ХРОНИКА

Оn Mr John Fletcher and his Works, never before published

To flatter living fools is easy sleight,
But hard, to do the living-dead men right.
To praise a landed lord is gainful art,
But thankless to pay tribute to desert.
This should have been my task: I had intent
To bring my rubbish to thy monument,
To stop some crannies there, but that I found
No need of least repair; all firm and sound.
Thy well-built fame doth still itself advance
Above the world's mad zeal and ignorance.
Though thou diedst not possess'd of that same pelf,
Which nobler souls call dirt, the city, wealth;
Yet thou hast left unto the times so great
A legacy, a treasure so complete,
That 'twill be hard, I fear, to prove thy will:
Men will be wrangling, and in doubting still,
How so vast sums of wit were left behind;
And yet nor debts, nor sharers, they can find.
Twas the kind providence of Fate to lock
Some of this treasure up; and keep a stock
For a reserve until these sullen days;
When scorn, and want, and danger, are the bays
That crown the head of merit –
But now he, Who in thy will hath part, is rich and free,
But there's a caveat enter'd by command,
None should pretend, but those can understand.

Henry Moody, Bart.