2
A prince with equal power and greatness blessed;
No government, or laws it had
To strengthen and establish it,
Till thy great hand the sceptre swayed,[1]
But groaned under a wretched anarchy of wit:
Unformed and void was then its poesy,
Only some pre-existing matter we
Perhaps could see,
That might foretel what was to be;
A rude and undigested lump it lay,
Like the old chaos, e'er the birth of light and day,
Till thy brave genius like a new creator came,
And undertook the mighty frame.
No shuffled atoms did the well-built work compose,
It from no lucky hit of blundering chance arose,
(As some of this great fabric idly dream)
But wise, all seeing judgment did contrive,
And knowing art its graces give:
No sooner did thy soul with active force and fire
The dull and heavy mass inspire,
But straight throughout it let us see
Proportion, order, harmony,
And every part did to the whole agree,
And straight appeared a beauteous, new-made world of poetry.
3
(Those only foes to art, and art to them)
- ↑ Jonson himself asserted his claim to the honour of having been the founder of the stage, and the first to give it laws. The passage occurs in his well-known lines to Richard Brome:
'I had you for a servant once, Dick Brome,
And you performed a servant's faithful parts:
Now you are got into a nearer room
Of fellowship, professing my old arts.
'And you do do them well; with good applause;
Which you have justly gained from the stage,
By observations of those comic laws
Which I, your master, first did teach the age.’
