View our Lucippe, and remaine
In her, these beauties o’re againe.
Amazement! Noble Clitophon
Ev’n now lookt somewhat colder on
His cooler mistresse, and she too
Smil’d not as she us’d to do.
See! the individuall payre
Are at sad oddes, and parted are;
They quarrell, aemulate, and stand
At strife, who first shal kisse your hand.
A new dispute there lately rose
Betwixt the Greekes and Latines, whose Temples should be bound with glory,
In best languaging this story;<61.5>
Yee heyres of love, that with one SMILE A ten-yeeres war can reconcile;
Peacefull Hellens! Vertuous! See:
The jarring languages agree!
And here, all armes layd by, they doe In English meet to wayt on you.
<61.1> Achillis Tatii Alexandrini DE LUCIPPES ET CLITOPHONTIS AMORIBUS LIBRI OCTO. The translation of this celebrated work, to which Lovelace contributed the commendatory verses here republished, was executed by his friend Anthony Hodges, A.M., of New College, Oxford, and was printed at Oxford in 1638, 8vo. There had been already a translation by W. Burton, purporting to be done from the Greek, in 1597, 4to. The text of 1649 and that of 1638 exhibit so many variations, that the reader may be glad to have the opportunity of comparison:–
“TO THE LADIES.
“Fair ones, breathe: a while lay by Blessed Sidney’s ARCADY:
Here’s a story that will make
You not repent HIM to forsake;
And with your dissolving looke
Vntie the contents of this booke; To which nought (except your sight)
Can give a worthie epithite.
‘Tis an abstract of all volumes, A pillaster of all columnes
Fancie e’re rear’d to wit, to be Little LOVE’S epitome,
And compactedly expresse
All lovers happy wretchednesse.
“Brave PAMELA’S majestie
And her sweet sister’s modestie
Are fixt in each of you, you are Alone, what these together were
Divinest, that are really
What Cariclea’s feign’d to be;
That are every one, the Nine;
And on earth Astraeas shine;
Be our LEUCIPPE, and remaine
In HER, all these o’re againe.
“Wonder! Noble CLITOPHON
Me thinkes lookes somewhat colder on His beauteous mistresse, and she too
Smiles not as she us’d to doe.
See! the individuall payre
Are at oddes and parted are;
Quarrel, emulate, and stand
At strife, who first shall kisse your hand.
“A new warre e’re while arose
‘Twixt the GREEKES and LATINES, whose Temples should be bound with glory
In best languaging this story:
You, that with one lovely smile
A ten-yeares warre can reconcile; Peacefull Hellens awfull see
The jarring languages agree,
And here all armes laid by, they doe Meet in English to court you.”
Rich. Lovelace, Ma: Ar: A: Glou: Eq: Aur: Fil: Nat: Max.
See Halliwell’s DICTIONARY OF OLD PLAYS, 1860, art. CLYTOPHON.
<61.2> There can be no doubt that Sidney’s ARCADIA was formerly as popular in its way among the readers of both sexes as Sir Richard Baker’s CHRONICLE appears to have been. The former was especially recommended to those who sought occasional relaxation from severer studies. See Higford’s INSTITUTIONS, 1658, 8vo, p. 46-7. In his poem of THE SURPRIZE, Cotton describes his nymph as reading the ARCADIA on the bank of a river–
“The happy OBJECT of her eye
Was SIDNEY’S living ARCADY:
Whose amorous tale had so betrai’d Desire in this all-lovely maid;
That, whilst her check a blush did warm, I read LOVES story in her form.”
POEMS ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS.
By Charles Cotton, Esq. Lond. 1689, 8vo, p. 392.
<61.3> The Pamela of Sydney’s ARCADIA
<61.4> The allusion is to the celebrated story of THEAGENES AND CHARICLEA, which was popular in this country at an early period. A drama on the subject was performed before Court in 1574.
<61.5> Lovelace refers, it may be presumed, to an edition of ACHILLES TATIUS, in which the Greek text was printed with a Latin translation.
TO MY TRUELY VALIANT, LEARNED FRIEND; WHO IN HIS BOOKE<62.1>
RESOLV’D THE ART GLADIATORY INTO THE MATHEMATICKS.
I.
Hearke, reader! wilt be learn’d ith’ warres? A gen’rall in a gowne?
Strike a league with arts and scarres, And snatch from each a crowne?
II.
Wouldst be a wonder? Such a one,
As should win with a looke?
A bishop in a garison,
And conquer by the booke?
III.
Take then this mathematick shield,
And henceforth by its rules
Be able to dispute ith’ field,
And combate in the schooles.
IV.
Whilst peaceful learning once againe And the souldier so concord,
As that he fights now with her penne, And she writes with his sword.
<62.1> “PALLAS ARMATA. The Gentlemen’s Armorie. Wherein the right and genuine use of the Rapier and of the Sword, as well against the right handed as against the left handed man ‘is displayed.’ [By G. A.] London, 1639, 8vo. With several illustrative woodcuts.” The lines, as originally printed in PALLAS ARMATA, vary from those subsequently admitted into LUCASTA. They are as follow:–
TO THE READER.
Harke, reader, would’st be learn’d ith’ warres, A CAPTAINE in a gowne?
Strike a league with bookes and starres, And weave of both the crowne?
Would’st be a wonder? Such a one
As would winne with a looke?
A schollar in a garrison?
And conquer by the booke?
Take then this mathematick shield, And henceforth by its rules,
Be able to dispute ith’ field,
And combate in the schooles.
Whil’st peacefull learning once agen And th’ souldier do concorde,
As that he fights now with her penne, And she writes with his sword.
Rich. Lovelace, A. Glouces. Oxon.
TO FLETCHER REVIV’D.<63.1>
How have I bin religious? what strange good Has scap’t me, that I never understood?
Have I hel-guarded Haeresie o’rthrowne? Heald wounded states? made kings and kingdoms one? That FATE should be so merciful to me,
To let me live t’ have said I have read thee.
Faire star, ascend! the joy! the life! the light Of this tempestuous age, this darke worlds sight! Oh, from thy crowne of glory dart one flame May strike a sacred reverence, whilest thy name (Like holy flamens to their god of day)
We bowing, sing; and whilst we praise, we pray.
Bright spirit! whose aeternal motion Of wit, like Time, stil in it selfe did run, Binding all others in it, and did give
Commission, how far this or that shal live; Like DESTINY of poems who, as she
Signes death to all, her selfe cam never dye.
And now thy purple-robed Traegedy,<63.2>
In her imbroider’d buskins, cals mine eye, Where the brave Aetius we see betray’d,
T’ obey his death, whom thousand lives obey’d; Whilst that the mighty foole his scepter breakes, And through his gen’rals wounds his own doome speakes, Weaving thus richly VALENTINIAN,
The costliest monarch with the cheapest man.
Souldiers may here to their old glories adde, The LOVER love, and be with reason MAD:<63.3>
Not, as of old, Alcides furious,<63.4>
Who wilder then his bull did teare the house (Hurling his language with the canvas stone): Twas thought the monster ror’d the sob’rer tone.
But ah! when thou thy sorrow didst inspire With passions, blacke as is her darke attire, Virgins as sufferers have wept to see
So white a soule, so red a crueltie; That thou hast griev’d, and with unthought redresse Dri’d their wet eyes who now thy mercy blesse; Yet, loth to lose thy watry jewell, when Joy wip’t it off, laughter straight sprung’t agen.
