Tottel sig. Ffiiv | Verse Miscellanies Online

[sig. Ffiiv]
(10) Doway that choyse, no life, or soon to dye: for all is well.
Of frendship. +The poem is borrowed by George Turberville, ‘That it is hurtfull to conceale secrets from our Friendes’, Epitaphes (1567): ‘A smart in silence kept/(as Ouid doth expresse)/… will soone increase to more’ (fols. 96r-7v). Author: Nicholas Grimald. Structure: 40: poult

O F all the heauenly giftes, that mortall men commend, What trusty treasure in the world can counteruailbe equivalent  a frend? Our helth is soon decayd: goodes, casuall, light, and vain: Broke haue we sene the force of powre, and honour suffer stain.  In bodies lust, man doth resemble but base brute: True vertue gets, and keeps a frend, good guide of our pursute: Whose harty zeale with ours accords, in euery case: No terme of time, no space of place, no storme can it deface. When fickle fortune failes, this knot endureth still:  Thy kin out of their kindeagainst the bonds of birth, that is, bonds of kinship  may swarueturn aside ,                             whenwhē  frends owe ththee e good will. What sweter solace shall befall, than one to finde, Upon whose brest thou mayst repose the secretes of thy minde? He wayleth at thy wo, his teares with thine be shed: With thee doth he all ioyes enioy: so leeflief, glad  a life is led.  Behold thy frend, and of thy self the patern see: One soull, a wonder shall it seem, in bodies twain to bee. In absence, present, rich in want, in sicknesse sound, Yea after death aliue, mayst thou by thy sure frend be found. Eche house, eche towne, eche realm by stedfast loue doth stand:  Where fowlfoul  debate breeds bitter balehurt, destruction , in eche deuided land. O frendship, flowr of flowrs: O liuely sprite of life, O sacred bond of blisfull peace, the stalworth staunch of strife: Scipio with Lelius +The friendship of Scipio Africanus the younger and Gaius Laelius was immortalised by Cicero  De Senectutes                             and  De Amicitia , in which Laelius praises and laments the death of Scipio.  didst thou conioyn in care, At home, in warrs, for weal and wo, with egall faith to fare.  Gesippus +The friendship of Gisippus and Titus Quintus Fulvius is celebrated in Boccaccio’s  Decameron , 10.8.  ekealso  with Tite, Damon with Pythias, +For the story of Damon and Pythias,                                see  glossary  And with  Menetus sonnePatroclus, comrade-in-arms and beloved of Achilles Achill  , by thee combined was. Euryalus, and Nisus gaue Uirgil cause to sing: +Virgil immortalised their friendship in the  Aeneid ,                            IX.176-82’: Nisus erat portae custos, acerrimus armis,/Hyrtacides, comitem Aeneae quem miserat Ida/… his amor unus erat pariterque in bella ruebant’,                            ‘Nisus was guardian of the gate, most valiant of warriors, son of Hyrtacus, whom Ida the huntress had sent in Aeneas’ train … A common love was theirs;                            side by side they would charge into battle’. Of Dylades doo many rimes, and of Orestes ring. +Friends and kin, via Pylades’s marriage to Electra, Orestes’s sister. Down  Theseus   went to hell,  Pirith  , his frend to finde: +Pirithous and Theseus both attempted                            to rescue Persephone from the underworld, rather than Theseus rescue Pirithous as the verse claims.  O that the wiues, in these our daies, wer to their mates so kinde. Cicero, the frendly man, to Atticus, his frend, Of frendship wrote: such couples lo doth lotfortune, destiny  but                             seldome lend. +Lines 31-32: ‘Cicero … to Atticus … wrote’: Cicero’s  De Amicitia  and  De Senectute  are                         dedicated to Atticus; sixteen books of letters to Atticus also survive. Recount thy race, now ronne: how few shalt thou there see, Of whom to say: This same is he, that neuer fayled mee.  So rare a iewell then must nedes be holden dere: And as thou wilt esteem thy self, so take thy chosen ferecompanion . The tirant, in dispaire, no lacke of gold bewayls. 