human
Can you write me a poem about new year ' s day, george herbert and cupid in the style of A. A. Soares de (Antonio Augusto Soares) Passos?
assistant
Sure, here's a poem about new year ' s day, george herbert and cupid in the style of A. A. Soares de (Antonio Augusto Soares) Passos:
  and Collated with the Original and Early Editions,
and Much Enlarged with
Illustrations of 1652, with others specially prepared.
St. George's, Blackburn, Lancashire.
SACRED POETRY: I. _Steps to the Temple, and Carmen Deo
Sancta Maria Dolorvm, or the Mother of Sorrows: a patheticall
Descant upon the deuout Plainsong of Stabat Mater Dolorosa
The Lord silences His Questioners
On the Wounds of our crucified Lord
Vpon the bleeding Crucifix: a song
+To the Name above every name, the Name of Iesvs: a hymn
Psalme xxiii
Psalme cxxxvii
+In the Holy Nativity of ovr Lord God: a hymn svng as by
New Year's Day
+In the gloriovs Epiphanie of ovr Lord God: a hymn svng as
by the three Kings
To the Qveen's Maiesty
Sospetto d'Herode
+Prayer: an Ode which was prefixed to a little Prayer-book
given to a young Gentle-woman
To the same Party: Covncel concerning her Choise
Description of a Religiovs Hovse and Condition of Life (out
On Mr. George Herbert's Booke intituled the Temple of Sacred
Poems: sent to a Gentle-woman
+A Hymn to the Name and Honor of the admirable Sainte
+An Apologie for the foregoing Hymn, as hauing been writt
when the Author was yet among the Protestants
+The Flaming Heart: vpon the Book and Picture of the seraphical
Saint Teresa, as she is vsvally expressed with a
Seraphim biside her
+In the gloriovs Assvmption of ovr Blessed Lady
+Upon five piovs and learned Discourses by Robert Shelford
Dies irae, dies illa: the Hymn of the Chvrch, in meditation
Charitas Nimia, or the dear Bargain
S. Maria Maior: the Himn, O gloriosa Domina
M. Crashaw's Answer for Hope
*Mary seeking Jesus when lost
SECULAR POETRY: I. _The Delights of the Muses_, 195-276.
Musick's Duell
In the Praise of the Spring (out of Virgil)
With a Picture sent to a Friend
+In praise of Lessius's Rule of Health
Cupid's Cryer (out of the Greeke)
Vpon Bishop Andrews' Picture before his Sermons
Vpon the Death of the most desired Mr. Herrys
+An Epitaph vpon a yovng Married Covple, dead and bvryed
together
Death's Lectvre and the Fvneral of a yovng Gentleman
An Epitaph vpon Doctor Brooke
On a foule Morning, being then to take a Journey
Love's Horoscope
A Song (out of the Italian)
Vpon the Frontispeece of Mr. Isaackson's Chronologie
On the same by Bishop Rainbow
An Epitaph vpon Mr. Ashton, a conformable Citizen
+To the Queen: an Apologie for the length of the following
To the Queen, vpon her numerous Progenie: a Panegyrick
Vpon two greene Apricockes sent to Cowley by Sir Crashaw
Alexias: The Complaint of the forsaken Wife of Sainte Alexis:
three Elegies
*Upon the King's Coronation
*Vpon a Gnatt burnt in a Candle
*An Elegy vpon the Death of Mr. Stanninow, Fellow of Queen's
Ditto  from Carmen Deo Nostro
ILLUSTRATIONS, _in the illustrated Quarto only_: Vol. I.
Author's own Design
The next edition was published in PARIS in 1652. In our Note (as
Was CAR then Crashawe; or was Crashawe Car,
Since both within one name combined are?
Yes, Car's Crashawe, he Car; 'tis loue alone
Which melts two harts, of both composing one.
So Crashaw's still the same: so much desired
By strongest witts; so honor'd, so admired;
Car was but he that enter'd as a friend
With whom he shar'd his thoughtes, and did commend
(While yet he liu'd) this worke; they lou'd each other:
Sweete Crashawe was his friend; he Crashawe's brother.
So Car hath title then; 'twas his intent
That what his riches pen'd, poore Car should print;
Nor feares he checke, praysing that happie one
Who was belou'd by all; disprais'd by none:
To witt, being pleas'd with all things, he pleas'd all,
Nor would he giue, nor take offence; befall
What might, he would possesse himselfe, and liue
As deade (deuoyde of interest) t' all might giue
Desease t' his well-composed mynd; fore-stal'd
With heauenly riches; which had wholy call'd
His thoughts from earth, to liue aboue in th' aire
A very bird of paradice. No care
Had he of earthly trashe. What might suffice
To fitt his soule to heauenly exercise
Sufficed him: and may we guesse his hart
By what his lipps brings forth, his onely part
Is God and godly thoughtes. Leaues doubt to none
But that to whom one God is all; all's one.
What he might eate or weare he tooke no thought;
His needfull foode he rather found then sought.
He seekes no downes, no sheetes, his bed's still made;
If he can find a chaire or stoole, he's layd.
When Day peepes in, he quitts his restlesse rest,
And still, poore soule, before he's vp, he's dre'st.
Thus dying did he liue, yet liued to dye
In th' Virgin's lappe, to whom he did applye
His virgine thoughtes and words, and thence was styld
By foes, the chaplaine of the virgine myld,
While yet he liued without. His modestie
Imparted this to some, and they to me.
Liue happie then, deare soule! inioy the rest
Eternally by paynes thou purchacedst,
While Car must liue in care, who was thy friend,
Nor cares he how he liue, so in the end
He may inioy his dearest Lord and thee;
And sitt and singe more skilfull songs eternally.
'Twixt pen and pensill rose a holy strife
Which might draw Vertue better to the life:
Best witts gaue votes to that, but painters swore
They neuer saw peeces so sweete before
As thes fruits of pure Nature; where no Art
Did lead the vntaught pensill, nor had part
The hand growne bold, with witt will needes contest:
Doth it preuayle? ah no! say each is best.
This to the eare speakes wonders; that will trye
To speake the same, yet lowder, to the eye.
Both in their aymes are holy, both conspire
To wound, to burne the hart with heauenly fire.
This then's the doome, to doe both parties right:
This to the eare speakes best; that, to the sight.
It is clear from these lines in the former poem--
'Car was but he that enter'd as a friend
With whom he shar'd his thoughtes, _and did commend_
So Car hath title then; '_twas his intent
That what his riches pen'd, poore Car should print_'--
'Tis not the work of force but skill
To find the way into man's will.
'Tis loue alone can hearts vnlock:
Who knowes the Word, he needs not knock.
Ton Createur te faict voir sa naissance
Deignant souffrir pour toy des son enfance.
Quem vidistis, Pastores, &c.
Natum vidimus, &c.
Tradidit semetipsum pro nobis oblationem et hostiam
Deo in odorem suavitatis.--Ad Ephe. 5.
Expostulatio Jesu Christi cum mundo ingrato.
Dilectus meus mihi, et ego illi,
Qui pascitur inter lilia. Cant.
Lo, where a wounded heart, with bleeding eyes conspire:
Is she a flaming fountaine, or a weeping fire?
Besides these TWELVE, I discovered another in illustration of 'O
We have now done with genuine editions; but have yet to notice a
letter--oblivious of (literally) hundreds infinitely worse.
Musicum, and Upon Herbert's Temple: pp. 172-3, Upon Isaacson's
Gunpowder-Treason' (three separate pieces), and 'Upon the King's
somewhat arduous and difficult work and 'labour of love.' To the
The Illustrations (in the 4to) speak for themselves. I cannot
sufficiently express my acknowledgments for the spontaneous and
Anything else needing to be said will be found in the
Poet and Saint! thy sky was dark
And sad thy lonely vigil here;
But thy meek spirit, like the lark
Still showered music on the ear,
From its own heaven ever clear:
No pining mourner thou! thy strain
Could breathe a slumber upon Pain,
Singing thy tears asleep: not long
To stray by Siloa's brook was thine:
Yet Time hath never dealt thee wrong,
Nor brush'd the sweet bloom from thy line:
Thou hast a home in every song,
In every Christian heart, a shrine.
How long the Charterhouse was attended is unknown; but renewed
'Julij 6. 1631. Richardus Crashawe, Gulielmi presbyteri filius,
improbable that CRASHAW and HARRIS were school-fellows at the
'Anno Domini millesimo sexcentesimo tricesimo sexto vicesimo die
mensis Novembris Richardus Crashaw admissus fuit a Reverendo in
Magistro et Sociis ejusdem Collegii personaliter constitutus,
juramentum praestitit quod singulis Ordinationibus et Statutis
He was made Fellow in 1637, and M.A. in 1638; looking forward to
'Whereas in pursuite of an ordinance of Parliament for regulating
reference to all those that are or shall hereafter bee putt in by
under my hand and seale the eleaventh day of June anno 1644.
ecclesiastics, to have drawn down on himself Italian jealousy and
ambition,'--I close for the present our Memoir:
Poet and Saint! to thee alone are giv'n
The two most sacred names of Earth and Heav'n,
The hardest, rarest union which can be
Next that of godhead with humanity.
Long did the Muses banish'd slaves abide,
And built vain pyramids to mortal pride;
Like Moses thou (tho' spells and charms withstand)
Hast brought them nobly home, back to their Holy Land.
Ah, wretched we, Poets of Earth! but thou
Wert living, the same Poet which thou'rt now;
Whilst angels sing to thee their ayres divine,
And joy in an applause so great as thine.
Equal society with them to hold,
Thou need'st not make new songs, but say the old;
And they (kind spirits!) shall all rejoice to see,
How little less than they, exalted man may be.
Still the old heathen gods in numbers dwell,
The heav'nliest thing on Earth still keeps up Hell:
Nor have we yet quite purg'd the Christian land;
Still idols here, like calves at Bethel stand.
And tho' Pan's death long since all or'cles broke,
Yet still in rhyme the fiend Apollo spoke;
Nay, with the worst of heathen dotage, we
(Vain men!) the monster woman deifie;
Find stars, and tie our fates there in a face,
And Paradise in them, by whom we lost it, place.
What diff'rent faults corrupt our Muses thus?
Wanton as girls, as old wives, fabulous.
Thy spotless Muse, like Mary, did contain
The boundless Godhead; she did well disdain
That her eternal verse employ'd should be
On a less subject than eternity;
And for a sacred mistress scorn'd to take
But her whom God Himself scorn'd not His spouse to make:
It (in a kind) her miracle did do,
A fruitful mother was, and virgin too.
How well (blest Swan) did Fate contrive thy death,
And made thee render up thy tuneful breath
In thy great mistress's arms! Thou most divine,
And richest off'ring of Loretto's shrine!
Where, like some holy sacrifice t' expire,
A fever burns thee, and Love lights the fire.
Angels (they say) brought the fam'd chappel there,
And bore the sacred load in triumph thro' the air:
'Tis surer much they brought thee there; and they,
And thou, their charge, went singing all the way.
Pardon, my Mother-Church, if I consent
That angels led him, when from thee he went;
For ev'n in error, sure no danger is,
When join'd with so much piety as his.
Ah! mighty God, with shame I speak't, and grief;
Ah! that our greatest faults were in belief!
And our weak reason were ev'n weaker yet,
Rather than thus, our wills too strong for it.
His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might
Be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right:
And I, myself, a Catholick will be;
So far at least, great Saint! to pray to thee.
Hail, Bard triumphant! and some care bestow
On us, the Poets militant below:
Oppos'd by our old enemy, adverse Chance,
Attack'd by Envy and by Ignorance;
Enchain'd by Beauty, tortur'd by desires,
Expos'd by tyrant-love, to savage beasts and fires.
Thou from low Earth in nobler flames didst rise,
And like Elijah, mount alive the skies.
Elisha-like (but with a wish much less,
More fit thy greatness and my littleness;)
Lo here I beg (I whom thou once didst prove
So humble to esteem, so good to love)
Not that thy sp'rit might on me doubled be,
I ask but half thy mighty sp'rit for me:
And when my Muse soars with so strong a wing,
'Twill learn of things divine, and first of thee to sing.
With other Delights of the
By RICHARD CRASHAW, _sometimes
of_ PEMBROKE _Hall, and
late Fellow of_ S. Peters _Coll._
_Printed and Published according to Order._
are to be sold at his shop at the Princes
Armes in St _Pauls_ Church-yard.
Other Poems written on
severall occasions.
By RICHARD CRASHAW, _sometimes of_ Pembroke
_Hall, and late Fellow of_ St. Peters
Mart. Dic mihi quid melius desidiosus agas.
By RICHARD CRASHAW, _sometimes
of_ Pembroke Hall, _and
late fellow of_ S. Peters _Coll._
_The second Edition wherein are added divers
pieces not before extant._
sold at his Shop at the Princes Armes
in St. _Pauls_ Church-yard.
Most humbly Presented.
Her most deuoted Seruant.
In heaty [_sic_] acknowledgment of his immortall
obligation to her Goodnes & Charity.
By PETER TARGA, Printer to the Archbishope
ef [_sic_] Paris, in S. Victors streete at
the golden sunne.
_4th edition, erroneously designated 2d edition_, 1670.
By _Ric. Crashaw_, sometimes Fellow of _Pembroke
Hall_, and late Fellow of _St. Peters
admiration. I dare undertake that what JAMBLICUS (_in vita
Amongst his other accomplishments in accademick (as well pious as
never created a Muse out of distempers, nor (with our Canary
scribblers) cast any strange mists of surfets before the
'Look on his following leaves, and see him breath.'
Live Iesus, live, and let it bee
My life, to dye for love of Thee.
Loe! where a wounded heart with bleeding eyes conspire.
Is she a flaming fountain, or a weeping fire?
Hail, sister springs!
Parents of syluer-footed rills!
Euer-bubling things!
Thawing crystall! snowy hills
Still spending, neuer spent! I mean
Thy fair eyes, sweet Magdalene!
Heauens thy fair eyes be;
Heauens of euer-falling starres.
'Tis seed-time still with thee;
And starres thou sow'st, whose haruest dares
Promise the Earth, to counter-shine
Whateuer makes heaun's forehead fine.
But we' are deceiued all:
Starres indeed they are too true;
For they but seem to fall,
As heaun's other spangles doe:
To shine in things so pretious.
Vpwards thou dost weep:
Heaun's bosome drinks the gentle stream.
Where th' milky riuers creep,
Thine floates aboue, and is the cream.
Waters aboue th' heauns, what they be
We' are taught best by thy teares and thee.
Euery morn from hence,
A brisk cherub something sippes,
Whose sacred influence
Addes sweetnes to his sweetest lippes;
Then to his musick; and his song
Tasts of this breakfast all day long.
When some new bright guest
Takes vp among the starres a room,
And Heaun will make a feast:
Angels with crystall violls come                 _phials_
And draw from these full eyes of thine,
Their Master's water, their own wine.
The deaw no more will weep
The primrose's pale cheek to deck:
The deaw no more will sleep
Nuzzel'd in the lilly's neck;
Much rather would it be thy tear,
And leaue them both to tremble here.
Not the soft gold which
Steales from the amber-weeping tree,
Makes Sorrow halfe so rich
As the drops distil'd from thee.
Sorrowe's best iewels lye in these
Caskets, of which Heaven keeps the keyes.
When Sorrow would be seen
In her brightest majesty:
Then is she drest by none but thee.
Then, and only then, she weares
Her proudest pearles: I mean, thy teares.
Not in the Euening's eyes,
When they red with weeping are
For the Sun that dyes;
Sitts Sorrow with a face so fair.
Nowhere but here did ever meet
Sweetnesse so sad, sadnesse so sweet.
Sadnesse all the while
Shee sits in such a throne as this,
Can doe nought but smile,
Nor beleeves she Sadnesse is:
Gladnesse it selfe would be more glad,
To bee made soe sweetly sad.
There's no need at all,
That the balsom-sweating bough
So coyly should let fall
His med'cinable teares; for now
Nature hath learnt to' extract a deaw
More soueraign and sweet, from you.
Yet let the poore drops weep
(Weeping is the ease of Woe):
Softly let them creep,
Sad that they are vanquish't so.
They, though to others no releife,
Balsom may be for their own greife.
Golden though he be,
Golden Tagus murmures though.
Were his way by thee,
Content and quiet he would goe;
Soe much more rich would he esteem
Thy syluer, then his golden stream.
Well does the May that lyes
Smiling in thy cheeks, confesse
The April in thine eyes;
Mutuall sweetnesse they expresse.
No April ere lent kinder showres,
Nor May return'd more faithfull flowres.
O cheeks! Bedds of chast loues,
By your own showres seasonably dash't.
Eyes! Nests of milky doues,
In your own wells decently washt.
O wit of Loue! that thus could place
Fountain and garden in one face.
O sweet contest! of woes
With loues; of teares with smiles disputing!
O fair and freindly foes,
Each other kissing and confuting!
While rain and sunshine, cheekes and eyes
Close in kind contrarietyes.
But can these fair flouds be
Freinds with the bosom-fires that fill thee!
Can so great flames agree
Aeternal teares should thus distill thee!
O flouds! O fires! O suns! O showres!
Mixt and made freinds by Loue's sweet powres.
'Twas his well-pointed dart
That digg'd these wells, and drest this wine;
And taught the wounded heart
The way into these weeping eyn.
Vain loues auant! bold hands forbear!
The Lamb hath dipp't His white foot here.
And now where'ere He strayes,
Among the Galilean mountaines,
Or more vnwellcome wayes;
He's follow'd by two faithfull fountaines;
Two walking baths, two weeping motions,
Portable, and compendious oceans.
O thou, thy Lord's fair store!
In thy so rich and rare expenses,
Euen when He show'd most poor
He might prouoke the wealth of princes.
What prince's wanton'st pride e'er could
Wash with syluer, wipe with gold?
Who is that King, but He
Who calls 't His crown, to be call'd thine,
That thus can boast to be
Waited on by a wandring mine,
A voluntary mint, that strowes
Warm, syluer showres wher're He goes?
O pretious prodigall!
Fair spend-thrift of thy-self! thy measure
(Mercilesse loue!) is all.
Euen to the last pearle in thy threasure: _thesaurus_, Latin.
All places, times, and obiects be
Thy teares' sweet opportunity.
Does the day-starre rise?
Still thy teares doe fall and fall.
Does Day close his eyes?
Still the fountain weeps for all.
Let Night or Day doe what they will,
Thou hast thy task: thou weepest still.
Does thy song lull the air?
Thy falling teares keep faithfull time.
Does thy sweet-breath'd praire
Vp in clouds of incense climb?
Still at each sigh, that is, each stop,
A bead, that is, a tear, does drop.
At these thy weeping gates
(Watching their watry motion),
Each winged moment waits:
Takes his tear, and gets him gone.
By thine ey's tinct enobled thus,
Time layes him vp; he's pretious.
Time, as by thee He passes,
Makes thy ever-watry eyes
His hower-glasses.
By them His steps He rectifies.
The sands He us'd, no longer please,
For His owne sands Hee'l use thy seas.
Not, 'so long she liued,'
Shall thy tomb report of thee;
But, 'so long she grieued:'
Thus must we date thy memory.
Others by moments, months, and yeares
Measure their ages; thou, by teares.
So doe perfumes expire,
So sigh tormented sweets, opprest
With proud vnpittying fire.
Such teares the suffring rose, that's vext
With vngentle flames, does shed,
Sweating in a too warm bed.
Say, ye bright brothers,
The fugitiue sons of those fair eyes,
Your fruitfull mothers!
What make you here? what hopes can 'tice
You to be born? what cause can borrow
You from those nests of noble sorrow?
Whither away so fast?
Your sweetnes cannot tast,
Nor does the dust deserve your birth.
Sweet, whither hast you then? O say
Why you trip so fast away?
We goe not to seek
The darlings of Aurora's bed,
The rose's modest cheek,
Nor the violet's humble head.
Though the feild's eyes too Weepers be,
Because they want such teares as we.
Much lesse mean we to trace
The fortune of inferior gemmes,
Preferr'd to some proud face,
Or pertch't vpon fear'd diadems:
Crown'd heads are toyes. We goe to meet
A worthy object, our Lord's feet.
With some shortcomings--superficial rather than substantive--'The
restorations from 1646.
In 1652 from stanza xv. (there) to end,
but I have made all uniform, and agreeably to above of 1652.
'I send, I send here my supremest kiss
To thee, my _silver-footed_ Thamasis'
'Heaven, of such faire floods as this,
Heaven the christall ocean is.'
So too the SANCROFT MS., save that for 'this' it has 'these.'
St. v. line 2. 'Brisk' is = active, nimble. So--and something
'Much rather would it tremble heere
And leave them both to bee thy teare.'
Line 4, '_med'cinable_ teares.' So SHAKESPEARE (nearly): 'their
'Might he flow from thee.'
full-stop as in the SANCROFT MS.
Line 4, ib. read
'Content and quiet would he goe.'
Line 5, ib. read
'Richer far does he esteeme.'
St. xv. lines 5 and 6, ib. read
'No April e're lent softer showres,
Nor May returned fairer flowers.'
St. xvii. line 2, in 1648 misreads
'With loves and tears, and smils disputing.'
St. xviii. line 2 in 1648 misreads
'Friends with the balsome fires that fill thee.'
'Cause great flames agree.'
Line 4. 'prouoke' = challenge.
'Does the Night arise?'
'Does Night loose her eyes?'
'Thy teares' just cadence still keeps time.'
'Thus dost thou melt the yeare
Into a weeping motion.
Each minute waiteth heere.'
'Others by dayes, by monthes, by yeares.'
So also the SANCROFT MS., wherein this st. follows our st. xv.
Line 3, ib. 'fertile' for 'fruitfull.'
'what is't can borrow
You from her eyes, swolne wombes of sorrow.'
Line 6, ib. read 'yee' for 'you.'
'No such thing; we goe to meet
A worthier object, our Lords feet.'
_A patheticall Descant vpon the deuout Plainsong of Stabat Mater
In shade of Death's sad tree
Stood dolefull shee.
Ah she! now by none other
Name to be known, alas, but Sorrow's Mother.
Before her eyes,
Her's, and the whole World's ioyes,
Hanging all torn she sees; and in His woes
And paines, her pangs and throes:
Each wound of His, from euery part,
All, more at home in her one heart.
What kind of marble, than,
Is that cold man
Who can look on and see,
Nor keep such noble sorrowes company?
Sure eu'en from you
(My flints) some drops are due,
To see so many unkind swords contest
So fast for one soft brest:
While with a faithfull, mutuall floud,
Her eyes bleed teares, His wounds weep blood.
O costly intercourse
Of deaths, and worse--
Diuided loues. While Son and mother
Discourse alternate wounds to one another,
Quick deaths that grow
And gather, as they come and goe:
His nailes write swords in her, which soon her heart
Payes back, with more then their own smart.
Her swords, still growing with His pain,
Turn speares, and straight come home again.
She sees her Son, her God,
Bow with a load
Of borrow'd sins; and swimme
In woes that were not made for Him.
Ah! hard command
Of loue! Here must she stand,
Charg'd to look on, and with a stedfast ey
See her life dy:
Leauing her only so much breath
As serues to keep aliue her death.
O mother turtle-doue!
Soft sourse of loue!
That these dry lidds might borrow
Somthing from thy full seas of sorrow!
O in that brest
Of thine (the noblest nest
Both of Loue's fires and flouds) might I recline
This hard, cold heart of mine!
The chill lump would relent, and proue
Soft subject for the seige of Loue.
O teach those wounds to bleed
In me; me, so to read
This book of loues, thus writ
In lines of death, my life may coppy it
With loyall cares.
O let me, here, claim shares!
Yeild somthing in thy sad praerogatiue
(Great queen of greifes), and giue
Me, too, my teares; who, though all stone,
Think much that thou shouldst mourn alone.
Yea, let my life and me
Fix here with thee,
And at the humble foot
Of this fair tree, take our eternall root.
At least be in Loue's way;
And in these chast warres, while the wing'd wounds flee
So fast 'twixt Him and thee,
My brest may catch the kisse of some kind dart,
Though as at second hand, from either heart.
O you, your own best darts,
Dear, dolefull hearts!
Hail! and strike home, and make me see
That wounded bosomes their own weapons be.
Come wounds! come darts!
Nail'd hands! and peirced hearts!
Come your whole selues, Sorrow's great Son and mother!
Nor grudge a yonger brother
Of greifes his portion, who (had all their due)
One single wound should not haue left for you.
Shall I, sett there
So deep a share
(Dear wounds), and onely now
In sorrows draw no diuidend with you?
O be more wise,
If not more soft, mine eyes!
Dissolue my dayes and howres.
And if thou yet (faint soul!) desert
To bleed with Him, fail not to weep with her.
Rich queen, lend some releife;
At least an almes of greif
To' a heart who by sad right of sin
Could proue the whole summe (too sure) due to him.
By all those stings
Of Loue, sweet-bitter things,
Which these torn hands transcrib'd on thy true heart;
O teach mine too the art
To study Him so, till we mix
Wounds, and become one crucifix.
O let me suck the wine
So long of this chast Vine,
Till drunk of the dear wounds, I be
A lost thing to the world, as it to me.
O faithfull friend
Of me and of my end!
Fold vp my life in loue; and lay't beneath
My dear Lord's vitall death.
Lo, heart, thy hope's whole plea! her pretious breath
Pour'd out in prayrs for thee; thy Lord's in death.
St. i. line 10. In 1648 the reading is
'Are more at home in her Owne heart.'
St. vii. line 4. By 'tree' the Cross is meant. Cf. st. i. line 1.
St. x. line 1. 1648 reads 'Lend, O lend some reliefe.'
Line 9 reads 'To studie thee so.'
St. xi. line 3, ib. reads 'thy' for 'the.'
Line 8, ib. reads 'Thy deare lost vitall death.'
What bright-soft thing is this,
Sweet Mary, thy faire eyes' expence?
A moist sparke it is,
A watry diamond; from whence
The very tearme, I think, was found,
The water of a diamond.
O, 'tis not a teare:
'Tis a star about to dropp
From thine eye, its spheare;
The sun will stoope and take it up:
Proud will his sister be, to weare
This thine eyes' iewell in her eare.
O, 'tis a teare,
Too true a teare; for no sad eyne,
How sad so 'ere,
Raine so true a teare, as thine;
Each drop leaving a place so deare,
Weeps for it self; is its owne teare.
Such a pearle as this is,
Slipt from Aurora's dewy brest--
The rose-bud's sweet lipp kisses;
And such the rose it self that's vext
With ungentle flames, does shed,
Sweating in a too warm bed.
Such the maiden gem,
By the purpling vine put on,
Peeps from her parent stem,
And blushes on the bridegroom sun;
The watry blossome of thy eyne
Ripe, will make the richer wine.
Faire drop, why quak'st thou so?
'Cause thou streight must lay thy head
In the dust? O, no!
The dust shall never be thy bed:
A pillow for thee will I bring,
Stuft with downe of angel's wing.
Thus carried up on high
(For to Heaven thou must goe),
Sweetly shalt thou lye,
And in soft slumbers bath thy woe,
Till the singing orbes awake thee,
And one of their bright chorus make thee.
There thy selfe shalt bee
An eye, but not a weeping one;
Yet I doubt of thee,
Whether th' had'st rather there have shone
An eye of heaven; or still shine here,
In the heaven of Marie's eye, a TEARE.
Tradidit semetipsum pro nobis oblationem et hostiam Deo in odorem
Lord, by Thy sweet and sailing sign!
Defend us from our foes and Thine.
_V._ Thou shalt open my lippes, O Lord.
_R._ And my mouth shall shew forth Thy prayse.
_V._ O God, make speed to saue me.
_R._ O Lord, make hast to help me.
Glory be to the FATHER,
and to the SON,
and to the H[oly] GHOST.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and euer
shall be, world without end. Amen.
The wakefull Matines hast to sing
The unknown sorrows of our King:
The Father's Word and Wisdom, made
Man for man, by man's betraid;
The World's price sett to sale, and by the bold
Merchants of Death and Sin, is bought and sold:
Of His best freinds (yea of Himself) forsaken;
By His worst foes (because He would) beseig'd and taken.
All hail, fair tree,
Whose fruit we be!
What song shall raise
Thy seemly praise,
Who broughtst to light
Life out of death, Day out of Night!
Lo, we adore Thee,
Dread LAMB! and bow thus low before Thee:
'Cause, by the couenant of Thy crosse,
Thou hast sau'd at once the whole World's losse.
O Lord IESV-CHRIST, Son of the liuing God!
interpose, I pray Thee, Thine Own pretious death,
Thy crosse and passion, betwixt my soul and Thy
iudgment, now and in the hour of my death. And
vouchsafe to graunt vnto me Thy grace and mercy;
vnto all quick and dead, remission and rest; to Thy
Church, peace and concord; to vs sinners, life and
glory euerlasting. Who liuest and reignest with
the Father, in the vnity of the Holy Ghost, one
God, world without end. Amen.
Lord, by Thy sweet and sailing sign!
Defend vs from our foes and Thine.
_V._ Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord.
_R._ And my mouth shall shew forth Thy praise.
_V._ O God, make speed to save me.
_R._ O Lord, make hast to help me.
_R._ As it was in the, &c.
The early Prime blushes to say
She could not rise so soon, as they
Call'd Pilat vp; to try if he
Could lend them any cruelty.
Their hands with lashes arm'd, their toungs with lyes
And loathsom spittle, blott those beauteous eyes,
The blissfull springs of ioy; from whose all-chearing ray
The fair starrs fill their wakefull fires, the sun him-
self drinks day.
Victorious sign
That now dost shine,
Transcrib'd aboue
Into the land of light and loue;
O let vs twine
Our rootes with thine,
That we may rise
Vpon thy wings, and reach the skyes.
Lo, we adore Thee,
Dread Lamb! and fall
Thus low before Thee.
'Cause by the couenant of Thy crosse
Thou hast sau'd at once the whole World's losse.
O LORD IESV-CHRIST, Son of the liuing God!
interpose, I pray Thee, Thine Own pretious death,
Thy crosse and passion, betwixt my soul and Thy
iudgment, now and in the hour of my death. And
vouchsafe to graunt vnto me Thy grace and mercy;
vnto all quick and dead, remission and rest; to
Thy Church, peace and concord; to vs sinners,
life and glory euerlasting. Who liuest and reignest
with the Father, in the vnity of the Holy Ghost,
one God, world without end. Amen.
Lord, by Thy sweet and sauing sign,
Defend vs from our foes and Thine.
_V._ Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord.
_R._ And my mouth shall shew forth Thy praise.
_V._ O God, make speed to save me.
_R._ O Lord, make hast to help me.
_R._ As it was in the, &c.
The third hour's deafen'd with the cry
Of crucify Him, crucify.