Now ruddy checked Mirth with rosie wings<63.5>
Fans ev’ry brow with gladnesse, whilst she sings Delight to all, and the whole theatre
A festivall in heaven doth appeare: Nothing but pleasure, love; and (like the morne) Each face a gen’ral smiling doth adorne.
Heare ye, foul speakers, that pronounce the aire Of stewes and shores,<63.6> I will informe you where
And how to cloath aright your wanton wit, Without her nasty bawd attending it:<63.7>
View here a loose thought sayd with such a grace, Minerva might have spoke in Venus face;
So well disguis’d, that ’twas conceiv’d by none But Cupid had Diana’s linnen on;
And all his naked parts so vail’d, th’ expresse The shape with clowding the uncomlinesse; That if this Reformation, which we
Receiv’d, had not been buried with thee, The stage (as this worke) might have liv’d and lov’d Her lines, the austere Skarlet<63.8> had approv’d;
And th’ actors wisely been from that offence As cleare, as they are now from audience.<63.9>
Thus with thy Genius did the scaene expire,<63.10>
Wanting thy active and correcting fire, That now (to spread a darknesse over all) Nothing remaines but Poesie to fall:
And though from these thy Embers we receive Some warmth, so much as may be said, we live; That we dare praise thee blushlesse, in the head Of the best piece Hermes to Love<63.11> e’re read;
That we rejoyce and glory in thy wit, And feast each other with remembring it; That we dare speak thy thought, thy acts recite: Yet all men henceforth be afraid to write.
<63.1> Fletcher the dramatist fell a victim to the plague of 1625. See Aubrey’s LIVES, vol. 2, part i. p. 352. The verses here republished were originally prefixed to the first collected edition of Beaumont and Fletcher’s TRAGEDIES AND COMEDIES, 1647, folio. It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that Lovelace was only a child when Fletcher died.
<63.2> VALENTINIAN, A TRAGEDY. First printed in the folio of 1647.
<63.3> THE MAD LOVER. Also first printed in the folio of 1647.
<63.4> An allusion to the HERCULES FURENS of Euripides. Lovelace had, no doubt, some tincture of Greek scholarship (See Wood’s ATH. OX. ii. 466); but as to the extent of his acquirements in this direction, it is hard to speak with confidence. Among the books of Mr. Thomas Jolley, dispersed in 1853, was a copy of Clenardus INSTITUTIONES GRAECAE LINGUAE, Lugd. Batav. 1626, 8vo., on the title of which was “Richard Lovelace, 1630, March 5,” supposed to be the autograph of the poet when a schoolboy.
<63.5> In the margin of the copy of 1647, against these lines is written–“COMEDIES: THE SPANISH CURATE, THE HUMOROUS LIEUTENANT, THE TAMER TAMED, THE LITTLE FRENCH LAWYER.”
<63.6> Sewers.
<63.7> THE CUSTOME OF THE COUNTREY–Marginal note in the copy of 1647.
<63.8> Query, LAUD.
<63.9> These lines refer to the prohibition published by the Parliament against the performance of stage-plays and interludes. The first ordinance appeared in 1642, but that not being found effectual, a more stringent measure was enacted in 1647, directing, under the heaviest penalties, the total and immediate abolition of theatricals.
<63.10> i.e. The scenic drama. The original meaning of SCENE was a wooden stage for the representation of plays, &c., and it is here used therefore in its primitive sense.
<63.11> In the old mythology of Greece, Cupid is the pupil of Mercury or Hermes; or, in other words, LOVE is instructed by ELOQUENCE and WIT.
LUCASTA.
Posthume
POEMS
0F
RICHARD LOVELACE ESQ;
THOSE HONOURS COME TOO LATE, THAT ON OUR ASHES WAITE.
Mart. lib. I. Epig. 26.
LONDON.
Printed by WILLIAM GODBID for
CLEMENT DARBY.
1659.
THE DEDICATION.
TO THE RIGHT H0N0RABLE JOHN LOVELACE, ESQUIRE.<64.1>
SIR,
LUCASTA (fair, but hapless maid!)
Once flourisht underneath the shade Of your illustrious Mother; now,
An orphan grown, she bows to you!
To you, her vertues’ noble heir;
Oh may she find protection there!
Nor let her welcome be the less,
‘Cause a rough hand makes her address: One (to whom foes the Muses are)
Born and bred up in rugged war:
For, conscious how unfit I am,
I only have pronounc’d her name
To waken pity in your brest,
And leave her tears to plead the rest. Sir,
Your most obedient
Servant and kinsman
DUDLEY POSTHUMUS-LOVELACE.
<64.1> This gentleman was the eldest son of John, second Lord Lovelace of Hurley, co. Berks, by Anne, daughter of Thomas, Earl of Cleveland. The first part of LUCASTA was inscribed by the poet himself to Lady Lovelace, his mother.
POEMS.
TO LVCASTA.
HER RESERVED LOOKS.
LUCASTA, frown, and let me die,
But smile, and see, I live;
The sad indifference of your eye
Both kills and doth reprieve.
You hide our fate within its screen; We feel our judgment, ere we hear.
So in one picture I have seen
An angel here, the devil there.
LUCASTA LAUGHING.
Heark, how she laughs aloud,
Although the world put on its shrowd: Wept at by the fantastic crowd,
Who cry: one drop, let fall
From her, might save the universal ball. She laughs again
At our ridiculous pain;
And at our merry misery
She laughs, until she cry.
Sages, forbear
That ill-contrived tear,
Although your fear
Doth barricado hope from your soft ear. That which still makes her mirth to flow, Is our sinister-handed woe,
Which downwards on its head doth go, And, ere that it is sown, doth grow.
This makes her spleen contract,
And her just pleasure feast:
For the unjustest act
Is still the pleasant’st jest.
NIGHT.
TO LUCASTA.
Night! loathed jaylor of the lock’d up sun, And tyrant-turnkey on committed day,
Bright eyes lye fettered in thy dungeon, And Heaven it self doth thy dark wards obey. Thou dost arise our living hell;
With thee grones, terrors, furies dwell; Until LUCASTA doth awake,
And with her beams these heavy chaines off shake.
Behold! with opening her almighty lid, Bright eyes break rowling, and with lustre spread, And captive day his chariot mounted is; Night to her proper hell is beat,
And screwed to her ebon seat;
Till th’ Earth with play oppressed lies, And drawes again the curtains of her eyes.
But, bondslave, I know neither day nor night; Whether she murth’ring sleep, or saving wake; Now broyl’d ith’ zone of her reflected light, Then frose, my isicles, not sinews shake. Smile then, new Nature, your soft blast Doth melt our ice, and fires waste;
Whil’st the scorch’d shiv’ring world new born Now feels it all the day one rising morn.
LOVE INTHRON’D.
ODE.
I.
Introth, I do my self perswade,
That the wilde boy is grown a man, And all his childishnesse off laid,
E’re since LUCASTA did his fires fan; H’ has left his apish jigs,
And whipping hearts like gigs:
For t’ other day I heard him swear, That beauty should be crown’d in honours chair.
II.
With what a true and heavenly state He doth his glorious darts dispence,
Now cleans’d from falsehood, blood and hate, And newly tipt with innocence!
Love Justice is become,
And doth the cruel doome;
Reversed is the old decree;
Behold! he sits inthron’d with majestie.
III.
