A Beardless Cynic Is The Shame Of

Revenge, At First Though Sweet, Bitter Ere Long Back On Itself Recoils.

Alas! What Boots It With Uncessant Care To Tend The Homely Slighted Shepherd's Trade, And Strictly Meditate The Thankless Muse; Were It Not Better Done As Others Use, To Sport With Amaryllis In The Shade, Or With The Tangles Of Neaera's Hair? Fame Is The Spur That The Clear Spirit Doth Raise (that Last Infirmity Of Noble Mind) To Scorn Delights, And Live Laborious Days; But The Fair Guerdon When We Hope To Find, And Think To Burst Out Into Sudden Blaze, Comes The Blind Fury With Th'abhorred Shears, And Slits The Thin-spun Life.

Where Shame Is, There Is Also Fear.

Now Conscience Wakes Despair That Slumber'd,-wakes The Bitter Memory Of What He Was, What Is, And What Must Be Worse.

O Sun, To Tell Thee How I Hate Thy Beams That Bring To My Remembrance From What State I Fell, How Glorious Once Above Thy Sphere.