To Mr. Rowland Woodward: Like One who in her Third Widowhood Doth Profess by John Donne

Like one who in her third widowhood doth profess / Herself a nun, tied to retiredness, / So affects my Muse, now, a chaste fallowness.

Since she to few, yet to too many hath shown, / How love-song weeds and satiric thorns are grown, / Where seeds of better arts were early sown;

Though to use and love poetry, to me, / Betroth'd to no one art, be no adultery; / Omissions of good, ill, as ill deeds be.

For though to us it seem but light and thin, / Yet in those faithful scales, where God throws in / Men's works, vanity weighs as much as sin.

If our souls have stain'd their first white, yet we / May clothe them with faith, and dear honesty, / Which God imputes as native purity.

There is no virtue but religion. / Wise, valiant, sober, just, are names which none / Want, which want not vice-covering discretion.

Seek we then ourselves in ourselves; for as / Men force the sun with much more force to pass, / By gathering his beams with a crystal glass,

So we-if we into ourselves will turn, / Blowing our spark of virtue-may out-burn / The straw which doth about our hearts sojourn.

You know physicians, when they would infuse / Into any oil the souls of simples, use / Places, where they may lie still warm, to choose.

So works retiredness in us. To roam / Giddily and be everywhere, but at home, / Such freedom doth a banishment become.

We are but farmers of ourselves, yet may, / If we can stock ourselves, and thrive, uplay / Much, much dear treasure for the great rent day.

Manure thyself then, to thyself be improved; / And with vain outward things be no more moved, / But to know that I love thee and would be loved.