Though limitlesse be naturally our love,
We can her powers officiously confine;
We can instruct her orderly to move,
And keepe the compassé wisely we assigne:
To take our faire leave, (till that ampler times
Some glorious object strongly may beget)
We make you tender of these hallowed rimes,
Tile vertuous payment of a worthier debt.
Till to our names that monument we reare
That steele and marble unto dust shall weare.
To this poem are prefixed some commendatory verses, according to the fashion of those times, and among them are the following:
To the Honourable Knight,
Sir Walter Aston.
From humble sheepcoates, to Love's bow and fires,
Thence to the armes of kings, and grieved peeres;[1]
Now to the great Jehovah's acts aspires,
Faire sir, your poet's pen; your noblesse cheeres
His mounting rouse; and with so worthy hand
Applaudes her flight, that nothing she will leave
Above the top, whereon she makes her stand.
So high bright honour learned spirits can heave!
Such lustre lends the poet's polisht verse
Unto nobility, that after-times
Shall thinke their patron's vertues they rehearse,
When vertuous men they caracter in rimes.
You raise his thoughts with full desire of fame;
And amongst heroes he enroles your name.
- ↑ That is, from "Pasterals" to "Heroical Epistles," and thence to the "Barons' Wan."
