WORD-PORTRAITS: OVID by ROBERT GREENE

Quaint was Ovid in his rhyme,
Chiefest poet of his time:
What he could in words rehearse
Ended in a pleasing verse:
Apollo with his aye-green bays
Crown'd his head to show his praise;
And all the Muses did agree
He should be theirs, and none but he.
This Poet chanted all of Love,
Of Cupid's wings and Venus' dove;
Of fair Corinna and her hue,
Of white and red and veins blue.
How they lov'd and how they 'greed,
And how in fancy they did speed.
His Elegies were wanton all,
Telling of Love's pleasing thrall,
And 'cause he would the Poet seem,
That best of Venus' laws could deem,
Strange precepts he did impart,
And writ three books of Love's art;
There he taught how to woo,
What in love men should do;
How they might soonest win
Honest women unto sin:
Thus to tellen all the truth
He infected Rome's youth,
And with his books and verses brought
That men in Rome nought else sought
But how to 'tangle maid or wife,
With honour's breach through wanton life;
The foolish sort did for his skill
Praise the deepness of his quill,
And like to him said there was none
Since died old Anacreon.
But Rome's Augustus, world's wonder,
Brook'd not of this foolish blunder;
Nor lik'd he of this wanton verse
That Love's laws did rehearse;
For well he saw and did espy
Youth was sore impair'd thereby;
And by experience he finds
Wanton books infect the minds;
Which made him straight for reward,
Though the censure seemèd hard
To banish Ovid quite from Rome,
This was great Augustus' doom;
For (quoth he) Poets' quills
Ought not for to teach men ills;
For learning is a thing of praise,
To show precepts to make men wise;
And near the Muses' sacred places
Dwells the virtuous-minded graces.
'Tis shame and sin, then, for good wits
To show their skill in wanton fits.
This Augustus did reply.
And as he said, so think I.

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