ble friend, you challenge me to write
To you in verse, and often you recite,
My promise to you, and to send you newes;
As 'tis a thing I very seldome vse,
And I must write of State, if to _Madrid_,
A thing our Proclamations here forbid,
And that word State such Latitude doth beare,
As it may make me very well to feare
To write, nay speake at all, these let you know
Your power on me, yet not that I will showe 10
The loue I beare you, in that lofty height,
So cleere expression, or such words of weight,
As into _Spanish_ if they were translated,
Might make the Poets of that Realme amated;
Yet these my least were, but that you extort
These numbers from me, when I should report
In home-spunne prose, in good plaine honest words
The newes our wofull _England_ vs affords.
The Muses here sit sad, and mute the while
A sort of swine vnseasonably defile 20
Those sacred springs, which from the by-clift hill
Dropt their pure _Nectar_ into euery quill;
In this with State, I hope I doe not deale,
This onely tends the Muses common-weale.
What canst thou hope, or looke for from his pen,
Who liues with beasts, though in the shapes of men,
And what a poore few are we honest still,
And dare to be so, when all the world is ill.
I finde this age of our markt with this Fate,
That honest men are still precipitate 30
Vnder base villaines, which till th' earth can vent
This her last brood, and wholly hath them spent,
Shall be so, then in reuolution shall
Vertue againe arise by vices fall;
But that shall I not see, neither will I
Maintaine this, as one doth a Prophesie,
That our King _Iames_ to _Rome_ shall surely goe,
And from his chaire the _Pope_ shall ouerthrow.
But O this world is so giuen vp to hell,
That as the old Giants, which did once rebell, 40
Against the Gods, so this now-liuing race
Dare sin, yet stand, and Ieere heauen in the face.
But soft my Muse, and make a little stay,
Surely thou art not rightly in thy way,
To my good _Ieffrayes_ was not I about
To write, and see, I suddainely am out,
This is pure _Satire_, that thou speak'st, and I
Was first in hand to write an Elegie.
To tell my countreys shame I not delight.
But doe