Go back to previous topic
Forum nameFreestyle Board Archives
Topic subjectthe pretensions of poverty
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=20&topic_id=1312&mesg_id=1387
1387, the pretensions of poverty
Posted by idle, Thu Dec-30-04 09:46 PM
Coelum Britannicum
____________________

Thou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch,
To claim a station in the firmament,
Because thy humble cottage, or thy tub,
Nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue
In the cheap sunshine or by shady springs,
With roots and pot-herbs; where thy right hand,
Tearing those humane passions from the mind,
Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish,
Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense,
And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone,
We not require a dull society
Of your necessitated temperence
Or that unnatural stupidity
That knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your forc'd
Falsely exalted passive fortitude
Above the active. This low abject brood,
That fix their seats in mediocrity,
Become your servile minds; but we advance
Such virtues only as admit excess,
Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence,
All-seeing pridence, magnaniminty
That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue
For which antiquity hath left no name,
But patterns only, such as Hercules,
Achilles, Theseus. Back to thy loath'd cell;
And when thou seest the new enlightened sphere,
Study to know but what those worthies were.

T. CAREW (1595?-1645?)

I think he is, in a most polite manner, instructing or suggesting 'mankind' remove there heads from their asses.