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