40
    Against the Gods, so this now-liuing race
    Dare sin, yet stand, and Ieere heauen in the face. 
      But soft my Muse, and make a little stay,
    Surely thou art not rightly in thy way,
    To my good Ieffrayes was not I about
    To write, and see, I suddainely am out,
    This is pure Satire, that thou speak’st, and I
    Was first in hand to write an Elegie. 
    To tell my countreys shame I not delight. 
    But doe bemoane ’t I am no Democrite:  50
    O God, though Vertue mightily doe grieue
    For all this world, yet will I not beleeue
    But that shees faire and louely,