When your fair hand receives this little book You must not there for prose or verses look. Those empty regions which within you see, May by yourself planted and peopled be: And though we scarce allow your sex to prove Writers (unless the argument be Love); Yet without crime or envy you have room Here, both the scribe and author to become.
[_Upon a Table-Book, &c._] The title in one of Hannah's MS. copies has '_Noble_ Lady'. The person addressed does not seem to have been identified.]
_To the same Lady upon Mr. Burton's Melancholy._
If in this Glass of Humours you do find The passions or diseases of your mind, Here without pain, you safely may endure, Though not to suffer, yet to read your cure. But if you nothing meet you can apply, Then, ere you need, you have a remedy. And I do wish you never may have cause To be adjudg'd by these fantastic laws; But that this book's example may be known, By others' Melancholy, not your own. 10
[Line: 6 _MS._ '_before_ you need'--perhaps better. The lady to whom the _Anatomy_ was likely to be congenial must have been worth knowing.]
Farewell, fond Love, under whose childish whip, I have serv'd out a weary prenti'ship; Thou that hast made me thy scorn'd property, To doat on rocks, but yielding loves to fly: Go, bane of my dear quiet and content, Now practise on some other patient.
Farewell, false Hope, that fann'd my warm desire Till it had rais'd a wild unruly fire, Which nor sighs cool, nor tears extinguish can, Although my eyes out-flow'd the Ocean: 10 Forth of my thoughts for ever, Thing of Air, Begun in error, finish'd in despair.
Farewell, vain World, upon whose restless stage 'Twixt Love and Hope I have fool'd out my age; Henceforth, ere sue to thee for my redress, I'll woo the wind, or court the wilderness; And buried from the day's discovery, Study a slow yet certain way to die.
My woful monument shall be a cell, The murmur of the purling brook my knell; 20 My lasting epitaph the rock shall groan: Thus when sad lovers ask the weeping stone, What wretched thing does in that centre lie? The hollow Echo will reply, 'twas I.
[_The Farewell._] The following are the variants of Malone MS. 22:
To doat on those that lov'd not and to fly Love that woo'd me. Go, bane of my content, And practise ... ]