To Those Worthy Heroes of Our Age

You noble laureates, whose able quills
In framing odes, do drean the sacred rills
Of Aganippe dry, within whose breasts
The sire of Æsculapius safely rests;
And all the Muses' temple, deign your rays
To cheer the measures of an infant bayes,
Spread forth the banners of your worths to shield
His younger Muse, unable yet to wield
Arms 'gainst the monsters of this critic age,
Envy, detraction, and Saturnine rage.
I to myself assume not double worth,
Or that my teeming fancy can bring forth
Words to make wonder stand amazed, do try
To vindicate the breath of poesy.
In such a thought I'm silent, but because
I've heard invectives belched from the jaws
Of nil-scientes, whose audacious brags
Have raised a thunder like a shoal of dags
T' affright endeavours.
In writing, which if my weak studies hit
Of any fancy speaking worth or wit,
If I have snatchèd any fainting Muse
From the black jaws of envy and abuse,
Shooting a soul into her, and new breath,
Maugre those tongues that doomèd her to death--
Echo forth thanks unto coy Daphne's lover
(About whose fane the sacred Nine do hover)
Whose kindness smiled on my uncrushed designs;
And locked a muse in my unworthy lines,
Able to blunt the darts of envy, pare
The sharpest-hoofèd satyr, and with air
Shrill as the voice of thunder, chide those galls
That belch forth scandals and invective bawls.
Nay, he, befriending me above my merit,
Unseen of any heaved my wingèd spirit
T' a higher court than the Star chamber is,
Where souls may surfeit with immortal bliss;
And taught my fancy, in those quiet slumbers,
What, waking, I have folded up in numbers;
To tell the brood of critics that there are
Some few, or if not some, yet one, that dare
(Backèd by your thrice-sacred worths) expose
These lines and letters to the ken of prose.