John Denham

Search not to find what lies too deeply hid, Nor to know things whose knowledge is forbid; Nor climb on pyramids, which thy head turn round Standing, and whence no safe descent is found.

Let not the pleasing many thee delight, First judge if those whom thou dost please judge right.

Search not to find how other men offend, But by that glass thy own offences mend; Still seek to learn, yet care not much from whom, (So it be learning) or from whence it come. Of thy own actions, others' judgments learn; Often by small, …

When any great design thou dost intend, Think of the means, the manner, and the end.

Books should to one of these four ends conduce, For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.

Some secrets deep in abstruse darkness lie: To search them thou wilt need a piercing eye.

Wisdom of what herself approves makes choice, Nor is led captive by the common voice.

Wisdom's first progress is to take a view What's decent or indecent, false or true.

That servile path thou nobly dost decline Of tracing word by word, and line by line; A new and nobler way thou dost pursue To make translations, and translators too; They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame, True to his sense, but truer …

Nor ought a genius less than his that writ Attempt translation.

Such is our pride, our folly, or our fate, That few but such as cannot write, translate.

[U]ncertain ways unsafest are.

Variety, which all the rest endears.

Oh, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme! Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull; Strong without rage; without o'erflowing, full.

Though with those streams he no resemblance hold, Whose foam is amber and their gravel gold; His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore, Search not his bottom, but survey his shore.

But wealth is crime enough to him that's poor.

Whatsoever Is worthy of their love, is worth their anger.

Ambition is like love, impatient Both of delays and rivals.

Actions o' th' last age are like almanacks o' th' last year.

But whither am I strayed? I need not raise Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise; Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built; Nor needs thy juster title the foul guilt Of Eastern kings, who, to secure their reign, Must have their …

poetry is of so subtile a spirit, that in the pouring out of one language into another, it will all evaporate; and if a new spirit be not added in the transfusion, there will remain nothing but a caput mortuum, there being certain graces …