Go, let the diving negro seek
For gems, hid in some forlorn creek:
We all pearls scorn,
Save what the dewy morn
Congeals upon each little spire of grass,
Which careless shepherds beat down as they pass:
And gold ne'er here appears,
Save what the yellow Ceres bears,
Blest silent groves, oh may ye be,
For ever, mirth's best nursery !
May pure contents
For ever pitch their tents
Upon these downs, these meads, these rocks, these mountains.
And peace still slumber by these purling fountains:
Which we may, every year,
Meet when we come a-fishing here.
Piscator. Trust me, Scholar, I thank you heartily for these Verses: they
be choicely good, and doubtless made by a lover of angling. Come,
now, drink a glass to me, and I will requite you with another very good
copy: it is a farewell to the vanities of the world, and some say written
by Sir Harry Wotton, who I told you was an excellent angler. But let
them be writ by whom they will, he that writ them had a brave soul, and
must needs be possess with happy thoughts at the time of their
composure.
Farewell, ye gilded follies, pleasing troubles;
Farewell, ye honour'd rags, ye glorious bubbles;
Fame's but a hollow echo, Gold, pure clay;
Honour the darling but of one short day;
Beauty, th' eye's idol, but a damask'd skin;
State, but a golden prison, to live in
And torture free-born minds; embroider'd Trains,
Merely but pageants for proud swelling veins;
And Blood allied to greatness is alone
Inherited, not purchas'd, nor our own.
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