IT is not growing like a tree     In bulk, doth make man better be; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:         A lily of 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.

    Call, noble Lucius, then for wine,     And let thy looks with gladness shine: Accept this garland, plant it on thy head, And think—nay, know—thy Morison 's not dead.         He leap'd the present age,         Possest with holy rage     To see that bright eternal Day     Of which we Priests and Poets say Such truths as we expect for happy men; And there he lives with memory—and Ben

Jonson: who sung this of him, ere he went         Himself to rest, Or tast a part of that full joy he meant         To have exprest     In this bright Asterism     Where it were friendship's schism— Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry—         To separate these twy         Lights, the Dioscuri, And keep the one half from his Harry. But fate doth so alternate the design, Whilst that in Heav'n, this light on earth must shine.

    And shine as you exalted are!     Two names of friendship, but one star: Of hearts the union: and those not by chance Made, or indenture, or leased out to advance         The profits for a time.         No pleasures vain did chime     Of rimes or riots at your feasts,     Orgies of drink or feign'd protests; But simple love of greatness and of good, That knits brave minds and manners more than blood.

    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 practise 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 sow'd these fruits, and got the harvest in.