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"You common people of the skies,
What are you when the moon doth rise?"
Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639), British poet. On His Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia (l. 4-5). . .
New Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1950. Helen Gardner, ed. (1972) Oxford University Press. |
"So, when my mistress shall be seen
In form and beauty of her mind,
By virtue first, then choice, a queen,"
Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639), British poet. On His Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia (l. 16-18). . .
New Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1950. Helen Gardner, ed. (1972) Oxford University Press. |
"As if the spring were all your own,
What are you when the rose is blown?"
Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639), British poet. On His Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia (l. 14-15). . .
New Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1950. Helen Gardner, ed. (1972) Oxford University Press. |
"By weaker accents, what's your praise
When Philomel her voice doth raise?"
Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639), British poet. On His Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia (l. 9-10). . .
New Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1950. Helen Gardner, ed. (1972) Oxford University Press. |
"An Ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country."
Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639), British diplomat, poet. Written in the album of Christopher Fleckmore, c. 1612. Quoted in Izaak Walton, Life of Sir Henry Wotton, published in Reliquiae Wottonianae (1651).
Wotton wrote the remark while in Germany, en route to Venice where he was serving as James I's envoy. However, he spoiled his pun by writing it in Latin, thus reducing "to lie" (ad mentiendum) to one meaning only—and thereby ruining his career. |
"How happy is he born and taught
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill!"
Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639), British poet. The Character of a Happy Life (l. 1-4). . .
New Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1950. Helen Gardner, ed. (1972) Oxford University Press. |
"Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing, yet hath all."
Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639), British poet. The Character of a Happy Life (l. 23-24). . .
New Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1950. Helen Gardner, ed. (1972) Oxford University Press. |
"He first deceas'd; She for a little tri'd
To live without him: lik'd it not, and di'd."
Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639), British poet, diplomat. Upon the Death of Sir Albert Morton's Wife (l. 1-2). . .
Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1918. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. (New ed., rev. and enl., 1939) Oxford University Press. |
"Then, though darkened, you shall say,
When friends fail, and Princes frown,
Virtue is the roughest way,
But proves at night a bed of down."
Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639), British poet. Upon the Sudden Restraint of the Earl of Somerset, Then Falling from Favor (l. 13-16). . .
New Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1950. Helen Gardner, ed. (1972) Oxford University Press. |
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