Among Unequals What Society Can Sort, What

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.

With Diadem And Sceptre High Advanced, The Lower Still I Fall; Only Supreme In Misery; Such Joy Ambition Finds.

His Form Had Yet Not Lost All Her Original Brightness, Nor Appear'd Less Than Archangel Ruin'd, And Th' Excess Of Glory Obscur'd.

But O Yet More Miserable! Myself My Sepulchre, A Moving Grave.

And The Earth Self-balanced On Her Centre Hung.