ON BEN: IONSON. TO MEMORIE
I doe not blame their paines who did not doubt
By labour of the Circle to finde out
The Quadrature; nor can I thinke it strange
That others should prove constancie in change.
Hee study'd not in vaine, who hop'd to give
A Body to the Eccho, to make it live,
Be seene, and felt; nor hee whose Art would borrow
Beliefe for shaping yesterday, to morrow:
But heere I yield; Invention, Study, Cost,
Time, and the Art of Art it self is lost.
When any fraile ambition undertakes
For Honour, profit, praise, or all their sakes,
To speake unto the world in perfect sense,
Pure Judgement IONSON, 'tis an excellence
Suted his Pen alone, which yet to doe,
Requires himselfe, and 'twere a Labour too
Crowning the best of POETS, say all sorts
Of bravest Acts must die, without reports,
Cound learned knowledge barren, fame abhord,
Let Memorie be nothing but a word:
Grant IONSON th'only Genius of the Times,
Fix him a constellation in all Rhimes,
All height, all secresies of wit invoke
The vertue of his Name, to ease the yoke
Of barbarisme; yet this lends only praise
To such as write, but addes not to his Bayes:

For hee will grow more fresh in every Story,
Out of the perfum'd Spring of his owne Glorie.

GEORGE DONNE

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