So goes the vote (nor ask them, why?),
But there is witt in wrath, and they will try
A hail more cruell then their crucify.
For while in sport He weares a spitefull crown
The serious showres along His decent Face run sadly down.
Christ when He dy'd
Deceiu'd the Crosse;
And on Death's side
Threw all the losse.
The captiue World awak't and found
The prisoners loose, the iaylor bound.
Lo, we adore Thee,
Dread LAMB, and fall
Thus low before Thee.
'Cause by the couenant of Thy crosse
Thou hast sau'd at once the whole World's losse.
O Lord IESV-CHRIST, Son of the liuing God!
interpose, I pray Thee, Thine Own pretious death,
Thy crosse and passion, betwixt my soul and Thy
iudgment, now and in the hour of my death. And
vouchsafe to graunt vnto me Thy grace and mercy;
vnto all quick and dead, remission and rest; to
Thy Church, peace and concord; to vs sinners,
life and glory everlasting. Who liuest and reignest
with the Father, in the vnity of the Holy Ghost,
one God, world without end. Amen.
Lord, by Thy sweet and sauing sign!
Defend vs from our foes and Thine.
_V._ Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord.
_R._ And my mouth shall shew forth Thy praise.
_V._ O God, make speed to save me!
_R._ O Lord, make hast to help me!
_R._ As it was in the, &c.
Now is the noon of Sorrow's night:
High in His patience, as their spite,
Lo, the faint Lamb, with weary limb
Beares that huge tree which must bear Him!
That fatall plant, so great of fame
For fruit of sorrow and of shame,
Shall swell with both, for Him, and mix
All woes into one crucifix.
Is tortur'd thirst itselfe too sweet a cup?
Gall, and more bitter mocks, shall make it vp.
Are nailes, blunt pens of superficiall smart?
Contempt and scorn can send sure wounds to
search the inmost heart.
O deare and sweet dispute
'Twixt Death's and Loue's farr different fruit!
Different as farr
As antidotes and poysons are.
By that first fatall tree
Both life and liberty
Were sold and slain;
By this they both look vp, and liue again.
Lo, we adore Thee,
Dread Lamb! and bow thus low before Thee.
'Cause by the couenant of Thy crosse,
Thou hast sau'd the World from certain losse.
O Lord IESV-CHRIST, Son of the liuing God!
interpose, I pray Thee, Thine Own pretious death,
Thy crosse and passion, betwixt my soul and Thy
iudgment, now and in the hour of my death. And
vouchsafe to graunt vnto me Thy grace and mercy;
vnto all quick and dead, remission and rest; to
Thy Church, peace and concord; to vs sinners,
life and glory euerlasting. Who liuest and reignest
with the Father, in the vnity of the Holy Ghost,
one God, world without end. Amen.
Lord, by Thy sweet and sauing sign,
Defend vs from our foes and Thine.
_V._ Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord.
_R._ And my mouth shall shew forth Thy praise.
_V._ O God, make speed to save me!
_R._ O Lord, make hast to help me!
_R._ As it was in the, &c.
The ninth with awfull horror hearkened to those groanes
Which taught attention eu'n to rocks and stones.
Hear, Father, hear! Thy Lamb (at last) complaines
Of some more painfull thing then all His paines.
Then bowes His all-obedient head, and dyes
His own lou's and our sins' GREAT SACRIFICE.
The sun saw that, and would haue seen no more;
The center shook: her vselesse veil th' inglorious Temple tore.
O strange, mysterious strife
Of open Death and hidden Life!
When on the crosse my King did bleed,
Life seem'd to dy, Death dy'd indeed.
Lo, we adore Thee,
Dread Lamb! and fall
Thus low before Thee.
'Cause by the couenant of Thy crosse
Thou hast sau'd at once the whole World's losse.
O Lord Iesv-Christ, Son of the liuing God!
interpose, I pray Thee, Thine Own pretious death,
Thy crosse and passion, betwixt my soul and Thy
iudgment, now and in the hour of my death. And
vouchsafe to graunt vnto me Thy grace and mercy;
vnto all quick and dead, remission and rest; to
Thy Church, peace and concord; to vs sinners,
life and glory euerlasting. Who liuest and reignest
with the Father, in the vnity of the Holy Ghost,
one God, world without end. Amen.
Lord, by Thy sweet and sauing sign!
Defend vs from our foes and Thine.
_V._ Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord!
_R._ And my mouth shall shew forth Thy praise.
_V._ O God, make speed to save me!
_R._ O Lord, make hast to help me!
_R._ As it was in the, &c.
But there were rocks would not relent at this:
Lo, for their own hearts, they rend His;
Their deadly hate liues still, and hath
A wild reserve of wanton wrath;
Superfluous spear! But there's a heart stands by
Will look no wounds be lost, no deaths shall dy.
Gather now thy Greif's ripe fruit, great mother-maid!
O sad, sweet tree!
Wofull and ioyfull we
Both weep and sing in shade of thee.
When the dear nailes did lock
And graft into thy gracious stock
The hope, the health,
The worth, the wealth
Of all the ransom'd World, thou hadst the power
(In that propitious hour)
To poise each pretious limb,
And proue how light the World was, when it weighd with Him.
Wide maist thou spred
Thine armes, and with thy bright and blissfull head
O'relook all Libanus. Thy lofty crown
The King Himself is, thou His humble throne,
Where yeilding and yet conquering He
Prou'd a new path of patient victory:
When wondring Death by death was slain,
And our Captiuity His captiue ta'ne.
Lo, we adore Thee,
Dread LAMB! and bow thus low before Thee.
'Cause by the couenant of Thy crosse
Thou hast sau'd the World from certain losse.
O Lord Iesv-Christ, Son of the liuing, &c.
Lord, by Thy sweet and sauing sign!
Defend vs from our foes and Thine.
_V._ Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord!
_R._ And my mouth shall shew forth Thy praise.
_V._ O God, make speed to save me!
_R._ O Lord, make hast to help me!
_R._ As it was in the, &c.
The Complin hour comes last, to call
Vs to our own lives' funerall.
Ah hartlesse task! yet Hope takes head,
And liues in Him that here lyes dead.
Run, Mary, run! Bring hither all the blest
Arabia, for thy royall phoenix' nest;
Pour on thy noblest sweets, which, when they touch
This sweeter body, shall indeed be such.
But must Thy bed, Lord, be a borrow'd graue
Who lend'st to all things all the life they haue.
O rather vse this heart, thus farr a fitter stone,
'Cause, though a hard and cold one, yet it is Thine own. Amen.
O saue vs then,
Mercyfull King of men!
Since Thou wouldst needs be thus
A Saviour, and at such a rate, for vs;
Saue vs, O saue vs, Lord.
We now will own no shorter wish, nor name a narrower word;
Thy blood bids vs be bold,
Thy wounds giue vs fair hold,
Thy sorrows chide our shame:
Thy crosse, Thy nature, and Thy name
Aduance our claim,
And cry with one accord
Saue them, O saue them, Lord!
These Houres, and that which houers o're my end,
Into Thy hands and hart, Lord, I commend.
Take both to Thine account, that I and mine
In that hour, and in these, may be all Thine.
That as I dedicate my deuoutest breath
To make a kind of life for my Lord's death,
So from His liuing and life-giuing death,
My dying life may draw a new and neuer fleeting breath.
_Various readings of the Hymns in 1648 'Steps.'_
"   2. The allusion is to the petition in the old Litanies,
'By all Thine _unknown_ sorrows, good Lord, deliver us.'
"   8. 'betray'd' for 'beseigd:' the former perhaps superior.
Look vp, languisting soul! Lo, where the fair
Badge of thy faith calls back thy care,
And biddes thee ne're forget
Thy life is one long debt
Of loue, to Him, Who on this painfull tree
Paid back the flesh He took for thee.
Lo, how the streames of life, from that full nest
Of loues, Thy Lord's too liberall brest,
Flow in an amorous floud
Of water wedding blood.
With these He wash't thy stain, transferred thy smart,
And took it home to His own heart.
But though great Love, greedy of such sad gain,
Vsurpt the portion of thy pain,
And from the nailes and spear
Turn'd the steel point of fear:
Their vse is chang'd, not lost; and now they moue
Not stings of wrath, but wounds of loue.
Tall tree of life! thy truth makes good
What was till now ne're understood,
Though the prophetick king
Struck lowd his faithfull string:
It was thy wood he meant should make the throne
For a more than Salomon.
Large throne of Loue! royally spred
With purple of too rich a red:
Thy crime is too much duty;
Thy burthen, too much beauty;
Glorious or greiuous more? thus to make good
Thy costly excellence with thy King's own blood.
Euen ballance of both worlds! our world of sin,
And that of grace, Heaun-way'd in Him:
Vs with our price thou weighed'st;
Our price for vs thou payed'st,
Soon as the right-hand scale reioyc't to proue
How much Death weigh'd more light then Loue.
Hail, our alone hope! let thy fair head shoot
Aloft, and fill the nations with thy noble fruit:
The while our hearts and we
Thus graft our selues on thee,
Grow thou and they. And be thy fair increase
The sinner's pardon and the iust man's peace.
Liue, O for euer liue and reign
The Lamb Whom His own loue hath slain!
And let Thy lost sheep liue to inherit
That kingdom which this Crosse did merit. Amen.
These variations &c. as between 1648 and 1652, deserve record:
St. i. line 1. 'Languishing,' which is the reading in 1648.
'Both with one price were weighed,
Both with one price were paid.'
'That Kingdome which Thy blessed death did merit.'
I place 'Vexilla Regis' immediately after the 'Office of the Holy
_St. Matthew_ xxii.
Mid'st all the darke and knotty snares,
Black wit or malice can, or dares,
Thy glorious wisedome breaks the nets,
And treds with uncontrouled steps;
Thy quell'd foes are not onely now
Thy triumphs, but Thy trophies too:
They both at once Thy conquests bee,
And Thy conquests' memorie.
Stony amazement makes them stand
Wayting on Thy victorious hand,
Like statues fixed to the fame
Of Thy renoune, and their own shame,
As if they onely meant to breath
To be the life of their own death.
'Twas time to hold their peace, when they
Had ne're another word to say;
Yet is their silence unto Thee,
The full sound of Thy victorie;
Their silence speaks aloud, and is
Thy well pronounc'd panegyris.
While they speak nothing, they speak all
Their share, in Thy memoriall.
While they speake nothing, they proclame
Thee, with the shrillest trump of Fame.
To hold their peace is all the wayes
These wretches have to speak Thy praise.
(For what else is My life?), lo! I bequeath:
Expect a sea; My heart shall make it good.
The floodgate shall be set wide ope for Him.
To drowne the wantonnesse of His wild thirst.
Are yett but hopes, weake as my infant yeares.
My teares but tender, and My death new-borne.
These cradle-torments have their towardnesse.
Erst the full stature of a fatall tree.
This knife may be the speare's praeludium.
O, these wakefull wounds of Thine!
Are they mouthes? or are they eyes?
Be they mouthes, or be they eyne,
Each bleeding part some one supplies.
Lo! a mouth! whose full-bloom'd lips
At too dear a rate are roses:
Lo! a blood-shot eye! that weeps,
And many a cruell teare discloses.
O, thou that on this foot hast laid
Many a kisse, and many a teare;
Now thou shalt have all repaid,
What soe're thy charges were.
This foot hath got a mouth and lips
To pay the sweet summe of thy kisses;
To pay thy teares, an eye that weeps,
Instead of teares, such gems as this is.
The difference onely this appeares,
(Nor can the change offend)
The debt is paid in ruby-teares
Which thou in pearles did'st lend.
IIESU, no more! It is full tide:
From Thy head and from Thy feet,
From Thy hands and from Thy side
All the purple riuers meet.
What need Thy fair head bear a part
In showres, as if Thine eyes had none?
What need they help to drown Thy heart,
That striues in torrents of it's own?
Water'd by the showres they bring,
The thornes that Thy blest browe encloses
(A cruell and a costly spring)
Conceiue proud hopes of proving roses.
Thy restlesse feet now cannot goe
For vs and our eternall good,
As they were euer wont. What though?
They swimme, alas! in their own floud.
Thy hand to giue Thou canst not lift;
Yet will Thy hand still giuing be.
It giues, but O itself's the gift:
It giues though bound; though bound 'tis free.
But O Thy side, Thy deep-digg'd side!
That hath a double Nilus going:
Nor euer was the Pharian tide
Half so fruitfull, half so flowing.
No hair so small, but payes his riuer
To this Red Sea of Thy blood;
Their little channells can deliuer
Somthing to the generall floud.
But while I speak, whither are run
All the riuers nam'd before?
I counted wrong: there is but one;
But O that one is one all ore.
Rain-swoln riuers may rise proud,
Bent all to drown and overflow;
But when indeed all's ouerflow'd,
They themselues are drowned too.
This Thy blood's deluge (a dire chance,
Dear Lord, to Thee) to vs is found
A deluge of deliuerance;
A deluge least we should be drown'd.                   _lest_
N'ere wast Thou in a sense so sadly true,
The well of liuing waters, Lord, till now.
'From Thy hands and from Thy feet,
From Thy head and from Thy side.'
'_In caput Xti spinis coronatum._
Cerno Caput si Christe tuum mihi vertitur omne
In spinis illud, quod fuit ante rosa.'
Turnbull gives the stanza, but misplaces it after our st. vi.,
overlooking that our st. ii. is in 1646 edition st. v.
I sing the name which none can say
But touch't with an interiour ray:
The name of our new peace; our good:
Our blisse: and supernaturall blood:
The name of all our liues and loues.
Hearken, and help, ye holy doues!
The high-born brood of Day; you bright
Candidates of blissefull light,
The heirs elect of Loue, whose names belong
Vnto the euerlasting life of song;
All ye wise sovles, who in the wealthy brest
Of this vnbounded name, build your warm nest.
Awake, my glory, Sovl (if such thou be,
And that fair word at all referr to thee),
Awake and sing,
And be all wing;
Bring hither thy whole self; and let me see
What of thy parent Heavn yet speakes in thee.
O thou art poore
Of noble powres, I see,
And full of nothing else but empty me:
Narrow, and low, and infinitely lesse
Then this great morning's mighty busynes.
One little world or two
(Alas) will neuer doe;
We must haue store.
Goe, Sovl, out of thy self, and seek for more.
Goe and request
Great Natvre for the key of her huge chest
Of Heauns, the self-inuoluing sett of sphears
(Which dull mortality more feeles then heares).
Then rouse the nest
Of nimble Art, and trauerse round
The aiery shop of soul-appeasing sound:
And beat a summons in the same
All-soueraign name,
To warn each seuerall kind
And shape of sweetnes, be they such
As sigh with supple wind
Or answer artfull touch;
That they conuene and come away
No other note for't, but the name we sing.
Wake lvte and harp, and euery sweet-lipp't thing
That talkes with tunefull string;
Start into life, and leap with me
Into a hasty fitt-tun'd harmony.
Nor must you think it much
T' obey my bolder touch;
I haue authority in Love's name to take you,
And to the worke of Loue this morning wake you.
Wake, in the name
Of Him Who neuer sleeps, all things that are,
Or, what's the same,
Are musicall;
Answer my call
And come along;
Help me to meditate mine immortal song.
Come, ye soft ministers of sweet sad mirth,
Bring all your houshold stuffe of Heaun on earth;
O you, my Soul's most certain wings,
Complaining pipes, and prattling strings,
Bring all the store
Of sweets you haue; and murmur that you haue no more.
Come, ne're to part,
Come; and come strong,
To the conspiracy of our spatious song.
Bring all the powres of praise,
Your prouinces of well-vnited worlds can raise;
Bring all your lvtes and harps of Heavn and Earth;
Whatere cooperates to the common mirthe:
Vessells of vocall ioyes,
Or you, more noble architects of intellectuall noise,
Cymballs of Heau'n, or humane sphears,
Solliciters of sovles or eares;
And when you are come, with all
That you can bring or we can call:
O may you fix
For euer here, and mix
Your selues into the long
And euerlasting series of a deathlesse song;
Mix all your many worlds aboue,
And loose them into one of loue.
Chear thee my heart!
For thou too hast thy part
And place in the Great Throng
Of this vnbounded all-imbracing song.
Powres of my soul, be proud!
And speake lowd
To all the dear-bought Nations, this redeeming Name,
And in the wealth of one rich word, proclaim
New similes to Nature. May it be no wrong
Blest Heauns, to you and your superiour song,
That we, dark sons of dust and sorrow,
A while dare borrow
The name of your dilights, and our desires,
And fitt it to so farr inferior lyres.
Our murmurs haue their musick too,
Ye mighty Orbes, as well as you;
Nor yeilds the noblest nest
Of warbling Seraphim to the eares of Loue,
A choicer lesson then the ioyfull brest
Of a poor panting turtle-doue.
And we, low wormes, haue leaue to doe
The same bright busynes (ye Third Heavens) with you.
Gentle spirits, doe not complain!
We will haue care
To keep it fair,
And send it back to you again.
Come, louely Name! Appeare from forth the bright
Regions of peacefull light;
Look from Thine Own illustrious home,
Fair King of names, and come:
Leaue all Thy natiue glories in their gorgeous nest,
And giue Thy Self a while the gracious Guest
Of humble soules, that seek to find
The hidden sweets
Which man's heart meets
When Thou art Master of the mind.
Come louely Name; Life of our hope!
Lo, we hold our hearts wide ope!
Vnlock Thy cabinet of Day,
Dearest Sweet, and come away.
Lo, how the thirsty Lands
Gasp for Thy golden showres! with long-stretcht hands
Lo, how the laboring Earth
That hopes to be
Leapes at Thy birth!
The' attending World, to wait Thy rise,
First turn'd to eyes;
And then, not knowing what to doe,
Turn'd them to teares, and spent them too.
Come royall Name! and pay the expence
Of all this pretious patience;
O come away
And kill the death of this delay!
O, see so many worlds of barren yeares
Melted and measur'd out in seas of teares:
O, see the weary liddes of wakefull Hope
(Love's eastern windowes) all wide ope
With curtains drawn,
To catch the day-break of Thy dawn.
O, dawn at last, long-lookt for Day!
Take Thine own wings, and come away.
Lo, where aloft it comes! It comes, among
The conduct of adoring spirits, that throng
Like diligent bees, and swarm about it.
O, they are wise,
And know what sweetes are suck't from out it:
It is the hiue,
By which they thriue,
Where all their hoard of hony lyes.
Lo, where it comes, vpon the snowy Dove's
Soft back; and brings a bosom big with loues:
Welcome to our dark world, Thou womb of Day!
Vnfold Thy fair conceptions, and display
The birth of our bright ioyes, O Thou compacted
Body of blessings: Spirit of soules extracted!
O, dissipate Thy spicy powres,
(Cloud of condensed sweets) and break vpon vs
In balmy showrs!
O, fill our senses, and take from vs all force of so
prophane a fallacy,
To think ought sweet but that which smells of Thee!
Fair, flowry Name, in none but Thee
And Thy nectareall fragrancy,
Hourly there meetes
An vniuersall synod of all sweets;
By whom it is defined thus,
That no perfume
For euer shall presume
To passe for odoriferous,
But such alone whose sacred pedigree
Can proue itself some kin (sweet Name!) to Thee.
Sweet Name, in Thy each syllable
A thousand blest Arabias dwell;
A thousand hills of frankincense,
Mountains of myrrh, and beds of spices
And ten thousand paradises,
The soul that tasts Thee takes from thence.
How many vnknown worlds there are
Of comforts, which Thou hast in keeping!
How many thousand mercyes there
In Pitty's soft lap ly a-sleeping!
To awake them,
And to take them
Home, and lodge them in his heart.
O, that it were as it was wont to be!
When Thy old freinds of fire, all full of Thee,
Fought against frowns with smiles; gaue glorious chase
To persecutions; and against the face
Of Death and feircest dangers, durst with braue
And sober pace, march on to meet A GRAVE.
On their bold brests, about the world they bore Thee,
And to the teeth of Hell stood vp to teach Thee;
In center of their inmost soules, they wore Thee,
Little, alas, thought they
Who tore the fair brests of Thy freinds,
Their fury but made way
For Thee, and seru'd them in Thy glorious ends.
What did their weapons but with wider pores
Inlarge Thy flaming-brested louers,
More freely to transpire
That impatient fire,
The heart that hides Thee hardly couers?
What did their weapons but sett wide the doores
For Thee? fair, purple doores, of Loue's deuising;
The ruby windowes which inricht the East
Of Thy so oft-repeated rising!
Each wound of theirs was Thy new morning,
And reinthron'd Thee in Thy rosy nest,
With blush of Thine Own blood Thy day adorning:
It was the witt of Loue oreflowd the bounds
Of Wrath, and made Thee way through all those wovnds.
Wellcome, dear, all-adored Name!
For sure there is no knee
That knowes not Thee:
Or, if there be such sonns of shame,
Alas! what will they doe
When stubborn rocks shall bow
And hills hang down their heaun-saluting heads
To seek for humble beds
Of dust, where in the bashfull shades of Night
Next to their own low Nothing, they may ly,
And couch before the dazeling light of Thy dread majesty.
They that by Loue's mild dictate now
Will not adore Thee,
Shall then, with just confusion bow
And break before Thee.
Line  7, 'the bright.'
"  49, 'Into a habit fit of self tun'd Harmonie.'
" 187, 'The soules tastes thee takes from thence.'
" 209, 'For Thee: And serv'd therein thy glorious ends.'
Happy me! O happy sheepe!
Whom my God vouchsafes to keepe;
Even my God, even He it is,
That points me to these paths of blisse;
On Whose pastures cheerefull Spring,
All the yeare doth sit and sing,
And rejoycing, smiles to see
Their green backs weare His liverie:
Pleasure sings my soul to rest,
Plentie weares me at her brest,
Whose sweet temper teaches me
Nor wanton, nor in want to be.
At my feet, the blubb'ring mountaine
Weeping, melts into a fountaine;
Whose soft, silver-sweating streames
Make high-noon forget his beames:
When my wayward breath is flying,
He calls home my soul from dying;
Strokes and tames my rabid griefe,
And does wooe me into life:
When my simple weaknes strayes,
(Tangled in forbidden wayes)
He (my Shepheard) is my guide,
Hee's before me, on my side,
And behind me, He beguiles
Craft in all her knottie wiles:
He expounds the weary wonder
Of my giddy steps, and under
Spreads a path, cleare as the day,
Where no churlish rub says nay
To my joy-conducted feet,
Whilst they gladly goe to meet
Grace and Peace, to learne new laies,
Tun'd to my great Shepheard's praise.
Come now all ye terrors sally,
Muster forth into the valley,
Where triumphant darknesse hovers
With a sable wing, that covers
Brooding horror. Come, thou Death,
Let the damps of thy dull breath
Over-shadow even that shade,
And make Darknes' selfe afraid;
There my feet, even there, shall find
Way for a resolved mind.
Still my Shepheard, still my God,
Thou art with me; still Thy rod,
And Thy staffe, whose influence
Gives direction, gives defence.
At the whisper of Thy word
Crown'd abundance spreads my boord:
While I feast, my foes doe feed
Their ranck malice not their need,
So that with the self-same bread
They are starv'd and I am fed.
How my head in ointment swims!
How my cup o'relooks her brims!
So, even so still may I move,
By the line of Thy deare love;
Still may Thy sweet mercy spread
A shady arme above my head,
About my paths; so shall I find,
The faire center of my mind,
Thy temple, and those lovely walls
Bright ever with a beame, that falls
Fresh from the pure glance of Thine eye,
There I'le dwell for ever; there
Will I find a purer aire
To feed my life with, there I'le sup
Balme and nectar in my cup;
And thence my ripe soule will I breath
Warme into the armes of Death.
On the proud banks of great Euphrates' flood,
There we sate, and there we wept:
Our harpes, that now no musick understood,
Nodding, on the willowes slept:
While unhappy captiv'd wee,
Lovely Sion, thought on thee.
They, they that snatcht us from our countrie's breast,
Would have a song carv'd to their eares
In Hebrew numbers, then (O cruell jest!)
When harpes and hearts were drown'd in teares:
Come, they cry'd, come sing and play
One of Sion's songs to-day.
Sing? play? to whom (ah!) shall we sing or play,
If not, Jerusalem, to thee?
Ah! thee Jerusalem! ah! sooner may
This hand forget the masterie
Of Musick's dainty touch, than I
The musick of thy memory.
Which when I lose, O may at once my tongue
Lose this same busie-speaking art,
Vnpearch't, her vocall arteries unstrung,
No more acquainted with my heart,
On my dry pallat's roof to rest
A wither'd leaf, an idle guest.
No, no, Thy good Sion, alone, must crowne
The head of all my hope-nurst joyes.
But Edom, cruell thou! thou cryd'st downe, downe
Sinke Sion, downe and never rise,
Her falling thou did'st urge and thrust,
And haste to dash her into dust:
Dost laugh? proud Babel's daughter! do, laugh on,
Till thy ruine teach thee teares,
Even such as these; laugh, till a venging throng
Of woes, too late, doe rouze thy feares:
Laugh, till thy children's bleeding bones
Weepe pretious teares upon the stones.
Come, we shepheards, whose blest sight
Hath mett Loue's noon in Nature's night;
Come, lift we vp our loftyer song
And wake the svn that lyes too long.
To all our world of well-stoln joy
He slept; and dreamt of no such thing.
While we found out Heaun's fairer ey
And kis't the cradle of our King.
Tell him He rises now, too late
To show vs ought worth looking at.
Tell him we now can show him more
Then he e're show'd to mortall sight;
Then he himselfe e're saw before,
Which to be seen needes not his light.
Tell him, Tityrus, where th' hast been,
Tell him Thyrsis, what th' hast seen.
Gloomy night embrac't the place
Where the noble Infant lay.
The Babe look't vp and shew'd His face;
In spite of darknes, it was day.
It was Thy day, Sweet! and did rise
Not from the East, but from Thine eyes.
_Chorus._ It was Thy day, Sweet.
Winter chidde aloud, and sent
The angry North to wage his warres.
The North forgott his feirce intent,
And left perfumes in stead of scarres.
By those sweet eyes' persuasiue powrs
Where he mean't frost, he scatter'd flowrs.
_Chorus._ By those sweet eyes.
We saw Thee in Thy baulmy-nest,
Young dawn of our aeternall Day!
We saw Thine eyes break from their East
And chase the trembling shades away.
We saw Thee; and we blest the sight,
We saw Thee by Thine Own sweet light.
Poor world (said I), what wilt thou doe
To entertain this starry Stranger?
Is this the best thou canst bestow?
A cold, and not too cleanly, manger?
Contend, the powres of Heau'n and Earth,
To fitt a bed for this huge birthe?
_Chorus._ Contend the powers.
Proud world, said I, cease your contest
And let the mighty Babe alone.
The phaenix builds the phaenix' nest,
Lov's architecture is his own.
The Babe whose birth embraues this morn,
Made His Own bed e're He was born.
I saw the curl'd drops, soft and slow,
Come houering o're the place's head;
Offring their whitest sheets of snow
To furnish the fair Infant's bed:
Forbear, said I; be not too bold,
Your fleece is white but 'tis too cold.
_Chorus._ Forbear, sayd I.
I saw the obsequious Seraphims
Their rosy fleece of fire bestow.
For well they now can spare their wing,
Since Heavn itself lyes here below.
Well done, said I; but are you sure
Your down so warm, will passe for pure?
_Chorus._ Well done, sayd I.
No, no! your King's not yet to seeke
Where to repose His royall head;
See, see! how soon His new-bloom'd cheek
Twixt's mother's brests is gone to bed.
Sweet choise, said we! no way but so
Not to ly cold, yet sleep in snow.
_Chorus._ Sweet choise, said we.
We saw Thee in Thy baulmy nest,
Bright dawn of our aeternall Day!
We saw Thine eyes break from their East
And chase the trembling shades away.
We saw Thee: and we blest the sight,
We saw Thee, by Thine Own sweet light.
Wellcome, all wonders in one sight!
Aeternity shutt in a span!
Heauen in Earth, and God in man!
Great, little One! Whose all-embracing birth
Lifts Earth to Heauen, stoopes Heau'n to Earth.
Wellcome, though not to gold nor silk,
To more then Caesar's birth-right is;
Two sister-seas of virgin-milk,
With many a rarely-temper'd kisse,
That breathes at once both maid and mother,
Warmes in the one, cooles in the other.
Shee sings Thy tears asleep, and dips
Her kisses in Thy weeping eye;
She spreads the red leaves of Thy lips,
That in their buds yet blushing lye;
She 'gainst those mother-diamonds, tries
The points of her young eagle's eyes.
Wellcome, though not to those gay flyes,
Guilded i' th' beames of earthly kings;
Slippery soules in smiling eyes;
But to poor shepheards' home-spun things;
Whose wealth's their flock; whose witt, to be
Well-read in their simplicity.
Yet when young April's husband-showrs
Shall blesse the fruitfull Maja's bed,
We'l bring the first-born of her flowrs
To kisse Thy feet and crown Thy head.
To Thee, dread Lamb! Whose loue must keep
The shepheards, more then they the sheep.
To Thee, meek Majesty! soft King
Of simple Graces and sweet Loves:
Each of vs his lamb will bring,
Each his pair of sylver doues:
Till burnt at last in fire of Thy fair eyes,
Ourselues become our own best sacrifice.
'who haue seene
Daie's King deposed by night's Queene.
Come lift we up our lofty song,
To wake the sun that sleeps too long.'
'Hee (in this our generall joy)
'I saw the officious angells bring
The downe that their soft breasts did strow:
For well they now can spare their wings,
When heauen itselfe lies here below.
Faire youth (said I) be not too rough,
Thy downe (though soft)'s not soft enough.'
'The Babe noe sooner 'gan to seeke
Where to lay His louely head;
But streight His eyes advis'd His cheeke
'Twixt's mother's breasts to goe to bed.'
"  79, 'Welcome to our wond'ring sight.'
"  85, 'not to gold' for 'nor to gold:' adopted.
'But to poore shepheards' simple things,
That vse not varnish; noe oyl'd arts,
But lift cleane hands full of cleare hearts.'
Rise, thou best and brightest morning!
Rosy with a double red;
With thine own blush thy cheeks adorning,
And the dear drops this day were shed.
All the purple pride, that laces
The crimson curtains of thy bed,
Guilds thee not with so sweet graces,
Nor setts thee in so rich a red.
Of all the fair-cheek't flowrs that fill thee,
None so fair thy bosom strowes,
As this modest maiden lilly
Our sins haue sham'd into a rose.
Bid thy golden god, the sun,
Burnisht in his best beames rise,
Put all his red-ey'd rubies on;
These rubies shall putt out their eyes.
Let him make poor the purple East,
Search what the world's close cabinets keep,
Rob the rich births of each bright nest
That flaming in their fair beds sleep.
