Collected English Verse — Ben Jonson. b. 1573, d. 1637 (Part 4 of 4)

vain did chime
     Of rimes or riots at your feasts,
     Orgies of drink or feign’d protests;
But simple love of greatness and of good,
That knits brave minds and manners more than blood.

     This made you first to know the Why
     You liked, then after, to apply
That liking, and approach so one the t’other
Till either grew a portion of the other:
            Each stylàed by his end
            The copy of his friend.
     You lived to be the great surnames
     And titles by which all made claims
Unto the Virtue—nothing perfect done
But as a CARY or a MORISON.

And such the force the fair example had
        As they that saw
The good, and durst not practise it, were glad
        That such a law
     Was left yet to mankind,
     Where they might read and find
FRIENDSHIP indeed was written, not in words,
          And with the heart, not pen,
          Of two so early men,
Whose lines her rules were and records:
Who, ere the first down bloomàed on the chin,
Had sow’d these fruits, and got the harvest in.