Inthroned in LUCASTA’S eye,
He doth our faith and hearts survey; Then measures them by sympathy,
And each to th’ others breast convey; Whilst to his altars now
The frozen vestals bow,
And strickt Diana too doth go
A-hunting with his fear’d, exchanged bow.
IV.
Th’ imbracing seas and ambient air
Now in his holy fires burn;
Fish couple, birds and beasts in pair Do their own sacrifices turn.
This is a miracle,
That might religion swell;
But she, that these and their god awes, Her crowned self submits to her own laws.
HER MUFFE.
I.
Twas not for some calm blessing to deceive, Thou didst thy polish’d hands in shagg’d furs weave; It were no blessing thus obtain’d;
Thou rather would’st a curse have gain’d, Then let thy warm driven snow be ever stain’d.
II.
Not that you feared the discolo’ring cold Might alchymize their silver into gold;
Nor could your ten white nuns so sin, That you should thus pennance them in,
Each in her coarse hair smock of discipline.
III.
Nor, Hero-like who, on their crest still wore A lyon, panther, leopard, or a bore,
To looke their enemies in their herse, Thou would’st thy hand should deeper pierce, And, in its softness rough, appear more fierce.
IV.
No, no, LUCASTA, destiny decreed,
That beasts to thee a sacrifice should bleed, And strip themselves to make you gay:
For ne’r yet herald did display
A coat, where SABLES upon ERMIN lay.
V.
This for lay-lovers, that must stand at dore, Salute the threshold, and admire no more; But I, in my invention tough,
Rate not this outward bliss enough, But still contemplate must the hidden muffe.
A BLACK PATCH<65.1> ON LUCASTA’S FACE.
Dull as I was, to think that a court fly Presum’d so neer her eye;
When ’twas th’ industrious bee Mistook her glorious face for paradise, To summe up all his chymistry of spice;
With a brave pride and honour led, Neer both her suns he makes his bed,
And, though a spark, struggles to rise as red. Then aemulates the gay
Daughter of day;
Acts the romantick phoenix’ fate, When now, with all his sweets lay’d out in state, LUCASTA scatters but one heat,
And all the aromatick pills do sweat, And gums calcin’d themselves to powder beat, Which a fresh gale of air
Conveys into her hair;
Then chaft, he’s set on fire,
And in these holy flames doth glad expire; And that black marble tablet there
So neer her either sphere
Was plac’d; nor foyl, nor ornament, But the sweet little bee’s large monument.
<65.1> The following is a poet’s lecture to the ladies of his time on the long prevailing practice of wearing patches, in which it seems that Lucasta acquiesced:–
BLACK PATCHES.
VANITAS VANITATUM.
LADIES turn conjurers, and can impart The hidden mystery of the black art,
Black artificial patches do betray; They more affect the works of night than day. The creature strives the Creator to disgrace, By patching that which is a perfect face: A little stain upon the purest dye
Is both offensive to the heart and eye. Defile not then with spots that face of snow, Where the wise God His workmanship doth show, The light of nature and the light of grace Is the complexion for a lady’s face.
FLAMMA SINE FUMO, by R. Watkyns, 1662, p. 81.
In a poem entitled THE BURSSE OF REFORMATION, in praise of the New Exchange, printed in WIT RESTORED, 1658, patches are enumerated among the wares of all sorts to be procured there:–
“Heer patches are of every cut,
For pimples and for scars.”
They were also used for rheum, as appears from a passage in WESTWARD HOE, 1607:–
“JUDITH. I am so troubled with the rheum too. Mouse, what’s good for it?
HONEY. How often I have told you you must get a patch.” Webster’s WORKS, ed. Hazlitt, i. 87. See Durfey’s PILLS TO PURGE MELANCHOLY, v. 197.
“Mrs. Pepys wore patches, and so did my Lady Sandwich and her daughter.”–DIARY, 30 Aug. and 20 Oct. 1660.
ANOTHER.
I.
As I beheld a winter’s evening air, Curl’d in her court-false-locks of living hair, Butter’d with jessamine the sun left there.
II.
Galliard and clinquant she appear’d to give, A serenade or ball to us that grieve,
And teach us A LA MODE more gently live.
III.
But as a Moor, who to her cheeks prefers White spots, t’ allure her black idolaters, Me thought she look’d all ore-bepatch’d with stars.
IV.
Like the dark front of some Ethiopian queen, Vailed all ore with gems of red, blew, green, Whose ugly night seem’d masked with days skreen.
V.
Whilst the fond people offer’d sacrifice To saphyrs, ‘stead of veins and arteries, And bow’d unto the diamonds, not her eyes.
VI.
Behold LUCASTA’S face, how’t glows like noon! A sun intire is her complexion,
And form’d of one whole constellation.
VII.
So gently shining, so serene, so cleer, Her look doth universal Nature cheer;
Only a cloud or two hangs here and there.
TO LUCASTA.
I.
I laugh and sing, but cannot tell
Whether the folly on’t sounds well; But then I groan,
Methinks, in tune;
Whilst grief, despair and fear dance to the air Of my despised prayer.
II.
A pretty antick love does this,
Then strikes a galliard with a kiss; As in the end
The chords they rend;
So you but with a touch from your fair hand Turn all to saraband.
TO LUCASTA.
I.
Like to the sent’nel stars, I watch all night; For still the grand round of your light And glorious breast
Awake<66.1> in me an east:
Nor will my rolling eyes ere know a west.
II.
Now on my down I’m toss’d as on a wave, And my repose is made my grave;
Fluttering I lye,
Do beat my self and dye,
But for a resurrection from your eye.
III.
Ah, my fair murdresse! dost thou cruelly heal With various pains to make me well?
Then let me be
Thy cut anatomie,
And in each mangled part my heart you’l see.
<66.1> Original has AWAKES.
LUCASTA AT THE BATH.
I.
I’ th’ autumn of a summer’s day,
When all the winds got leave to play, LUCASTA, that fair ship, is lanch’d,
And from its crust this almond blanch’d.
II.
Blow then, unruly northwind, blow,
‘Till in their holds your eyes you stow; And swell your cheeks, bequeath chill death; See! she hath smil’d thee out of breath.
III.
Court, gentle zephyr, court and fan Her softer breast’s carnation wan;
Your charming rhethorick of down
Flyes scatter’d from before her frown.
IV.
Say, my white water-lilly, say,
How is’t those warm streams break away, Cut by thy chast cold breast, which dwells Amidst them arm’d in isicles?
V.
And the hot floods, more raging grown, In flames of thee then in their own,
In their distempers wildly glow,
And kisse thy pillar of fix’d snow.
VI.
No sulphur, through whose each blew vein The thick and lazy currents strein,
Can cure the smarting nor the fell
Blisters of love, wherewith they swell.
VII.
These great physicians of the blind, The lame, and fatal blains of Inde
In every drop themselves now see
Speckled with a new leprosie.
VIII.
As sick drinks are with old wine dash’d, Foul waters too with spirits wash’d,
Thou greiv’d, perchance, one tear let’st fall, Which straight did purifie them all.
IX.
And now is cleans’d enough the flood, Which since runs cleare as doth thy blood; Of the wet pearls uncrown thy hair,
And mantle thee with ermin air.
X.
Lucasta, hail! fair conqueresse
Of fire, air, earth and seas!
Thou whom all kneel to, yet even thou Wilt unto love, thy captive, bow.
THE ANT.<67.1>
I.
