Know, best of friends, however wild report May justly say, I am unapt to sort With your opinion or society (Which truth would shame me, did I it deny), 50 There 's something in me says, I dare make good, When honour calls me, all I want in blood.
Put off your giant titles, then I can Stand in your judgement's blank an equal man. Though hills advanced are above the plain, They are but higher earth, nor must disdain Alliance with the vale: we see a spade Can level them, and make a mount a glade. Howe'er we differ in the Heralds' book, He that mankind's extraction shall look 60 In Nature's rolls, must grant we all agree In our best part's immortal pedigree: You must by that perspective only view My service, else 'twill ne'er show worthy you.
You see I court you bluntly, like a friend, Not like a mistress; my Muse is not penn'd For smooth and oily flights: and I indent To use more honesty than compliment.
But I have done; in lieu of all you give, Receive his thankful tribute, who must live 70 Your vow'd observer, and devotes a heart Which will in death seal the bold counterpart.
[_A Letter._] I do not know any clue to the object of this epistle. King, like most churchmen of distinction at the time, was on familiar terms with divers 'persons of quality'. But it _might_ be a mere literary exercise--a 'copy of verses'.]
[Line: 23 'Nod regardant' is good. It shows, with 'passant' just before that his own reference to heraldry was still floating in King's mind.]
[Line: 54 Either of two of the numerous senses of 'blank' would come in here. One is _tabula rasa_, the judgement being obscured by no prepossession; the other 'bull's-eye' or 'target'.]
[Line: 59 Orig. as usual, 'Heralds', with no apostrophe to make case or number. If anybody prefers 'herald's' I have no objection.]
[Line: 67 indent] In the sense of 'contract', 'engage'.]
My best of friends! what needs a chain to tie One by your merit bound a votary? Think you I have some plot upon my peace, I would this bondage change for a release? Since 'twas my fate your prisoner to be, Heav'n knows I nothing fear, but liberty.
Yet you do well, that study to prevent, After so rich a stock of favour spent On one so worthless, lest my memory Should let so dear an obligation die 10 Without record. This made my precious Friend Her token, as an antidote, to send, Against forgetful poisons; That as they Who Vespers late, and early Mattins say Upon their beads, so on this linked score In golden numbers I might reckon o'er Your virtues and my debt, which does surmount The trivial laws of popular account: For that, within this emblematic knot, Your beauteous mind, and my own fate, is wrote. 20