Classic Poem

My lord;
Poor wretched states, pressed by extremities,
Are fain to seek for succours, and supplies
Of princes' aids, or good men's charities.

Disease, the enemy, and his engineers,
Wants, with the rest of his concealed compeers,
Have cast a trench about me, now five years.

And made those strong approaches, by false braies,
Reduicts, half-moons, horn-works, and such close ways,
The muse not peeps out, one of hundred days;

But lies blocked up, and straitened, narrowed in,
Fixed to the bed, and boards, unlike to win
Health, or scarce breath, as she had never bin.

Unless some saving honour of the crown,
Dare think it, to relieve, no less renown,
A bedrid wit, than a besieged town.