Poets may boast, as safely vain, <br />Their works shall with the world remain; <br />Both, bound together, live or die, <br />The verses and the prophecy. <br /> <br />But who can hope his lines should long <br />Last in a daily changing tongue? <br />While they are new, envy prevails; <br />And as that dies, our language fails. <br /> <br />When architects have done their part, <br />The matter may betray their art; <br />Time, if we use ill-chosen stone, <br />Soon brings a well-built palace down. <br /> <br />Poets that lasting marble seek <br />Must carve in Latin or in Greek; <br />We write in sand, our language grows, <br />And, like the tide, our work o'erflows. <br /> <br />Chaucer his sense can only boast, <br />The glory of his numbers lost! <br />Years have defaced his matchless strain, <br />And yet he did not sing in vain. <br /> <br />The beauties which adorned that age, <br />The shining subjects of his rage, <br />Hoping they should immortal prove, <br />Rewarded with success his love. <br /> <br />This was the generous poet's scope, <br />And all an English pen can hope, <br />To make the fair approve his flame, <br />That can so far extend their fame. <br /> <br />Verse, thus designed, has no ill fate <br />If it arrive but at the date <br />Of fading beauty; if it prove <br />But as long-lived as present love.<br /><br />Edmund Waller<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/of-english-verse/
