Ben Jonson (1572 – 1637)
English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor, most famous for his plays Volpone and The Alchemist, his lyrics, his influence on Jacobean and Caroline poets, his theory of humours, his contentious personality, and his friendship and rivalry with William Shakespeare.
Hang sorrow! care'll kill a cat.
Ambition, like a torrent, ne'er looks back;
And is a swelling, and the last affection
A high mind can put off; being both a rebel
Unto the soul and reason, and enforceth
All laws, all conscience, treads upon religion,
and offereth violence to nature's self.
It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log, dry, bald and sere:
A lily of a day,
Is fairer far, in May,
Although it fall, and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.
If all you boast of your great art be true;
Sure, willing poverty lives most in you.
As he brews, so shall he drink.
There shall be no love lost.
The voice so sweet, the words so fair,
As some soft chime had stroked the air;
And, though the sound were parted thence,
Still left an echo in the sense.
Greatness of name in the father oft-times overwhelms the son; they stand too near one another. The shadow kills the growth: so much, that we see the grandchild come more and oftener to be heir of the first.
That Shakespeare wanted Art.
Thy praise or dispraise is to me alike;
One doth not stroke me, nor the other strike.
Underneath this sable hearse
Lies the subject of all verse,—
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother.
Death, ere thou hast slain another,
Learn'd and fair and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.
Those that merely talk and never think,
That live in the wild anarchy of drink.
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy!
My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now. For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,
And, if no other misery, yet age!
Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry:
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.
Still to be powder'd, still perfum'd,
Lady, it is to be presum'd,
Though art's hid causes are not found,
All is not sweet, all is not sound.
Give me a look, give me a face,
That makes simplicity a grace;
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free,
Such sweet neglect more taketh me
Than all the adulteries of art:
They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.
I now think, Love is rather deaf, than blind,
For else it could not be,
That she,
Whom I adore so much, should so slight me,
And cast my love behind.