Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham

Of English Verse

1 Poets may boast, as safely vain,
  Their works shall with the world remain:
  Both, bound together, live or die,
  The verses and the prophecy.

2 But who can hope his line should long
  Last in a daily changing tongue?
  While they are new, envy prevails;
  And as that dies, our language fails.

3 When architects have done their part,
  The matter may betray their art;
  Time, if we use ill-chosen stone,
  Soon brings a well-built palace down.

4 Poets that lasting marble seek,
  Must carve in Latin, or in Greek;
  We write in sand, our language grows,
  And like the tide, our work o’erflows.

5 Chaucer his sense can only boast;
  The glory of his numbers lost!
  Years have defaced his matchless strain;
  And yet he did not sing in vain.

6 The beauties which adorn’d that age,
  The shining subjects of his rage,
  Hoping they should immortal prove,
  Rewarded with success his love.

7 This was the gen’rous poet’s scope;
  And all an English pen can hope,
  To make the fair approve his flame,
  That can so far extend their fame.

8 Verse, thus design’d, has no ill fate,
  If it arrive but at the date
  Of fading beauty; if it prove
  But as long-lived as present love.