Forbear, thou great good husband, little ant; A little respite from thy flood of sweat! Thou, thine own horse and cart under this plant, Thy spacious tent, fan thy prodigious heat; Down with thy double load of that one grain! It is a granarie for all thy train.
II.
Cease, large example of wise thrift, awhile (For thy example is become our law),
And teach thy frowns a seasonable smile: So Cato sometimes the nak’d Florals saw.<67.2>
And thou, almighty foe, lay by thy sting, Whilst thy unpay’d musicians, crickets, sing.
III.
LUCASTA, she that holy makes the day, And ‘stills new life in fields of fueillemort,<67.3>
Hath back restor’d their verdure with one ray, And with her eye bid all to play and sport, Ant, to work still! age will thee truant call; And to save now, th’art worse than prodigal.
IV.
Austere and cynick! not one hour t’ allow, To lose with pleasure, what thou gotst with pain; But drive on sacred festivals thy plow,
Tearing high-ways with thy ore-charged wain. Not all thy life-time one poor minute live, And thy ore-labour’d bulk with mirth relieve?
V.
Look up then, miserable ant, and spie Thy fatal foes, for breaking of their<67.4> law,
Hov’ring above thee: Madam MARGARET PIE: And her fierce servant, meagre Sir JOHN DAW: Thy self and storehouse now they do store up, And thy whole harvest too within their crop.
VI.
Thus we unt[h]rifty thrive within earth’s tomb For some more rav’nous and ambitious jaw: The grain in th’ ant’s, the ant<67.5> in the pie’s womb,
The pie in th’ hawk’s, the hawk<67.6> ith’ eagle’s maw.
So scattering to hord ‘gainst a long day, Thinking to save all, we cast all away.
<67.1> A writer in CENSURA LITERARIA, x. 292 (first edit.)–the late E. V. Utterson, Esq.–highly praises this little poem, and says that it is not unworthy of Cowper. I think it highly probable that the translation from Martial (lib. vi. Ep. 15), at the end of the present volume, was executed prior to the composition of these lines; and that the latter were suggested by the former. Compare the beautiful description of the ant in the PROVERBS OF SOLOMON:–“Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise: which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.–PROVERBS, vi. 6-8.
In the poems of John Cleveland, 1669, is a piece entitled “Fuscara, or the Bee Errant,” which is of a somewhat similar character, and is by no means a contemptible production, though spoiled by that LUES ALCHYMISTICA which disfigures so much of the poetry of Cleveland’s time. The abilities of Cleveland as a writer seem to have been underrated by posterity, in proportion to the undue praise lavished upon him by his contemporaries.
<67.2> The Floralia, games antiently celebrated at Rome in honour of Flora.
<67.3> Here used for DEAD OR FADED VEGETATION, but strictly it means DEAD OR FADED LEAF. FILEMORT is another form of the same word.
<67.4> Original has HER.
<67.5> Original reads ANTS.
<67.6> Original reads HAWKS.
SONG.
I.
Strive not, vain lover, to be fine; Thy silk’s the silk-worm’s, and not thine: You lessen to a fly your mistriss’ thought, To think it may be in a cobweb caught.
What, though her thin transparent lawn Thy heart in a strong net hath drawn:
Not all the arms the god of fire ere made Can the soft bulwarks of nak’d love invade.
II.
Be truly fine, then, and yourself dress In her fair soul’s immac’late glass.
Then by reflection you may have the bliss Perhaps to see what a true fineness is;
When all your gawderies will fit
Those only that are poor in wit.
She that a clinquant outside doth adore, Dotes on a gilded statue and no more.
IN ALLUSION TO THE FRENCH SONG.
N’ ENTENDEZ VOUS PAS CE LANGUAGE.
CHORUS.
THEN UNDERSTAND YOU NOT (FAIR CHOICE) THIS LANGUAGE WITHOUT TONGUE OR VOICE?
I.
How often have my tears
Invaded your soft ears,
And dropp’d their silent chimes
A thousand thousand times?
Whilst echo did your eyes,
And sweetly sympathize;
But that the wary lid
Their sluces did forbid.
Cho. THEN UNDERSTAND YOU NOT (FAIR CHOICE) THIS LANGUAGE WITHOUT TONGUE OR VOICE?
II.
My arms did plead my wound,
Each in the other bound;
Volleys of sighs did crowd,
And ring my griefs alowd;
Grones, like a canon-ball,
Batter’d the marble wall,
That the kind neighb’ring grove
Did mutiny for love.
Cho. THEN UNDERSTAND YOU NOT (FAIR CHOICE) THIS LANGUAGE WITHOUT TONGUE OR VOICE?
III.
The rheth’rick of my hand
Woo’d you to understand;
Nay, in our silent walk
My very feet would talk;
My knees were eloquent,
And spake the love I meant;
But deaf unto that ayr,
They, bent, would fall in prayer.
Cho. YET UNDERSTAND YOU NOT (FAIR CHOICE) THIS LANGUAGE WITHOUT TONGUE OR VOICE?
IV.
No? Know, then, I would melt
On every limb I felt,
And on each naked part
Spread my expanded heart,
That not a vein of thee
But should be fill’d with mee.
Whilst on thine own down, I
Would tumble, pant, and dye.
Cho. YOU UNDERSTAND NOT THIS (FAIR CHOICE); THIS LANGUAGE WANTS BOTH TONGUE AND VOICE.
COURANTE<68.1> MONSIEUR.
That frown, Aminta, now hath drown’d Thy bright front’s pow’r, and crown’d
Me that was bound.
No, no, deceived cruel, no!
Love’s fiery darts,
Till tipt with kisses, never kindle hearts.
Adieu, weak beauteous tyrant, see!
Thy angry flames meant me,<68.2>
Retort on thee:
For know, it is decreed, proud fair, I ne’r must dye
By any scorching, but a melting, eye.
<68.1> COURANTE was a favourite dance and dance-tune. It is still known under the same name.
<68.2> i.e. THAT meant me, which was intended for me.
A LOOSE SARABAND.
I.
Nay, prethee, dear, draw nigher,
Yet closer, nigher yet;
Here is a double fire,
A dry one and a wet.
True lasting heavenly fuel
Puts out the vestal jewel,
When once we twining marry
Mad love with wild canary.
II.
Off with that crowned Venice,<69.1>
‘Till all the house doth flame,
Wee’l quench it straight in Rhenish, Or what we must not name.
Milk lightning still asswageth;
So when our fury rageth,
As th’ only means to cross it,
Wee’l drown it in love’s posset.
III.
Love never was well-willer
Unto my nag or mee,
Ne’r watter’d us ith’ cellar,
But the cheap buttery.
At th’ head of his own barrells,
Where broach’d are all his quarrels, Should a true noble master
Still make his guest his taster.
IV.
See, all the world how’t staggers,
More ugly drunk then we,
As if far gone in daggers
And blood it seem’d to be.
We drink our glass of roses,
Which nought but sweets discloses:
Then in our loyal chamber
Refresh us with love’s amber.
V.
Now tell me, thou fair cripple,
That dumb canst scarcely see
Th’ almightinesse of tipple,
And th’ ods ‘twixt thee and thee,
What of Elizium’s missing,
Still drinking and still kissing;
Adoring plump October;
Lord! what is man, and<69.2> sober?
VI.
Now, is there such a trifle
As honour, the fools gyant,
What is there left to rifle,
When wine makes all parts plyant?
Let others glory follow,
In their false riches wallow,
And with their grief be merry:
Leave me but love and sherry.
