Lxxiii. Exhortation To Live Well Poem by Ellis Walker

To these great rules with constancy adhere
With noble resolutions, pious fear;
Fear to recede from these, as you would dread
To tear the sacred garland from the head
Of awful Jove, or wickedly deny
To pay your vows made to the deity:
And mind not what the thoughtless vulgar say,
Whose words the winds blow with rank fogs away,
Whose calumnies you can no more prevent,
Than chain those roarers of the element,
When with their airy wings they beat the plain,
And buffet the green surges of the main.