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To the Countesse of Salisbury. August. 1614. |
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Faire, great, and good, since seeing you, we see |
What Heaven can doe, what any Earth can be: |
Since now your beautie shines, now when the Sun |
Growne stale, is to so low a value runne, |
That his disshevel'd beames, and scattered fires |
Serve but for Ladies Periwigs and Tyres |
In Lovers Sonnets: you come to repaire |
Gods booke of creatures, teaching what is faire, |
Since now, when all is withered, shrunk, & dry'd, |
All Vertues ebb'd out to a dead low tyde, |
All the worlds frame being crumbled into sand, |
Where every man thinkes by himselfe to stand, |
Integritie, friendship, and confidence, |
(Ciments of greatnesse) being vapour'd hence, |
And narrow man being fill'd with little shares, |
Court, Citie, Church are all shops of small-wares, |
All having blowne to sparkes their noble fire, |
And drawne their sound gold ingot, into wyre; |
All trying by a love of littlenesse |
To make abridgements, and to draw to lesse, |
Even that nothing, which at first we were; |
Since in these times your greatnesse doth appeare, |
And that we learne by it, that man to get |
Towards him thats infinite, must first be great. |
Since in an age so ill, as none is fit |
So much as to accuse, much lesse mend it,
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[CW: (For] |