<69.1> QU. a crowned goblet of Venice glass.
<69.2> i.e. if.
THE FALCON.
Fair Princesse of the spacious air,
That hast vouchsaf’d acquaintance here, With us are quarter’d below stairs,
That can reach heav’n with nought but pray’rs; Who, when our activ’st wings we try,
Advance a foot into the sky.
Bright heir t’ th’ bird imperial,
From whose avenging penons fall
Thunder and lightning twisted spun! Brave cousin-german to the Sun!
That didst forsake thy throne and sphere, To be an humble pris’ner here;
And for a pirch of her soft hand,
Resign the royal woods’ command.
How often would’st thou shoot heav’ns ark, Then mount thy self into a lark;
And after our short faint eyes call, When now a fly, now nought at all!
Then stoop so swift unto our sence, As thou wert sent intelligence!
Free beauteous slave, thy happy feet In silver fetters vervails<70.1> meet,
And trample on that noble wrist,
The gods have kneel’d in vain t’ have kist. But gaze not, bold deceived spye,
Too much oth’ lustre of her eye;
The Sun thou dost out stare, alas!
Winks at the glory of her face.
Be safe then in thy velvet helm,
Her looks are calms that do orewhelm, Then the Arabian bird more blest,
Chafe in the spicery of her breast, And loose you in her breath a wind
Sow’rs the delicious gales of Inde.
But now a quill from thine own wing
I pluck, thy lofty fate to sing;
Whilst we behold the varions fight
With mingled pleasure and affright; The humbler hinds do fall to pray’r,
As when an army’s seen i’ th’ air,
And the prophetick spannels run,
And howle thy epicedium.
The heron mounted doth appear
On his own Peg’sus a lanceer,
And seems, on earth when he doth hut, A proper halberdier on foot;
Secure i’ th’ moore, about to sup,
The dogs have beat his quarters up.
And now he takes the open air,
Drawes up his wings with tactick care; Whilst th’ expert falcon swift doth climbe In subtle mazes serpentine;
And to advantage closely twin’d
She gets the upper sky and wind,
Where she dissembles to invade,
And lies a pol’tick ambuscade.
The hedg’d-in heron, whom the foe
Awaits above, and dogs below,
In his fortification lies,
And makes him ready for surprize;
When roused with a shrill alarm,
Was shouted from beneath: they arm.
The falcon charges at first view
With her brigade of talons, through Whose shoots, the wary heron beat
With a well counterwheel’d retreat. But the bold gen’ral, never lost,
Hath won again her airy post;
Who, wild in this affront, now fryes, Then gives a volley of her eyes.
The desp’rate heron now contracts
In one design all former facts;
Noble, he is resolv’d to fall,
His and his en’mies funerall,
And (to be rid of her) to dy,
A publick martyr of the sky.
When now he turns his last to wreak
The palizadoes of his beak,
The raging foe impatient,
Wrack’d with revenge, and fury rent, Swift as the thunderbolt he strikes
Too sure upon the stand of pikes;
There she his naked breast doth hit, And on the case of rapiers’s split.
But ev’n in her expiring pangs
The heron’s pounc’d within her phangs, And so above she stoops to rise,
A trophee and a sacrifice;
Whilst her own bells in the sad fall Ring out the double funerall.
Ah, victory, unhap’ly wonne!
Weeping and red is set the Sun;
Whilst the whole field floats in one tear, And all the air doth mourning wear.
Close-hooded all thy kindred come
To pay their vows upon thy tombe;
The hobby<70.2> and the musket<70.3> too
Do march to take their last adieu.
The lanner<70.4> and the lanneret<70.5>
Thy colours bear as banneret;
The GOSHAWK and her TERCEL<70.6> rows’d
With tears attend thee as new bows’d, All these are in their dark array,
Led by the various herald-jay.
But thy eternal name shall live
Whilst quills from ashes fame reprieve, Whilst open stands renown’s wide dore,
And wings are left on which to soar; Doctor robbin, the prelate pye,
And the poetick swan, shall dye,
Only to sing thy elegie.
<70.1> i.e. VERVELS. See Halliwell’s DICTIONARY OF ARCHAIC AND PROVINCIAL WORDS, art. VERVEL.
<70.2> A kind of falcon. It is the FALCO SUBBUTEO of Linnaeus. Lyly, in his EUPHUES (1579, fol. 28), makes Lucilla say– “No birde can looke agains the Sunne, but those that bee bredde of the eagle, neyther any hawke soare so hie as the broode of the hobbie.”
“Then rouse thee, muse, each little hobby plies At scarabes and painted butterflies.” Wither’s ABUSES STRIPT AND WHIPT, 1613.
<70.3> The young male sparrow-hawk.
<70.4> The FALCO LANIARIUS of Linnaeus.
<70.5> The female of the LANNER. Latham (Faulconrie, lib. ii. chap. v. ed. 1658), explains the difference between the LANNER and the GOSHAWK.
<70.6> Here used for the female of the goshawk. TIERCEL and TASSEL are other forms of the same word. See Strutt’s SPORTS AND PASTIMES, ed. Hone, 1845, p. 37.
LOVE MADE IN THE FIRST AGE.
TO CHLORIS.
I.
In the nativity of time,
Chloris! it was not thought a crime In direct Hebrew for to woe.
Now wee make love, as all on fire,
Ring retrograde our lowd desire,
And court in English backward too.
II.
Thrice happy was that golden age,
When complement was constru’d rage, And fine words in the center hid;
When cursed NO stain’d no maid’s blisse, And all discourse was summ’d in YES,
And nought forbad, but to forbid.
III.<71.1>
Love then unstinted love did sip,
And cherries pluck’d fresh from the lip, On cheeks and roses free he fed;
Lasses, like Autumne plums, did drop, And lads indifferently did drop
A flower and a maiden-head.
IV.
Then unconfined each did tipple
Wine from the bunch, milk from the nipple; Paps tractable as udders were.
Then equally the wholsome jellies
Were squeez’d from olive-trees and bellies: Nor suits of trespasse did they fear.
V.
A fragrant bank of strawberries,
Diaper’d with violets’ eyes,
Was table, table-cloth and fare;
No palace to the clouds did swell,
Each humble princesse then did dwell In the Piazza of her hair.
VI.
Both broken faith and th’ cause of it, All-damning gold, was damn’d to th’ pit; Their troth seal’d with a clasp and kisse, Lasted until that extreem day,
In which they smil’d their souls away, And in each other breath’d new blisse.
VII.
Because no fault, there was no tear; No grone did grate the granting ear,
No false foul breath, their del’cat smell. No serpent kiss poyson’d the tast,
Each touch was naturally chast,
And their mere Sense a Miracle.
VIII.
Naked as their own innocence,
And unembroyder’d from offence,
They went, above poor riches, gay; On softer than the cignet’s down,
In beds they tumbled off their own: For each within the other lay.
IX.
Thus did they live: thus did they love, Repeating only joyes above,
And angels were but with cloaths on, Which they would put off cheerfully,
To bathe them in the Galaxie,
Then gird them with the heavenly zone.
X.
Now, Chloris! miserably crave
The offer’d blisse you would not have, Which evermore I must deny:
Whilst ravish’d with these noble dreams, And crowned with mine own soft beams,
Injoying of my self I lye.
<71.1> This and the succeeding stanza are omitted by Mr. Singer in his reprint.