Let him embraue his own bright tresses
With a new morning made of gemmes;
And wear, in those his wealthy dresses,
Another day of diadems.
When he hath done all he may
To make himselfe rich in his rise,
All will be darknes to the day
That breakes from one of these bright eyes.
And soon this sweet truth shall appear,
Dear Babe, ere many dayes be done;
The Morn shall come to meet Thee here,
And leaue her own neglected sun.
Here are beautyes shall bereaue him
Of all his eastern paramours.
His Persian louers all shall leaue him,
And swear faith to Thy sweeter powres;
Nor while they leave him shall they lose the sun,
But in Thy fairest eyes find two for one.
'All the purple pride that laces;'
'look, love, what envious streaks
Do _lace_ the severing clouds in yonder East.'
_1 Kinge._ Bright Babe! Whose awfull beautyes make
The morn incurr a sweet mistake;
_2 Kinge._ For Whom the officious Heauns deuise
To disinheritt the sun's rise:
_3 Kinge._ Delicately to displace
The day, and plant it fairer in Thy face.
_1 Kinge._ O Thou born King of loues!
_2 Kinge._ Of lights!
_Chorus._ Look vp, sweet Babe, look vp and see
For loue of Thee,
Thus farr from home
The East is come
To seek her self in Thy sweet eyes.
_1 Kinge._ We, who strangely went astray,
Lost in a bright
Meridian night.
_2 Kinge._ A darknes made of too much day.
_3 Kinge._ Becken'd from farr
By Thy fair starr,
Lo, at last haue found our way.
Lo, we at last haue found the way
To Thee, the World's great vniuersal East,
The generall and indifferent Day.
_1 Kinge._ All-circling point! all-centring sphear!
The World's one, round, aeternall year:
_2 Kinge._ Whose full and all-vnwrinkled face
Nor sinks nor swells with time or place;
_3 Kinge._ But euery where and euery while
Is one consistent, solid smile:
_1 Kinge._ Not vext and tost
_2 Kinge._ 'Twixt Spring and frost;
_3 Kinge._ Nor by alternate shredds of light,
Sordidly shifting hands with shades and Night.
_Chorus._ O little all! in Thy embrace
The World lyes warm, and likes his place;
Nor does his full globe fail to be
Kist on both his cheeks by Thee.
Time is too narrow for Thy year,
Nor makes the whole World Thy half-sphear.
From him we flee.
_2 Kinge._ From him, whom by a more illustrious ly,
The blindnes of the World did call the eye.
_3 Kinge._ To Him, Who by these mortall clouds hast made
Thyself our sun, though Thine Own shade.
_1 Kinge._ Farewell, the World's false light!
Farewell, the white
Bright idol, black idolatry:
The dire face of inferior darknes, kis't
And courted in the pompus mask of a more specious mist.
_2 Kinge._  Farewell, farewell
The proud and misplac't gates of Hell,
Pertch't in the Morning's way        _perched._
And double-guilded as the doores of Day:
The deep hypocrisy of Death and Night
More desperately dark, because more bright.
_3 Kinge._ Welcome, the World's sure way!
Heavn's wholsom ray.
(Sweet!) to our selues, in Thee.
_1 Kinge._ The deathles Heir of all Thy Father's day!
_2 Kinge._ Decently born!
Embosom'd in a much more rosy Morn:
The blushes of Thy all-vnblemisht mother.
_3 Kinge._ No more that other
Aurora shall sett ope
Her ruby casements, or hereafter hope
From mortall eyes
To meet religious welcomes at her rise.
_Chorus._ We (pretious ones!) in you haue won
A gentler Morn, a iuster sun.
_1 Kinge._ His superficiall beames sun-burn't our skin;
_2 Kinge._ But left within
_3 Kinge._ The Night and Winter still of Death and Sin.
_Chorus._ Thy softer yet more certaine darts
Spare our eyes, but peirce our harts:
_1 Kinge._ Therfore with his proud Persian spoiles
_2 Kinge._ We court Thy more concerning smiles.
_3 Kinge._ Therfore with his disgrace
We guild the humble cheek of this chast place;
_Chorus._ And at Thy feet powr forth his face.
_1 Kinge._ The doating Nations now no more
Shall any day but Thine adore.
_2 Kinge._ Nor--much lesse--shall they leaue these eyes
_3 Kinge._ In whatsoe're more sacred shape
Of ram, he-goat, or reuerend ape;
Those beauteous rauishers opprest so sore
The too-hard-tempted nations.
_1 Kinge._ Neuer more
By wanton heyfer shall be worn
_2 Kinge._ A garland, or a guilded horn:
The altar-stall'd ox, fatt Osyris now
With his fair sister cow
_3 Kinge._ Shall kick the clouds no more; but lean and tame,
_Chorus._ See His horn'd face, and dy for shame:
And Mithra now shall be no name.
_1 Kinge._ No longer shall the immodest lust
Of adulterous godles dust
_2 Kinge._ Fly in the face of Heau'n; as if it were
The poor World's fault that He is fair.
_3 Kinge._ Nor with peruerse loues and religious rapes
Reuenge Thy bountyes in their beauteous shapes;
And punish best things worst; because they stood
Guilty of being much for them too good.
_1 Kinge._ Proud sons of Death! that durst compell
Heau'n it self to find them Hell:
_2 Kinge._ And by strange witt of madnes wrest
From this World's East the other's West.
_3 Kinge._ All-idolizing wormes! that thus could crowd
And vrge their sun into Thy cloud;
Forcing His sometimes eclips'd face to be
A long deliquium to the light of Thee.
_Chorus._ Alas! with how much heauyer shade
The shamefac't lamp hung down his head
For that one eclipse he made,
Then all those he suffered!
_1 Kinge._ For this he look't so bigg; and euery morn
With a red face confes't his scorn.
Or hiding his vex't cheeks in a hir'd mist
Kept them from being so vnkindly kis't.
_2 Kinge._ It was for this the Day did rise
So oft with blubber'd eyes:
For this the Evening wept; and we ne're knew
But call'd it deaw.
_3 Kinge._ This dayly wrong
Silenc't the morning-sons, and damp't their song:
_Chorus._ Nor was't our deafnes, but our sins, that thus
Long made th' harmonious orbes all mute to vs.
_1 Kinge._ Time has a day in store
When this so proudly poor
And self-oppressed spark, that has so long
By the loue-sick World bin made
Not so much their sun as shade:
Weary of this glorious wrong
From them and from himself shall flee
For shelter to the shadow of Thy tree:
_Chorus._ Proud to haue gain'd this pretious losse
And chang'd his false crown for Thy crosse.
_2 Kinge._ That dark Day's clear doom shall define
Whose is the master Fire, which sun should shine:
That sable judgment-seat shall by new lawes
Decide and settle the great cause
Of controuerted light:
_Chorus._ And Natur's wrongs rejoyce to doe Thee right.
_3 Kinge._ That forfeiture of Noon to Night shall pay
All the idolatrous thefts done by this Night of Day;
And the great Penitent presse his own pale lipps
With an elaborate loue-eclipse:
To which the low World's lawes
Shall lend no cause,
_Chorus._ Saue those domestick which He borrowes
From our sins and His Own sorrowes.
_1 Kinge._ Three sad hours' sackcloth then shall show to vs
His penance, as our fault, conspicuous:
_2 Kinge._ And He more needfully and nobly proue
The Nations' terror now then erst their loue.
_3 Kinge._ Their hated loues changd into wholsom feares:
_Chorus._ The shutting of His eye shall open their's.
_1 Kinge._ As by a fair-ey'd fallacy of Day
Miss-ledde, before, they lost their way;
So shall they, by the seasonable fright
Of an vnseasonable Night,
Loosing it once again, stumble on true Light:
_2 Kinge._ And as before His too-bright eye
Was their more blind idolatry;
So his officious blindnes now shall be
Their black, but faithfull perspectiue of Thee:
_3 Kinge._ His new prodigious Night,
Their new and admirable light,
The supernaturall dawn of Thy pure Day;
While wondring they
(The happy conuerts now of Him
Whom they compell'd before to be their sin)
Shall henceforth see
To kisse him only as their rod,
Whom they so long courted as God.
_Chorus._ And their best vse of him they worship't, be
To learn of him at last, to worship Thee.
_1 Kinge._ It was their weaknes woo'd his beauty;
But it shall be
Their wisdome now, as well as duty,
To injoy his blott; and as a large black letter
Vse it to spell Thy beautyes better;
And make the Night it self their torch to Thee.
_2 Kinge._ By the oblique ambush of this close night
Couch't in that conscious shade
The right-ey'd Areopagite
Shall with a vigorous guesse inuade
And catch Thy quick reflex; and sharply see
On this dark ground
To descant Thee.
_3 Kinge._ O prize of the rich Spirit! with what feirce chase
Of his strong soul, shall he
Leap at thy lofty face,
And seize the swift flash, in rebound
From this obsequious cloud,
Once call'd a sun,
Till dearly thus vndone;
_Chorus._ Till thus triumphantly tam'd (O ye two
Twinne svnnes!) and taught now to negotiate you.
_1 Kinge._ Thus shall that reuerend child of Light,
_2 Kinge._ By being scholler first of that new Night,
Come forth great master of the mystick Day;
_3 Kinge._ And teach obscure mankind a more close way
By the frugall negatiue light
Of a most wise and well-abused Night
To read more legible Thine originall ray;
_Chorus._ And make our darknes serue Thy Day:
Maintaining 'twixt Thy World and oures
A commerce of contrary powres,
A mutuall trade
'Twixt sun and shade,
By confederat black and white
Borrowing Day and lending Night.
_1 Kinge._ Thus we, who when with all the noble powres
That (at Thy cost) are call'd, not vainly, ours:
We vow to make braue way
Vpwards, and presse on for the pure intelligentiall prey;
_2 Kinge._ At least to play
The amorous spyes
And peep and proffer at Thy sparkling throne;
_3 Kinge._ In stead of bringing in the blissfull prize
And fastening on Thine eyes:
And nothing gain
But more ambitious losse at last, of brain;
_Chorus._ Now by abased liddes shall learn to be
Eagles; and shutt our eyes that we may see.
(Dread Sweet!) lo thus
At last by vs,
The delegated eye of Day
Does first his scepter, then himself, in solemne tribute pay.
Thus he vndresses
His sacred vnshorn tresses;
At Thy adored feet, thus he layes down
_1 Kinge._ His gorgeous tire
Of flame and fire,
_Chorus._ To which he now has no pretence:
For being show'd by this Day's light, how farr
He is from sun enough to make Thy starr,
His best ambition now is but to be
Somthing a brighter shadow, Sweet, of Thee.
Or on Heaun's azure forhead high to stand
Thy golden index; with a duteous hand
Pointing vs home to our own sun
The World's and his Hyperion.
line 25, 'indifferent' is = impartial, not as now 'unconcerned.'
"  95, 'a guilded horn.' Cf. Juvenal, Satire x.
"  99, ib. is given to 3d King. Throughout we have corrected
a number of slips of the Paris printer in his figures.
"  117, '_deliquium_' = swoon, faint. In chemistry = melting.
adopted it.
Line 143, ib. reads 'deere:' a misprint.
"  195, ib. reads 'what' for 'that,' and in next line 'his'
Line 212, 'legible' is = legibly.
"  224 and onward, in 1648 is printed 'least,' in our text
(1652) 'lest.' Except in line 224 it is plainly = last, and so I
'That He whom the sun serves should faintly peep
Through _clouds of infant flesh_.'
'And urge their sun ...
'Not so much their sun as shade
'Mongst those long rowes of crownes that guild your race,
These royall sages sue for decent place:
The day-break of the Nations; their first ray,
When the dark World dawn'd into Christian Day,
And smil'd i' th' Babe's bright face; the purpling bud
And rosy dawn of the right royall blood;
Fair first-fruits of the Lamb! sure kings in this,
They took a kingdom while they gaue a kisse.
But the World's homage, scarse in these well blown,
We read in you (rare queen) ripe and full-grown.
For from this day's rich seed of diadems
Does rise a radiant croppe of royalle stemms,
A golden haruest of crown'd heads, that meet
And crowd for kisses from the Lamb's white feet:
In this illustrious throng, your lofty floud
Swells high, fair confluence of all high-born bloud:
With your bright head, whole groues of scepters bend
Their wealthy tops, and for these feet contend.
So swore the Lamb's dread Sire: and so we see't,
Crownes, and the heads they kisse, must court these feet.
Fix here, fair majesty! May your heart ne're misse
To reap new crownes and kingdoms from that kisse;
Nor may we misse the ioy to meet in you
The aged honors of this day still new.
May the great time, in you, still greater be,
While all the year is your epiphany;
While your each day's deuotion duly brings
Three kingdomes to supply this day's three kings.
corrects our text's misprint of 'whose' for 'whole,' which I have
In line 3 we read
'Those royall sages sue for decent place.'
Rise heire of fresh Eternity
From thy virgin tombe!
Rise mighty Man of wonders, and Thy World with Thee!
Thy tombe the uniuersall East,
Nature's new wombe,
Thy tombe, fair Immortalitie's perfumed nest.
Of all the glories make Noone gay,
This Rock buds forth the fountaine of the streames of Day;
In Joye's white annalls live this howre
When Life was borne;
No cloud scoule on His radiant lids, no tempest lower.
Life, by this Light's nativity
All creatures have;
Death onely by this Daye's just doome is forc't to dye,
Nor is Death forc't; for may he ly
Thron'd in Thy grave,
Death will on this condition be content to dye.
_Casting the times with their strong signes,
Death's master his owne death divines:
Strugling for helpe, his best hope is
Herod's suspition may heale his.
Therefore he sends a fiend to wake
The sleeping tyrant's fond mistake;                _foolish_
Who feares (in vaine) that He Whose birth
Meanes Heav'n, should meddle with his Earth._
Muse, now the servant of soft loves no more,
Hate is thy theame, and Herod, whose unblest
Hand (O what dares not jealous greatnesse?) tore
A thousand sweet babes from their mothers' brest:
The bloomes of martyrdome. O be a dore
Of language to my infant lips, yee best
Of confessours: whose throates answering his swords,
Gave forth your blood for breath, spoke soules for words.
Great Anthony! Spain's well-beseeming pride,
Thou mighty branch of emperours and kings;
The beauties of whose dawne what eye may bide?
Which with the sun himselfe weigh's equall wings;
Mappe of heroick worth! whom farre and wide
To the beleeving world, Fame boldly sings:
Deigne thou to weare this humble wreath, that bowes
To be the sacred honour of thy browes.
Nor needs my Muse a blush, or these bright flowers
Other than what their owne blest beauties bring:
They were the smiling sons of those sweet bowers
That drink the deaw of life, whose deathlesse spring,
Nor Sirian flame nor Borean frost deflowers:
From whence heav'n-labouring bees with busie wing,
Suck hidden sweets, which well-digested proves
Immortall hony for the hive of loves.
Thou, whose strong hand with so transcendent worth,
Holds high the reine of faire Parthenope,
That neither Rome nor Athens can bring forth
A name in noble deeds rivall to thee!
Thy fame's full noise, makes proud the patient Earth,
Farre more then, matter for my Muse and mee.
The Tyrrhene Seas and shores sound all the same
And in their murmurs keepe thy mighty name.
Below the bottome of the great Abysse,
There where one center reconciles all things:
The World's profound heart pants; there placed is
Mischiefe's old master. Close about him clings
A curl'd knot of embracing snakes, that kisse
His correspondent cheekes: these loathsome strings
Hold the perverse prince in eternall ties
Fast bound, since first he forfeited the skies.
The judge of torments and the king of teares,
He fills a burnisht throne of quenchlesse fire:
And for his old faire roabes of light, he weares
A gloomy mantle of darke flames; the tire
That crownes his hated head on high appeares:
Where seav'n tall hornes (his empire's pride) aspire.
And to make up Hell's majesty, each horne
Seav'n crested Hydras, horribly adorne.
His eyes, the sullen dens of Death and Night,
Startle the dull ayre with a dismall red:
Such his fell glances, as the fatall light
Of staring comets, that looke kingdomes dead.
From his black nostrills, and blew lips, in spight
Of Hell's owne stinke, a worser stench is spread.
His breath Hell's lightning is: and each deepe groane
Disdaines to think that Heav'n thunders alone.
His flaming eyes' dire exhalation,
Vnto a dreadfull pile gives fiery breath;
Whose unconsum'd consumption preys upon
The never-dying life of a long death.
In this sad house of slow destruction,
(His shop of flames) hee fryes himself, beneath
A masse of woes; his teeth for torment gnash,
While his steele sides sound with his tayle's strong lash.
Three rigourous virgins waiting still behind,
Assist the throne of th' iron-sceptred king.
With whips of thornes and knotty vipers twin'd
They rouse him, when his ranke thoughts need a sting.
Their lockes are beds of uncomb'd snakes that wind
About their shady browes in wanton rings.
Thus reignes the wrathfull king, and while he reignes,
His scepter and himselfe both he disdaines.
Disdainefull wretch! how hath one bold sinne cost
Thee all the beauties of thy once bright eyes!
How hath one black eclipse cancell'd, and crost
The glories that did gild thee in thy rise!
Proud morning of a perverse day! how lost
Art thou unto thy selfe, thou too selfe-wise
Narcissus! foolish Phaeton! who for all
Thy high-aym'd hopes, gaind'st but a flaming fall.
From Death's sad shades to the life-breathing ayre,
This mortall enemy to mankind's good,
Lifts his malignant eyes, wasted with care,
To become beautifull in humane blood.
Where Iordan melts his chrystall, to make faire
The fields of Palestine, with so pure a flood,
There does he fixe his eyes: and there detect
New matter, to make good his great suspect.
He calls to mind th' old quarrell, and what sparke
Set the contending sons of Heav'n on fire:
Oft in his deepe thought he revolves the darke
Sibill's divining leaves: he does enquire
Into th' old prophesies, trembling to marke
How many present prodigies conspire,
To crowne their past predictions, both he layes
Together, in his pondrous mind both weighs.
Heaven's golden-winged herald, late he saw
To a poore Galilean virgin sent:
How low the bright youth bow'd, and with what awe
Immortall flowers to her faire hand present.
He saw th' old Hebrewe's wombe, neglect the law
Of age and barrennesse, and her babe prevent      _anticipate_
His birth by his devotion, who began
Betimes to be a saint, before a man.
He saw rich nectar-thawes, release the rigour
Of th' icy North; from frost-bound Atlas hands,
His adamantine fetters fall: green vigour
Gladding the Scythian rocks and Libian sands.
He saw a vernall smile, sweetly disfigure
Winter's sad face, and through the flowry lands
Of faire Engaddi, hony-sweating fountaines
With manna, milk, and balm, new-broach the mountaines.
He saw how in that blest Day-bearing Night,
The Heav'n-rebuked shades made hast away;
How bright a dawne of angels with new light
Amaz'd the midnight world, and made a Day
Of which the Morning knew not. Mad with spight
He markt how the poore shepheards ran to pay
Their simple tribute to the Babe, Whose birth
Was the great businesse both of Heav'n and Earth.
He saw a threefold Sun, with rich encrease
Make proud the ruby portalls of the East.
He saw the Temple sacred to sweet Peace,
Adore her Prince's birth, flat on her brest.
He saw the falling idolls, all confesse
A comming Deity: He saw the nest
Of pois'nous and unnaturall loves, Earth-nurst,
Toucht with the World's true antidote, to burst.
He saw Heav'n blossome with a new-borne light,
On which, as on a glorious stranger gaz'd
The golden eyes of Night: whose beame made bright
The way to Beth'lem and as boldly blaz'd,
(Nor askt leave of the sun) by day as night.
By whom (as Heav'ns illustrious hand-maid) rais'd,
Three kings (or what is more) three wise men went
Westward to find the World's true orient.
Strucke with these great concurrences of things,
Symptomes so deadly unto Death and him;
Faine would he have forgot what fatall strings
Eternally bind each rebellious limbe.
He shooke himselfe, and spread his spatious wings:
Which like two bosom'd sailes, embrace the dimme
Aire, with a dismall shade; but all in vaine:
Of sturdy adamant is his strong chaine.
While thus Heav'n's highest counsails, by the low
Footsteps of their effects, he trac'd too well,
He tost his troubled eyes: embers that glow
Now with new rage, and wax too hot for Hell:
With his foule clawes he fenc'd his furrowed brow,
And gave a gastly shreeke, whose horrid yell
Ran trembling through the hollow vaults of Night,
The while his twisted tayle he gnaw'd for spight.
Yet on the other side, faine would he start
Above his feares, and thinke it cannot be.
He studies Scripture, strives to sound the heart
And feele the pulse of every prophecy;
He knows (but knowes not how, or by what art)
The Heav'n-expecting ages hope to see
A mighty Babe, Whose pure, unspotted birth
From a chast virgin wombe, should blesse the Earth.
But these vast mysteries his senses smother,
And reason (for what's faith to him?) devoure.
How she that is a maid should prove a mother,
Yet keepe inviolate her virgin flower;
How God's eternall Sonne should be Man's brother,
Poseth his proudest intellectuall power.
How a pure Spirit should incarnate bee,
And Life it selfe weare Death's fraile livery.
That the great angell-blinding Light should shrinke
His blaze, to shine in a poore shepherd's eye:
That the unmeasur'd God so low should sinke,
As pris'ner in a few poore rags to lye:
That from His mother's brest He milke should drinke,
Who feeds with nectar Heav'n's faire family:
That a vile manger His low bed should prove,
Who in a throne of stars thunders above.
That He Whom the sun serves, should faintly peepe
Through clouds of infant flesh: that He the old
Eternall Word should be a child, and weepe:
That He Who made the fire, should feare the cold:
That Heav'n's high Majesty His court should keepe
In a clay-cottage, by each blast control'd:
That Glorie's Self should serve our griefs and feares,
And free Eternity, submit to yeares.
And further, that the Lawe's eternall Giver
Should bleed in His Owne Lawe's obedience:
And to the circumcising knife deliver
Himselfe, the forfet of His slave's offence:
That the unblemisht Lambe, blessed for ever,
Should take the marke of sin, and paine of sence.
These are the knotty riddles, whose darke doubt
Intangles his lost thoughts, past getting out.
While new thoughts boyl'd in his enraged brest,
His gloomy bosome's darkest character
Was in his shady forehead seen exprest:
The forehead's shade in Griefe's expression there,
Is what in signe of joy among the blest
The face's lightning, or a smile is here.
Those stings of care that his strong heart opprest,
A desperate, Oh mee! drew from his deepe brest.
Oh mee! (thus bellow'd he) Oh mee! what great
Portents before mine eyes their powers advance?
And serves my purer sight, onely to beat
Downe my proud thought, and leave it in a trance?
Frowne I: and can great Nature keep her seat?
And the gay starrs lead on their golden dance?
Can His attempts above still prosp'rous be,
Auspicious still, in spight of Hell and me?
Hee has my Heaven (what would He more?) whose bright
And radiant scepter this bold hand should beare:
And for the never-fading fields of light,
My faire inheritance, He confines me here
To this darke house of shades, horrour and night,
To draw a long-liv'd death, where all my cheere
Is the solemnity my sorrow weares,
That mankind's torment waits upon my teares.
Darke, dusky Man, He needs would single forth,
To make the partner of His Owne pure ray:
And should we powers of Heav'n, spirits of worth,
Bow our bright heads before a king of clay?
It shall not be, said I, and clombe the North,
Where never wing of angell yet made way:
What though I mist my blow? yet I strooke high,
And to dare something, is some victory.
Is He not satisfied? meanes He to wrest
Hell from me too, and sack my territories?
Vile humane nature means He not t' invest
(O my despight!) with His divinest glories?
And rising with rich spoiles upon His brest
With His faire triumphs fill all future stories?
Must the bright armes of Heav'n, rebuke these eyes?
Mocke me, and dazle my darke mysteries?
Art thou not Lucifer? he to whom the droves
Of stars that gild the Morne, in charge were given?
The nimblest of the lightning-winged loves,
The fairest, and the first-borne smile of Heav'n?
Looke in what pompe the mistrisse planet moves
Rev'rently circled by the lesser seaven:
Such, and so rich, the flames that from thine eyes,
Opprest the common-people of the skyes.
Ah wretch! what bootes thee to cast back thy eyes,
Where dawning hope no beame of comfort showes?
While the reflection of thy forepast joyes,
Renders thee double to thy present woes:
Rather make up to thy new miseries,
And meet the mischiefe that upon thee growes.
If Hell must mourne, Heav'n sure shall sympathize,
What force cannot effect, fraud shall devise.
And yet whose force feare I? have I so lost
My selfe? my strength too with my innocence?
Come try who dares, Heav'n, Earth, what ere doth boast
A borrowed being, make thy bold defence.
Come thy Creator too: What though it cost
Me yet a second fall? wee'd try our strengths:
Heav'n saw us struggle once; as brave a fight
Earth now should see, and tremble at the sight.
Thus spoke th' impatient prince, and made a pause:
His foule hags rais'd their heads, and clapt their hands,
And all the powers of Hell in full applause
Flourisht their snakes, and tost their flaming brands.
We (said the horrid sisters) wait thy lawes,
Th' obsequious handmaids of thy high commands:
Be it thy part, Hell's mighty lord, to lay
On us thy dread command, our's to obey.
What thy Alecto, what these hands can doe,
Thou mad'st bold proofe upon the brow of Heav'n,
Nor should'st thou bate in pride, because that now
To these thy sooty kingdomes thou art driven.
Let Heav'n's Lord chide above lowder than thou
In language of His thunder, thou art even
With Him below: here thou art lord alone,
Boundlesse and absolute: Hell is thine owne.
If usuall wit, and strength will doe no good,
Vertues of stones, nor herbes: use stronger charmes,
Anger and love, best hookes of humane blood.
If all faile, wee'l put on our proudest armes,
And pouring on Heav'n's face the Sea's huge flood
Quench His curl'd fires: wee'l wake with our alarmes
Ruine, where e're she sleepes at Nature's feet:
And crush the World till His wide corners meet.
Reply'd the proud king, O my crowne's defence,
Stay of my strong hopes, you of whose brave worth,
The frighted stars tooke faint experience,
When 'gainst the Thunder's mouth we marched forth:
Still you are prodigall of your Love's expence
In our great projects, both 'gainst Heav'n and Earth:
I thanke you all, but one must single out:
Cruelty, she alone shall cure my doubt.
Fourth of the cursed knot of hags is shee,
Or rather all the other three in one;
Hell's shop of slaughter shee do's oversee,
And still assist the execution.
But chiefly there do's she delight to be,
Where Hell's capacious cauldron is set on:
And while the black soules boile in their own gore,
To hold them down, and looke that none seeth o're.
Thrice howl'd the caves of Night, and thrice the sound,
Thundring upon the bankes of those black lakes,
Rung through the hollow vaults of Hell profound:
At last her listning eares the noise o're takes,
She lifts her sooty lampes, and looking round,
A gen'rall hisse from the whole tire of snakes
Rebounding, through Hell's inmost cavernes came,
In answer to her formidable name.
'Mongst all the palaces in Hell's command,
No one so mercilesse as this of her's.
The adamantine doors, for ever stand
Impenetrable, both to prai'rs and teares;
The walls inexorable steele, no hand
Of Time, or teeth of hungry Ruine feares.
Their ugly ornaments are the bloody staines
Of ragged limbs, torne sculls, and dasht-out braines.
There has the purple Vengeance a proud seat
Whose ever-brandisht sword is sheath'd in blood:
About her Hate, Wrath, Warre and Slaughter sweat;
Bathing their hot limbs in life's pretious flood:
There rude impetuous Rage do's storme and fret,
And there as master of this murd'ring brood,
Swinging a huge sith stands impartiall Death:    _scythe_
With endlesse businesse almost out of breath.
For hangings and for curtaines, all along
The walls (abominable ornaments!)
Are tooles of wrath, anvills of torments hung;
Fell executioners of foule intents,
Nailes, hammers, hatchets sharpe, and halters strong,
Swords, speares, with all the fatall instruments
Of Sin and Death, twice dipt in the dire staines
Of brothers' mutuall blood, and fathers' braines.
The tables furnisht with a cursed feast
Which Harpyes, with leane Famine feed upon,
Vnfill'd for ever. Here among the rest,
Inhumane Erisicthon too makes one;
Tantalus, Atreus, Progne, here are guests:
Wolvish Lycaon here a place hath won.
The cup they drinke in is Medusa's scull,
Which mixt with gall and blood they quaffe brim-full.
The foule queen's most abhorred maids of honour,
Medaea, Jezabell, many a meager witch,
With Circe, Scylla, stand to wait upon her:
But her best huswife's are the Parcae, which
Still worke for her, and have their wages from her:
They prick a bleeding heart at every stitch.
Her cruell cloathes of costly threds they weave,
Which short-cut lives of murdred infants leave.
The house is hers'd about with a black wood,      _hearsed_
Which nods with many a heavy-headed tree:
Each flowers a pregnant poyson, try'd and good,
Each herbe a plague. The wind's sighes timed bee
By a black fount, which weeps into a flood.
Through the thick shades obscurely might you see
Minotaures, Cyclopses, with a darke drove
Of Dragons, Hydraes, Sphinxes, fill the grove.
Here Diomed's horses, Phereus' dogs appeare,
With the fierce lyons of Therodamas.
Busiris has his bloody altar here:
Here Sylla his severest prison has:
The Lestrigonians here their table reare:
Here strong Procrustes plants his bed of brasse:
Here cruell Scyron boasts his bloody rockes
And hatefull Schinis his so feared oakes.
What ever schemes of blood, fantastick Frames
Of death, Mezentius or Geryon drew;
Phalaris, Ochus, Ezelinus: names
Mighty in mischiefe; with dread Nero too;
Here are they all, here all the swords or flames
Such was the house, so furnisht was the hall,
Whence the fourth Fury answer'd Pluto's call.
Scarce to this monster could the shady king
The horrid summe of his intentions tell;
But shee (swift as the momentary wing
Of lightning, or the words he spoke) left Hell.
She rose, and with her to our World did bring
Pale proofe of her fell presence; th' aire too well
With a chang'd countenance witnest the sight,
And poore fowles intercepted in their flight.
Heav'n saw her rise, and saw Hell in the sight:
The fields' faire eyes saw her, and saw no more,
But shut their flowry lids for ever: Night
And Winter strow her way: yea, such a sore
Is she to Nature, that a generall fright,
An universal palsie spreading o're
The face of things, from her dire eyes had run,
Had not her thick snakes hid them from the sun.
Now had the Night's companion from her dew,
Where all the busie day she close doth ly,
With her soft wing wipt from the browes of men
Day's sweat; and by a gentle tyranny
And sweet oppression, kindly cheating them
Of all their cares, tam'd the rebellious eye
Of Sorrow, with a soft and downy hand,
Sealing all brests in a Lethaean band.
