And must I sing? What subject shall I choose! <br />Or whose great name in poets' heaven use, <br />For the more countenance to my active muse? <br /> <br />Hercules? alas, his bones are yet sore <br />With his old earthly labours t' exact more <br />Of his dull godhead were sin. I'll implore <br /> <br />Phoebus. No, tend thy cart still. Envious day <br />Shall not give out that I have made thee stay, <br />And foundered thy hot team, to tune my lay. <br /> <br />Nor will I beg of thee, lord of the vine, <br />To raise my spirits with thy conjuring wine, <br />In the green circle of thy ivy twine. <br /> <br />Pallas, nor thee I call on, mankind maid, <br />That at thy birth mad'st the poor smith afraid. <br />Who with his axe thy father's midwife played. <br /> <br />Go, cramp dull Mars, light Venus, when he snorts, <br />Or with thy tribade trine invent new sports; <br />Thou, nor thy looseness with my making sorts. <br /> <br />Let the old boy, your son, ply his old task, <br />Turn the stale prologue to some painted mask; <br />His absence in my verse is all I ask. <br /> <br />Hermes, the cheater, shall not mix with us, <br />Though he would steal his sisters' Pegasus, <br />And rifle him; or pawn his petasus. <br /> <br />Nor all the ladies of the Thespian lake, <br />Though they were crushed into one form, could make <br />A beauty of that merit, that should take <br /> <br />My muse up by commission; no, I bring <br />My own true fire: now my thought takes wing, <br />And now an epode to deep ears I sing.<br /><br />Ben Jonson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/praeludium/