TO A LADY WITH CHILD THAT ASK’D AN OLD SHIRT.<72.1>
And why an honour’d ragged shirt, that shows, Like tatter’d ensigns, all its bodie’s blows? Should it be swathed in a vest so dire,
It were enough to set the child on fire; Dishevell’d queen[s] should strip them of their hair, And in it mantle the new rising heir:
Nor do I know ought worth to wrap it in, Except my parchment upper-coat of skin;
And then expect no end of its chast tears, That first was rowl’d in down, now furs of bears.
But since to ladies ‘t hath a custome been Linnen to send, that travail and lye in; To the nine sempstresses, my former friends, I su’d; but they had nought but shreds and ends. At last, the jolli’st of the three times three Rent th’ apron from her smock, and gave it me; ‘Twas soft and gentle, subt’ly spun, no doubt; Pardon my boldnese, madam; HERE’S THE CLOUT.
<72.1> A portion of this little poem is quoted in Brand’s POPULAR ANTIQUITIES (edit. 1849, ii. 70), as an illustration of the custom to which it refers. No second example of such an usage seems to have been known to Brand and his editors.
<
following passage in the old morality of THE MARRIAGE OF WIT AND WISDOM (circa 1570) has come under my notice:–
“INDULGENCE [to her son WIT].
Well, yet before the goest, hold heare MY BLESSING IN A CLOUTE,
WELL FARE THE MOTHER AT A NEEDE, Stand to thy tackling stout.”
The allusion is to the contemplated marriage of WIT to his betrothed, WISDOM.
SONG.
I.
In mine one monument I lye,
And in my self am buried;
Sure, the quick lightning of her eye Melted my soul ith’ scabberd dead;
And now like some pale ghost I walk, And with another’s spirit talk.
II.
Nor can her beams a heat convey,
That may my frozen bosome warm,
Unless her smiles have pow’r, as they, That a cross charm can countercharm.
But this is such a pleasing pain,
I’m loth to be alive again.
ANOTHER.
I did believe I was in heav’n,
When first the heav’n her self was giv’n, That in my heart her beams did passe
As some the sun keep in a glasse,
So that her beauties thorow me
Did hurt my rival-enemy.
But fate, alas! decreed it so,
That I was engine to my woe:
For, as a corner’d christal spot,
My heart diaphanous was not;
But solid stuffe, where her eye flings Quick fire upon the catching strings:
Yet, as at triumphs in the night,
You see the Prince’s Arms in light, So, when I once was set on flame,
I burnt all ore the letters of her name.
ODE.
I.
You are deceiv’d; I sooner may, dull fair, Seat a dark Moor in Cassiopea’s<73.1> chair,
Or on the glow-worm’s uselesse light Bestow the watching flames of night,
Or give the rose’s breath
To executed death,
Ere the bright hiew
Of verse to you;
It is just Heaven on beauty stamps a fame, And we, alas! its triumphs but proclaim.
II.
What chains but are too light for me, should I Say that Lucasta in strange arms could lie? Or that Castara<73.2> were impure;
Or Saccarisa’s<73.3> faith unsure?
That Chloris’ love, as hair,
Embrac’d each en’mies air;
That all their good
Ran in their blood?
‘Tis the same wrong th’ unworthy to inthrone, As from her proper sphere t’ have vertue thrown.
III.
That strange force on the ignoble hath renown; As AURUM FULMINANS, it blows vice down.
‘Twere better (heavy one) to crawl Forgot, then raised, trod on [to] fall. All your defections now
Are not writ on your brow;
Odes to faults give
A shame must live.
When a fat mist we view, we coughing run; But, that once meteor drawn, all cry: undone.
IV.
How bright the fair Paulina<73.4> did appear,
When hid in jewels she did seem a star! But who could soberly behold
A wicked owl in cloath of gold,
Or the ridiculous Ape
In sacred Vesta’s shape?
So doth agree
Just praise with thee:
For since thy birth gave thee no beauty, know, No poets pencil must or can do so.
<73.1> The constellation so called. In old drawings Cassiopeia is represented as a woman sitting in a chair with a branch in her hand, and hence the allusion here. Dixon, in his CANIDIA, 1683, part i. p. 35, makes his witches say:–
“We put on Berenice’s hair,
And sit in Cassiopeia’s chair.”
Randolph couples it with “Ariadne’s Crowne” in the following passage:–
“Shine forth a constellation, full and bright, Bless the poor heavens with more majestick light, Who in requitall shall present you there ARIADNE’S CROWNE and CASSIOPEIA’S CHAYR.” POEMS, ed. 1640, p. 14.
<73.2> William Habington published his poems under the name of CASTARA, a fictitious appellation signifying the daughter of Lord Powis. This lady was eventually his wife. The first edition of CASTARA appeared in 1634, the second in 1635, and the third in 1640.
<73.3> Waller’s SACHARISSA, i.e. Lady Dorothy Sydney.
<73.4> Lollia Paulina, who first married Memmius Regulus, and subsequently the Emperor Caligula, from both of whom she was divorced. She inherited from her father enormous wealth.
THE DUELL.
I.
Love drunk, the other day, knockt at my brest, But I, alas! was not within.
My man, my ear, told me he came t’ attest, That without cause h’d boxed him,
And battered the windows of mine eyes, And took my heart for one of’s nunneries.
II.
I wondred at the outrage safe return’d, And stormed at the base affront;
And by a friend of mine, bold faith, that burn’d, I called him to a strict accompt.
He said that, by the law, the challeng’d might Take the advantage both of arms and fight.
III.
Two darts of equal length and points he sent, And nobly gave the choyce to me,
Which I not weigh’d, young and indifferent, Now full of nought but victorie.
So we both met in one of’s mother’s groves, The time, at the first murm’ring of her doves.
IV.
I stript myself naked all o’re, as he: For so I was best arm’d, when bare.
His first pass did my liver rase: yet I Made home a falsify<74.1> too neer:
For when my arm to its true distance came, I nothing touch’d but a fantastick flame.
V.
This, this is love we daily quarrel so, An idle Don-Quichoterie:
We whip our selves with our own twisted wo, And wound the ayre for a fly.
The only way t’ undo this enemy
Is to laugh at the boy, and he will cry.
<74.1> “To falsify a thrust,” says Phillips (WORLD OF WORDS, ed. 1706, art. FALSIFY), “is to make a feigned pass.” Lovelace here employs the word as a substantive rather awkwardly; but the meaning is, no doubt, the same.
CUPID FAR GONE.
I.
What, so beyond all madnesse is the elf, Now he hath got out of himself!
His fatal enemy the Bee,
Nor his deceiv’d artillerie,
His shackles, nor the roses bough
Ne’r half so netled him, as he is now.
II.<75.1>
See! at’s own mother he is offering; His finger now fits any ring;
Old Cybele he would enjoy,
And now the girl, and now the boy. He proffers Jove a back caresse,
And all his love in the antipodes.
III.
Jealous of his chast Psyche, raging he Quarrels with<75.2> student Mercurie,
And with a proud submissive breath Offers to change his darts with Death.
He strikes at the bright eye of day, And Juno tumbles in her milky way.
IV.
The dear sweet secrets of the gods he tells, And with loath’d hate lov’d heaven he swells; Now, like a fury, he belies
Myriads of pure virginities,
And swears, with this false frenzy hurl’d, There’s not a vertuous she in all the world.
V.