When the Erinnys her black pineons spread,
And came to Bethlem, where the cruell king
Had now retyr'd himselfe, and borrowed
His brest a while from Care's unquiet sting;
Such as at Thebes' dire feast she shew'd her head,
Her sulphur-breathed torches brandishing:
Such to the frighted palace now she comes,
And with soft feet searches the silent roomes.
The scepter, which of old great David swaid;
Whose right by David's linage so long worne,      _lineage_
Himselfe a stranger to, his owne had made;
And from the head of Judah's house quite torne
The crowne, for which upon their necks he laid
A sad yoake, under which they sigh'd in vaine,
And looking on their lost state sigh'd againe.
Vp, through the spatious pallace passed she,
To where the king's proudly-reposed head
(If any can be soft to Tyranny
And selfe-tormenting sin) had a soft bed.
She thinkes not fit, such, he her face should see,
As it is seene in Hell, and seen with dread.
To change her face's stile she doth devise,
And in a pale ghost's shape to spare his eyes.
Her selfe a while she layes aside, and makes
Ready to personate a mortall part.
Ioseph, the king's dead brother's shape, she takes:
What he by nature was, is she by art.
She comes to th' king, and with her cold hand slakes
His spirits (the sparkes of life) and chills his heart,
Life's forge; fain'd is her voice, and false too, be
Her words: 'sleep'st thou, fond man? sleep'st thou?' said she.
So sleeps a pilot, whose poore barke is prest
With many a mercylesse o're-mastring wave;
For whom (as dead) the wrathfull winds contest
Which of them deep'st shall digge her watry grave.
Why dost thou let thy brave soule lye supprest
In death-like slumbers, while thy dangers crave
A waking eye and hand? looke vp and see
The Fates ripe, in their great conspiracy.
Know'st thou not how of th' Hebrewes' royall stemme
(That old dry stocke) a despair'd branch is sprung:
A most strange Babe! Who here conceal'd by them
In a neglected stable lies, among
Beasts and base straw: Already is the streame
Quite turn'd: th' ingratefull rebells, this their young
Master (with voyce free as the trumpe of Fame)
Their new King, and thy Successour proclame.
What busy motions, what wild engines stand
On tiptoe in their giddy braynes! th' have fire
Already in their bosomes, and their hand
Already reaches at a sword; they hire
Poysons to speed thee; yet through all the Land
What one comes to reveale what they conspire?
Goe now, make much of these; wage still their wars
And bring home on thy brest, more thanklesse scarrs.
Why did I spend my life, and spill my blood,
That thy firme hand for ever might sustaine
A well-pois'd scepter? does it now seeme good
Thy brother's blood be spilt, life spent in vaine?
'Gainst thy owne sons and brothers thou hast stood
In armes, when lesser cause was to complaine:
And now crosse Fates a watch about thee keepe,
Can'st thou be carelesse now? now can'st thou sleep?
Where art thou man? what cowardly mistake
Of thy great selfe, hath stolne king Herod from thee?
O call thy selfe home to thy self, wake, wake,
And fence the hanging sword Heav'n throws upon thee.
Redeeme a worthy wrath, rouse thee, and shake
Thy selfe into a shape that may become thee.
Be Herod, and thou shalt not misse from mee
Immortall stings to thy great thoughts, and thee.
So said, her richest snake, which to her wrist
For a beseeming bracelet she had ty'd
(A speciall worme it was as ever kist
The foamy lips of Cerberus) she apply'd
To the king's heart: the snake no sooner hist,
But Vertue heard it, and away she hy'd:
Dire flames diffuse themselves through every veine:
This done, home to her Hell she hy'd amaine.
He wakes, and with him (ne're to sleepe) new feares:
His sweat-bedewed bed hath now betraid him
To a vast field of thornes; ten thousand speares
All pointed in his heart seem'd to invade him:
So mighty were th' amazing characters
With which his feeling dreame had thus dismay'd him,
He his owne fancy-framed foes defies:
In rage, My armes, give me my armes, he cryes.
As when a pile of food-preparing fire,
The breath of artificiall lungs embraves,
The caldron-prison'd waters streight conspire
And beat the hot brasse with rebellious waves;
He murmurs, and rebukes their bold desire;
Th' impatient liquor frets, and foames, and raves,
Till his o're-flowing pride suppresse the flame
Whence all his high spirits and hot courage came.
So boyles the fired Herod's blood-swolne brest,
Not to be slak't but by a sea of blood:
His faithlesse crowne he feeles loose on his crest,
Which a false tyrant's head ne're firmely stood.
The worme of jealous envy and unrest
To which his gnaw'd heart is the growing food,
Makes him, impatient of the lingring light,
Hate the sweet peace of all-composing Night.
A thousand prophecies that talke strange things
Had sowne of old these doubts in his deepe brest.
And now of late came tributary kings,
Bringing him nothing but new feares from th' East,
More deepe suspicions, and more deadly stings,
With which his feav'rous cares their cold increast.
And now his dream (Hel's fireband) still more bright,
Shew'd him his feares, and kill'd him with the sight.
No sooner therefore shall the Morning see
(Night hangs yet heavy on the lids of Day)
But all the counsellours must summon'd bee,
To meet their troubled lord: without delay
Heralds and messengers immediately
Are sent about, who poasting every way
To th' heads and officers of every band,
Declare who sends, and what is his command.
Why art thou troubled, Herod? what vaine feare
Thy blood-revolving brest to rage doth move?
Heaven's King, Who doffs Himselfe weak flesh to weare,
Comes not to rule in wrath, but serve in love.
Nor would He this thy fear'd crown from thee teare,
But give thee a better with Himselfe above.
Poor jealousie! why should He wish to prey
Vpon thy crowne, Who gives His owne away?
Make to thy reason, man, and mock thy doubts,
Looke how below thy feares their causes are;
Thou art a souldier, Herod; send thy scouts,
See how Hee's furnish't for so fear'd a warre?
What armour does He weare? A few thin clouts.
His trumpets? tender cries; His men to dare
So much? rude shepheards: what His steeds? alas
Poore beasts! a slow oxe and a simple asse.
_Il fine del primo Libro._
See our Essay for critical remarks on the original and CRASHAW'S
interpretation. These things may be recorded:
'Lofty Lucretius shall live that hour
That Nature shall dissolve this earthly bower,'
were afterwards altered by JONSON himself to,
'Then shall Lucretius' lofty numbers die,
When earth and seas in fire and flame shall _frie_.'
In another way one of our most ludicrous-serious experiences of
printers' errors was in a paper contributed by us to an American
St. li. line 3, 'linage' = 'lineage.' For once 1670 is correct in
'Herod the liege of Augustus, a man now aged,
Then ruled over the royal courts of David:
Not of the royal _line_ ...'
Ecce panis Angelorum,
With all the powres my poor heart hath
Of humble loue and loyall faith,
Thus lowe (my hidden life!) I bow to Thee
Whom too much loue hath bow'd more low for me.
Down, down, proud Sense! discourses dy!
Keep close, my soul's inquiring ey!
Not touch, nor tast, must look for more
But each sitt still in his own dore.
Your ports are all superfluous here,
Saue that which lets in Faith, the eare.
Faith is my skill: Faith can beleiue
As fast as Loue new lawes can giue.
Faith is my force: Faith strength affords
To keep pace with those powrfull words.
And words more sure, more sweet then they,
Loue could not think, Truth could not say.
O let Thy wretch find that releife
Thou didst afford the faithful theife.
Plead for me, Loue! alleage and show
That Faith has farther here to goe
And lesse to lean on: because than                     _then_
Though hidd as God, wounds with Thee man:
Thomas might touch, none but might see
At least the suffring side of Thee;
And that too was Thy self which Thee did couer,
But here eu'n that's hid too which hides the other.
Sweet, consider then, that I
Though allow'd nor hand nor eye
To reach at Thy lou'd face; nor can
Tast Thee God, or touch Thee man,
Both yet beleiue; and witnesse Thee
My Lord too and my God, as lowd as he.
Help, Lord, my faith, my hope increase,
And fill my portion in Thy peace:
Giue loue for life; nor let my dayes
Grow, but in new powres to Thy name and praise.
O dear memoriall of that Death
Which liues still, and allowes vs breath!
Rich, royall food! Bountyfull bread!
Whose vse denyes vs to the dead;
Whose vitall gust alone can giue
The same leaue both to eat and liue;
Liue euer bread of loues, and be
My life, my soul, my surer-selfe to mee.
O soft self-wounding Pelican!
Whose brest weepes balm for wounded man:
Ah! this way bend Thy benign floud
To a bleeding heart that gaspes for blood.
That blood, whose least drops soueraign be
To wash my worlds of sins from me.
Come Loue! come Lord! and that long day
For which I languish, come away.
When this dry soul those eyes shall see,
And drink the vnseal'd sourse of Thee:
When Glory's sun, Faith's shades shall chase,
And for Thy veil giue me Thy face. Amen.
"  8, 'sitt still in his own dore.'
"  9, 'ports' = openings or gates. So in Edinburgh the
'West-port' = a gate of the city in the old west wall.
Line 21, 'than' = 'then.' See our PHINEAS FLETCHER, as before.
Line 36, 1670 edition reads 'Grow, but in new pow'rs to name thy
Lines 37-38 are inadvertently omitted in 1648 edition.
Rise, royall Sion! rise and sing
Thy soul's kind shepheard, thy hart's King.
Stretch all thy powres; call if you can
Harpes of heaun to hands of man.
This soueraign subject sitts aboue
The best ambition of thy loue.
Lo, the Bread of Life, this day's
Triumphant text, prouokes thy prayse:            _incites_
The liuing and life-giuing bread
To the great twelue distributed;
When Life, Himself, at point to dy
Of loue, was His Own legacy.
Come, Loue! and let vs work a song
Lowd and pleasant, sweet and long;
Let lippes and hearts lift high the noise
Of so iust and solemn ioyes,
Which on His white browes this bright day
Shall hence for euer bear away.
With a new Lamb blesses the board:
The aged Pascha pleads not yeares
But spyes Loue's dawn, and disappeares.
Types yield to truthes; shades shrink away;
And their Night dyes into our Day.
But lest that dy too, we are bid
Euer to doe what He once did:
And by a mindfull, mystick breath
That we may liue, reuiue His death;
With a well-bles't bread and wine,
Transsum'd and taught to turn diuine.
The Heaun-instructed house of Faith
Here a holy dictate hath,
That they but lend their form and face;--
Themselues with reuerence leaue their place,
Nature, and name, to be made good,
By a nobler bread, more needfull blood.
Where Nature's lawes no leaue will giue,
Bold Faith takes heart, and dares beleiue
In different species: name not things,
Himself to me my Saviovr brings;
As meat in that, as drink in this,
But still in both one Christ He is.
The receiuing mouth here makes
Nor wound nor breach in what he takes.
Let one, or one thovsand be
Here diuiders, single he
Beares home no lesse, all they no more,
Nor leaue they both lesse then before.
Though in it self this soverain Feast
Be all the same to euery guest,
Yet on the same (life-meaning) Bread
The child of death eates himself dead:
Nor is't Loue's fault, but Sin's dire skill
That thus from Life can death distill.
When the blest signes thou broke shalt see
Hold but thy faith intire as He
Who, howsoe're clad, cannot come
Lesse then whole Christ in euery crumme.
In broken formes a stable Faith
Vntouch't her precious totall hath.
So the life-food of angells then
Bow'd to the lowly mouths of men!
The children's Bread, the Bridegroom's Wine;
Not to be cast to dogges, or swine.
Lo, the full, finall Sacrifice
On which all figures fix't their eyes:
The ransom'd Isack, and his ramme;
The manna, and the paschal lamb.
Iesv Master, iust and true!
Our food, and faithfull Shephard too!
O by Thy self vouchsafe to keep,
As with Thy selfe Thou feed'st Thy sheep.
O let that loue which thus makes Thee
Mix with our low mortality,
Lift our lean soules, and sett vs vp
Con-victors of Thine Own full cup,
Coheirs of saints. That so all may
Drink the same wine; and the same way:
Nor change the pastvre, but the place,
To feed of Thee, in Thine Own face. Amen.
Lo here a little volume, but great book!
(Feare it not, sweet,
It is no hipocrit)
Much larger in itselfe then in its looke.
A nest of new-born sweets;
Whose natiue fires disdaining
To ly thus folded, and complaining
Of these ignoble sheets,
Affect more comly bands
(Fair one) from thy kind hands;
And confidently look
To find the rest
Of a rich binding in your brest.
It is, in one choise handfull, Heauvn; and all
Heaun's royall host; incampt thus small
To proue that true, Schooles vse to tell,
Ten thousand angels in one point can dwell.
It is Loue's great artillery
Which here contracts it self, and comes to ly
Close-couch't in your white bosom; and from thence
As from a snowy fortresse of defence,
Against the ghostly foes to take your part,
And fortify the hold of your chast heart.
It is an armory of light;
Let constant vse but keep it bright,
You'l find it yields
To holy hands and humble hearts
More swords and sheilds
Then sin hath snares, or Hell hath darts.
Only be sure
The hands be pure
That hold these weapons; and the eyes,
Those of turtles, chast and true;
Wakefull and wise:
Here is a freind shall fight for you;
Hold but this book before your heart,
Let prayer alone to play his part;
But O the heart
That studyes this high art
Must be a sure house-keeper:
And yet no sleeper.
Dear soul, be strong!
Mercy will come e're long
And bring his bosome fraught with blessings,
Flowers of neuer-fading graces
To make immortall dressings
For worthy soules, whose wise embraces
Store vp themselues for Him, Who is alone
The Spovse of virgins and the virgin's Son.
But if the noble Bridegroom, when He come,
Shall find the loytering heart from home;
Leauing her chast aboad
To gadde abroad
Among the gay mates of the god of flyes;
To take her pleasure, and to play
And keep the deuill's holyday;
To dance in th' sunshine of some smiling
But beguiling
Spheare of sweet and sugred lyes;
Some slippery pair
Of false, perhaps, as fair,
Flattering but forswearing, eyes;
Doubtlesse some other heart
Will gett the start
Meanwhile, and stepping in before
Will take possession of that sacred store
Of hidden sweets and holy ioyes;
Words which are not heard with eares
(Those tumultuous shops of noise)
Effectuall whispers, whose still voice
The soul it selfe more feeles then heares;
Amorous languishments; luminous trances;
Sights which are not seen with eyes;
Spirituall and soul-peircing glances
Whose pure and subtil lightning flyes
Home to the heart, and setts the house on fire,
And melts it down in sweet desire
Yet doth not stay
To ask the windows' leaue, to passe that way;
Delicious deaths; soft exalations
Of soul; dear and diuine annihilations;
A thousand vnknown rites
Of ioyes and rarefy'd delights;
A hundred thousand goods, glories, and graces:
And many a mystick thing
Which the diuine embraces
Of the deare Spouse of spirits, with them will bring,
For which it is no shame
That dull mortality must not know a name.
Of all this hidden store
Of blessings, and ten thousand more
(If when He come
He find the heart from home)
Doubtlesse He will vnload
Himself some other where,
And poure abroad
His pretious sweets
On the fair soul whom first He meets.
O fair, O fortunate! O riche! O dear!
O happy and thrice-happy she
Deare silver-breasted dove
Who ere she be,
Whose early loue
With winged vowes
Makes hast to meet her morning Spouse,
And close with His immortall kisses.
Happy indeed, who neuer misses
To improue that pretious hour,
And euery day
Seize her sweet prey,
All fresh and fragrant as He rises,
Dropping with a baulmy showr,
A delicious dew of spices;
O let the blissfull heart hold it fast
Her heaunly arm-full; she shall tast
At once ten thousand paradises;
She shall haue power
To rifle and deflour
The rich and roseall spring of those rare sweets
Which with a swelling bosome there she meets:
Of pure inebriating pleasures.
Happy proof! she shal discouer
What ioy, what blisse,
How many heau'ns at once it is
To haue her God become her Lover.
"  2-4 restored to their place here. TURNBULL gives them
in a foot-note with this remark: 'So in the Paris edition of
Fear it not, sweet,
It is no hypocrite,
Much larger in itself, than in its book.'
Lines 5-13 not in 1646 edition: first appeared in 1648 edition.
"  20. Our text (1652) here and elsewhere misreads 'their:'
silently corrected.
"  54. The allusion is to one of the names of Satan, viz.
Baal-zebub = fly-god, dunghill-god.
Line 62, 'forswearing:' a classic word.
"  64, 'git' is the spelling.
"  65. All the editions save our text (1652) omit 'meanwhile.'
"  78, 'doth' for 'does' I have adopted here.
"  84, 'An hundred thousand loves and graces.'
edition.
edition. In all the others (except 1670) it is 'Selected dove.'
indicating a blank where the MS. was illegible. In our text
(1652) we have two lines, but no blank indicated.
Dear, Heaun-designed sovl!
Amongst the rest
Of suters that beseige your maiden brest,
Why may not I
My fortune try
And venture to speak one good word,
Not for my self, alas! but for my dearer Lord?
You have seen allready, in this lower sphear
Of froth and bubbles, what to look for here:
Say, gentle soul, what can you find
But painted shapes,
Peacocks and apes;
Illustrious flyes,
Guilded dunghills, glorious lyes;
Goodly surmises
And deep disguises,
Oathes of water, words of wind?
Trvth biddes me say 'tis time you cease to trust
Your soul to any son of dust.
'Tis time you listen to a brauer loue,
Which from aboue
Calls you vp higher
And biddes you come
And choose your roome
Among His own fair sonnes of fire;
Where you among
The golden throng
That watches at His palace doores
May passe along,
And follow those fair starres of your's;
Starrs much too fair and pure to wait vpon
The false smiles of a sublunary sun.
Sweet, let me prophesy that at last t'will proue
Your wary loue
Layes vp his purer and more pretious vowes,
And meanes them for a farre more worthy Spovse
Then this World of lyes can giue ye:
Eu'n for Him with Whom nor cost,
Nor loue, nor labour can be lost;
Him Who neuer will deceiue ye.
Let not my Lord, the mighty Louer
Of soules, disdain that I discouer
The hidden art
Of His high stratagem to win your heart:
It was His heaunly art
Kindly to cross you
In your mistaken loue;
That, at the next remoue
Thence, He might tosse you
And strike your troubled heart
Home to Himself; to hide it in His brest:
The bright ambrosiall nest
Of Loue, of life, and euerlasting rest.
Happy mystake!
That thus shall wake
Your wise soul, neuer to be wonne
Now with a loue below the sun.
Your first choyce failes; O when you choose agen
May it not be amongst the sonnes of men.
The first line, 'To Mistress M.R.
Dear, Heav'n-designed soul,'
'Dian, the count's a fool and full of gold.'
(_All's Well that ends Well_, iv. 3.)
and Longaville (_Love's Labour Lost_) prefixes to his sonnet,
'O sweet Maria, empress of my love.'
No roofes of gold o're riotous tables shining
Whole dayes and suns, deuour'd with endlesse dining.
No sailes of Tyrian sylk, proud pauements sweeping,
Nor iuory couches costlyer slumber keeping;
False lights of flairing gemmes; tumultuous ioyes;
Halls full of flattering men and frisking boyes;
What'ere false showes of short and slippery good
Mix the mad sons of men in mutuall blood.
But walkes, and vnshorn woods; and soules, iust so
Vnforc't and genuine; but not shady tho.
Our lodgings hard and homely as our fare,
That chast and cheap, as the few clothes we weare.
Those, course and negligent, as the naturall lockes
Of these loose groues; rough as th' vnpolish't rockes.
A hasty portion of praescribed sleep;
Obedient slumbers, that can wake and weep,
And sing, and sigh, and work, and sleep again;
Still rowling a round spear of still-returning pain.
Hands full of harty labours; paines that pay
And prize themselves: doe much, that more they may,
And work for work, not wages; let to-morrow's
New drops, wash off the sweat of this daye's sorrows.
A long and dayly-dying life, which breaths
A respiration of reuiuing deaths.
But neither are there those ignoble stings
That nip the blossome of the World's best things,
And lash Earth-labouring souls....
No cruell guard of diligent cares, that keep
Crown'd woes awake, as things too wise for sleep:
But reuerent discipline, and religious fear,
And soft obedience, find sweet biding here;
Silence, and sacred rest; peace, and pure ioyes;
Kind loues keep house, ly close, make no noise;
And room enough for monarchs, while none swells
Beyond the kingdomes of contentfull cells.
The self-remembring sovl sweetly recouers
Her kindred with the starrs; not basely houers
Below: but meditates her immortall way
Home to the originall sourse of Light and intellectuall day
Line 3, 1648 misprints 'weeping' for 'sweeping.'
this couplet by printing,
'Hands full of harty labours; doe much, that more they may.'
Line 23. Our text misspells 'ding.'
"  26. Misprinted 'bosome' in all the editions, and perpetuated
by TURNBULL. Line 27 that follows is a break (unrhymed).
Know you, faire, on what you looke?
Divinest love lyes in this booke:
Expecting fier from your faire eyes,
To kindle this his sacrifice.
When your hands untie these strings,
Think, yo' have an angell by the wings;
One that gladly would be nigh,
To waite upon each morning sigh;
To flutter in the balmy aire
Of your well-perfumed praier;
These white plumes of his hee'l lend you,
Which every day to Heaven will send you:
To take acquaintance of each spheare,
And all your smooth-fac'd kindred there.
And though HERBERT'S name doe owe
These devotions; fairest, know
While I thus lay them on the shrine
Of your white hand, they are mine.
Misericordias Domini in Aeternvm cantabo.
Le Vray portraict de Ste Terese, Fondatrice des Religieuses et
Loue, thou art absolute, sole lord
Of life and death. To proue the word
Wee'l now appeal to none of all
Those thy old souldiers, great and tall,
Ripe men of martyrdom, that could reach down
With strong armes, their triumphant crown;
Such as could with lusty breath
Speak lowd into the face of death,
Their great Lord's glorious name, to none
Of those whose spatious bosomes spread a throne
For Love at large to fill; spare blood and sweat:
And see him take a priuate seat,
Making his mansion in the mild
And milky soul of a soft child.
Scarse has she learn't to lisp the name
Of martyr; yet she thinks it shame
Life should so long play with that breath
Which spent can buy so braue a death.
She neuer vndertook to know
What Death with Loue should haue to doe;
Nor has she e're yet vnderstood
Why to show loue, she should shed blood,
Yet though she cannot tell you why
She can love, and she can dy.
Scarse has she blood enough to make
A guilty sword blush for her sake;
Yet has she a heart dares hope to proue
How much lesse strong is Death then Love.
Be Loue but there; let poor six yeares
Be pos'd with the maturest feares
Man trembles at, you straight shall find
Love knowes no nonage, nor the mind;
'Tis love, not yeares or limbs that can
Make the martyr, or the man.
Love touch't her heart, and lo it beates
High, and burnes with such braue heates;
Such thirsts to dy, as dares drink vp
A thousand cold deaths in one cup.
Good reason: for she breathes all fire;
Her white brest heaues with strong desire
Of what she may with fruitles wishes
Seek for amongst her mother's kisses.
Since 'tis not to be had at home
She'l trauail to a martyrdom.
No home for hers confesses she
But where she may a martyr be.
She'l to the Moores; and trade with them          _Moors_
For this vnualued diadem:
She'l offer them her dearest breath,
With Christ's name in't, in change for death:
She'l bargain with them; and will giue
Them God; teach them how to liue
In Him: or, if they this deny,
For Him she'l teach them how to dy:
So shall she leaue amongst them sown
Her Lord's blood; or at lest her own.                 _least_
Farewel then, all the World! adieu!
Teresa is no more for you.
Farewell, all pleasures, sports, and ioyes
(Never till now esteemed toyes)
Farewell, what ever deare may bee,
Mother's armes or father's knee:
Farewell house, and farewell home!
She's for the Moores, and martyrdom.
Sweet, not so fast! lo thy fair Spouse
Whom thou seekst with so swift vowes;
Calls thee back, and bidds thee come
T'embrace a milder martyrdom.
Blest powres forbid, thy tender life
Should bleed vpon a barbarous knife:
Or some base hand haue power to raze
Thy brest's chast cabinet, and vncase
A soul kept there so sweet: O no,
Wise Heaun will neuer have it so.
Thou art Love's victime; and must dy
A death more mysticall and high:
Into Loue's armes thou shalt let fall
A still-suruiuing funerall.
His is the dart must make the death
Whose stroke shall tast thy hallow'd breath;
A dart thrice dip't in that rich flame
Which writes thy Spouse's radiant name
Vpon the roof of Heau'n, where ay
It shines; and with a soueraign ray
Beates bright vpon the burning faces
Of soules which in that Name's sweet graces
Find euerlasting smiles: so rare,
So spirituall, pure, and fair
Must be th' immortall instrument
Vpon whose choice point shall be sent
A life so lou'd: and that there be
Fitt executioners for thee,
The fair'st and first-born sons of fire
Blest seraphim, shall leaue their quire,
And turn Loue's souldiers, vpon thee
To exercise their archerie.
O how oft shalt thou complain
Of a sweet and subtle pain:
Of intolerable ioyes:
Of a death, in which who dyes
Loues his death, and dyes again
And would for euer so be slain.
And liues, and dyes; and knowes not why
To liue, but that he thus may neuer leaue to dy.
How kindly will thy gentle heart
Kisse the sweetly-killing dart!
And close in his embraces keep
Those delicious wounds, that weep
Balsom to heal themselves with: thus
When these thy deaths, so numerous
Shall all at last dy into one,
And melt thy soul's sweet mansion;
Like a soft lump of incense, hasted
By too hott a fire, and wasted
Into perfuming clouds, so fast
Shalt thou exhale to Heaun at last
In a resoluing sigh, and then
O what? Ask not the tongues of men;
Angells cannot tell; suffice
Thy selfe shall feel thine own full ioyes,
And hold them fast for euer there.
So soon as thou shalt first appear,
The moon of maiden starrs, thy white
Mistresse, attended by such bright
Soules as thy shining self, shall come
And in her first rankes make thee room;
Where 'mongst her snowy family
Immortall wellcomes wait for thee.
O what delight, when reueal'd Life shall stand,
And teach thy lipps Heaun with His hand;
On which thou now maist to thy wishes
Heap vp thy consecrated kisses.
What ioyes shall seize thy soul, when she,
Bending her blessed eyes on Thee,
(Those second smiles of Heau'n,) shall dart
Her mild rayes through Thy melting heart.
Angels, thy old friends, there shall greet thee
Glad at their own home now to meet thee.
All thy good workes which went before
And waited for thee, at the door,
Shall own thee there; and all in one
Weaue a constellation
Of crowns, with which the King thy Spouse
Shall build vp thy triumphant browes.
All thy old woes shall now smile on thee,
And thy paines sitt bright vpon thee,
All thy sorrows here shall shine,
All thy svfferings be diuine:
Teares shall take comfort, and turn gemms
And wrongs repent to diademms.
Eu'n thy death shall liue; and new-
Dresse the soul that erst he slew.
Thy wounds shall blush to such bright scarres
As keep account of the Lamb's warres.
Those rare workes where thou shalt leaue writt
Loue's noble history, with witt
Taught thee by none but Him, while here
They feed our soules, shall clothe thine there.
Each heaunly word, by whose hid flame
Our hard hearts shall strike fire, the same
Shall flourish on thy browes, and be
Both fire to vs and flame to thee;
Whose light shall liue bright in thy face
By glory, in our hearts by grace.
Thou shalt look round about, and see
Thousands of crown'd soules throng to be
Themselues thy crown: sons of thy vowes
The virgin-births with which thy soueraign Spouse
Made fruitfull thy fair soul. Goe now
And with them all about thee, bow
To Him; put on (Hee'l say) put on
(My rosy loue) that thy rich zone
Sparkling with the sacred flames
Of thousand soules, whose happy names
Heau'n keep vpon thy score: (Thy bright
Life brought them first to kisse the light,
That kindled them to starrs,) and so
Thou with the Lamb, thy Lord, shalt goe,
And whereso'ere He setts His white
Stepps, walk with Him those wayes of light,
Which who in death would liue to see,
Must learn in life to dy like thee.
_Various readings from 1646 edition._
Line 3, 'Wee need to goe to none of all.'
"  5, 'ripe and full growne.'
"  8, 'unto' for 'into;' the latter preferable.
"  10, 'Of those whose large breasts built a throne.'
'For Love their Lord, glorious and great
Weel see Him take a private seat,
Line 37, 'thirst' for 'thirsts,' and 'dare' for 'dares.'
"  40, 'weake' for 'white;' the latter a favourite epithet
"  61, this line is by oversight dropped from our text
Line 70, spelled 'barborous' in our text, but I have adopted
Line 71, 'race' for 'raze;' a common contemporary spelling.
"  93, 'The fairest, and the first borne Loves of fire.'
"  94, 'Seraphims,' the usual misspelling of the plural
of seraph in our English Bible.
Line 104, 'To live, but that he still may dy.'
"  130, 'shee' for 'reueal'd Life;' and in next line 'her'
for 'His.' Our text (1652) is preferable, as pointing to Christ
the Life, our Life. See under lines 11-13.
"  146, 'set;' a common contemporary spelling.
"  147, this line, dropped inadvertently from our text
"  152, 'Dresse the soul that late they slew.'
Thus haue I back again to thy bright name
(Fair floud of holy fires!) transfus'd the flame
I took from reading thee: 'tis to thy wrong
I know, that in my weak and worthlesse song
Thou here art sett to shine where thy full day
Scarse dawnes. O pardon, if I dare to say
Thine own dear bookes are guilty. For from thence
I learn't to know that Loue is eloquence.
That hopefull maxime gaue me hart to try
If, what to other tongues is tun'd so high,
Thy praise might not speak English too: forbid
(By all thy mysteryes that here ly hidde)
Forbid it, mighty Loue! let no fond hate
Of names and wordes, so farr praeiudicate.
Souls are not Spaniards too: one freindly floud
Of baptism blends them all into a blood.
Christ's faith makes but one body of all soules,
And Loue's that body's soul; no law controwlls
Our free traffique for Heau'n; we may maintaine
Peace, sure, with piety, though it come from Spain.
What soul so e're, in any language, can
Speak Heau'n like her's, is my soul's country-man.
O 'tis not Spanish, but 'tis Heau'n she speaks!
'Tis Heau'n that lyes in ambush there, and breaks
From thence into the wondring reader's brest;
Who feels his warm heart hatcht into a nest
Of little eagles and young loues, whose high
Flights scorn the lazy dust, and things that dy.
