English Poetry. Thomas Urquhart. Epigrams. The First Booke. № 38. How Fortune oftentimes most praeposterously pond’ring the aections of men, with a great deale of injustice bestoweth her favours. Томас Эркарт.

Thomas Urquhart (Томас Эркарт)

Epigrams. The First Booke. № 38. How Fortune oftentimes most praeposterously pond’ring the aections of men, with a great deale of injustice bestoweth her favours

FOrtune with wealth, and honour at her feet:
And holding in her hand a ballance, sits
Weighing human desert, as she thinks fit:
One of the scales whereof the learn'dest wits,
Most vertuous, and of choisest parts containes:
The other being appointed for such, as
Are vicious, light, and destitute of Braines.
The light are mounted up into the place,
Where riches, and preferment lye exposed
To those, can reach them: while the other scale,
By th'only weight of worth, therein inclosed
Is more submissively deprest, then all
That hangs on Fortunes ballance: and the higher,
That hair-brain'd heads b'advanc'd above the states
Of others in this world: so much the higher
To want, and bondage are the wiser pates;
Of such things then, as to the disposition
Of Fortune doe pertaine, let no man wonder,
While the most wicked gaine the acquisition,
That by their meanes, the good be brought at under;
For wheresoever vice is most respected:
The greatest vertues are the more rejected.

Thomas Urquhart’s other poems:

1. Epigrams. The Third Booke. № 36. Of Death, and Sin
2. Epigrams. The Third Booke. № 23. Of foure things, in an epalleled way vanquished each by other
3. Epigrams. The Third Booke. № 19. The Parallel of Nature, and For∣tune
4. Epigrams. The Second Booke. № 13. What the subject of your conference ought to be with men of judgment, and account
5. Epigrams. The Third Booke. № 3. We ought always to thinke upon what we are to say, before we utter any thing; the speeches and talk of solid wits, being still pre∣meditated, and never using to forerunne the mind

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