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MUSOPHILUS: DEDICATION TO MASTER FULKE GREVILLE (2), by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: If I have erred or run a course unfit
Last Line: Who herein holds an int'rest in my fame.
Subject(s): Errors; Fortune; Greville, Fulke, 1st Baron Brooke; Praise; Virtue; Mistakes; Fallacies


If I have erred or run a course unfit
To vent my understanding in this kind,
Your approbation hath been cause of it,
That fed this grateful error of my mind;
For you, most worthy and judicious knight,
Did first draw forth from close obscurity
My unpresuming verse into the light,
And graced the same, and made me known thereby.
And every man we see is easily
Confirmed in that wherein he takes delight,
But chiefly when he finds his industry
Allowed by him he knows can judge aright.
Though praise, I fear me, is not virtue's friend
So much as we would make it seem to be,
For more undone than raised thereby we see,
Whereas themselves men cannot comprehend.
And for my part, I have been oft constrained
To re-examine this my course herein,
And question with myself what is contained,
Or what solidity there was therein;
And then in casting it with that account
And reck'nings of the world, I therein found
It came far short, and neither did amount
In value with those hopes I did propound
Nor answered the expenses of my time,
Which made me much distrust myself and rhyme.

And I was flying from my heart and from
The station I was set in to remain,
And had left all, had not fresh forces come,
And brought me back unto myself again,
And furnished my distrusts with this defense,
This armor, wherewith all the best I could
I have made good, against the difference
Of fortune and the world, that which I told;
And have maintained your honor in the same,
Who herein holds an int'rest in my fame.




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