There are enow whose draughts (as deep as Hell)
Drink vp all Spain in sack. Let my soul swell
With the strong wine of Loue: let others swimme
In puddles; we will pledge this seraphim
Bowles full of richer blood then blush of grape
Was euer guilty of. Change we our shape
(My soul) some drink from men to beasts, O then
Drink we till we proue more, not lesse, then men,
And turn not beasts but angels. Let the King
Me euer into these His cellars bring,
Where flowes such wine as we can haue of none
But Him Who trod the wine-presse all alone:
Wine of youth, life, and the sweet deaths of Loue;
Wine of immortall mixture; which can proue
Its tincture from the rosy nectar; wine
That can exalt weak earth; and so refine
Our dust, that at one draught, Mortality
May drink it self vp, and forget to dy.
_Various readings from 1646._
and TURNBULL follows blindly.
after the editions as in No. 9.
Line 34, our text misreads 'too' after 'we:' I omit it, as
Line 41, 'Wine of youth's Life.'
"  45, 'in' for 'at.' As the 'Apologie' refers only to
the Hymn preceding, and not to what follows, I have placed it
after the former, not (as in 1648) the latter, which would make
it refer to both. G.
Wel-meaning readers! you that come as freinds
And catch the pretious name this peice pretends;
Make not too much hast to admire
That fair-cheek't fallacy of fire.
That is a seraphim, they say
And this the great Teresia.
Readers, be rul'd by me; and make
Here a well-plact and wise mistake:
You must transpose the picture quite,
And spell it wrong to read it right;
Read him for her, and her for him,
And call the saint the seraphim.
Painter, what didst thou vnderstand
To put her dart into his hand?
See, euen the yeares and size of him
Showes this the mother seraphim.
This is the mistresse flame; and duteous he
Her happy fire-works here, comes down to see.
O most poor-spirited of men!
Had thy cold pencil kist her pen,
Thou couldst not so vnkindly err
To show vs this faint shade for her.
Why, man, this speakes pure mortall frame;
And mockes with female frost Loue's manly flame.
One would suspect thou meant'st to paint
Some weak, inferiour, woman-saint.
But had thy pale-fac't purple took
Fire from the burning cheeks of that bright booke,
Thou wouldst on her haue heap't vp all
That could be found seraphicall;
What e're this youth of fire, weares fair,
Rosy fingers, radiant hair,
Glowing cheek, and glistering wings,
All those fair and fragrant things
But before all, that fiery dart
Had fill'd the hand of this great heart.
Doe then, as equall right requires,
Since his the blushes be, and her's the fires,
Resume and rectify thy rude design,
Vndresse thy seraphim into mine;
Redeem this iniury of thy art,
Giue him the vail, giue her the dart.
Giue him the vail; that he may couer
The red cheeks of a riuall'd louer.
Asham'd that our world now can show
Nests of new seraphims here below.
Giue her the dart, for it is she
(Fair youth) shootes both thy shaft, and thee;
Say, all ye wise and well-peirc't hearts
That liue and dy amidst her darts,
What is't your tastfull spirits doe proue
In that rare life of her, and Loue?
Say, and bear witnes. Sends she not
A seraphim at euery shott?
What magazins of immortall armes there shine!
Heaun's great artillery in each loue-spun line.
Giue then the dart to her who giues the flame;
Giue him the veil, who giues the shame.
But if it be the frequent fate
Of worst faults to be fortunate;
If all's praescription; and proud wrong
Hearkens not to an humble song;
For all the gallantry of him,
Giue me the suffring seraphim.
His be the brauery of all those bright things,
The glowing cheekes, the glistering wings;
The rosy hand, the radiant dart;
Leaue her alone the flaming heart.
Leaue her that; and thou shalt leaue her
Not one loose shaft but Loue's whole quiver.
For in Loue's feild was neuer found
A nobler weapon then a wovnd.
Loue's passiues are his actiu'st part,
The wounded is the wounding heart.
O heart! the aequall poise of Loue's both parts
Bigge alike with wound and darts.
Liue in these conquering leaues; liue all the same,
And walk through all tongues one triumphant flame.
Liue here, great heart; and loue and dy and kill;
And bleed and wound; and yeild and conquer still.
Let this immortall life wherere it comes
Walk in a crowd of loues and martyrdomes.
Let mystick deaths wait on't; and wise soules be
The loue-slain wittnesses of this life of thee.
O sweet incendiary! shew here thy art,
Vpon this carcasse of a hard, cold hart;
Let all thy scatter'd shafts of light, that play
Among the leaues of thy larg books of day.
Combin'd against this brest at once break in
And take away from me my self and sin;
This gratious robbery shall thy bounty be,
And my best fortunes such fair spoiles of me.
O thou vndanted daughter of desires!
By all thy dowr of lights and fires;
By all the eagle in thee, all the doue;
By all thy liues and deaths of loue;
By thy larg draughts of intellectuall day,
And by thy thirsts of loue more large then they;
By all thy brim-fill'd bowles of feirce desire,
By thy last morning's draught of liquid fire;
By the full kingdome of that finall kisse
That seiz'd thy parting soul, and seal'd thee His;
By all the Heau'n thou hast in Him
(Fair sister of the seraphim!)
By all of Him we have in thee;
Leaue nothing of my self in me.
Let me so read thy life, that I
Vnto all life of mine may dy.
_Various readings from 1648._
Line 31 misreads 'But e're,' and 'were' for 'weares.'
"  34 flagrantly misreads 'flagrant' for 'fragrant,' which
TURNBULL as usual blindly repeats.
"  58 reads '... kindly tells the shame.' It is a characteristic
of CRASHAW to vary his measures, else I should have
adopted this reading from 1648. The line is somewhat obscure
through the conceitful repetition of 'gives.' The sense is,
who, being pictured red, shows the blushing shamefacedness
of being outdone in his own seraphic nature by an earthly
saint. G.
Lord, when the sense of Thy sweet grace
Sends vp my soul to seek Thy face,
Thy blessed eyes breed such desire,
I dy in Loue's delicious fire.
O Loue, I am thy sacrifice!
Be still triumphant, blessed eyes!
Still shine on me, fair suns! that I
Still may behold, though still I dy.
Though still I dy, I liue again;
Still longing so to be still slain;
So gainfull is such losse of breath,
I dy euen in desire of death.
Still liue in me this longing strife
Of liuing death and dying life;
For while Thou sweetly slayest me
Dead to my selfe, I liue in Thee.
Hark! she is call'd, the parting houre is come;
Take thy farewell, poor World! Heaun must go home.
A peice of heau'nly earth; purer and brighter
Then the chast starres, whose choise lamps come to light her,
Whil'st through the crystall orbes, clearer then they
She climbes; and makes a farre more Milkey Way.
She's call'd! Hark, how the dear immortall Doue
Sighes to His syluer mate, 'Rise vp, my loue'!
Rise vp, my fair, my spotlesse one!
The Winter's past, the rain is gone;
The Spring is come, the flowrs appear,
No sweets, (save thou,) are wanting here.
Come away, my loue!
Come away, my doue!
Cast off delay;
The court of Heau'n is come
To wait vpon thee home;
Come, come away!
The flowrs appear,
Or quickly would, wert thou once here.
The Spring is come, or if it stay
'Tis to keep time with thy delay.
The rain is gone, except so much as we
Detain in needfull teares to weep the want of thee.
The Winter's past,
Or if he make lesse hast,
His answer is, why she does so,
If Sommer come not, how can Winter goe?
Come away, come away!
The shrill winds chide, the waters weep thy stay;
The fountains murmur, and each loftyest tree
Bowes low'st his leauy top, to look for thee.
Come away, my loue!
Come away, my doue &c.
She's call'd again. And will she goe?
When Heau'n bidds come, who can say no?
Heau'n calls her, and she must away,
Heau'n will not, and she cannot stay.
Goe then; goe, gloriovs on the golden wings
Of the bright youth of Heau'n, that sings
Vnder so sweet a burthen. Goe,
Since thy dread Son will haue it so.
And while thou goest, our song and we
Will, as we may, reach after thee.
Hail, holy queen of humble hearts!
We in thy prayse will haue our parts.
And though thy dearest lookes must now give light
To none but the blest heavens, whose bright
Beholders, lost in sweet delight,
Feed for ever their faire sight
With those divinest eyes, which we
And our darke world noe more shall see;
Though our poore eyes are parted soe,
Yet shall our lipps never lett goe
Thy gracious name, but to the last
Our loving song shall hold it fast.
Thy pretious name shall be
Thy self to vs; and we
With holy care will keep it by vs.
We to the last
Will hold it fast,
And no Assvmption shall deny vs.
All the sweetest showres
Of our fairest flowres
Will we strow vpon it.
Though our sweets cannot make
It sweeter, they can take
Themselues new sweetness from it.
Maria, men and angels sing,
Maria, mother of our King.
Live, rosy princesse, live! and may the bright
Crown of a most incomparable light
Embrace thy radiant browes. O may the best
Of euerlasting ioyes bath thy white brest.
Live, our chast loue, the holy mirth
Of Heau'n; the humble pride of Earth.
Liue, crown of woemen; queen of men;
Liue, mistresse of our song. And when
Our weak desires haue done their best,
Sweet angels come, and sing the rest.
Rise, then, immortall maid! Religion, rise!
Put on thy self in thine own looks: t' our eyes
Be what thy beauties, not our blots, have made thee;
Such as (ere our dark sinnes to dust betray'd thee)
Heav'n set thee down new drest; when thy bright birth
Shot thee like lightning to th' astonisht Earth.
From th' dawn of thy fair eyelids wipe away
Dull mists and melancholy clouds: take Day
And thine own beams about thee: bring the best
Of whatsoe're perfum'd thy Eastern nest.
Girt all thy glories to thee: then sit down,
Open this book, fair Queen, and take thy crown.
These learned leaves shall vindicate to thee
Thy holyest, humblest, handmaid, Charitie;
She'l dresse thee like thy self, set thee on high
Where thou shalt reach all hearts, command each eye.
Lo! where I see thy altars wake, and rise
From the pale dust of that strange sacrifice
Which they themselves were; each one putting on
A majestie that may beseem thy throne.
The holy youth of Heav'n, whose golden rings
Girt round thy awfull altars; with bright wings
Fanning thy fair locks, (which the World beleeves
As much as sees) shall with these sacred leaves
Trick their tall plumes, and in that garb shall go
If not more glorious, more conspicuous tho.
By the fair laws of thy firm-pointed pen,
God's services no longer shall put on
No longer shall our Churches' frighted stones
Lie scatter'd like the burnt and martyr'd bones
Of dead Devotion; nor faint marbles weep
In their sad ruines; nor Religion keep
A melancholy mansion in those cold
Urns: Like God's sanctuaries they lookt of old;
Now seem they Temples consecrate to none,
Or to a new god, Desolation.
No more the hypocrite shall th' upright be
Because he's stiffe, and will confesse no knee:
While others bend their knee, no more shalt thou,
(Disdainfull dust and ashes!) bend thy brow;
Nor on God's altar cast two scorching eyes,
Bak't in hot scorn, for a burnt sacrifice:
But (for a lambe) thy tame and tender heart,
New struck by Love, still trembling on his dart;
Or (for two turtle-doves) it shall suffice
To bring a pair of meek and humble eyes.
This shall from henceforth be the masculine theme
Pulpits and pennes shall sweat in; to redeem
Vertue to action, that life-feeding flame
That keeps Religion warm: not swell a name
Of Faith; a mountain-word, made up of aire,
With those deare spoils that wont to dresse the fair
And fruitfull Charitie's full breasts (of old),
Turning her out to tremble in the cold.
What can the poore hope from us, when we be
Uncharitable ev'n to Charitie?
Nor shall our zealous ones still have a fling
At that most horrible and horned thing,
Forsooth the Pope: by which black name they call
The Turk, the devil, Furies, Hell and all,
And something more. O he is Antichrist:
Doubt this, and doubt (say they) that Christ is Christ:
Why, 'tis a point of Faith. What e're it be,
I'm sure it is no point of Charitie.
In summe, no longer shall our people hope,
To be a true Protestant's but to hate the Pope.
The title in all is 'On a Treatise of Charity.'
"  17, all the editions 'off'rings' for 'altars.'
"  36, our text misprints 'look' for 'look't.'
Hear'st thou, my soul, what serious things
Both the Psalm and sybyll sings
Of a sure Iudge, from Whose sharp ray
The World in flames shall fly away.
O that fire! before whose face
Heaun and Earth shall find no place.
O those eyes! Whose angry light
Must be the day of that dread night.
O that trump! whose blast shall run
An euen round with the circling sun,
And vrge the murmuring graues to bring
Pale mankind forth to meet his King.
When a deep groan from beneath
Shall cry, We come, we come, and all
The caues of Night answer one call.
O that Book! whose leaues so bright
Will sett the World in seuere light.
O that Iudge! Whose hand, Whose eye
None can indure; yet none can fly.
Ah then, poor soul, what wilt thou say?
And to what patron chuse to pray?
When starres themselues shall stagger; and
The most firm foot no more then stand.
But Thou giu'st leaue (dread Lord!) that we
Take shelter from Thy self, in Thee;
And with the wings of Thine Own doue
Fly to Thy scepter of soft loue.
Dear, remember in that Day
Who was the cause Thou cam'st this way.
Thy sheep was stray'd; and Thou wouldst be
Euen lost Thyself in seeking me.
Shall all that labour, all that cost
Of loue, and eu'n that losse, be lost?
And this lou'd soul, iudg'd worth no lesse
Then all that way, and wearyness.
Iust mercy then, Thy reckning be
With my Price, and not with me;
'Twas pay'd at first with too much pain,
To be pay'd twice; or once, in vain.
Mercy (my Iudge), mercy I cry
With blushing cheek and bleeding ey:
The conscious colors of my sin
Are red without and pale within.
O let Thine Own soft bowells pay
Thy self; and so discharge that day.
If Sin can sigh, Loue can forgiue:
O say the word, my soul shall liue.
Those mercyes which Thy Mary found,
Or who Thy crosse confes't and crown'd;
Hope tells my heart, the same loues be
Still aliue, and still for me.
Though both my prayres and teares combine,
Both worthlesse are; for they are mine.
But Thou Thy bounteous Self still be;
And show Thou art, by sauing me.
O when Thy last frown shall proclaim
The flocks of goates to folds of flame,
And all Thy lost sheep found shall be;
Let 'Come ye blessed,' then call me.
When the dread '_Ite_' shall diuide
Those limbs of death, from Thy left side;
Let those life-speaking lipps command
That I inheritt Thy right hand.
O hear a suppliant heart, all crush't
And crumbled into contrite dust.
My hope, my fear! my Iudge, my Freind!
Take charge of me, and of my end.
Lord, what is man? why should he coste Thee
So dear? what had his ruin lost Thee?
Lord, what is man? that thou hast ouerbought
So much a thing of nought?
Loue is too kind, I see; and can
Make but a simple merchant-man.
'Twas for such sorry merchandise,
Bold painters haue putt out his eyes.
Alas, sweet Lord, what wer't to Thee
If there were no such wormes as we?
Heau'n ne're the lesse still Heau'n would be,
Should mankind dwell
In the deep Hell:
What haue his woes to doe with Thee?
Let him goe weep
O're his own wounds;
Seraphims will not sleep
Nor spheares let fall their faithfull rounds.
Still would the youthfull spirits sing;
And still Thy spatious palace ring;
Still would those beauteous ministers of light
Burn all as bright.
And bow their flaming heads before Thee:
Still thrones and dominations would adore Thee;
Still would those euer-wakefull sons of fire
Keep warm Thy prayse
Both nights and dayes,
And teach Thy lou'd name to their noble lyre.
Let froward dust then doe it's kind;
And giue it self for sport to the proud wind.
Why should a peice of peeuish clay plead shares
In the aeternity of Thy old cares?
Why shouldst Thou bow Thy awfull brest to see
What mine own madnesses haue done with me?
Should not the king still keepe his throne
Because some desperate fool's vndone?
Or will the World's illustrious eyes
Weep for euery worm that dyes.
Will the gallant sun
E're the lesse glorious run?
Will he hang down his golden head
Or e're the sooner seek his Western bed,
Because some foolish fly
Growes wanton, and will dy?
If I were lost in misery,
What was it to Thy pretious blood
If my foul heart call'd for a floud?
What if my faithlesse soul and I
Would needs fall in
With guilt and sin;
What did the Lamb, that He should dy?
What did the Lamb, that He should need,
When the wolf sins, Himself to bleed?
If my base lust,
Bargain'd with Death and well-beseeming dust:
Why should the white
Lamb's bosom write
The purple name
Of my sin's shame?
Why should His vnstaind brest make good
My blushes with His Own heart-blood?
O my Saviovr, make me see
How dearly Thou hast payd for me,
That lost again my life may proue,
As then in death, so now in loue.
Hail, most high, most humble one!
Aboue the world, below thy Son;
Whose blush the moon beauteously marres
And staines the timerous light of stares.
He that made all things, had not done
Till He had made Himself thy Son:
The whole World's host would be thy guest
And board Himself at thy rich brest.
O boundles hospitality!
The Feast of all things feeds on thee.
The first Eue, mother of our Fall,
E're she bore any one, slew all.
Of her vnkind gift might we haue
Th' inheritance of a hasty grave:
Quick-burye'd in the wanton tomb
Of one forbidden bitt;
Had not a better frvit forbidden it.
Had not thy healthfull womb
The World's new eastern window bin,
And giuen vs heau'n again, in giuing Him.
Thine was the rosy dawn, that spring the Day
Which renders all the starres she stole away.
Let then the aged World be wise, and all
Proue nobly here vnnaturall;
'Tis gratitude to forgett that other
And call the maiden Eue their mother.
Yee redeem'd nations farr and near,
Applaud your happy selues in her;
(All you to whom this loue belongs)
And keep't aliue with lasting songs.
Let hearts and lippes speak lowd; and say
Hail, door of life: and sourse of Day!
The door was shut, the fountain seal'd;
Yet Light was seen and Life reueal'd.
The door was shut, yet let in day,
The fountain seal'd, yet life found way.
Glory to Thee, great virgin's Son
In bosom of Thy Father's blisse.
The same to Thee, sweet Spirit be done;
As euer shall be, was, and is. Amen.
Line 21, I follow here the text of 1648. 1652 reads
'Thine was the rosy dawn that sprung the day.'
and this is repeated in 1670 and, of course, by TURNBULL.
"  35 is inadvertently dropped in our text (1652), though
the succeeding line (with which it rhymes) appears. I restore
it. 1670 also drops it; and so again TURNBULL!
Hope, whose weak beeing ruin'd is
Alike if it succeed or if it misse!
Whom ill and good doth equally confound,
And both the hornes of Fate's dilemma wound.
Vain shadow; that dost vanish quite
Both at full noon and perfect night!
The starres haue not a possibility
Of blessing thee.
If thinges then from their end we happy call,
'Tis Hope is the most hopelesse thing of all.
Hope, thou bold taster of delight!
Who in stead of doing so, deuourst it quite.
Thou bringst vs an estate, yet leau'st vs poor
By clogging it with legacyes before.
The ioyes which we intire should wed
Come deflour'd-virgins to our bed.
Good fortunes without gain imported be
Such mighty custom's paid to thee
For ioy, like wine kep't close, doth better tast;
If it take air before, his spirits wast.
Hope, Fortun's cheating lottery,
Where for one prize, an hundred blankes there be.
Fond anchor, Hope! who tak'st thine aime so farr
That still or short or wide thine arrows are;
Thinne empty cloud which th' ey deceiues
With shapes that our own fancy giues.
A cloud which gilt and painted now appeares
But must drop presently in teares:
When thy false beames o're reason's light preuail,
By _ignes fatvi_ for North starres we sail.
Brother of Fear, more gaily clad,
The merryer fool o' th' two, yet quite as mad.
Sire of Repentance, child of fond desire
That blow'st the chymick's and the louer's fire.
Still leading them insensibly on
With the strong witchcraft of 'anon.'
By thee the one does changing nature, through
Her endlesse labyrinths pursue;
And th' other chases woman; while she goes
More wayes and turnes then hunted Nature knowes.
_Various readings from 1646 edition._
"  7, 'Fates' for 'starres:' but as Fate occurs in line 4,
'starres' seems preferable.
"  20, 'its' for 'his;' the personification warrants 'his.'
"  25. All the other editions misread
'Thine empty cloud, the eye it selfe deceives.'
" 33, 'shield' in all the editions save 1652 by mistake.
" 34, 'blows' and 'chymicks' for 'chymick;' the latter adopted.
In our Essay see critical remarks showing that COWLEY and CRASHAW
Dear Hope! Earth's dowry, and Heaun's debt!
The entity of things that are not yet.
Subtlest, but surest beeing! thou by whom
Our nothing has a definition!
Substantiall shade! whose sweet allay
Blends both the noones of Night and Day:
Fates cannot find out a capacity
Of hurting thee.
From thee their lean dilemma, with blunt horn,
Shrinkes, as the sick moon from the wholsome morn.
Rich hope! Loue's legacy, vnder lock
Of Faith! still spending, and still growing stock!
Our crown-land lyes aboue, yet each meal brings
A seemly portion for the sonnes of kings.
Nor will the virgin ioyes we wed
Come lesse vnbroken to our bed,
Because that from the bridall cheek of Blisse
Thou steal'st vs down a distant kisse.
Hope's chast stealth harmes no more Ioye's maidenhead
Then spousal rites preiudge the marriage bed.
Fair hope! Our earlyer Heau'n! by thee
Young Time is taster to Eternity:
Thy generous wine with age growes strong, not sowre,
Nor does it kill thy fruit, to smell thy flowre.
Thy golden, growing head neuer hangs down
Till in the lappe of Loue's full noone
It falls; and dyes! O no, it melts away
As doth the dawn into the Day:
As lumpes of sugar loose themselues, and twine
Their subtile essence with the soul of wine.
Fortune? alas, aboue the World's low warres
Hope walks; and kickes the curld heads of conspiring starres.
Her keel cutts not the waues where these winds stirr,
Fortune's whole lottery is one blank to her.
Her shafts and shee, fly farre above,
And forage in the fields of light and love.
Sweet Hope! kind cheat! fair fallacy! by thee
We are not where nor what we be,
But what and where we would be. Thus art thou
Our absent presence, and our future now.
Faith's sister! nurse of fair desire!
Fear's antidote! a wise and well-stay'd fire!
Temper 'twixt chill Despair, and torrid Ioy!
Queen regent in yonge Loue's minority!
Though the vext chymick vainly chases
His fugitiue gold through all her faces;
Though Loue's more feirce, more fruitlesse, fires assay:
One face more fugitiue then all they;
True Hope's a glorious huntresse, and her chase,
The God of Nature in the feilds of grace.
_Various readings from 1646 edition._
Lines 5-6 read
'Faire cloud of fire, both shade and light
Our life in death, our day in night.'
"  11, 'Rich hope' dropped in all the other editions; but
as it is parallel with the 'dear Hope' and 'fair Hope' of the
preceding and succeeding stanzas, I have restored the words.
The line reads elsewhere,
'Thou art Love's Legacie under lock'
and the next,
'Of Faith: the steward of our growing stock.'
" 18, 'Thou thus steal'st downe a distant kisse.'
'Fortune, alas, above the world's law warres,
Hope kicks the curld'....
In 1670 there is a capital L to Law: but 'low' yields the evident
"  47, 'huntresse' for 'hunter;' adopted.
orthography of the MS. G.
And is He gone, Whom these armes held but now?
Their hope, their vow!
Did euer greife and joy in one poore heart
Soe soone change part?
Hee's gone! The fair'st flower that e're bosome drest;
My soule's sweet rest.
My wombe's chast pride is gone, my heauen-borne boy;
And where is joy?
Hee's gone! and His lou'd steppes to wait vpon,
My joy, is gone.
My joyes, and Hee are gone; my greife, and I
Alone must ly.
Hee's gone! not leaving with me, till He come,
One smile at home.
Oh come then, bring Thy mother her lost joy:
Oh come, sweet boy!
Make hast, and come, or e're my greife and I
Make hast, and dy.
Peace, heart! The heauens are angry, all their spheres
Rivall thy teares.
I was mistaken, some faire sphere or other
Was Thy blest mother.
What but the fairest heauen, could owne the birth
Of soe faire earth?
Yet sure Thou did'st lodge heere: this wombe of mine
Was once call'd Thine!
Oft haue these armes Thy cradle envied,
Beguil'd Thy bed.
Oft to Thy easy eares hath this shrill tongue
Trembled, and sung.
Oft haue I wrapt Thy slumbers in soft aires,
And stroak't Thy cares.
Oft hath this hand those silken casements kept,
While their sunnes slept.
Oft haue my hungry kisses made Thine eyes
Too early rise.
Oft haue I spoild my kisses' daintiest diet,
To spare Thy quiet.
Oft from this breast to Thine, my loue-tost heart
Hath leapt, to part.
Oft my lost soule haue I bin glad to seeke
On Thy soft cheeke.
Oft haue these armes--alas!--show'd to these eyes
Their now lost joyes.
Dawne then to me, Thou morne of mine owne day,
And lett heauen stay.
Oh, would'st Thou heere still fixe Thy faire abode,
My bosome God:
What hinders, but my bosome still might be
Thy heauen to Thee?
Come braue soldjers, come and see
Mighty Loue's artillery.
This was the conquering dart; and loe
There shines His quiuer, there His bow.
These the passiue weapons are,
That made great Loue, a man of warre.
The quiver that He bore, did bide
Soe neare, it prov'd His very side:
In it there sate but one sole dart,
A peircing one--His peirced heart.
His weapons were nor steele, nor brasse,
The weapon that He wore, He was.
For bow His vnbent hand did serue,
Well strung with many a broken nerue.
Strange the quiver, bow and dart!
A bloody side, and hand, and heart!
But now the feild is wonne; and they
(The dust of Warre cleane wip'd away)
The weapons now of triumph be,
That were before of Victorie.
I sing Impiety beyond a name:
Who stiles it any thinge, knowes not the same.
Dull, sluggish Ile! what more than lethargy
Gripes thy cold limbes soe fast, thou canst not fly,
And start from of[f] thy center? hath Heauen's loue
Stuft thee soe full with blisse, thou can'st not moue?
If soe, oh Neptune, may she farre be throwne
By thy kind armes to a kind world vnknowne:
Lett her surviue this day, once mock her fate,
And shee's an island truely fortunate.
Lett not my suppliant breath raise a rude storme
To wrack my suite: O keepe Pitty warme
In thy cold breast, and yearely on this day
Mine eyes a tributary streame shall pay.
Dos't thou not see an exhalation
Belch'd from the sulph'ry lungs of Phlegeton?
A living comet, whose pestiferous breath
Adulterates the virgin aire? with death
It laboures: stif'led Nature's in a swound,
Ready to dropp into a chaos, round
About horror's displai'd; It doth portend,
That earth a shoure of stones to heauen shall send,
And crack the christall globe; the milkly streame
Shall in a siluer raine runne out, whose creame
Shall choake the gaping earth, wch then shall fry
In flames, & of a burning feuer dy.
That wonders may in fashion be, not rare,
A Winter's thunder with a groane shall scare,
And rouze the sleepy ashes of the dead,
Making them skip out of their dusty bed.
Those twinckling eyes of heauen, wch eu'n now shin'd,
Shall with one flash of lightning be struck blind.
The sea shall change his youthfull greene, & slide
Along the shore in a graue purple tide.
It does praesage, that a great Prince shall climbe,
And gett a starry throne before his time.
To vsher in this shoale of prodigies,
Thy infants, Aeolus, will not suffice.
Noe, noe, a giant wind, that will not spare
To tosse poore men like dust into the aire;
Justle downe mountaines: Kings courts shall be sent,
Like bandied balles, into the firmament.
Atlas shall be tript vpp, Ioue's gate shall feele
The weighty rudenes of his boysterous heele.
All this it threats, & more: Horror, that flies
To th' empyraeum of all miseries.
Most tall hyperbole's cannot descry it;
Mischeife, that scornes expression should come nigh it.
All this it only threats: the meteor ly'd;
It was exhal'd, a while it hung, & dy'd.
Heauen kickt the monster downe: downe it was throwne,
The fall of all things it praesag'd, its oune
It quite forgott: the fearfull earth gaue way,
And durst not touch it, heere it made noe stay.
At last it stopt at Pluto's gloomy porch;
He streightway lighted vpp his pitchy torch.
Now to those toiling soules it giues its light,
Wch had the happines to worke ith' night.
They banne the blaze, & curse its curtesy,
For lighting them vnto their misery.
Till now Hell was imperfect; it did need
Some rare choice torture; now 'tis Hell indeed.
Then glutt thy dire lampe with the warmest blood,
That runnes in violett pipes: none other food
It can digest, then watch the wildfire well,
Least it breake forth, & burne thy sooty cell.
Reach me a quill, pluckt from the flaming wing
Of Pluto's Mercury, that I may sing
Death to the life. My inke shall be the blood
Of Cerberus, or Alecto's viperous brood.
Vnmated malice! Oh vnpeer'd despight!
Such as the sable pinions of the night
Neuer durst hatch before: extracted see
The very quintessence of villanie:
I feare to name it; least that he, wch heares,
Should haue his soule frighted beyond the spheres.
Heauen was asham'd, to see our mother Earth
Engender with the Night, & teeme a birth
Soe foule, one minute's light had it but seene,
The fresh face of the morne had blasted beene.
Her rosy cheekes you should haue seene noe more
Dy'd in vermilion blushes, as before:
But in a vaile of clouds mufling her head
A solitary life she would haue led.
Affrighted Phoebus would haue lost his way,
Giving his wanton palfreys leaue to play
Olympick games in the' Olympian plaines,
His trembling hands loosing the golden raines.
The Queene of night gott the greene sicknes then,
Sitting soe long at ease in her darke denne,
Not daring to peepe forth, least that a stone
Should beate her headlong from her jetty throne.
Ioue's twinckling tapers, that doe light the world,
Had beene puft out, and from their stations hurl'd:
Aeol kept in his wrangling sonnes, least they
With this grand blast should haue bin blowne away.
Amazed Triton, with his shrill alarmes
Bad sporting Neptune to pluck in his armes,
And leaue embracing of the Isles, least hee
Might be an actor in this Tragedy.
Nor should wee need thy crisped waues, for wee
An Ocean could haue made t' haue drowned thee.
Torrents of salt teares from our eyes should runne,
And raise a deluge, where the flaming sunne
Should coole his fiery wheeles, & neuer sinke
Soe low to giue his thirsty stallions drinke;
Each soule in sighes had spent its dearest breath,
As glad to waite vpon their King in death.
Each winged chorister would swan-like sing
A mournfull dirge to their deceased king.
The painted meddowes would haue laught no more
For ioye of their neate coates; but would haue tore
Their shaggy locks, their flowry mantles turn'd
Into dire sable weeds, & sate, & mourn'd.
