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Title: To Master George Sandys
Author: Michael Drayton [
More Titles by Drayton]
To Master George Sandys, Treasurer for the English Colony in VIRGINIA
Friend, if you think my Papers may supply
You, with some strange omitted Novelty,
Which others' Letters yet have left untold,
You take me off, before I can take hold
Of you at all; I put not thus to Sea,
For two months Voyage to Virginia,
With news which now, a little something here,
But will be nothing ere it can come there.
I fear, as I do Stabbing; this word, State,
I dare not speak of the Palatinate,
Although some men make it their hourly theme,
And talk what's done in Austria, and in Beam,
I may not so; what Spinola intends,
Nor with his Dutch, which way Prince Maurice bends;
To other men, although these things be free,
Yet (GEORGE) they must be mysteries to me.
I scarce dare praise a virtuous friend that's dead,
Lest for my lines he should be censured;
It was my hap before all other men
To suffer shipwreck by my forward pen:
When King JAMES entered; at which joyful time
I taught his title to this Isle in rime:
And to my part did all the Muses win,
With high-pitch Paeans to applaud him in:
When cowardise had tied up every tongue,
And all stood silent, yet for him I sung;
And when before by danger I was dared,
I kicked her from me, nor a jot I spared.
Yet had not my cleere spirit in Fortunes's scorn,
Me above earth and her afflictions born;
He next my God on whom I built my trust,
Had left me troden lower then the dust:
But let this pass; in the extreamest ill,
Apollo's brood must be courageous still,
Let Pies, and Daws, sit dumb before their death,
Only the Swan sings at the parting breath.
And (worthy GEORGE) by industry and use,
Let's see what lines Virginia will produce;
Go on with OVID, as you have begun,
With the first five Books; let your numbers run
Glib as the former, so shall it live long,
And do much honour to the English tongue:
Entice the Muses thither to repair,
Entreat them gently, train them to that air,
For they from hence may thither hap to fly,
T'wards the sad time which but to fast doth hie,
For Poesie is followed with such spite,
By groveling drones that never raught her height,
That she must hence, she may no longer stay:
The dreary fates prefixed have the day,
Of her departure, which is now come on,
And they command her straight ways to be gone;
That bestiall heard so hotly her pursue,
And to her succour, there be very few,
Nay none at all, her wrongs that will redress,
But she must wander in the wilderness,
Like to the woman, which that holy JOHN
Beheld in Pathmos in his vision.
As th' English now, so did the stiff-necked Jews,
Their noble Prophets utterly refuse,
And of these men such poor opinions had;
They counted Esay and Ezechiel mad;
When Jeremy his Lamentations writ,
They thought the Wizard quite out of his wit,
Such sots they were, as worthily to lie,
Locked in the chains of their captivity,
Knowledge hath still her Eddy in her Flow,
So it hath been, and it will still be so.
That famous Greece where learning flourisht most,
Hath of her muses long since left to boast,
Th' unlettered Turk, and rude Barbarian trades,
Where HOMER sang his lofty Iliads;
And this vast volume of the world hath taught,
Much may to pass in little time be brought.
As if to Symptoms we may credit give,
This very time, wherein we two now live,
Shall in the compass, wound the Muses more,
Then all the old English ignorance before;
Base Balatry is so beloved and sought,
And those brave numbers are put by for naught,
Which rarely read, were able to awake,
Bodies from graves, and to the ground to shake
The wandering clouds, and to our men at arms,
'Gainst pikes and muskets were most powerfull charms.
That, but I know, insuing ages shall,
Raise her again, who now is in her fall;
And out of dust reduce our scattered rimes,
Th' rejected jewels of these slothfull times,
Who with the Muses would misspend an hour,
But let blind Gothish Barbarism devour
These feverous Dogdays, blest by no record,
But to be everlastingly abhorr'd.
If you vouchsafe rescription, stuff your quill
With natural bounties, and impart your skill,
In the description of the place, that I,
May become learned in the soil thereby;
Of noble Wyats health, and let me hear,
The Governour; and how our people there,
Increase and labour, what supplies are sent,
Which I confess shall give me much content;
But you may save your labour if you please,
To write to me ought of your Savages.
As savage slaves be in great Britain here,
As any one that you can show me there
And though for this, I'll say I do not thirst,
Yet I should like it well to be the first,
Whose numbers hence into Virginia flew,
So (noble Sandis) for this time adue.
[The end]
Michael Drayton's poem: To Master George Sandys
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