To Sir William Davenant, upon His Two First Books of Gondibert. Written in France

Thus the wise nightingale that leaves her home,Her native wood, when storms and winter come,Pursuing constantly the cheerful spring,To foreign groves does her old music bring.

The drooping Hebrews' banish'd harps, unstrung,At Babylon upon the willows hung;Yours sounds aloud, and tells us you excelNo less in courage, than in singing well;While, unconcern'd, you let your country knowThey have impoverish'd themselves, not you;Who, with the Muses' help, can mock those fatesWhich threaten kingdoms, and disorder states.So Ovid, when from Cæsar's rage he fled,The Roman Muse to Pontus with him led;Where he so sung, that we, through pity's glass,See Nero milder than Augustus was.Hereafter such, in thy behalf, shall beTh' indulgent censure of posterity.To banish those who with such art can sing,Is a rude crime, which its own curse doth bring;Ages to come shall ne'er know how they fought,Nor how to love, their present youth be taught.

This to thyself.--Now to thy matchless book,Wherein those few that can with judgment look,May find old love in pure fresh language told,Like new-stamp'd coin made out of angel-gold.Such truth in love as th'antique world did know,In such a style as courts may boast of now;Which no bold tales of gods or monsters swell,But human passions, such as with us dwell.Man is thy theme; his virtue or his rageDrawn to the life in each elaborate page.Mars nor Bellona are not namèd here,But such a Gondibert as both might fear;Venus had here, and Hebe, been outshinedBy the bright Birtha and thy Rhodalind.Such is thy happy skill, and such the oddsBetwixt thy worthies and the Grecian gods!Whose deities in vain had here come down,Where mortal beauty wears the Sovereign crown;Such as of flesh compos'd, by flesh and blood,Though not resisted, may be understood.