"What boots it with incessant care To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?"

"The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread."

"He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honorablest things."

"Yet more there be, who doubt him or deride, And think, that all this world was made for show."

"For what can war but acts of war produce? And what can acts of war but wars breed?"