A Part of an Ode

2IT is not growing like a tree

3 In bulk, doth make man better be;

4Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,

5To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:

6 A lily of a day

7 Is fairer far in May,

8 Although it fall and die that night;

9 It was the plant and flower of light.

10In small proportions we just beauties see;

11And in short measures, life may perfect be.

12 Call, noble Lucius, then for wine,

13 And let thy looks with gladness shine:

14Accept this garland, plant it on thy head,

15And think — nay, know — thy Morison 's not dead.

16 He leap'd the present age,

17 Possest with holy rage

18 To see that bright eternal Day

19 Of which we Priests and Poets say

20Such truths as we expect for happy men;

21And there he lives with memory — and Ben

22Jonson: who sung this of him, ere he went

23 Himself to rest,

24Or tast a part of that full joy he meant

25 To have exprest

26 In this bright Asterism

27 Where it were friendship's schism —

28Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry —

29 To separate these twy

30 Lights, the Dioscuri,

31And keep the one half from his Harry.

32But fate doth so alternate the design,

33Whilst that in Heav'n, this light on earth must shine.

34 And shine as you exalted are!

35 Two names of friendship, but one star:

36Of hearts the union: and those not by chance

37Made, or indenture, or leased out to advance

38 The profits for a time.

39 No pleasures vain did chime

40 Of rimes or riots at your feasts,

41 Orgies of drink or feign'd protests;

42But simple love of greatness and of good,

43That knits brave minds and manners more than blood.

44 This made you first to know the Why

45 You liked, then after, to apply

46That liking, and approach so one the t'other

47Till either grew a portion of the other:

48 Each styled by his end

49 The copy of his friend.

50 You lived to be the great surnames

51 And titles by which all made claims

52Unto the Virtue — nothing perfect done

53But as a CARY or a MORISON.

54And such the force the fair example had

55 As they that saw

56The good, and durst not practise it, were glad

57 That such a law

58 Was left yet to mankind,

59 Where they might read and find

60FRIENDSHIP indeed was written, not in words,

61 And with the heart, not pen,

62 Of two so early men,

63Whose lines her rules were and records:

64Who, ere the first down bloomed on the chin,

65Had sow'd these fruits, and got the harvest in.