poet
born in the City of London
late in 1618. He was one of the leading English poets of the 17th century, with 14 printings of his Works published between 1668 and 1721.
His father, a wealthy citizen, who died shortly before his birth, was a stationer. His mother was wholly given to works of devotion, but it happened that there lay in her parlour a copy of The Faerie Queene
.
Fond archer, Hope! who tak'st thy aim so far,That still or short, or wide thine arrows are!
Why to mute fish should'st thou thyself discoverAnd not to me, they no less silent lover?
To be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city; to be a philosopher, from the world
What shall I do to be forever known,And make the age to come my own?
His time is forever, everywhere his place.
Life is an incurable disease.
We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine,But search of deep philosophy,Wit, eloquence, and poetry;Arts which I lov'd, for they, my friend, were thine.
His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets mightBe wrong; his life, I 'm sure, was in the right.
The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,And drinks, and gapes for drink again;The plants suck in the earth, and areWith constant drinking fresh and fair.
Fill all the glasses there, for whyShould every creature drink but I?Why, man of morals, tell me why?