Of English Verse

POETS may boast, as safely vain,

Their works shall with the world remain;

Both, bound together, live or die,

The verses and the prophecy.

But who can hope his lines should long

Last in a daily changing tongue?

While they are new, envy prevails;

And as that dies, our language fails.

When architects have done their part,

The matter may betray their art;

Time, if we use ill-chosen stone,

Soon brings a well-built palace down.

Poets that lasting marble seek

Must carve in Latin or in Greek;

We write in sand, our language grows,

And, like the tide, our work o'erflows.

Chaucer his sense can only boast,

The glory of his numbers lost!

Years have defaced his matchless strain,

And yet he did not sing in vain.

The beauties which adorned that age,

The shining subjects of his rage,

Hoping they should immortal prove,

Rewarded with success his love.

This was the generous poet's scope,

And all an English pen can hope,

To make the fair approve his flame,

That can so far extend their fame.

Verse, thus designed, has no ill fate

If it arrive but at the date

Of fading beauty; if it prove

But as long-lived as present love.

Edmund Waller

Index to poems in the collection by Edmund Waller