To Cyriack Skinner
John Milton · 1645
Public domain
From The Golden Treasury, selected by Francis Turner Palgrave. John Milton. The text is free of copyright in the United States. This copy is the poem, without the Project Gutenberg header.
Cyriack, whose grandsire on the royal bench
Of British Themis, with no mean applause
Pronounced, and in his volumes taught, our laws,
Which others at their bar so often wrench;
To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench
In mirth, that after no repenting draws;
Let Euclid rest and Archimedes pause,
And what the Swede intends, and what the French.
To measure life learn thou betimes, and know
Toward solid good what leads the nearest way;
For other things mild Heaven a time ordains,
And disapproves that care, though wise in show,
That with superfluous burden loads the day,
And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.