Each stone had streight a Niobe become,
And wept amaine; then rear'd a costly tombe,
T' entombe the lab'ring earth. For surely shee
Had died just in her deliuery.
But when Ioue's winged heralds this espied,
Vpp to th' Almighty thunderer they hied,
Relating this sad story. Streight way hee
The monster crusht, maugre their midwiferie.
And may such Pythons neuer liue to see
The Light's faire face, but still abortiue bee.
Grow plumpe, leane Death; his Holinesse a feast
Hath now praepar'd, & you maist be his guest.
Come grimme Destruction, & in purple gore
Dye seu'n times deeper than they were before
Thy scarlet robes: for heere you must not share
A common banquett: noe, heere's princely fare.
And least thy blood-shott eyes should lead aside
This masse of cruelty, to be thy guide
Three coleblack sisters, (whose long sutty haire,
And greisly visages doe fright the aire;
When Night beheld them, shame did almost turne
Her sable cheekes into a blushing morne,
To see some fowler than herselfe) these stand,
Each holding forth to light the aery brand,
Whose purer flames tremble to be soe nigh,
And in fell hatred burning, angry dy.
Sly, lurking treason is his bosome freind,
Whom faint, & palefac't Feare doth still attend.
These need noe invitation, onely thou
Black dismall Horror, come; make perfect now
Th' epitome of Hell: oh lett thy pinions
Be a gloomy canopy to Pluto's minions.
In this infernall Majesty close shrowd
Your selues, you Stygian states; a pitchy clowd
Shall hang the roome, & for your tapers bright,
Sulphureous flames, snatch'd from aeternall night.
But rest, affrighted Muse; thy siluer wings
May not row neerer to these dusky rings.
Cast back some amorous glances on the cates,
That heere are dressing by the hasty Fates,
Nay stopp thy clowdy eyes, it is not good,
To drowne thy selfe in this pure pearly flood.
But since they are for fire-workes, rather proue
A phenix, & in chastest flames of loue
Offer thy selfe a virgin sacrifice
To quench the rage of hellish deities.
But dares Destruction eate these candid breasts,
The Muses, & the Graces sugred neasts?
Dares hungry Death snatch of one cherry lipp?
Or thirsty Treason offer once to sippe
One dropp of this pure nectar, wch doth flow
In azure channells warme through mounts of snow?
The roses fresh, conserued from the rage,
And cruell ravishing of frosty age,
Feare is afraid to tast of: only this,
He humbly crau'd to banquett on a kisse.
Poore meagre horror streightwaies was amaz'd,
And in the stead of feeding stood, & gaz'd.
Their appetites were gone at th' uery sight;
But yet theire eyes surfett with sweet delight.
Only the Pope a stomack still could find;
But yett they were not powder'd to his mind.
Forth-with each god stept from his starry throne,
And snatch'd away the banquett; euery one
Convey'd his sweet delicious treasury
To the close closet of aeternity:
Where they will safely keepe it, from the rude,
And rugged touch of Pluto's multitude.
Now Westward Sol had spent the richest beams
Of Noon's high glory, when hard by the streams
Of Tiber, on the sceane of a greene plat,
Vnder protection of an oake, there sate
A sweet Lute's-master; in whose gentle aires
He lost the daye's heat, and his owne hot cares.
Close in the covert of the leaves there stood
A Nightingale, come from the neighbouring wood:
(The sweet inhabitant of each glad tree,
Their Muse, their Syren--harmlesse Syren she!)
There stood she listning, and did entertaine
The musick's soft report, and mold the same
In her owne murmures, that what ever mood
His curious fingers lent, her voyce made good:
The man perceiv'd his rivall, and her art;
Dispos'd to give the light-foot lady sport,
Awakes his lute, and 'gainst the fight to come
Informes it in a sweet praeludium
Of closer straines, and ere the warre begin,
He lightly skirmishes on every string,
Charg'd with a flying touch: and streightway she
Carves out her dainty voyce as readily,
Into a thousand sweet distinguish'd tones,
And reckons up in soft divisions,
Quicke volumes of wild notes; to let him know
By that shrill taste, she could do something too.
His nimble hands' instinct then taught each string
A capring cheerefullnesse; and made them sing
To their owne dance; now negligently rash
He throwes his arme, and with a long drawne dash
Blends all together; then distinctly tripps
From this to that; then quicke returning skipps
And snatches this again, and pauses there.
Shee measures every measure, every where
Meets art with art; sometimes as if in doubt
Not perfect yet, and fearing to be out,
Trayles her plaine ditty in one long-spun note,
Through the sleeke passage of her open throat,
A cleare unwrinckled song; then doth shee point it
With tender accents, and severely joynt it
By short diminutives, that being rear'd
In controverting warbles evenly shar'd,
With her sweet selfe shee wrangles. Hee amazed
That from so small a channell should be rais'd
The torrent of a voyce, whose melody
Could melt into such sweet variety,
Straines higher yet; that tickled with rare art
The tatling strings (each breathing in his part)
Most kindly doe fall out; the grumbling base
In surly groans disdaines the treble's grace;
The high-perch't treble chirps at this, and chides,
Vntill his finger (Moderatour) hides
And closes the sweet quarrell, rowsing all,
Hoarce, shrill at once; as when the trumpets call
Hot Mars to th' harvest of Death's field, and woo
Men's hearts into their hands: this lesson too
Shee gives him back, her supple brest thrills out
Sharpe aires, and staggers in a warbling doubt
Of dallying sweetnesse, hovers o're her skill,
And folds in wav'd notes with a trembling bill
The plyant series of her slippery song;
Then starts shee suddenly into a throng
Of short, thicke sobs, whose thundring volleyes float
And roule themselves over her lubrick throat
In panting murmurs, 'still'd out of her breast,
That ever-bubling spring; the sugred nest
Of her delicious soule, that there does lye
Bathing in streames of liquid melodie;
Musick's best seed-plot, whence in ripen'd aires
A golden-headed harvest fairely reares
His honey-dropping tops, plow'd by her breath,
Which there reciprocally laboureth
In that sweet soyle; it seemes a holy quire
Founded to th' name of great Apollo's lyre,
Whose silver-roofe rings with the sprightly notes
Of sweet-lipp'd angel-imps, that swill their throats
In creame of morning Helicon, and then
Preferre soft-anthems to the eares of men,
To woo them from their beds, still murmuring
That men can sleepe while they their mattens sing:
(Most divine service) whose so early lay,
Prevents the eye-lidds of the blushing Day!
There you might heare her kindle her soft voyce,
In the close murmur of a sparkling noyse,
And lay the ground-worke of her hopefull song,
Still keeping in the forward streame, so long,
Till a sweet whirle-wind (striving to get out)
Heaves her soft bosome, wanders round about,
And makes a pretty earthquake in her breast,
Till the fledg'd notes at length forsake their nest,
Fluttering in wanton shoales, and to the sky
Wing'd with their owne wild ecchos, pratling fly.
Shee opes the floodgate, and lets loose a tide
Of streaming sweetnesse, which in state doth ride
On the wav'd backe of every swelling straine,
Rising and falling in a pompous traine.
And while she thus discharges a shrill peale
Of flashing aires; she qualifies their zeale
With the coole epode of a graver noat,
Thus high, thus low, as if her silver throat
Would reach the brazen voyce of War's hoarce bird;
Her little soule is ravisht: and so pour'd
Into loose extasies, that she is plac't
Above her selfe, Musick's Enthusiast.
Shame now and anger mixt a double staine
In the Musitian's face; yet once againe
(Mistresse) I come; now reach a straine my lute
Above her mocke, or be for ever mute;
Or tune a song of victory to me,
Or to thy selfe, sing thine own obsequie:
So said, his hands sprightly as fire, he flings
And with a quavering coynesse tasts the strings.
The sweet-lip't sisters, musically frighted,
Singing their feares, are fearefully delighted,
Trembling as when Appolo's golden haires
Are fan'd and frizled, in the wanton ayres
Of his own breath: which marryed to his lyre
Doth tune the spheares, and make Heaven's selfe looke higher.
From this to that, from that to this he flyes.
Feeles Musick's pulse in all her arteryes;
Caught in a net which there Apollo spreads,
His fingers struggle with the vocall threads.
Following those little rills, he sinkes into
A sea of Helicon; his hand does goe
Those pathes of sweetnesse which with nectar drop,
Softer than that which pants in Hebe's cup.
The humourous strings expound his learned touch,
By various glosses; now they seeme to grutch,
And murmur in a buzzing dinne, then gingle
In shrill-tongu'd accents: striving to be single.
Every smooth turne, every delicious stroake
Gives life to some new grace; thus doth h' invoke
Sweetnesse by all her names; thus, bravely thus
(Fraught with a fury so harmonious)
The lute's light genius now does proudly rise,
Heav'd on the surges of swolne rapsodyes,
Whose flourish (meteor-like) doth curle the aire
With flash of high-borne fancyes: here and there
Dancing in lofty measures, and anon
Creeps on the soft touch of a tender tone;
Whose trembling murmurs melting in wild aires
Runs to and fro, complaining his sweet cares,
Because those pretious mysteryes that dwell
In Musick's ravish't soule, he dares not tell,
But whisper to the world: thus doe they vary
Each string his note, as if they meant to carry
Their Master's blest soule (snatcht out at his eares
By a strong extasy) through all the spheares
Of Musick's heaven; and seat it there on high
In th' empyraeum of pure harmony.
At length (after so long, so loud a strife
Of all the strings, still breathing the best life
Of blest variety, attending on
His fingers fairest revolution
In many a sweet rise, many as sweet a fall)
A full-mouth'd diapason swallowes all.
This done, he lists what she would say to this,
And she, (although her breath's late exercise
Had dealt too roughly with her tender throate,)
Yet summons all her sweet powers for a noate.
Alas! in vaine! for while (sweet soule!) she tryes
To measure all those wild diversities
Of chatt'ring strings, by the small size of one
Poore simple voyce, rais'd in a naturall tone;
She failes, and failing grieves, and grieving dyes.
She dyes: and leaves her life the Victor's prise,
Falling upon his lute: O, fit to have
(That liv'd so sweetly) dead, so sweet a grave!
(_a_) _The Musicke Warre between ye Fidler and the Nightingale._
Nowe had greate Sol ye middle orbe forsooke
When as a fidler by a slidinge brooke
With shadie bowers was guarded from ye aire
And on his fidle plaid away his care.
A nightingale hid in the leaues there stood
The muse and harmeles Syren of the wood;
Shee snatcht ye soundes and with an echo prates:
What his hand playde her voice reiterates.
Perceavinge how ye listninge bird did sit
Ye fidler faine would make some sport with it,
And neately stroke ye lute; then she began
And through those notes ran glib division;
Then with quicke hand he strikes ye tremblinge strings,
Now with a skilfull negligence he flings
His carelesse armes, then softly playes his part:
Then shee begins and answers art with art,
And now as if vncertaine how to singe
Lengthens her notes and choisest art doth bringe,
And interminglinge softer notes with shrill
Daintily quavers through her trembling bill.
Ye fidler wonders such melodious notes
Shold haue proceedinges from soe slender throats;
Tryes her againe, then loudly spoke ye....
Sometimes graue were ye tones, sometimes....
Then high, then lowe againe, yn sweetly iarrs
Just like a trumpet callinge men to warrs.
Thus did ye dainty Philomela doe
And with hoarse voice sange an alarme too.
The fidler blusht, and al in ragg [_i.e._ rage] he went
About to breake his conquered instrument,
But yet suspectinge lest ambitious shee
Shold to the woods warble her victory;
Strikes with inimitable blowes
And flies through all the strings, now these, now those,
Then tryes the notes, labours in each strayne
And then expects if shee replyed agayne.
The poore harmonious bird now almost dombe,
But impatient, to be overcome
Calls her sweet strength together all in vayne,
For while shee thinkes to imitate each strayne
In pure and natiue language, in this strife
And dayntie musicke warre shee left her life,
And yeldinge to the gladsome conquerour
Falls in his fidle: a fit sepulchere.
'When past the middle orbe the parching sun
Had downward nearer our horizon run
A Lutenist neare Tiber's streames had found
Where the eccho did resound.
Under a holme a shady bower he made
To ease his cares, his severall phancies play'd;
The philomell no sooner did the musicke hear
But straight-wayes she drew neare.
The harmlesse Syren, musicke of the wood,
Hid in a leavy-bush, she hearking stood,
She ruminates upon the ayers he plaid,
And to him answers made.
With her shirl voyce doth all his paines requite
Lost not one note, but to his play sung right;
Well pleased to heare her skil, and envy, he
Tryes his variety.
And dares her with his severall notes, runs throw
Even all the strains his skill could reach unto:
A thousand wayes he tryes: she answers all,
And for new straynes dares call.
He could not touch a string in such a straine,
To which she warble and not sung it plaine;
His fingers could not reach to greater choice,
Then she did with her voyce.
The Lutenist admired her narrow throat
Could reach so high or fall to any note:
But that which he did thinke in her most strange,
She instantly could change.
Or sharpe or flat, or meane, or quicke, or slow,
What ere he plaid, she the like skill would show:
And if he inward did his notes recall,
She answer made to all.
Th' inraged Lutenist, he blusht for shame
That he could not this weake corrivall tame:
If thou canst answer this I'le breake my lute,
And yeild in the dispute.
He said no more, but aimes at such a height
Of skill, he thought she could not imitate:
He shows the utmost cunning of his hand
And all he could command.
He tryes his strength, his active fingers flye
To every string and stop, now low, now high,
And higher yet he multiplyes his skill,
Then doth his chorus fill.
Then he expecting stands to try if she
His envy late would yeeld the victory:
She would not yeeld, but summons all her force
Though tyred out and hoarse.
She strives with various strings the lute's bast chest
The spirit of man, one narrow throat and chest:
Unequal matches, yet she's pleased that she
Concludes victoriously.
Her spirit was such she would not live to heare
The Lutenist bestow on her a jeere,
But broken-hearted fall upon the tombe
She choose the sweet lute's wombe.
The warbling lutes doe yet their triumphs tell
(With mournfull accents) of the philomell,
And have usurpt the title ever since,
Of harmony the prince.
The morall this, by emulation wee
May much improve both art and industry,
Though she deserve the name of Philomell
Yet men must her excell.'
All trees, all leavy groves confesse the Spring
Their gentlest friend; then, then the lands begin
To swell with forward pride, and feed desire
To generation; Heaven's Almighty Sire
Melts on the bosome of His love, and powres
Himselfe into her lap in fruitfull showers.
And by a soft insinuation, mixt
With Earth's large masse, doth cherish and assist
Her weake conceptions. No lone shade but rings
With chatring birds' delicious murmurings;
Then Venus' mild instinct (at set times) yields
The herds to kindly meetings, then the fields
(Quick with warme Zephyre's lively breath) lay forth
Their pregnant bosomes in a fragrant birth.
Each body's plump and jucy, all things full
Of supple moisture: no coy twig but will
Trust his beloved blossome to the sun
(Growne lusty now): no vine so weake and young
That feares the foule-mouth'd Auster or those stormes
That the Southwest-wind hurries in his armes,
But hasts her forward blossomes, and layes out
Freely layes out her leaves: nor doe I doubt
But when the world first out of chaos sprang
So smil'd the dayes, and so the tenor ran
Of their felicity. A Spring was there,
An everlasting Spring, the jolly yeare
Led round in his great circle; no wind's breath
As then did smell of Winter or of Death.
When Life's sweet light first shone on beasts, and when
From their hard mother Earth, sprang hardy men,
When beasts tooke up their lodging in the Wood,
Starres in their higher chambers: never cou'd
The tender growth of things endure the sence
Of such a change, but that the Heav'ns indulgence
Kindly supplyes sick Nature, and doth mold
A sweetly-temper'd meane, nor hot nor cold.
I paint so ill, my peece had need to be
Painted againe by some good poesie.
I write so ill, my slender line is scarce
So much as th' picture of a well-lim'd verse:
Yet may the love I send be true, though I
Send not true picture, nor true poesie.
Both which away, I should not need to feare,
My love, or feign'd or painted should appeare.
Goe now, with some dareing drugg,
Baite thy disease, and while they tugg,
Thou, to maintaine their cruell strife
Spend the deare treasure of thy life:
Goe take physicke, doat upon
Some big-nam'd composition,--
The oraculous doctors' mistick bills,
Certain hard words made into pills;
And what at length shalt get by these?
Onely a costlyer disease.
Goe poore man, thinke what shall bee
Remedie 'gainst thy remedie.
That which makes us have no need
Of phisick, that's phisick indeed.
Heark hither, Reader: would'st thou see
Nature her own physician be?
Would'st see a man all his own wealth,
His own musick, his own health?
A man, whose sober soul can tell
How to wear her garments well?
Her garments, that upon her sit,
(As garments should do) close and fit?
A well-clothed soul, that's not opprest
Nor choked with what she should be drest?
Whose soul's sheath'd in a crystall shrine,
Through which all her bright features shine?
As when a piece of wanton lawn,
A thin aerial vail is drawn,
O're Beauty's face; seeming to hide,
More sweetly shows the blushing bride:
A soul, whose intellectuall beams
No mists do mask, no lazie steams?
A happie soul, that all the way
To Heav'n, hath a Summer's day?
Would'st see a man whose well-warm'd bloud
Bathes him in a genuine floud?
A man, whose tuned humours be
A set of rarest harmonie?
Would'st see blithe looks, fresh cheeks beguile
Age? Would'st see December smile?
Would'st see a nest of roses grow
In a bed of reverend snow?
Warm thoughts, free spirits, flattering
Winter's self into a Spring?
In summe, would'st see a man that can
Live to be old, and still a man?
Whose latest, and most leaden houres,
Fall with soft wings, stuck with soft flowres;
And when Life's sweet fable ends,
His soul and bodie part like friends:
No quarrels, murmures, no delay:
A kisse, a sigh, and so away?
This rare one, Reader, would'st thou see,
Heark hither: and thyself be he.
variations are noticeable:
repeats the error.
in 2d copy.
Lines 11, 12, this couplet is inadvertently dropped in 1648.
I adopt ''gainst' for 'against' from SANCROFT MS. in line 12.
'musick' is assuredly the finer reading, as in Hygiasticon and
'music' was intended.
adopted.
The smiling Morne had newly wak't the Day,
And tipt the mountaines with a tender ray:
When on a hill (whose high imperious brow
Lookes downe, and sees the humble Nile below
Licke his proud feet, and haste into the seas
Through the great mouth that's nam'd from Hercules)
A band of men, rough as the armes they wore
Look't round, first to the sea, then to the shore.
The shore that shewed them, what the sea deny'd,
Hope of a prey. There to the maine-land ty'd
A ship they saw; no men she had, yet prest
Appear'd with other lading, for her brest
Deep in the groaning waters wallowed
Vp to the third ring: o're the shore was spread
Death's purple triumph; on the blushing ground
Life's late forsaken houses all lay drown'd
In their owne blood's deare deluge: some new dead;
Some panting in their yet warme ruines bled,
While their affrighted soules, now wing'd for flight
Lent them the last flash of her glimmering light.
Those yet fresh streames which crawled every where
Shew'd that sterne Warre had newly bath'd him there.
Nor did the face of this disaster show
Markes of a fight alone, but feasting too:
A miserable and a monstruous feast,
Where hungry Warre had made himself a guest:
And comming late had eat up guests and all,
Who prov'd the feast to their owne funerall &c.
Love is lost, nor can his mother
Her little fugitive discover:
She seekes, she sighes, but no where spyes him;
Love is lost: and thus shee cryes him.
O yes! if any happy eye,
This roaving wanton shall descry;
Let the finder surely know
Mine is the wagge; 'tis I that owe
The winged wand'rer; and that none
May thinke his labour vainely gone,
The glad descryer shall not misse,
To tast the nectar of a kisse
From Venus lipps. But as for him
That brings him to me, he shall swim
In riper joyes: more shall be his
(Venus assures him) than a kisse.
But lest your eye discerning slide,
These markes may be your judgement's guide;
His skin as with a fiery blushing
High-colour'd is; his eyes still flushing
With nimble flames; and though his mind
Be ne're so curst, his tongue is kind:
For never were his words in ought
Found the pure issue of his thought.
The working bees' soft melting gold,
That which their waxen mines enfold,
Flow not so sweet as doe the tones
Of his tun'd accents; but if once
His anger kindle, presently
It boyles out into cruelty,
And fraud: he makes poor mortalls' hurts
The objects of his cruell sports.
With dainty curles his froward face
Is crown'd about: But O what place,
What farthest nooke of lowest Hell
Feeles not the strength, the reaching spell
Of his small hand? Yet not so small
As 'tis powerfull therewithall.
Though bare his skin, his mind he covers,
And like a saucy bird he hovers
With wanton wing, now here, now there,
'Bout men and women, nor will spare
Till at length he perching rest,
In the closet of their brest.
His weapon is a little bow,
Yet such a one as--Jove knows how--
Ne're suffred, yet his little arrow,
Of Heaven's high'st arches to fall narrow.
The gold that on his quiver smiles,
Deceives men's feares with flattering wiles.
But O---too well my wounds can tell--
With bitter shafts 'tis sauc't too well.
He is all cruell, cruell all,
His torch imperious though but small
Makes the sunne--of flames the sire--
Worse than sun-burnt in his fire.
Wheresoe're you chance to find him
Ceaze him, bring him--but first bind him--
Pitty not him, but feare thy selfe
Though thou see the crafty elfe,
Tell down his silver-drops unto thee:
They'r counterfeit, and will undoe thee.
With baited smiles if he display
His fawning cheeks, looke not that way.
If he offer sugred kisses,
Start, and say, the serpent hisses.
Draw him, drag him, though he pray
Wooe, intreat, and crying say
Prethee, sweet, now let me go,
Here's my quiver, shafts and bow,
I'le give thee all, take all; take heed
Lest his kindnesse make thee bleed.
What e're it be Loue offers, still presume
That though it shines, 'tis fire and will consume.
This reverend shadow cast that setting sun,
Whose glorious course through our horrizon run,
Left the dimme face of this dull hemispheare,
All one great eye, all drown'd in one great teare.
Whose faire, illustrious soule, led his free thought
Through Learning's vniverse, and (vainly) sought
Room for her spatious selfe, untill at length
Shee found the way home, with an holy strength;
Snatch't her self hence to Heaven: fill'd a bright place,
'Mongst those immortall fires, and on the face
Of her great Maker fixt her flaming eye,
There still to read true, pure divinity.
And now that grave aspect hath deign'd to shrinke
Into this lesse appearance: If you thinke
'Tis but a dead face, Art doth here bequeath:
Looke on the following leaves, and see him breath.
Faithlesse and fond Mortality!
Who will ever credit thee?
Fond, and faithlesse thing! that thus,
In our best hopes beguilest us.
What a reckoning hast thou made,
Of the hopes in him we laid!
For life by volumes lengthened,
A line or two to speake him dead.
For the laurell in his verse,
For soe many hoped yeares
Of fruit, soe many fruitles teares:
For a silver-crowned head
A durty pillow in Death's bed.
For so deare, so deep a trust,
Sad requitall, thus much dust!
Now though the blow that snatch him hence,
Stopt the mouth of Eloquence:
Not us'd to speake but in his breath;
Leaving his death vngarnished
Therefore, because hee is dead
Yet if at least shee not denyes,
The sad language of our eyes,
Wee are contented: for then this
Language none more fluent is.
Nothing speakes our griefe so well
As to speak nothing. Come then tell
Thy mind in teares who e're thou be,
That ow'st a name to misery.
Eyes are vocall, teares have tongues,
And there be words not made with lungs;
Sententious showres: O let them fall,
Their cadence is rhetoricall.
Here's a theame will drinke th' expence,
Of all thy watry eloquence.
Weepe then! onely be exprest
Thus much, 'he's dead:' and weep the rest.
A plant of noble stemme, forward and faire,
As ever whisper'd to the morning aire,
Thriv'd in these happie grounds; the Earth's just pride;
Whose rising glories made such haste to hide
His head in cloudes, as if in him alone
Impatient Nature had taught motion
To start from Time, and cheerfully to fly
Before, and seize upon Maturity.
Thus grew this gratious tree, in whose sweet shade
The sunne himselfe oft wisht to sit, and made
The morning Muses perch like birds, and sing
Among his branches: yea, and vow'd to bring
His owne delicious phoenix from the blest
Arabia, there to build her virgin nest,
To hatch her selfe in; 'mongst his leaves, the Day
Fresh from the rosie East, rejoyc't to play;
To them shee gave the first and fairest beame
That waited on her birth: she gave to them
The purest pearles, that wept her evening death;
The balmy Zephirus got so sweet a breath
By often kissing them. And now begun
Glad Time to ripen Expectation:
The timorous maiden-blossomes on each bough
Peept forth from their first blushes; so that now
A thousand ruddy hopes smil'd in each bud,
And flatter'd every greedy eye that stood
Fixt in delight, as if already there
Those rare fruits dangled, whence the golden Yeare
His crowne expected: when, (O Fate! O Time!
That seldome lett'st a blushing youthfull prime
Hide his hot beames in shade of silver age,
So rare is hoary Vertue) the dire rage
Of a mad storme these bloomy joyes all tore,
Ravisht the maiden blossoms, and downe bore
The trunke. Yet in this ground his pretious root
Still lives, which when weake Time shall be pour'd out
Into Eternity, and circular joyes
Dance in an endlesse round, again shall rise
The faire son of an ever-youthfull Spring,
To be a shade for angels while they sing;
Meane while who e're thou art that passest here,
O doe thou water it with one kind teare.
Death, what dost? O, hold thy blow,
What thou dost thou dost not know.
Death, thou must not here be cruell,
This is Nature's choycest iewell:
This is hee, in whose rare frame
Nature labour'd for a name:
And meant to leave his pretious feature
The patterne of a perfect creature.
Ioy of Goodnesse, love of Art,
Vertue weares him next her heart.
Him the Muses love to follow,
Him they call their vice-Apollo.
Apollo, golden though thou bee,
Th' art not fairer than is hee,
Nor more lovely lift'st thy head
(Blushing) from thine Easterne bed.
The glories of thy youth ne're knew
Brighter hopes than his can shew.
Why then should it e're be seen
That his should fade, while thine is green?
And wilt thou (O, cruell boast!)
Put poore Nature to such cost?
O, twill undoe our common mother,
To be at charge of such another.
What? thinke me to no other end
Gracious heavens do use to send
Earth her best perfection,
But to vanish, and be gone?
Therefore onely given to day
To-morrow to be snatch't away?
I've seen indeed the hopefull bud
Of a ruddy rose that stood
Blushing, to behold the ray
Of the new-saluted Day:
(His tender toppe not fully spread)
The sweet dash of a shower new shead,
Invited him, no more to hide
Within himselfe the purple pride
Of his forward flower; when lo,
While he sweetly 'gan to show
His swelling gloryes, Auster spide him,
Cruell Auster thither hy'd him,
And with the rush of one rude blast,
Sham'd not, spitefully to wast
All his leaves, so fresh, so sweet,
And lay them trembling at his feet.
I've seen the Morning's lovely ray
Hover o're the new-borne Day,
With rosie wings so richly bright,
As if she scorn'd to thinke of Night;
When a rugged storme, whose scowle
Made heaven's radiant face looke foule
Call'd for an untimely night,
To blot the newly-blossom'd light.
But were the rose's blush so rare,
Were the Morning's smile so faire,
As is he, nor cloud, nor wind,
But would be courteous, would be kind.
Spare him Death, ah! spare him then,
Spare the sweetest among men:
And let not Pitty, with her teares
Keepe such distance from thine eares.
But O, thou wilt not, can'st not spare,
Haste hath never time to heare.
Therefore if he needs must go,
And the Fates will have it so;
Softly may he be possest
Of his monumentall rest.
Safe, thou darke home of the dead,
Safe, O hide his loved head:
Keepe him close, close in thine armes,
Seal'd vpp with a thousand charmes.
For Pittie's sake, O, hide him quite
From his mother Nature's sight;
Lest for griefe his losse may move
All her births abortive proue.
See our Essay for notice of 'Mr. Herrys.' In the SANCROFT MS. the
If ever Pitty were acquainted
With sterne Death; if e're he fainted,
Or forgot the cruell vigour
Of an adamantine rigour;
Here, O, here we should have knowne it,
Here, or no where, hee'd have showne it.
For hee, whose pretious memory
Bathes in teares of every eye;
Hee, to whom our Sorrow brings
All the streames of all her springs;
Was so rich in grace, and nature,
In all the gifts that blesse a creature;
The fresh hopes of his lovely youth
Flourish't in so faire a growth;
So sweet the temple was, that shrin'd
The sacred sweetnesse of his mind;
That could the Fates know to relent,
Could they know what mercy meant,
Or had ever learnt to beare
The soft tincture of a teare;
Teares would now have flow'd so deepe,
As might have taught Griefe how to weepe.
Now all their steely operation
Would quite have lost the cruell fashion.
Sicknesse would have gladly been
Sick himselfe to have sav'd him;
And his feaver wish'd to prove,
Burning onely in his love.
Him when Wrath it selfe had seen,
Wrath it selfe had lost his spleen.
Grim Destruction here amaz'd,
In stead of striking, would have gaz'd.
Even the iron-pointed pen,
That notes the tragick doomes of men,
Wet with teares, 'still'd from the eyes
Of the flinty Destinies,
Would have learn't a softer style,
And have been asham'd to spoyle
His live's sweet story, by the hast
Of a cruell stop, ill plac't.
In the darke volume of our fate,
Whence each lease of life hath date,
Where in sad particulars
The totall summe of man appeares,
And the short clause of mortall breath,
Bound in the period of Death:
In all the booke if any where
Such a tearme as this, 'Spare here,'
Could been found, 'twould have been read,
Writ in white letters o're his head:
Or close unto his name annext,
The faire glosse of a fairer text.
In briefe, if any one were free
Hee was that one, and onely hee.
But he, alas! even hee is dead,
And our hope's faire harvest spread
In the dust. Pitty, now spend
All the teares that Griefe can lend.
Sad Mortality may hide
In his ashes all her pride;
With this inscription o're his head,
'All hope of never dying here is dead.'
Passenger, who e're thou art
Stay a while, and let thy heart
Take acquaintance of this stone,
Before thou passest further on.
This stone will tell thee, that beneath,
Is entomb'd the crime of Death;
The ripe endowments of whose mind
Left his yeares so much behind,
That numbring of his vertues' praise,
Death lost the reckoning of his dayes;
And believing what they told,
Imagin'd him exceeding old.
In him Perfection did set forth
The strength of her united worth.
Him his wisdome's pregnant growth
Made so reverend, even in youth,
That in the center of his brest
(Sweet as is the phoenix' nest)
Every reconciled Grace
Had their generall meeting-place.
