Where dost thou careless lie, <br />Buried in ease and sloth? <br />Knowledge that sleeps doth die; <br />And this security, <br />It is the common moth <br />That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both. <br /> <br />Are all th' Aonian springs <br />Dried up? lies Thespia waste? <br />Doth Clarius' harp want strings, <br />That not a nymph now sings? <br />Or droop they as disgrac'd, <br />To see their seats and bowers by chatt'ring pies defac'd? <br /> <br />If hence thy silence be, <br />As 'tis too just a cause, <br />Let this thought quicken thee: <br />Minds that are great and free <br />Should not on fortune pause; <br />'Tis crown enough to virtue still, her own applause. <br /> <br />What though the greedy fry <br />Be taken with false baites <br />Of worded balladry, <br />And think it poesy? <br />They die with their conceits, <br />And only piteous scorn upon their folly waits. <br /> <br />Then take in hand thy lyre, <br />Strike in thy proper strain, <br />With Japhet's line aspire <br />Sol's chariot for new fire, <br />To give the world again; <br />Who aided him will thee, the issue of Jove's brain. <br /> <br />And since our dainty age <br />Cannot endure reproof, <br />Make not thyself a page <br />To that strumpet, the stage, <br />But sing high and aloof, <br />Safe from the wolf's black jaw and the dull ass's hoof.<br /><br />Ben Jonson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-ode-to-himself-2/