Olympus he renownces, then descends, And makes a friendship with the fiends; Bids Charon be no more a slave,
He Argos rigg’d with stars shall have, And triple Cerberus from below
Must leash’d t’ himself with him a hunting go.
<75.1> This stanza was suppressed by Mr. Singer.
<75.2> Original reads THE.
A MOCK SONG.
I.
Now Whitehall’s in the grave,
And our head is our slave,
The bright pearl in his close shell of oyster; Now the miter is lost,
The proud Praelates, too, crost,
And all Rome’s confin’d to a cloister. He, that Tarquin was styl’d,
Our white land’s exil’d,
Yea, undefil’d;
Not a court ape’s left to confute us; Then let your voyces rise high,
As your colours did flye,
And flour’shing cry:
Long live the brave Oliver-Brutus.<76.1>
II.
Now the sun is unarm’d,
And the moon by us charm’d,
All the stars dissolv’d to a jelly; Now the thighs of the Crown
And the arms are lopp’d down,
And the body is all but a belly.
Let the Commons go on,
The town is our own,
We’l rule alone:
For the Knights have yielded their spent-gorge; And an order is tane
With HONY SOIT profane,
Shout forth amain:
For our Dragon hath vanquish’d the St. George.
<76.1> Cromwell.
A FLY CAUGHT IN A COBWEB.
Small type of great ones, that do hum Within this whole world’s narrow room,
That with a busie hollow noise
Catch at the people’s vainer voice, And with spread sails play with their breath, Whose very hails new christen death.
Poor Fly, caught in an airy net,
Thy wings have fetter’d now thy feet; Where, like a Lyon in a toyl,
Howere thou keep’st a noble coyl,
And beat’st thy gen’rous breast, that o’re The plains thy fatal buzzes rore,
Till thy all-bellyd foe (round elf<77.1>)
Hath quarter’d thee within himself.
Was it not better once to play
I’ th’ light of a majestick ray,
Where, though too neer and bold, the fire Might sindge thy upper down attire,
And thou i’ th’ storm to loose an eye. A wing, or a self-trapping thigh:
Yet hadst thou fal’n like him, whose coil Made fishes in the sea to broyl,
When now th’ast scap’d the noble flame; Trapp’d basely in a slimy frame,
And free of air, thou art become
Slave to the spawn of mud and lome?
Nor is’t enough thy self do’s dresse To thy swoln lord a num’rous messe,
And by degrees thy thin veins bleed, And piecemeal dost his poyson feed;
But now devour’d, art like to be
A net spun for thy familie,
And, straight expanded in the air,
Hang’st for thy issue too a snare.
Strange witty death and cruel ill
That, killing thee, thou thine dost kill! Like pies, in whose entombed ark
All fowl crowd downward to a lark,
Thou art thine en’mies’ sepulcher,
And in thee buriest, too, thine heir.
Yet Fates a glory have reserv’d
For one so highly hath deserv’d.
As the rhinoceros doth dy
Under his castle-enemy,
As through the cranes trunk throat doth speed, The aspe doth on his feeder feed;
Fall yet triumphant in thy woe,
Bound with the entrails of thy foe.
<77.1> The spider.
A FLY ABOUT A GLASSE OF BURNT CLARET.
I.
Forbear this liquid fire, Fly,
It is more fatal then the dry,
That singly, but embracing, wounds; And this at once both burns and drowns.
II.
The salamander, that in heat
And flames doth cool his monstrous sweat, Whose fan a glowing cake is said,
Of this red furnace is afraid.
III.
Viewing the ruby-christal shine,
Thou tak’st it for heaven-christalline; Anon thou wilt be taught to groan:
‘Tis an ascended Acheron.
IV.
A snow-ball heart in it let fall,
And take it out a fire-ball;
Ali icy breast in it betray’d
Breaks a destructive wild granade.
V.
‘Tis this makes Venus altars shine, This kindles frosty Hymen’s pine;
When the boy grows old in his desires, This flambeau doth new light his fires.
VI.
Though the cold hermit over wail,
Whose sighs do freeze, and tears drop hail, Once having pass’d this, will ne’r
Another flaming purging fear.
VII.
The vestal drinking this doth burn
Now more than in her fun’ral urn;
Her fires, that with the sun kept race, Are now extinguish’d by her face.
VIII.
The chymist, that himself doth still,<78.1>
Let him but tast this limbecks<78.2> bill,
And prove this sublimated bowl,
He’ll swear it will calcine a soul.
IX.
Noble, and brave! now thou dost know The false prepared decks below,
Dost thou the fatal liquor sup,
One drop, alas! thy barque blowes up.
X.
What airy country hast to save,
Whose plagues thou’lt bury in thy grave? For even now thou seem’st to us
On this gulphs brink a Curtius.
XI.
And now th’ art faln (magnanimous Fly) In, where thine Ocean doth fry,
Like the Sun’s son, who blush’d the flood To a complexion of blood.
XII.
Yet, see! my glad auricular
Redeems thee (though dissolv’d) a star, Flaggy<78.3> thy wings, and scorch’d thy thighs, Thou ly’st a double sacrifice.
XIII.
And now my warming, cooling breath
Shall a new life afford in death;
See! in the hospital of my hand
Already cur’d, thou fierce do’st stand.
XIV.
Burnt insect! dost thou reaspire
The moist-hot-glasse and liquid fire? I see ’tis such a pleasing pain,
Thou would’st be scorch’d and drown’d again.
<78.1> i.e. distil.
<78.2> Lovelace was by no means peculiar in the fondness which he has shown in this poem and elsewhere for figures drawn from the language of alchemy.
“Retire into thy grove of eglantine, Where I will all those ravished sweets distill Through Love’s alembic, and with chemic skill From the mix’d mass one sovereign balm derive.” Carew’s POEMS (1640), ed. 1772, p. 77.
“—-I will try
From the warm limbeck of my eye, In such a method to distil
Tears on thy marble nature—-“
Shirley’s POEMS (Works by Dyce, vi. 407).
“Nature’s Confectioner, the BEE,
Whose suckers are moist ALCHYMIE, The still of his refining Mould,
Minting the garden into gold.”
Cleveland’s POEMS, ed. 1669, p. 4.
“Fisher is here with purple wing,
Who brings me to the Spring-head, where Crystall is Lymbeckt all the year.”
Lord Westmoreland’s OTIA SACRA, 1648, p. 137,
<78.3> WEAK. The word was once not very uncommon in writings. Bacon, Spenser, &c. use it; but it is now, I believe, confined to Somersetshire and the bordering counties.
“LUKE. A south wind
Shall sooner soften marble, and the rain, That slides down gently from his flaggy wings, O’erflow the Alps.”
Massinger’s CITY MADAM, 1658.
FEMALE GLORY.
Mongst the worlds wonders, there doth yet remain One greater than the rest, that’s all those o’re again, And her own self beside: A Lady, whose soft breast Is with vast honours soul and virtues life possest. Fair as original light first from the chaos shot, When day in virgin-beams triumph’d, and night was not, And as that breath infus’d in the new-breather good, When ill unknown was dumb, and bad not understood; Chearful, as that aspect at this world’s finishing, When cherubims clapp’d wings, and th’ sons of Heaven did sing; Chast as th’ Arabian bird, who all the ayr denyes,<79.1>
And ev’n in flames expires, when with her selfe she lyes. Oh! she’s as kind as drops of new faln April showers, That on each gentle breast spring fresh perfuming flowers; She’s constant, gen’rous, fixt; she’s calm, she is the all We can of vertue, honour, faith, or glory call, And she is (whom I thus transmit to endless fame) Mistresse oth’ world and me, and LAURA is her name.
