HERE'S no more news than virtue ; I may as well <br />Tell you Calais, or Saint Michael's tales, as tell <br />That vice doth here habitually dwell. <br /> <br />Yet as, to get stomachs, we walk up and down, <br />And toil to sweeten rest ; so, may God frown, <br />If, but to loathe both, I haunt court or town. <br /> <br />For, here, no one's from th' extremity <br />Of vice by any other reason free, <br />But that the next to him still 's worse than he. <br /> <br />In this world's warfare, they whom rugged Fate <br />(God's commissary) doth so throughly hate, <br />As in the court's squadron to marshal their state ; <br /> <br />if they stand arm'd with silly honesty, <br />With wishes, prayers, and neat integrity, <br />Like Indians 'gainst Spanish hosts they be. <br /> <br />Suspicious boldness to this place belongs, <br />And to have as many ears as all have tongues ; <br />Tender to know, tough to acknowledge wrongs. <br /> <br />Believe me, sir, in my youth's giddiest days, <br />When to be like the court was a play's praise, <br />Plays were not so like courts, as courts like plays. <br /> <br />Then let us at these mimic antics jest, <br />Whose deepest projects and egregious gests <br />Are but dull morals of a game at chests. <br /> <br />But now 'tis incongruity to smile, <br />Therefore I end ; and bid farewell awhile ; <br />“ At court,”—though “ from court” were the better style.<br /><br />John Donne<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-sir-henry-wotton-ii/
