Page:The Works of Abraham Cowley - volume 1 (ed. Aikin) (1806).djvu/218

Well: but in love thou dost pretend to reign;
There thine the power and lordship is;
Thou bad'st me write, and write, and write again;
'T was such a way as could not miss.
I, like a fool, did thee obey:
I wrote, and wrote, but still I wrote in vain;
For, after all my expence of wit and pain,
A rich, unwriting hand carried the prize away.

Thus I complain'd, and straight the Muse reply'd,
That she had given me fame.
Bounty immense! and that too must be try'd
When I myself am nothing but a name.
Who now, what reader does not strive
T' invalidate the gift whilst we 're alive?
For, when a poet now himself doth show,
As if he were a common foc,
All draw upon him, all around,
And every part of him they wound,
Happy the man that gives the deepest blow:
And this is all, kind Muse to thee we owe.
Then in rage I took,
And out at window threw,
Ovid and Horace, all the chiming crew;
Homer himself went with them too;
Hardly escap'd the sacred Mantuan book:
I my own offspring, like Agave, tore,
And I resolv'd, nay, and I think I swore,
That I no more the ground would till and sow,
Where only flowery weeds instead of corn did grow.