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To His Peculiar Friend, Mr. Thomas Shapcott, Lawyer

by Robert Herrick, 1648

I’ve paid thee what I promis’d; that’s not all;
Besides I give thee here a verse that shall
(When hence thy circummortal part is gone),
Arch-like, hold up thy name’s inscription.
Brave men can’t die, whose candid actions are
Writ in the poet’s endless calendar:
Whose vellum and whose volume is the sky,
And the pure stars the praising poetry.
    Farewell

Published in Hesperides
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