TWO NOBLE FRIENDS

From “Ode to the Immortal Memory and Friendship of that Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Morison”.

It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak, there hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily or a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be.
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This made you first to know the Why
You liked, then after to apply
That liking, and approach so one the t’ other
Till either grew a portion of the other:
Each styled by his end
The copy of his friend.
You lived to be the great surnames
And titles by which all made claims
Unto the virtue- nothing perfect done
But as a CARY or a MORISON.

And such the force the fair example had
As they that saw
The good, and durst not practice it, were glad
That such a law
Was left yet to mankind,
Where they might read and find
Friendship indeed was written, not in words,
And with the heart, not pen,
Of two so early men,
Whose lines her rules were and records:
Who, ere the first down bloomed on the chin,
Had sowed these fruits, and got the harvest in.

Ben Jonson.