In him Goodnesse joy'd to see
Learning learne Humility.
The splendor of his birth and blood
Was but the glosse of his owne good.
The flourish of his sober youth
Was the pride of naked truth.
In composure of his face,
Liv'd a faire, but manly grace.
His mouth was Rhetorick's best mold,
His tongue the touchstone of her gold.
What word so e're his breath kept warme,
Was no word now but a charme:
For all persuasive Graces thence
Suck't their sweetest influence.
His vertue that within had root,
Could not chuse but shine without.
And th' heart-bred lustre of his worth,
At each corner peeping forth,
Pointed him out in all his wayes,
Circled round in his owne rayes:
That to his sweetnesse, all men's eyes
Were vow'd Love's flaming sacrifice.
Him while fresh and fragrant Time
Cherisht in his golden prime;
E're Hebe's hand had overlaid
His smooth cheekes with a downy shade;
The rush of Death's unruly wave,
Swept him off into his grave.
Enough, now (if thou canst) passe on,
For now (alas!) not in this stone
(Passenger who e're thou art)
Is he entomb'd, but in thy heart.
To these, whom Death again did wed,
This grave's their second marriage-bed;
For though the hand of Fate could force
'Twixt sovl and body, a diuorce,
It could not sunder man and wife,
'Cause they both liued but one life.
Peace, good Reader, Doe not weep.
Peace, the louers are asleep.
They, sweet turtles, folded ly
In the last knott that Loue could ty.
And though they ly as they were dead,
Their pillow stone, their sheetes of lead;
(Pillow hard, and sheetes not warm)
Loue made the bed; they'l take no harm;
Let them sleep: let them sleep on,
Till this stormy night be gone,
And the aeternall morrow dawn;
Then the curtaines will be drawn
And they wake into a light,
Whose Day shall neuer sleepe in Night.
"  6, 'Because they both liv'd but one life.'
"  10, I accept 'that' in 1646 and SANCROFT MS. as it is
confirmed by HARLEIAN MS. 6917-18, as before.
"  19, 'waken with that Light,' and so SANCROFT MS.:
before, 'And they waken with.'
Line 20, 'sleep' for 'dy,' which I adopt as agreeing with the
'wake,' and as being confirmed by HARLEIAN MS. as before. G.
Dear reliques of a dislodg'd sovl, whose lack
Makes many a mourning paper put on black!
O stay a while, ere thou draw in thy head
And wind thy self vp close in thy cold bed.
Stay but a little while, vntill I call
A summon's worthy of thy funerall.
Come then, Youth, Beavty, Blood! all ye soft powres,
Whose sylken flatteryes swell a few fond howres
Into a false aeternity. Come man;
Hyperbolized nothing! know thy span;
Take thine own measure here, down, down, and bow
Before thy self in thine idaea; thou
Huge emptynes! contract thy bulke; and shrinke
All thy wild circle to a point. O sink
Lower and lower yet; till thy leane size
Call Heaun to look on thee with narrow eyes.
Lesser and lesser yet; till thou begin
To show a face, fitt to confesse thy kin,
Thy neighbourhood to Nothing!
Proud lookes, and lofty eyliddes, here putt on
Your selues in your vnfaign'd reflexion;
Here, gallant ladyes! this vnpartiall glasse
(Through all your painting) showes you your true face.
These death-seal'd lippes are they dare giue the ly
To the lowd boasts of poor Mortality;
These curtain'd windows, this retired eye
Outstares the liddes of larg-look't Tyranny.
This posture is the braue one, this that lyes
Thus low, stands vp (me thinkes) thus and defies
The World. All-daring dust and ashes! only you
Of all interpreters read Nature true.
These various readings are worthy of record:
Line 8 in 1652 is misprinted 'svlken' for 'sylken.'
Line 15, 1646 has 'small' for 'lean,' which is inferior.
"  19, in 1646 the readings here are,
'Thy neighbourhood to nothing I here put on
Thy selfe in this unfeign'd reflection.'
'To the proud hopes of poor Mortality.'
A Brooke, whose streame so great, so good,
Was lov'd, was honour'd, as a flood:
Whose bankes the Muses dwelt upon,
More than their owne Helicon;
Here at length, hath gladly found
A quiet passage under ground;
Meane while his loved bankes, now dry
The Muses with their teares supply.
Where art thou Sol, while thus the blind-fold Day
Staggers out of the East, loses her way
Stumbling on Night? Rouze thee illustrious youth,
And let no dull mists choake thy Light's faire growth.
Point here thy beames: O glance on yonder flocks,
And make their fleeces golden as thy locks.
Vnfold thy faire front, and there shall appeare
Full glory, flaming in her owne free spheare.
Gladnesse shall cloath the Earth, we will instile
The face of things, an universall smile.
Say to the sullen Morne, thou com'st to court her;
And wilt command proud Zephirus to sport her
With wanton gales: his balmy breath shall licke
The tender drops which tremble on her cheeke;
Which rarified, and in a gentle raine
On those delicious bankes distill'd againe,
Shall rise in a sweet Harvest, which discloses
Two ever-blushing bed[s] of new-borne roses.
Hee'l fan her bright locks, teaching them to flow,
And friske in curl'd maeanders: hee will throw
A fragrant breath suckt from the spicy nest
O' th' pretious phoenix, warme upon her breast.
Hee with a dainty and soft hand will trim
And brush her azure mantle, which shall swim
In silken volumes; wheresoe're shee'l tread,
Bright clouds like golden fleeces shall be spread.
Rise then (faire blew-ey'd maid!) rise and discover
Thy silver brow, and meet thy golden lover.
See how hee runs, with what a hasty flight,
Into thy bosome, bath'd with liquid light.
Fly, fly prophane fogs, farre hence fly away,
Taint not the pure streames of the springing Day,
With your dull influence; it is for you
To sit and scoule upon Night's heavy brow,
Not on the fresh cheekes of the virgin Morne,
Where nought but smiles, and ruddy joyes are worne.
Fly then, and doe not thinke with her to stay;
Let it suffice, shee'l weare no maske to day.
orthographic differences only.
'The grey-eyed Morn smiles on the frowning Night
And flecked Darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth Day's path and Titan's burning wheels.' (ii. 3.)
Line 4, in HARLEIAN MS. 6917-18 reads, as I have adopted,
Line 5, ib. 'on yond faire.'
"  7, ib. 'Unfold thy front and then....'
"  9, instile is = instill, used in Latinate sense of drop
into or upon: HARLEIAN MS., as before, is 'enstile.'
Line 14, HARLEIAN MS., as before, 'thy' for 'her.'
...      'and disclose
See our Essay for critical remarks. G.
What succour can I hope my Muse shall send
Whose drowsinesse hath wrong'd the Muses' friend?
What hope, Aurora, to propitiate thee,
Vnlesse the Muse sing my apologie?
O in that morning of my shame! when I
Lay folded up in Sleepe's captivity,
How at the sight did'st thou draw back thine eyes,
Into thy modest veyle? how didst thou rise
Twice dy'd in thine owne blushes! and did'st run
To draw the curtaines, and awake the sun!
Who, rowzing his illustrious tresses, came,
And seeing the loath'd object, hid for shame
His head in thy faire bosome, and still hides
Mee from his patronage; I pray, he chides:
And pointing to dull Morpheus, bids me take
My owne Apollo, try if I can make
If Morpheus have a Muse to wait on mee.
Hence 'tis, my humble fancie finds no wings,
No nimble rapture starts to Heaven, and brings
Enthusiasticke flames, such as can give
Marrow to my plumpe genius, make it live
Drest in the glorious madnesse of a Muse,
Whose feet can walke the milky way, and chuse
Her starry throne; whose holy heats can warme
The grave, and hold up an exalted arme
To lift me from my lazy vrne, to climbe
Vpon the stooped shoulders of old Time,
And trace Eternity--But all is dead,
All these delicious hopes are buried
In the deepe wrinckles of his angry brow,
Where Mercy cannot find them: but O thou
Bright lady of the Morne! pitty doth lye
So warme in thy soft brest, it cannot dye.
Have mercy then, and when he next shall rise
O meet the angry God, invade his eyes,
And stroake his radiant cheekes; one timely kisse
Will kill his anger, and revive my blisse.
So to the treasure of thy pearly deaw,
Thrice will I pay three teares, to show how true
My griefe is; so my wakefull lay shall knocke
At th' orientall gates, and duly mocke
The early larkes' shrill orizons, to be
An anthem at the Daye's nativitie.
And the same rosie-finger'd hand of thine,
That shuts Night's dying eyes, shall open mine.
But thou, faint God of Sleepe, forget that I
Was ever known to be thy votary.
No more my pillow shall thine altar be,
Nor will I offer any more to thee
My selfe a melting sacrifice; I'me borne
Againe a fresh child of the buxome Morne,
Heire of the sun's first beames. Why threat'st thou so?
Why dost thou shake thy leaden scepter? goe,
Bestow thy poppy upon wakefull Woe,
Sicknesse, and Sorrow, whose pale lidds ne're know
Thy downie finger; dwell upon their eyes,
Shut in their teares: shut out their miseries.
In 1646, line 1, for 'shall' reads 'will:' ib. in HARLEIAN MS. as
Love, brave Vertue's younger brother,
Erst hath made my heart a mother;
Shee consults the conscious spheares
To calculate her young son's yeares.
Shee askes, if sad, or saving powers,
Gave omen to his infant howers;
Shee askes each starre that then stood by,
If poore Love shall live or dy.
Ah, my heart, is that the way?
Are these the beames that rule thy day?
Thou know'st a face in whose each looke,
Beauty layes ope Love's fortune-booke;
On whose faire revolutions wait
The obsequious motions of man's fate:
Ah, my heart, her eyes, and shee,
Have taught thee new astrologie.
How e're Love's native houres were set,
What ever starry synod met,
'Tis in the mercy of her eye,
If poore Love shall live or dye.
If those sharpe rayes putting on
Points of death, bid Love be gon:
(Though the Heavens in counsell sate
To crowne an uncontrouled fate,
Though their best aspects twin'd upon
The kindest constellation,
Cast amorous glances on his birth,
And whisper'd the confederate Earth
To pave his pathes with all the good,
That warmes the bed of youth and blood)
Love hath no plea against her eye:
Beauty frownes, and Love must dye.
But if her milder influence move,
And gild the hopes of humble Love:
(Though Heaven's inauspicious eye
Lay blacke on Love's nativitie;
Though every diamond in Love's crowne
Fixt his forehead to a frowne:)
Her eye, a strong appeale can giue,
Beauty smiles, and Love shall live.
O, if Love shall live, O, where
But in her eye, or in her eare,
In her brest, or in her breath,
Shall I hide poore Love from Death?
For in the life ought else can give,
Love shall dye, although he live.
Or, if Love shall dye, O, where
But in her eye, or in her eare,
In her breath, or in her breast,
Shall I build his funerall nest?
While Love shall thus entombed lye,
Love shall live, although he dye.
To thy lover
Deere, discover
That sweet blush of thine that shameth
--When those roses
It discloses--
All the flowers that Nature nameth.
In free ayre,
Flow thy haire;
That no more Summer's best dresses,
Bee beholden
For their golden
Locks, to Phoebus' flaming tresses.
O deliver
Love his quiver;
From thy eyes he shoots his arrowes:
Cannot follow:
Featherd with his mother's sparrowes.
O envy not
--That we dye not--
Those deere lips whose doore encloses
In their places,
Brother pearles, and sister roses.
From these treasures
Of ripe pleasures
One bright smile to cleere the weather.
Thus made even,
Both will be good friends together.
The aire does wooe thee,
Winds cling to thee;
Might a word once fly from out thee,
Storme and thunder
Would sit under,
And keepe silence round about thee.
But if Nature's
Common creatures,
So deare glories dare not borrow:
Yet thy beauty
Owes a duty,
To my loving, lingring sorrow,
Death shall send mee
All his terrors to affright mee:
Thine eyes' Graces
Gild their faces,
And those terrors shall delight mee.
When my dying
Life is flying,
Those sweet aires that often slew mee
Shall revive mee,
Or reprive mee,
And to many deaths renew mee.
Love now no fire hath left him,
We two betwixt us have divided it.
Your eyes the light hath reft him,
The heat commanding in my heart doth sit.
O that poore Love be not for ever spoyled,
Let my heat to your light be reconciled.
So shall these flames, whose worth
Now all obscured lyes:
--Drest in those beames--start forth
And dance before your eyes.
Or else partake my flames
(I care not whither)
And so in mutuall names
Of Love, burne both together.
Would any one the true cause find
How Love came nak't, a boy, and blind?
'Tis this: listning one day too long,
So th' Syrens in my mistris' song,
The extasie of a delight
So much o're-mastring all his might,
To that one sense, made all else thrall,
And so he lost his clothes, eyes, heart and all.
Let hoary Time's vast bowels be the grave
To what his bowels' birth and being gave;
Let Nature die, (Phoenix-like) from death
Revived Nature takes a second breath;
If on Time's right hand, sit faire Historie,
If from the seed of emptie Ruine, she
Can raise so faire an harvest; let her be
Ne're so farre distant, yet Chronologie
(Sharp-sighted as the eagle's eye, that can
Out-stare the broad-beam'd daye's meridian)
Will have a perspicill to find her out,
And, through the night of error and dark doubt,
Discerne the dawne of Truth's eternall ray,
As when the rosie Morne budds into Day.
Now that Time's empire might be amply fill'd,
Babel's bold artists strive (below) to build
Ruine a temple; on whose fruitfull fall
History reares her pyramids, more tall
On these she lifts the world; and on their base
Showes the two termes, and limits of Time's race:
That, the creation is; the judgement, this;
That, the World's morning; this, her midnight is.
If with distinctive eye, and mind, you looke
Vpon the Front, you see more than one Booke.
Creation is God's Booke, wherein He writ
Each creature, as a letter filling it.
History is Creation's Booke; which showes
To what effects the Series of it goes.
Chronologie's the Booke of Historie, and beares
The just account of Dayes, Moneths, and Yeares.
But Resurrection, in a later Presse,
And New Edition, is the summe of these.
The Language of these Bookes had all been one,
Had not th' aspiring Tower of Babylon
Confus'd the tongues, and in a distance hurl'd
As farre the speech, as men, o' th' new fill'd world.
Set then your eyes in method, and behold
Time's embleme, Saturne; who, when store of gold
Coyn'd the first age, devour'd that birth, he fear'd;
Till History, Time's eldest child appear'd;
And Phoenix-like, in spight of Saturne's rage,
Forc'd from her ashes, heyres in every age.
From th' Rising Sunne, obtaining by just suit,
A Spring's ingender, and an Autumne's fruit.
Who in those Volumes at her motion pend,
Vnto Creation's Alpha doth extend.
Againe ascend, and view Chronology,
By optick skill, pulling farre History
Neerer; whose Hand the piercing Eagle's eye
Strengthens, to bring remotest objects nigh.
Vnder whose feet, you see the Setting Sunne,
From the darke Gnomon, o're her volumes runne,
Drown'd in eternall night, never to rise,
Till Resurrection show it to the eyes
Of Earth-worne men; and her shrill trumpet's sound
Affright the Bones of mortals from the ground.
The Columnes both are crown'd with either Sphere,
To show Chronology and History beare,
No other Culmen than the double Art,
Astronomy, Geography, impart.
The modest front of this small floore,
Beleeve me, Reader, can say more
Than many a braver marble can;
_Here lyes a truly honest man._
One whose conscience was a thing,
That troubled neither Church nor King.
One of those few that in this towne,
Honour all Preachers, heare their owne.
Sermons he heard, yet not so many
As left no time to practise any.
He heard them reverendly, and then
His practice preach'd them o're agen.
His Parlour-Sermons rather were
Those to the eye, then to the eare.
His prayers took their price and strength,
Not from the lowdnesse, nor the length.
He was a Protestant at home,
Not onely in despight of Rome.
He lov'd his Father; yet his zeale
Tore not off his Mother's veile.
To th' Church he did allow her dresse,
True Beauty, to true Holinesse.
Peace, which he lov'd in life, did lend
Her hand to bring him to his end.
When Age and Death call'd for the score,
No surfets were to reckon for.
Death tore not--therefore--but sans strife
Gently untwin'd his thread of life.
What remaines then, but that thou
Write these lines, Reader, in thy brow,
And by his faire example's light,
Burne in thy imitation bright.
So while these lines can but bequeath
A life perhaps unto his death;
His better Epitaph shall bee,
His life still kept alive in thee.
Come and let us live my deare,
Let us love and never feare,
What the sowrest fathers say:
Brightest Sol that dyes to day
Lives againe as blith to morrow;
But if we darke sons of sorrow
Set: O then how long a Night
Shuts the eyes of our short light!
Then let amorous kisses dwell
On our lips, begin and tell
A thousand, and a hundred score,
An hundred and a thousand more,
Till another thousand smother
That, and that wipe of[f] another.
Thus at last when we have numbred
Many a thousand, many a hundred,
Wee'l confound the reckoning quite,
And lose our selves in wild delight:
While our joyes so multiply,
As shall mocke the envious eye.
That not impossible she
That shall command my heart and me;
Lock't up from mortall eye,
In shady leaves of Destiny;
Of studied Fate stand forth,
And teach her faire steps tread our Earth;
Idaea, take a shrine
Of chrystall flesh, through which to shine;
Bespeake her to my blisses,
And be ye call'd, my absent kisses.
That owes not all its duty
To gaudy tire or glistring shoo-ty.
Taffata or tissew can,
Or rampant feather, or rich fan.
Of shop, or silkeworme's toyle,
Or a bought blush, or a set smile.
By its owne beauty drest,
And can alone commend the rest.
Out of no other shop
Than what Nature's white hand sets ope.
And blood, with pen of Truth
Write, what their reader sweetly ru'th.
More than a morning rose:
Which to no boxe his being owes.
A lover's kisse may play,
Yet carry nothing thence away.
Their richest tires, but dresse
Themselves in simple nakednesse.
The neighbour diamond, and out-face
That sunshine, by their own sweet grace.
Iewells, but to declare
How much themselves more pretious are.
Can tame the wanton day
Of gems, that in their bright shades play.
Or pearle that dares appeare,
Be its own blush, be its own teare.
For whose more noble smart,
Love may be long chusing a dart.
Full quivers on Love's bow;
Yet pay lesse arrowes than they owe.
The blood, yet teach a charme,
That Chastity shall take no harme.
The burnish of no sin,
Nor flames of ought too hot within.
Vertue their mistresse,
And have no other head to dresse.
As the coy bride's, when Night
First does the longing lover right.
And vaine, as those are shed
For a dying maydenhead.
No part of their good morrow,
From a fore-spent night of sorrow.
Of darknesse, by the light
Of a cleere mind are day all night.
Made short by lovers play,
Yet long by th' absence of the day.
A challenge to his end,
And when it comes say, Welcome friend!
Of sweet discourse, whose powers
Can crown old Winter's head with flowers.
Open sunnes; shady bowers;
'Bove all, nothing within that lowers.
Can make Daye's forehead bright,
Or give downe to the wings of Night.
Haue Nature all the name,
Art and ornament the shame.
Her counsell her owne vertue be.
Of worth may leave her poore
Of wishes; and I wish----no more.
That her, whose radiant browes
Weave them a garland of my vowes;
My future hopes can raise,
A trophie to her present praise.
What these lines wish to see:
I seeke no further: it is she.
Lo I uncloath and cleare,
My wishes cloudy character.
Whose merit dare apply it,
But Modesty dares still deny it.
Shall fixe my flying wishes,
And determine them to kisses.
My fancyes, fly before ye,
Be ye my fictions; but her story.
The HARLEIAN MS. 6917-18, as before, gives an admirable reading,
When you are mistresse of the song,
Mighty queen, to thinke it long,
Were treason 'gainst that majesty
Your Vertue wears. Your modesty
Yet thinks it so. But ev'n that too
--Infinite, since part of you--
New matter for our Muse supplies,
And so allowes what it denies.
Say then dread queen, how may we doe
To mediate 'twixt your self and you?
That so our sweetly temper'd song
Nor be too sort, nor seeme to[o] long.
Needs must your noble prayses' strength
That made it long excuse the length.
Britain! the mighty Ocean's lovely bride!
Now stretch thy self, fair isle, and grow: spread wide
Thy bosome, and make roome. Thou art opprest
With thine own glories, and art strangely blest
Beyond thy self: for (lo!) the gods, the gods
Come fast upon thee; and those glorious ods
Swell thy full honours to a pitch so high
As sits above thy best capacitie.
Are they not ods? and glorious? that to thee
Those mighty genii throng, which well might be
Each one an Age's labour? that thy dayes
Are gilded with the union of those rayes
Whose each divided beam would be a sunne
To glad the sphere of any Nation?
Sure, if for these thou mean'st to find a seat,
Th' hast need, O Britain, to be truly Great.
And so thou art; their presence makes thee so:
They are thy greatnesse. Gods, where-e're they go,
Bring their Heav'n with them: their great footsteps place
An everlasting smile upon the face
Of the glad Earth they tread on: while with thee
Those beames that ampliate mortalitie,
And teach it to expatiate and swell
To majestie and fulnesse, deign to dwell,
Thou by thy self maist sit, (blest Isle) and see
How thy great mother Nature dotes on thee.
Thee therefore from the rest apart she hurl'd,
And seem'd to make an Isle, but made a World.
Time yet hath dropt few plumes since Hope turn'd Joy,
And took into his armes the princely boy,
Whose birth last blest the bed of his sweet mother,
And bad us first salute our prince, a brother.
Bright Charles! thou sweet dawn of a glorious Day!
Centre of those thy grandsires (shall I say,
Henry and James? or, Mars and Phoebus rather?
If this were Wisdome's god, that War's stern father;
'Tis but the same is said: Henry and James
Are Mars and Phoebus under diverse names):
O thou full mixture of those mighty souls
Whose vast intelligences tun'd the poles
Of Peace and War; thou, for whose manly brow
Both lawrels twine into one wreath, and woo
To be thy garland: see (sweet prince), O see,
Thou, and the lovely hopes that smile in thee,
Art ta'n out and transcrib'd by thy great mother:
See, see thy reall shadow; see thy brother,
Thy little self in lesse: trace in these eyne
The beams that dance in those full stars of thine.
From the same snowy alabaster rock
Those hands and thine were hewn; those cherries mock
The corall of thy lips: thou wert of all
This well-wrought copie the fair principall.
Iustly, great Nature, didst thou brag, and tell
How ev'n th' hadst drawn that faithfull parallel,
And matcht thy master-piece. O then go on,
Make such another sweet comparison.
Seest thou that Marie there? O teach her mother
To shew her to her self in such another.
Fellow this wonder too; nor let her shine
Alone; light such another star, and twine
Their rosie beams, that so the Morn for one
Venus, may have a constellation.
These words scarce waken'd Heaven, when--lo!--our vows
Sat crown'd upon the noble infant's brows.
Th' art pair'd, sweet princesse: in this well-writ book
Read o're thy self; peruse each line, each look.
And when th' hast summ'd up all those blooming blisses,
Close up the book, and clasp it with thy kisses.
So have I seen (to dresse their mistresse May)
Two silken sister-flowers consult, and lay
Their bashfull cheeks together: newly they
Peep't from their buds, show'd like the garden's eyes
Scarce wak't: like was the crimson of their joyes;
Like were the tears they wept, so like, that one
Seem'd but the other's kind reflexion.
_The new-borne Prince._
And now 'twere time to say, sweet queen, no more.
Fair source of princes, is thy pretious store
Not yet exhaust? O no! Heavens have no bound,
But in their infinite and endlesse round
Embrace themselves. Our measure is not their's;
Nor may the pov'rtie of man's narrow prayers
Span their immensitie. More princes come:
Rebellion, stand thou by; Mischief, make room:
War, blood, and death--names all averse from Ioy--
Heare this, we have another bright-ey'd boy:
That word's a warrant, by whose vertue I
Have full authority to bid you dy.
Dy, dy, foul misbegotten monsters! dy:
Make haste away, or e'r the World's bright eye
Blush to a cloud of bloud. O farre from men
Fly hence, and in your Hyperborean den
Hide you for evermore, and murmure there
Where none but Hell may heare, nor our soft aire
Shrink at the hatefull sound. Mean while we bear
High as the brow of Heaven, the noble noise
And name of these our just and righteous joyes,
Where Envie shall not reach them, nor those eares
Whose tune keeps time to ought below the spheres.
But thou, sweet supernumerary starre,
Shine forth; nor fear the threats of boyst'rous Warre.
The face of things has therefore frown'd a while
On purpose, that to thee and thy pure smile
The World might ow an universall calm;
While thou, fair halcyon, on a sea of balm
Shalt flote; where while thou layst thy lovely head,
The angry billows shall but make thy bed:
Storms, when they look on thee, shall straigt relent;
And tempests, when they tast thy breath, repent
To whispers, soft as thine own slumbers be,
Or souls of virgins which shall sigh for thee.
Shine then, sweet supernumerary starre,
Nor feare the boysterous names of bloud and warre:
Thy birth-day is their death's nativitie;
They've here no other businesse but to die.
But stay; what glimpse was that? why blusht the Day?
Why ran the started aire trembling away?
Who's this that comes circled in rayes that scorn
Acquaintance with the sun? what second morn
At midday opes a presence which Heaven's eye
Stands off and points at? Is't some deity
Stept from her throne of starres, deignes to be seen?
Is it some deity? or is't our queen?
'Tis she, 'tis she: her awfull beauties chase
The Day's abashed glories, and in face
Of noon wear their own sunshine. O thou bright
Mistresse of wonders! Cynthia's is the Night;
But thou at noon dost shine, and art all day
(Nor does thy sun deny't) our Cynthia.
Illustrious sweetnesse! in thy faithfull wombe,
That nest of heroes, all our hopes find room.
Thou art the mother-phenix, and thy brest
Chast as that virgin honour of the East,
But much more fruitfull is; nor does, as she,
Deny to mighty Love, a deitie.
Then let the Eastern world brag and be proud
Of one coy phenix, while we have a brood,
A brood of phenixes: while we have brother
And sister-phenixes, and still the mother.
And may we long! Long may'st thou live t'increase
The house and family of phenixes.
Nor may the life that gives their eye-lids light
E're prove the dismall morning of thy night:
Ne're may a birth of thine be bought so dear
To make his costly cradle of thy beer.
O may'st thou thus make all the year thine own,
And see such names of joy sit white upon
The brow of every month! and when th' hast done,
Mayst in a son of his find every son
Repeated, and that son still in another,
And so in each child, often prove a mother.
Long may'st thou, laden with such clusters, lean
Vpon thy royall elm (fair vine!) and when
The Heav'ns will stay no longer, may thy glory
And name dwell sweet in some eternall story!
Pardon (bright Excellence,) an untun'd string,
That in thy eares thus keeps a murmuring.
O speake a lowly Muse's pardon, speake
Her pardon, or her sentence; onely breake
Thy silence. Speake, and she shall take from thence
Numbers, and sweetnesse, and an influence
Confessing thee. Or (if too long I stay,)
O speake thou, and my pipe hath nought to say:
For see Apollo all this while stands mute,
Expecting by thy voice to tune his lute.
But gods are gracious; and their altars make
Pretious the offrings that their altars take.
Give then this rurall wreath fire from thine eyes,
This rurall wreath dares be thy sacrifice.
TURNBULL, as noted below. The heading in the SANCROFT MS. is 'A
Panegyrick vpon the birth of the Duke of Yorke. R. CR.'
"  33. These headings here and onward omitted hitherto.
"  43, our text (1648) misprints 'owne' for 'one' of Voces
Line 50, 1646 oddly misprints 'these Cherrimock.'
"  78-118, all these lines--most characteristic---restored
from 1648. TURNBULL overlooked them. Not in the SANCROFT MS.
Line 140, 1670 drops a line here, and thus confuses,
'A brood of phenixes, and still the mother:
And may we long: long may'st thou live t' encrease
'With that great name Britannia, this blest isle
Hath won her ancient dignity and style;
A world divided from a world, and tried
The abstract of it, in his general pride.'
To be chastis'd (sweet friend) and chide by thee.
Pale sons of our Pomona! whose wan cheekes
Have spent the patience of expecting weekes,
Yet are scarce ripe enough at best to show
The redd, but of the blush to thee they ow.
By thy comparrison they shall put on
More Summer in their shame's reflection,
Than ere the fruitfull Phoebus' flaming kisses
Kindled on their cold lips. O had my wishes
And the deare merits of your Muse, their due,
The yeare had found some fruit early as you;
Ripe as those rich composures Time computes
Blossoms, but our blest tast confesses fruits.
How does thy April-Autumne mocke these cold
Progressions 'twixt whose termes poor Time grows old!
With thee alone he weares no beard, thy braine
Gives him the morning World's fresh gold againe.
'Twas only Paradice, 'tis onely thou,
Whose fruit and blossoms both blesse the same bough.
Proud in the patterne of thy pretious youth,
Nature (methinks) might easily mend her growth.
Could she in all her births but coppie thee,
Into the publick yeares proficiencie,
No fruit should have the face to smile on thee
(Young master of the World's maturitie)
But such whose sun-borne beauties what they borrow
Of beames to day, pay back again to morrow,
Nor need be double-gilt. How then must these
Poor fruites looke pale at thy Hesperides!
Faine would I chide their slownesse, but in their
Defects I draw mine own dull character.
Take them, and me in them acknowledging,
How much my Summer waites upon thy Spring.
I late the Roman youth's loud prayse and pride,
Whom long none could obtain, though thousands try'd;
Lo, here am left (alas!) For my lost mate
T' embrace my teares, and kisse an vnkind fate.
Sure in my early woes starres were at strife,
And try'd to make a widow ere a wife.
Nor can I tell (and this new teares doth breed)
In what strange path, my lord's fair footsteppes bleed.
O knew I where he wander'd, I should see
Some solace in my sorrow's certainty:
I'd send my woes in words should weep for me,
(Who knowes how powerfull well-writt praires would be.)
Sending's too slow a word; myselfe would fly.
Who knowes my own heart's woes so well as I?
But how shall I steal hence? Alexis thou,
Ah thou thy self, alas! hast taught me how.
Loue too that leads the way would lend the wings
To bear me harmlesse through the hardest things.
And where Loue lends the wing, and leads the way,
What dangers can there be dare say me nay?
If I be shipwrack't, Loue shall teach to swimme:
If drown'd, sweet is the death indur'd for him:
The noted sea shall change his name with me,
I'mongst the blest starres, a new name shall be.
And sure where louers make their watry graues,
The weeping mariner will augment the waues.
For who so hard, but passing by that way
Will take acquaintance of my woes, and say
Here 'twas the Roman maid found a hard fate,
While through the World she sought her wandring mate
Here perish't she, poor heart; Heauns, be my vowes
As true to me, as she was to her spouse.
