When in the fresh and beauteous fields he may
With various healthful pleasures fill the day?
If there be man (ye gods!) I ought to hate,
Dependance and attendance be his fate.
Still let him busy be, and in a crowd,
And very much a slave, and very proud:
Thus he perhaps powerful and rich may grow;
No matter, O ye gods! that I'll allow :
But let him peace and freedom never see;
Let him not love this life, who loves not me.

MARTIAL, LIB. II. EP. LIII.

66 Vis fieri liber ?" &c.

OULD you be free? 'Tis your chief wish, you

say:

Come on; I'll shew thee, friend, the certain way. If to no feasts abroad thou lov'st to go,

Whilst bounteous God does bread at home bestow;
If thou the goodness of thy clothes dost prize
By thine own use, and not by others' eyes;
If (only safe from weathers) thou can'st dwell
In a small house, but a convenient shell;
If thou, without a sigh, or golden wish,
Canst look upon thy beechen bowl, and dish;
If in thy mind such power and greatness be,
The Persian king's a slave compar'd with thee.

MARTIAL, LIB. II. EP. LXVIII.

"Quod te nomine," &c.

HAT I do you, with humble bows no more,
And danger of my naked head, adore;

That I, who, Lord and master, cry'd erewhile, Salute you, in a new and different stile,

By your own name, a scandal to you now,
Think not, that I forget myself or you :
By loss of all things, by all others sought,
This freedom, and the freeman's hat is bought.
A lord and master no man wants, but he
Who o'er himself has no authority,

Who does for honours and for riches strive,
And follies, without which lords cannot live.
If thou from fortune dost no servant crave,
Believe it, thou no master need'st to have.

ODE, UPON LIBERTY.

1.

REEDOM with Virtue takes her seat;
Her proper place, her only scene,
Is in the golden mean,

She lives not with the poor, nor with the great.
The wings of those Necessity has clipt,

And they're in Fortune's Bridewell whipt
To the laborious task of bread;

These are by various tyrants captive led.
Now wild Ambition with imperious force

Rides, reins, and spurs them, like th' unruly horse.

And servile Avarice yokes them now,
Like toilsome oxen, to the plow.

And sometimes Lust, like the misguiding light,
Draws them through all the labyrinths of night.
any few among the great there be
From these insulting passions free,

If

Yet we ev'n those, too, fetter'd see

By custom, business, crowds, and formal decency.
And wheresoe'er they stay, and wheresoe'er they go,
Impertinencies round them flow:

These are the small uneasy things

Which about greatness still are found,

And rather it molest, than wound:

Like gnats, which too much heat of summer brings;

But cares do swarm there, too, and those have stings: As, when the honey does too open lie,

A thousand wasps about it fly:

Nor will the master ev'n to share admit;

The master stands aloof, and dares not taste of it.

2.

'Tis morning well; I fain would yet sleep on;
You cannot now; you must be gone
To court, or to the noisy hall:

Besides, the rooms without are crowded all;
The stream of business does begin,

And a spring-tide of clients is come in.
Ah, cruel guards, which this poor prisoner keep!
Will they not suffer him to sleep?

Make an escape; out at the postern flee,
And get some blessed hours of liberty:
With a few friends, and a few dishes dine,

And much of mirth and moderate wine.

To thy bent mind some relaxation give,
And steal one day out of thy life, to live.
Oh, happy man (he cries) to whom kind heaven
Has such a freedom always given!

Why, mighty madman, what should hinder thee
From being every day as free?

3.

In all the freeborn nations of the air,
Never did bird a spirit so mean and sordid bear,

As to exchange his native liberty

Of soaring boldly up into the sky,

His liberty to sing, to perch, or fly,

When, and wherever he thought good,

And all his innocent pleasures of the wood,
For a more plentiful or constant food.
Nor ever did ambitious rage
Make him into a painted cage,

Or the false forest 20 of a well-hung room,
For honour and preferment, come.

Now, blessings on you all, ye heroic race,
Who keep your primitive powers and rights so well,
Though men and angels fell.

Of all material lives the highest place

To you is justly given;

And ways and walks the nearest heaven. Whilst wretched we, yet vain and proud, think fit

To boast, that we look up to it.

Even to the universal tyrant, Love,

You homage pay but once a year:

20 Alluding, no doubt, to the tapestry, common enough, and often very fine too, of Cowley's time.

None so degenerous and unbirdly21 prove,
As his perpetual yoke to bear.
None, but a few unhappy houshold fowl,

Whom human lordship does controul;
Who from their birth corrupted were
By bondage, and by man's example here.

4.

He's no small prince, who every day
Thus to himself can say;

Now will I sleep, now eat, now sit, now walk,
Now meditate alone, now with acquaintance talk.
This I will do, here I will stay,

Or, if my fancy call me away,

My man and I will presently go ride;
(For we, before, have nothing to provide,
Nor, after, are to render an account)
To Dover, Berwick, or the Cornish mount.
If thou but a short journey take,

As if thy last thou wert to make,

Business must be despatch'd, ere thou canst part,
Nor canst thou stir, unless there be

A hundred horse and men to wait on thee,
And many a mule, and many a cart;
What an unwieldy man thou art!
The Rhodian Colossus so

A journey, too, might go.

21 A happy coinage of a word. Degenerous is the old (and better?) form of degenerate; and why not unbirdly as well as unmanly?