To the Same (T. S.), Recovered of the Small Pox

Nature foreseeing that if thou wert gone,
And we her younger Children left alone,
None could with Virtue feed this beggerd age
(For with thee Heir is gone, and Heritage)
In pitty longer lent us Thee, that so
Thou mightst lead mankind, and teach how to go,
How to speak Languages, to discourse how,
How the created book of things to know,
How with smooth cadence harsher verse to file,
Within soft numbers to confine a stile,
And lastly how to love a freind, for this
Lesson the Crown of humane actions is.

Nor was't in pitty to our state alone.
She, as all do, reflected on her owne,
And gave thee longer breath, that our desire
Might learne of thine her beauty to admire
Nor out of pitty to thy youth, whose hearse
Not to thy selfe, but to the Universe
Had Ship-wrack been; For thou hadst stood being dead
Above the sphear of being pittied.
Let then this thy redintegrated wrack
Not Irksome be if onely for our sake,
(For friendship is the greatest argument
Moves us to be from Angels here content)
Yet one inducement more thy stay may plead,
That nature hath so clean thy prison made;
What though she pit thy skin? She onely can
Deface the woman in thee, not thee Man.