O liue, so rare a loue! liue! and in thee
The too frail life of femal constancy.
Farewell; and shine, fair soul, shine there aboue
Firm in thy crown, as here fast in thy loue.
There thy lost fugitiue th' hast found at last:
Be happy; and for euer hold him fast.
Though all the ioyes I had, fled hence with thee,
Vnkind! yet are my teares still true to me:
I'm wedded o're again since thou art gone;
Nor couldst thou, cruell, leaue me quite alone.
Alexis' widdow now is Sorrow's wife,
With him shall I weep out my weary life.
Wellcome, my sad-sweet mate! Now haue I gott
At last a constant Loue, that leaues me not:
Firm he, as thou art false; nor need my cryes
Thus vex the Earth and teare the beauteous skyes.
For him, alas! n'ere shall I need to be
Troublesom to the world thus as for thee:
For thee I talk to trees; with silent groues
Expostulate my woes and much-wrong'd loues;
Hills and relentlesse rockes, or if there be
Things that in hardnesse more allude to thee,
To these I talk in teares, and tell my pain,
And answer too for them in teares again.
How oft haue I wept out the weary sun!
My watry hour-glasse hath old Time's outrunne.
O I am learned grown: poor Loue and I
Haue study'd ouer all Astrology;
I'm perfect in Heaun's state; with euery starr
My skillfull greife is grown familiar.
Rise, fairest of those fires; what'ere thou be
Whose rosy beam shall point my sun to me.
Such as the sacred light that e'rst did bring
The Eastern princes to their infant King,
O rise, pure lamp! and lend thy golden ray
That weary Loue at last may find his way.
Rich, churlish Land! that hid'st so long in thee
My treasures; rich, alas! by robbing mee.
Needs must my miseryes owe that man a spite
Who e're he be was the first wandring knight.
O had he nere been at that cruell cost
Natvre's virginity had nere been lost;
Seas had not bin rebuk't by sawcy oares
But ly'n lockt vp safe in their sacred shores;
Men had not spurn'd at mountaines; nor made warrs
Nor lost in too larg bounds, our little Rome
Full sweetly with it selfe had dwell't at home.
My poor Alexis, then, in peacefull life
Had vnder some low roofe lou'd his plain wife;
But now, ah me! from where he has no foes
He flyes; and into willfull exile goes.
Cruell, return, O tell the reason why
Thy dearest parents have deseru'd to dy.
And I, what is my crime, I cannot tell,
Vnlesse it be a crime t' haue lou'd too well.
If heates of holyer loue and high desire,
Make bigge thy fair brest with immortall fire,
What needes my virgin lord fly thus from me,
Who only wish his virgin wife to be?
Witnesse, chast Heauns! no happyer vowes I know
Then to a virgin grave vntouch't to goe.
Loue's truest knott by Venus is not ty'd,
Nor doe embraces onely make a bride.
The queen of angels (and men chast as you)
Was maiden-wife and maiden-mother too.
Cecilia, glory of her name and blood,
With happy gain her maiden-vowes made good:
The lusty bridegroom made approach; young man
Take heed (said she) take heed, Valerian!
My bosome's guard, a spirit great and strong,
Stands arm'd, to sheild me from all wanton wrong;
My chastity is sacred; and my Sleep
Wakefull, her dear vowes vndefil'd to keep.
Pallas beares armes, forsooth; and should there be
No fortresse built for true Virginity?
No gaping Gorgon, this: none, like the rest
Of your learn'd lyes. Here you'll find no such iest.
I'm your's: O were my God, my Christ so too,
I'd know no name of Loue on Earth but you.
He yeilds, and straight baptis'd, obtains the grace
To gaze on the fair souldier's glorious face.
Both mixt at last their blood in one rich bed
Of rosy martyrdome, twice married.
O burn our Hymen bright in such high flame,
Thy torch, terrestriall Loue, haue here no name.
How sweet the mutuall yoke of man and wife,
When holy fires maintain Loue's heaunly life!
But I (so help me Heaun my hopes to see)
When thousands sought my loue, lou'd none but thee.
Still, as their vain teares my firm vowes did try,
Alexis, he alone is mine (said I).
Half true, alas! half false, proues that poor line,
Alexis is alone; but is not mine.
Line 3, ib. misprints 'I' am.'
"  10, ib. drops 'beauteous' inadvertently. TURNBULL,
for a wonder, wakes up here to notice a deficient word; but
again, instead of collating his texts, inserts without authority
'lofty.' Had he turned to 1648 edition, he would have found
Line 20, I have adopted 'Time's' for 'Time.'
"  23, as in line 17 in 1st Elegy.
"  30, a reference to the 'Love will find out the way,'
in the old song 'Over the mountain.' 'Weary' is misprinted
"  29, 'The Blessed Virgin' for 'The queen of angels.'
"  43, as in line 17 in 1st Elegy.
Sound forth, coelestiall organs, let heauen's quire
Ravish the dancing orbes, make them mount higher
With nimble capers, & force Atlas tread
Vpon his tiptoes, e're his siluer head
Shall kisse his golden curthen. Thou glad Isle,
That swim'st as deepe in joy, as seas, now smile;
Lett not thy weighty glories, this full tide
Of blisse, debase thee; but with a just pride
Swell: swell to such an height, that thou maist vye
With heauen itselfe for stately majesty.
Doe not deceiue mee, eyes: doe I not see
In this blest earth heauen's bright epitome,
Circled with pure refined glory? heere
I view a rising sunne in this our sphere,
Whose blazing beames, maugre the blackest night,
And mists of greife, dare force a joyfull light.
The gold, in wch he flames, does well praesage
A precious season, & a golden age.
Doe I not see joy keepe his revels now,
And sitt triumphing in each cheerfull brow?
Vnmixt felicity with siluer wings
Broodeth this sacred place: hither Peace brings
The choicest of her oliue-crownes, & praies
To haue them guilded with his courteous raies.
Abash the purest beauties of the day?
To whom heauen's lampes often in silent night
Steale from their stations to repaire their light.
Doe I not see a constellation,
Each little beame of wch would make a sunne?
I meane those three great starres, who well may scorn
Acquaintance with the vsher of the morne.
To gaze vpon such starres each humble eye
Would be ambitious of astronomie
Who would not be a phoenix, & aspire
To sacrifice himselfe in such sweet fire?
Shine forth, ye flaming sparkes of Deity,
Yee perfect emblemes of divinity.
Fixt in your spheres of glory, shed from thence,
The treasures of our liues, your influence,
For if you sett, who may not justly feare,
The world will be one ocean, one great teare.
Strange metamorphosis! It was but now
The sullen heauen had vail'd its mournfull brow
With a black maske: the clouds with child by Greife
Traueld th' Olympian plaines to find releife.
But at the last (having not soe much power
As to refraine) brought forth a costly shower
Of pearly drops, & sent her numerous birth
(As tokens of her greife) vnto the Earth.
Alas, the Earth, quick drunke with teares, had reel'd
From of her center, had not Ioue vpheld
The staggering lumpe: each eye spent all its store,
As if heereafter they would weepe noe more:
Streight from this sea of teares there does appeare
Full glory naming in her owne free sphere.
Amazed Sol throwes of his mournfull weeds,
Speedily harnessing his fiery steeds,
Vp to Olympus' stately topp he hies,
From whence his glorious rivall hee espies.
Then wondring starts, & had the curteous night
Withheld her vaile, h' had forfeited his sight.
The joy full sphaeres with a delicious sound
Afright th' amazed aire, and dance a round
To their owne musick, nor (untill they see
This glorious Phoebus sett) will quiet bee.
Each aery Siren now hath gott her song,
To whom the merry lambes doe tripp along
The laughing meades, as joy full to behold
Their winter coates couer'd with naming gold.
Such was the brightnesse of this Northerne starre,
It made the virgin phoenix come from farre
To be repair'd: hither she did resort,
Thinking her father had remou'd his Court.
The lustre of his face did shine soe bright,
That Rome's bold egles now were blinded quite;
The radiant darts shott from his sparkling eyes,
Made euery mortall gladly sacrifice
A heart burning in loue; all did adore
This rising sunne; their faces nothing wore,
But smiles, and ruddy joyes, and at this day
All melancholy clouds vanisht away.
Bright starre of Majesty, oh shedd on mee,
A precious influence, as sweet as thee.
That with each word, my loaden pen letts fall,
The fragrant Spring may be perfum'd withall.
That Sol from them may suck an honied shower,
To glutt the stomack of his darling flower.
With such a sugred livery made fine,
They shall proclaime to all, that they are thine.
Lett none dare speake of thee, but such as thence
Extracted haue a balmy eloquence.
But then, alas, my heart! oh how shall I
Cure thee of thy delightfull tympanie?
I cannot hold; such a spring-tide of joy
Must haue a passage, or 'twill force a way.
Yet shall my loyall tongue keepe this command:
But giue me leaue to ease it with my hand.
And though these humble lines soare not soe high,
As is thy birth; yet from thy flaming eye
Drop downe one sparke of glory, & they'l proue
A praesent worthy of Apollo's loue.
My quill to thee may not praesume to sing:
Lett th' hallowed plume of a seraphick wing
Bee consecrated to this worke, while I
Chant to my selfe with rustick melodie.
Rich, liberall heauen, what hath yor treasure store
Of such bright angells, that you giue vs more?
Had you, like our great sunne, stamped but one
For earth, t' had beene an ample portion.
Had you but drawne one liuely coppy forth,
That might interpret our faire Cynthia's worth,
Y' had done enough to make the lazy ground
Dance, like the nimble spheres, a joyfull round.
But such is the coelestiall excellence,
That in the princely patterne shines, from whence
The rest pourtraicted are, that 'tis noe paine
To ravish heauen to limbe them o're againe.
Wittnesse this mapp of beauty; euery part
Of wch doth show the quintessence of art.
See! nothing's vulgar, every atome heere
Speakes the great wisdome of th' artificer.
Poore Earth hath not enough perfection,
To shaddow forth th' admired paragon.
Those sparkling twinnes of light should I now stile
Rich diamonds, sett in a pure siluer foyle;
Or call her cheeke a bed of new-blowne roses;
And say that ivory her front composes;
Or should I say, that with a scarlet waue
Those plumpe soft rubies had bin drest soe braue;
Or that the dying lilly did bestow
Vpon her neck the whitest of his snow;
Or that the purple violets did lace
That hand of milky downe; all these are base;
Her glories I should dimme with things soe grosse,
And foule the cleare text with a muddy glosse.
Goe on then, Heauen, & limbe forth such another,
Draw to this sister miracle a brother;
Compile a first glorious epitome
Of heauen, & Earth, & of all raritie;
And sett it forth in the same happy place,
And I'le not blurre it with my paraphrase.
Little, buzzing, wanton elfe
Perish there, and thanke thy selfe.
Thou deseru'st thy life to loose,
For distracting such a Muse.
Was it thy ambitious aime
By thy death to purchase fame?
Didst thou hope he would in pitty
Haue bestow'd a funerall ditty
On thy ghoast? and thou in that
To haue outliued Virgill's gnatt?
No! The treason thou hast wrought
Might forbid thee such a thought.
If that Night's worke doe miscarry,
Or a syllable but vary;
A greater foe thou shalt me find,
The destruction of thy kind.
Phoebus, to revenge thy fault,
In a fiery trapp thee caught;
That thy winged mates might know it,
And not dare disturbe a poet.
Deare and wretched was thy sport,
Since thyselfe was crushed for't;
Scarcely had that life a breath,
Yet it found a double death;
Playing in the golden flames,
Thou fell'st into an inky Thames;
Scorch'd and drown'd. That petty sunne
A pretty Icarus hath vndone.
_Ales Phasiacis petita Colchis, &c._
The bird that's fetch't from Phasis floud,
Or choicest hennes of Africk-brood;
These please our palates; and why these?
'Cause they can but seldome please.
Whil'st the goose soe goodly white,
And the drake, yeeld noe delight,
Though his wings' conceited hewe
Paint each feather, as if new.
These for vulgar stomacks be,
And rellish not of rarity.
But the dainty Scarus, sought
In farthest clime; what e're is bought
With shipwrack's toile, oh, that is sweet,
'Cause the quicksands hansell'd it.
The pretious barbill, now growne rife,
Is cloying meat. How stale is wife?
Deare wife hath ne're a handsome letter,
Sweet mistris sounds a great deale better.
Rose quakes at name of cinnamon.
Unlesse't be rare, what's thought vpon?
_Ille et ne fasto te posuit die, &c._
Shame of thy mother soyle! ill-nurtur'd tree!
Sett, to the mischeife of posteritie!
That hand (what e're it wer) that was thy nurse,
Was sacrilegious (sure) or somewhat worse.
Black, as the day was dismall, in whose sight
Thy rising topp first stain'd the bashfull light.
That man---I thinke--wrested the feeble life
From his old father, that man's barbarous knife
Conspir'd with darknes 'gainst the strangers throate;
(Whereof the blushing walles tooke bloody note)
Huge high-floune poysons, eu'n of Colchos breed,
And whatsoe're wild sinnes black thoughts doe feed,
His hands haue padled in; his hands, that found
Thy traiterous root a dwelling in my ground.
Perfidious totterer! longing for the staines
Of thy kind Master's well-deseruing braines.
Man's daintiest care, & caution cannot spy
The subtile point of his coy destiny,
Wch way it threats. With feare the merchant's mind
Is plough'd as deepe, as is the sea with wind,
(Rowz'd in an angry tempest), Oh the sea!
Oh! that's his feare; there flotes his destiny:
While from another (vnseene) corner blowes
The storme of fate, to wch his life he owes;
By Parthians bow the soldier lookes to die,
(Whose hands are fighting, while their feet doe flie.)
The Parthian starts at Rome's imperiall name,
Fledg'd with her eagle's wing; the very chaine
Of his captivity rings in his eares.
Thus, o thus fondly doe wee pitch our feares
Farre distant from our fates, our fates, that mocke
Our giddy feares with an vnlook't for shocke.
A little more, & I had surely seene
Thy greisly Majesty, Hell's blackest Queene;
And Oeacus on his tribunall too,
Sifting the soules of guilt; & you, (oh you!)
You euer-blushing meads, where doe the blest
Farre from darke horrors home appeale to rest.
There amorous Sappho plaines vpon her lute
Her loue's crosse fortune, that the sad dispute
Runnes murmuring on the strings. Alcaeus there
In high-built numbers wakes his golden lyre
To tell the world, how hard the matter went,
How hard by sea, by warre, by banishment.
There these braue soules deale to each wondring eare
Such words, soe precious, as they may not weare
Without religious silence; aboue all
Warre's ratling tumults, or some tyrant's fall.
The thronging clotted multitude doth feast:
What wonder? when the hundred-headed beast
Hangs his black lugges, stroakt with those heavenly lines; _ears_
And stretch their cold limbes in a pleasing fire.
Prometheus selfe, and Pelops sterved sire
Are cheated of their paines; Orion thinkes
Of lions now noe more, or spotted linx.
_O Dea, siderei seu tu stirpe alma tonantis, &c._
Bright goddesse (whether Joue thy father be,
Or Jove a father will be made by thee)
Oh crowne these praiers (mov'd in a happy bower)
But with one cordiall smile for Cloe. That power
Of Loue's all-daring hand, that makes me burne,
Makes me confess't. Oh, doe not thou with scorne,
Great nymph, o'relooke my lownesse. Heau'n you know
And all their fellow-deities will bow
Eu'n to the naked'st vowes. Thou art my fate;
To thee the Parcae haue given vp of late
My threds of life: if then I shall not live
By thee, by thee yet lett me die; this giue,
High Beautie's soveraigne, that my funerall flames
May draw their first breath from thy starry beames.
The phoenix' selfe shall not more proudly burne,
That fetcheth fresh life from her fruitfull vrne.
Hath aged winter, fledg'd with feathered raine,
To frozen Caucasus his flight now tane?
Doth hee in downy snow there closely shrowd
His bedrid limmes, wrapt in a fleecy clowd?
Is th' Earth disrobed of her apron white,
Kind Winter's guift, & in a greene one dight?
Doth she beginne to dandle in her lappe
Her painted infants, fedd with pleasant pappe,
Wch their bright father in a pretious showre
From heaven's sweet milky streame doth gently poure
Doth blith Apollo cloath the heavens with joye,
And with a golden waue wash cleane away
Those durty smutches, wch their faire fronts wore,
And make them laugh, wch frown'd, & wept before?
If heaven hath now forgot to weepe; o then
What meane these shoures of teares amongst vs men?
These cataracts of griefe, that dare eu'n vie
With th' richest clowds their pearly treasurie?
If Winters gone, whence this vntimely cold,
That on these snowy limmes hath laid such hold?
What more than winter hath that dire art found,
These purple currents hedg'd with violets round.
To corrallize, wch softly wont to slide
In crimson waueletts, & in scarlet tide?
If Flora's darlings now awake from sleepe,
And out of their greene mantletts dare to peepe
O tell me then, what rude outragious blast
Forc't this prime flowre of youth to make such hast?
To hide his blooming glories, & bequeath
His balmy treasure to the bedd of death?
'Twas not the frozen zone; one sparke of fire,
Shott from his flaming eye, had thaw'd its ire,
And made it burne in loue: 'twas not the rage,
And too vngentle nippe of frosty age:
'Twas not the chast, & purer snow, whose nest
Was in the modest nunnery of his brest:
Noe, none of these ravish't those virgin roses,
The Muses, & the Graces fragrant posies.
Wch, while they smiling sate vpon his face,
They often kist, & in the sugred place
Left many a starry teare, to thinke how soone
The golden harvest of our joyes, the noone
Of all our glorious hopes should fade,
And be eclipsed with an envious shade.
Noe 'twas old doting Death, who stealing by,
Dragging his crooked burthen, look't awry,
And streight his amorous syth (greedy of blisse)
Murdred the Earth's just pride with a rude kisse.
A winged herald, gladd of soe sweet a prey,
Snatch't vpp the falling starre, soe richly gay,
And plants it in a precious perfum'd bedd,
Amongst those lillies, wch his bosome bredd.
Where round about hovers with siluer wing
A golden Summer, an aeternall Spring.
Now that his root such fruit againe may beare,
Let each eye water't with a courteous teare.
Hee's dead! Oh what harsh musick's there
Vnto a choyce, and curious eare!
Wee must that Discord surely call,
Since sighs doe rise and teares doe fall.
Teares fall too low, sighes rise too high,
How then can there be harmony?
But who is he? him may wee know
That jarres and spoiles sweet consort soe?
O Death, 'tis thou: you false time keepe,
And stretch'st thy dismall voice too deepe.
Long time to quavering Age you giue,
But to large Youth, short time to liue.
You take vpon you too too much,
In striking where you should not touch.
How out of tune the world now lies,
Since youth must fall, when it should rise!
Gone be all consort, since alone
He that once bore the best part's gone.
Whose whole life, musick was; wherein
Each vertue for a part came in.
And though that musick of his life be still,
The musick of his name yett soundeth shrill.
Stay, silver-footed Came, striue not to wed
Thy maiden streames soe soone to Neptune's bed;
Fixe heere thy wat'ry eyes upon these towers,
Vnto whose feet in reuerence of the powers,
That there inhabite, thou on euery day
With trembling lippes an humble kisse do'st pay.
See all in mourning now; the walles are jett,
With pearly papers carelesly besett.
Whose snowy cheekes, least joy should be exprest,
The weeping pen with sable teares hath drest.
Their wronged beauties speake a tragoedy,
Somewhat more horrid than an elegy.
Pure, & vnmixed cruelty they tell,
Wch poseth Mischeife's selfe to parallel.
Justice hath lost her hand, the law her head;
Peace is an orphan now; her father's dead.
Honestie's nurse, Vertue's blest guardian,
That heauenly mortall, that seraphick man.
Enough is said, now, if thou canst crowd on
Thy lazy crawling streames, pri'thee be gone,
And murmur forth thy woes to euery flower,
That on thy bankes sitts in a uerdant bower,
And is instructed by thy glassy waue
To paint its perfum'd face wth colours braue.
In vailes of dust their silken heads they'le hide,
As if the oft-departing sunne had dy'd.
Goe learne that fatall quire, soe sprucely dight
In downy surplisses, & vestments white,
To sing their saddest dirges, such as may
Make their scar'd soules take wing, & fly away.
Lett thy swolne breast discharge thy strugling groanes
To th' churlish rocks; & teach the stubborne stones
To melt in gentle drops, lett them be heard
Of all proud Neptune's siluer-sheilded guard;
That greife may crack that string, & now vntie
Their shackled tongues to chant an elegie.
Whisper thy plaints to th' Ocean's curteous eares,
Then weepe thyselfe into a sea of teares.
A thousand Helicons the Muses send
In a bright christall tide, to thee they send,
Leaving those mines of nectar, their sweet fountaines,
They force a lilly path through rosy mountaines.
Feare not to dy with greife; all bubling eyes
Are teeming now with store of fresh supplies.
To the volume of 1652 ('Carmen Deo Nostro' &c.) was prefixed a
characteristic poem, and relative to the Countess of Denbigh. G.
What Heav'n-besieged heart is this
Stands trembling at the Gate of Blisse:
Holds fast the door, yet dares not venture
Fairly to open and to enter?
Whose definition is, A Doubt
'Twixt life and death, 'twixt In and Out.
Ah! linger not, lov'd soul: a slow
And late consent was a long No.
Who grants at last, a great while try'de
And did his best, to have deny'de
What magick-bolts, what mystick barrs
Maintain the Will in these strange warrs?
What fatall, yet fantastick, bands
Keep the free heart from his own hands?
Say, lingring Fair, why comes the birth
Of your brave soul so slowly forth?
Plead your pretences (O you strong
In weaknesse!) why you chuse so long
In labour of your self to ly,
Not daring quite to live nor die.
So when the Year takes cold we see
Poor waters their own prisoners be:
Fetter'd and lock'd up fast they lie
In a cold self-captivity.
find themselves their own severer shoar.
Love, that lends haste to heaviest things,
In you alone hath lost his wings.
Look round and reade the World's wide face,
The field of Nature or of Grace;
Where can you fix, to find excuse
Or pattern for the pace you use?
Mark with what faith fruits answer flowers,
And know the call of Heav'n's kind showers:
Each mindfull plant hasts to make good
The hope and promise of his bud.
Seed-time's not all; there should be harvest too.
Alas! and has the Year no Spring for you?
Both winds and waters urge their way,
And murmure if they meet a stay.
Mark how the curl'd waves work and wind,
All hating to be left behind.
Each bigge with businesse thrusts the other,
And seems to say, Make haste, my brother.
That draw the chariot of chast Loves,
Chide your delay: yea those dull things,
Whose wayes have least to doe with wings,
Make wings at least of their own weight,
And by their love controll their Fate.
So lumpish steel, untaught to move,
Learn'd first his lightnesse by his love.
What e're Love's matter be, he moves
By th' even wings of his own doves,
Lives by his own laws, and does hold
In grossest metalls his own gold.
All things swear friends to Fair and Good
Yea suitours; man alone is wo'ed,
Tediously wo'ed, and hardly wone:
Only not slow to be undone.
As if the bargain had been driven
So hardly betwixt Earth and Heaven;
Our God would thrive too fast, and be
Too much a gainer by't, should we
Our purchas'd selves too soon bestow
On Him, who has not lov'd us so.
When love of us call'd Him to see
If wee'd vouchsafe His company,
He left His Father's Court, and came
Lightly as a lambent flame,
Leaping upon the hills, to be
The humble king of you and me.
Nor can the cares of His whole crown
(When one poor sigh sends for Him down)
Detain Him, but He leaves behind
The late wings of the lazy wind,
Spurns the tame laws of Time and Place,
And breaks through all ten heav'ns to our embrace.
Yield to His siege, wise soul, and see
Your triumph in His victory.
Disband dull feares, give Faith the day:
To save your life, kill your Delay.
'Tis cowardise that keeps this field;
And want of courage not to yield.
Yield then, O yield, that Love may win
The Fort at last, and let Life in.
Yield quickly, lest perhaps you prove
Death's prey, before the prize of Love.
This fort of your fair self if't be not wone,
He is repuls'd indeed, but you'r undone.
''Tis not the work of force but skill
To find the way into man's will.
'Tis loue alone can hearts unlock;
Who knowes the Word, he needs not knock.'
To the noblest and best of Ladyes, the Countesse of Denbigh,
perswading her to Resolution in Religion, and to render her selfe
What heau'n-intreated heart is this
Stands trembling at the gate of blisse?
Holds fast the door, yet dares not venture
Fairly to open it, and enter.
Whose definition is a doubt
'Twixt life and death, 'twixt in and out.
Say, lingring Fair! why comes the birth
Of your brave soul so slowly forth?
Plead your pretences (O you strong
In weaknes!) why you choose so long
In labor of your selfe to ly,
Nor daring quite to liue nor dy?
Ah! linger not, lou'd soul! a slow
And late consent was a long no;
Who grants at last, long time try'd
And did his best to haue deny'd:
What magick bolts, what mystick barres
Maintain the will in these strange warres?
What fatall yet fantastick, bands
Keep the free heart from its own hands?
So when the year takes cold, we see
Poor waters their own prisoners be:
Fetter'd and lockt vp they ly
In a sad selfe-captivity.
The astonisht nymphs their flood's strange fate deplore,
To see themselues their own seuerer shore.
Thou that alone canst thaw this cold,
And fetch the heart from its strong-hold;
Allmighty Love! end this long warr,
And of a meteor make a starr.
O fix this fair Indefinite!
And 'mongst Thy shafts of soueraign light
Choose out that sure decisiue dart
Which has the key of this close heart,
Knowes all the corners of't, and can controul
The self-shutt cabinet of an vnsearcht soul.
O let it be at last, Loue's hour!
Raise this tall trophee of Thy powre;
Come once the conquering way; not to confute
But kill this rebell-word 'irresolute,'
That so, in spite of all this peeuish strength
Of weaknes, she may write 'resolv'd' at length.
Vnfold at length, vnfold fair flowre
And vse the season of Loue's showre!
Meet His well-meaning wounds, wise heart,
And hast to drink the wholsome dart.
That healing shaft, which Heaun till now
Hath in Loue's quiuer hid for you.
O dart of Loue! arrow of light!
O happy you, if it hitt right!
It must not fall in vain, it must
Not mark the dry, regardless dust.
Fair one, it is your fate; and brings
Aeternal worlds upon its wings.
Meet it with wide-spread armes, and see
Its seat your soul's iust center be.
Disband dull feares; giue faith the day;
To saue your life, kill your delay.
It is Loue's seege, and sure to be
Your triumph, though His victory.
'Tis cowardise that keeps this feild
And want of courage not to yeild.
Yeild then, O yeild, that Loue may win
The fort at last, and let life in.
Yeild quickly, lest perhaps you proue
Death's prey, before the prize of Loue.
This fort of your faire selfe, if't be not won,
He is repulst indeed; but you are vndone.
 TURNBULL again misprints in line 3 'But' for 'Best,' once more
making nonsense.
 I owe very hearty thanks to my good friend Mr. W. Aldis Wright,
M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge, and to the Masters and other
 Life of COWLEY, in Lives of the Poets.
 Works, vol. i. (1707) pp. 44-7. Line 3 by a strange oversight is
'O give it ful obedience, that so _seiz'd_
Of all I have, I may not move thy wrath' (i. 154),
 = Iamblichus, the celebrated Neo-Platonic philosopher, author of
 Cf. poem on Lessius, lines 18 and 38. G.
 '_Seven shares and a halfe._' The same phrase occurs in Ben
editions, printed in italics. Various other players having been
 '_Sixpenny soule, a suburb sinner._' This was the ordinary town
 = swollen. G.
 = drinkers of Canary (wine)? G.
 On the authorship of this Preface see our Preface. G.
 This couplet appeared first in 1648 edition of the 'Steps to the
Mors et vita duello
Conflixero mirando:
Dux vitae mortuus, regnat vivus.
_Latin Sequence_ 12th-13th century: Vict. Pasch. G.
 The engraving of our text (1652) here, is reproduced in our
 Appeared originally in 'Steps' of 1648 (pp. 30-1): reprinted in
 Originally appeared in 'Steps' of 1646 (p. 15): was reprinted in
 Appeared originally in the 'Steps' of 1646 (pp. 23, 24): was
'_vnpearch't_' = without perch or support. G.
reproduced in our illustrated quarto edition. See Notes and
Illustrations at close of this composition. G.
 For critical remarks on the present very striking expansion and
 Appeared first in 'Steps' of 1648 (pp. 74-75): was reprinted in
 Appeared originally in 'Steps' of 1646 (pp. 74-78), where it is
 Appeared originally in 'Steps' of 1648 (pp. 84-5): reprinted in
 Appeared originally in 'Steps' of 1646 (p. 78): reprinted in
 Appeared originally in 'Steps' of 1646 (pp. 79-84): reprinted in
 Appeared originally in 1648 'Steps' (pp. 94-6): reprinted in
 Appeared originally in 'Steps' of 1648 (pp. 106-7), where it is
 As with Cowley's lines: see foot-note _ante_. G.
 See our Essay for critical remarks on this and related poems. G.
 May be 'kings;' but the MS. doubtful. G.
 Appeared originally in the 'Delights' of 1646 (pp. 111): was
 Our text is from the 'Hygiasticon' of LESSIUS in the English
translation of 1636, the title-page of which is as follows:
 The first edition of Bishop Andrewes' Sermons was published in
 Appeared originally in the 'Steps' of 1646 (pp. 32-3): was
 Appeared originally in 'Steps' of 1646 (pp. 39-40), where it is
 Appeared originally in 'Steps' of 1646 (pp. 40-1), where it is
 Appeared originally in 'Steps' of 1646 (p. 40): was reprinted in
 Appeared originally in the 'Delights' of 1646 (pp. 123-4), along
 TURNBULL glaringly misprints 'The heart commanding in my heart,'
 Appeared originally, without signature, in the work celebrated,
increased otherwise therein the reproductions announced. RAINBOW
 Appeared originally in 'Delights' of 1646 (pp. 132-3), and was
 Appeared originally in 'Voces Votivae ab Academicis
title-page of his juvenile Poems, 'Poetical _Blossoms_,' 1633.
'Apricocks' = apricots. So HERRICK in the 'Maiden Blush,'
'So cherries blush, and kathern peares,
And _apricocks_, in youthfull yeares.'
 Appeared originally in the 'Delights' of 1648 (pp. 67-8): was
 Charles I. See our Essay on this and kindred poems, and their
relation to the Latin royal poems. G.
 Petronius, Satyricon, cap. 93. G.
 See notice of Staninough in our Essay, as before. G.
 See our Essay, as before, for notice of PORTER. G.