Chapter LXIX

To Sir Henry Goodyer. This letter appears to belong to the period of Sir Henry's prosperity, and was written, I think, either from Mitcham, or from Donne's lodgings in the Strand; in either case, not earlier than 1605 nor later than 1610. Parson's Green was in the parish of Fulham, Middlesex. Ben Jonson has an _Epigram_ (_LXXXV_) anent Sir Henry Goodyer's hawks:

"Goodyere, I'm glad, and grateful to report,
Myself a witness of thy few days sport;
Where I both learn'd, why wise men hawking follow,
And why that bird was sacred to Apollo:
She doth instruct men by her gallant flight,
That they to knowledge so should tower upright,
And never stoop, but to strike ignorance;
Which if they miss, yet they should re-advance
To former height, and there in circle tarry,
Till they be sure to make the fool their quarry.
Now, in whose pleasures I have this discerned,
What would his serious actions me have learned?"

And in the verses enclosed in his letter (XXX) to Goodyer, Donne writes:

"Our soule, whose country is heaven, & God her father,
Into this world, corruptions sinke, is sent,
Yet, so much in her travaile she doth gather,
That she returnes home, wiser than she went;
It pays you well, if it teach you to spare
And make you asham'd, to make your hawks praise, yours,
Which when herselfe she lessens in the aire,
You then first say, that high enough she toures."