Poem by Thomas Urquhart

Epigrams. The First Booke. ¹ 38. How Fortune oftentimes most praeposterously pond'ring the aections of men, with a great deale of injustice bestoweth her favours

FOrtune with wealth, and honour at her feet:
And holding in her hand a ballance, sits
Weighing human desert, as she thinks fit:
One of the scales whereof the learn'dest wits,
Most vertuous, and of choisest parts containes:
The other being appointed for such, as
Are vicious, light, and destitute of Braines.
The light are mounted up into the place,
Where riches, and preferment lye exposed
To those, can reach them: while the other scale,
By th'only weight of worth, therein inclosed
Is more submissively deprest, then all
That hangs on Fortunes ballance: and the higher,
That hair-brain'd heads b'advanc'd above the states
Of others in this world: so much the higher
To want, and bondage are the wiser pates;
Of such things then, as to the disposition
Of Fortune doe pertaine, let no man wonder,
While the most wicked gaine the acquisition,
That by their meanes, the good be brought at under;
For wheresoever vice is most respected:
The greatest vertues are the more rejected.

1. Epigrams. The First Booke. ¹ 17. The expression of a contented mind in povertie
2. Epigrams. The Third Booke. ¹ 40. Of wisedome, in speech, in action in reality, and reputation
3. Epigrams. The Second Booke. ¹ 24. No man should glory too much in the flourishing verdure of his Youth
4. Epigrams. The Third Booke. ¹ 8. The resolution of a proficient in vertue
5. Epigrams. The Second Booke. ¹ 9. To one, who did glory too much in the faire, and durable fabrick of a gorgious Palace, which he had caused lately to be built

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