That Power Which Erring Men Call Chance.

We Should Be Wary What Persecution We Raise Against The Living Labors Of Public Men, How We Spill That Seasoned Life Of Man, Preserved And Stored Up In Books, Since We See A Kind Of Homicide May Be Thus Committed, Sometimes A Martyrdom; And If It Extend To The Whole Impression, A Kind Of Massacre, Whereof The Execution Ends Not In The Slaying Of An Elemental Life, But Strikes At The Ethereal And Fifth Essence, The Breath Of Reason Itself; Slays An Immortality Rather Than A Life.

Who Kills A Man Kills A Reasonable Creature, God's Image; But He Who Destroys A Good Book, Kills Reason Itself, Kills The Image Of God, As It Were, In The Eye.

Fame, If Not Double Fac'd, Is Double Mouth'd, And With Contrary Blast Proclaims Most Deeds; On Both His Wings, One Black, The Other White, Bears Greatest Names In His Wild Aery Flight.

Love Virtue, She Alone Is Free, She Can Teach Ye How To Climb Higher Than The Sphery Chime; Or, If Virtue Feeble Were, Heav'n Itself Would Stoop To Her.

Alas! What Boots It With Uncessant Care To Tend The Homely Slighted Shepherd's Trade, And Strictly Meditate The Thankless Muse; Were It Not Better Done As Others Use, To Sport With Amaryllis In The Shade, Or With The Tangles Of Neaera's Hair? Fame Is The Spur That The Clear Spirit Doth Raise (that Last Infirmity Of Noble Mind) To Scorn Delights, And Live Laborious Days; But The Fair Guerdon When We Hope To Find, And Think To Burst Out Into Sudden Blaze, Comes The Blind Fury With Th'abhorred Shears, And Slits The Thin-spun Life.