<79.1> The Phoenix.
A DIALOGUE.
LUTE AND VOICE.
L. Sing, Laura, sing, whilst silent are the sphears, And all the eyes of Heaven are turn’d to ears.
V. Touch thy dead wood, and make each living tree Unchain its feet, take arms, and follow thee.
CHORUS.
L. Sing. V. Touch. 0 Touch. L. 0 Sing. BOTH. It is the souls, souls sole offering.
V. Touch the divinity of thy chords, and make Each heart string tremble, and each sinew shake.
L. Whilst with your voyce you rarifie the air, None but an host of angels hover here.
CHORUS. SING, TOUCH, &c.
V. Touch thy soft lute, and in each gentle thread The lyon and the panther captive lead.
L. Sing, and in heav’n inthrone deposed love, Whilst angels dance, and fiends in order move.
DOUBLE CHORUS.
What sacred charm may this then be In harmonie,
That thus can make the angels wild, The devils mild,
And teach<80.1> low hell to heav’n to swell,
And the high heav’n to stoop to hell?
<80.1> Original and Singer read REACH.
A MOCK CHARON.
DIALOGUE.
CHA. W.
W. Charon! thou slave! thou fooll! thou cavaleer!<81.1>
CHA. A slave! a fool! what traitor’s voice I hear? W. Come bring thy boat. CH. No, sir. W. No! sirrah, why? CHA. The blest will disagree, and fiends will mutiny At thy, at thy [un]numbred treachery. W. Villain, I have a pass which who disdains, I will sequester the Elizian plains. CHA. Woes me, ye gentle shades! where shall I dwell? He’s come! It is not safe to be in hell.
CHORUS.
Thus man, his honor lost, falls on these shelves; Furies and fiends are still true to themselves.
CHA. You must, lost fool, come in. W. Oh, let me in! But now I fear thy boat will sink with my ore-weighty sin. Where, courteous Charon, am I now? CHA. Vile rant!<81.2>
At the gates of thy supreme Judge Rhadamant.
DOUBLE CHORUS OF DIVELS.
Welcome to rape, to theft, to perjurie, To all the ills thou wert, we canot hope to be; Oh, pitty us condemned! Oh, cease to wooe, And softly, softly breath, least you infect us too.
<81.1> This word is used here merely to denote a GALLANT, a FELLOW. From being in its primitive sense a most honourable appellation, it became, during and after the civil war between Charles and the Parliament, a term of equivocal import.
<81.2> Here equivalent to RANTER, and used for the sake of the metre.
THE TOAD AND SPYDER.
A DUELL.
Upon a day, when the Dog-star
Unto the world proclaim’d a war,
And poyson bark’d from black throat, And from his jaws infection shot,
Under a deadly hen-bane shade
With slime infernal mists are made, Met the two dreaded enemies,
Having their weapons in their eyes.
First from his den rolls forth that load Of spite and hate, the speckl’d toad,
And from his chaps a foam doth spawn, Such as the loathed three heads yawn;
Defies his foe with a fell spit,
To wade through death to meet with it; Then in his self the lymbeck turns,
And his elixir’d poyson urns.
Arachne, once the fear oth’ maid<82.1>
Coelestial, thus unto her pray’d:
Heaven’s blew-ey’d daughter, thine own mother! The Python-killing Sun’s thy brother.
Oh! thou, from gods that didst descend, With a poor virgin to contend,
Shall seed of earth and hell ere be A rival in thy victorie?
Pallas assents: for now long time
And pity had clean rins’d her crime; When straight she doth with active fire
Her many legged foe inspire.
Have you not seen a charact<82.2> lie
A great cathedral in the sea,
Under whose Babylonian walls
A small thin frigot almshouse stalls? So in his slime the toad doth float
And th’ spyder by, but seems his boat. And now the naumachie<82.3> begins;
Close to the surface her self spins: Arachne, when her foe lets flye
A broad-side of his breath too high, That’s over-shot, the wisely-stout,
Advised maid doth tack about;
And now her pitchy barque doth sweat, Chaf’d in her own black fury wet;
Lasie and cold before, she brings
New fires to her contracted stings, And with discolour’d spumes doth blast
The herbs that to their center hast. Now to the neighb’ring henbane top
Arachne hath her self wound up,
And thence, from its dilated leaves, By her own cordage downwards weaves,
And doth her town of foe attack,<82.4>
And storms the rampiers<82.5> of his back;
Which taken in her colours spread,
March to th’ citadel of’s head.
Now as in witty torturing Spain,
The brain is vext to vex the brain, Where hereticks bare heads are arm’d
In a close helm, and in it charm’d
An overgrown and meagre rat,
That peece-meal nibbles himself fat; So on the toads blew-checquer’d scull
The spider gluttons her self full.
And vomiting her Stygian seeds,
Her poyson on his poyson feeds.
Thus the invenom’d toad, now grown
Big with more poyson than his own,
Doth gather all his pow’rs, and shakes His stormer in’s disgorged lakes;
And wounded now, apace crawls on
To his next plantane surgeon,<82.6>
With whose rich balm no sooner drest, But purged is his sick swoln breast;
And as a glorious combatant,
That only rests awhile to pant,
Then with repeated strength and scars, That smarting fire him new to wars,
Deals blows that thick themselves prevent, As they would gain the time he spent.
So the disdaining angry toad,
That calls but a thin useless load, His fatal feared self comes back
With unknown venome fill’d to crack. Th’ amased spider, now untwin’d,
Hath crept up, and her self new lin’d With fresh salt foams and mists, that blast The ambient air as they past.
And now me thinks a Sphynx’s wing
I pluck, and do not write, but sting; With their black blood my pale inks blent,<82.7>
Gall’s but a faint ingredient.
The pol’tick toad doth now withdraw, Warn’d, higher in CAMPANIA.<82.8>
There wisely doth, intrenched deep, His body in a body keep,
And leaves a wide and open pass
T’ invite the foe up to his jaws,
Which there within a foggy blind
With fourscore fire-arms were lin’d. The gen’rous active spider doubts
More ambuscadoes than redoubts;
So within shot she doth pickear,<82.9>
Now gall’s the flank, and now the rear; As that<82.10> the toad in’s own dispite
Must change the manner of his fight, Who, like a glorious general,
With one home-charge lets fly at all. Chaf’d with a fourfold ven’mous foam
Of scorn, revenge, his foes and ‘s own, He seats him in his loathed chair,
New-made him by each mornings air,
With glowing eyes he doth survey
Th’ undaunted hoast he calls his prey; Then his dark spume he gred’ly laps,
And shows the foe his grave, his chaps.
Whilst the quick wary Amazon
Of ‘vantage takes occasion,
And with her troop of leggs carreers In a full speed with all her speers.
Down (as some mountain on a mouse)
On her small cot he flings his house; Without the poyson of the elf,
The toad had like t’ have burst himself: For sage Arachne with good heed
Had stopt herself upon full speed,
And, ‘s body now disorder’d, on
She falls to execution.
The passive toad now only can
Contemn and suffer. Here began
The wronged maids ingenious rage,
Which his heart venome must asswage. One eye she hath spet out, strange smother, When one flame doth put out another,
And one eye wittily spar’d, that he Might but behold his miserie.
She on each spot a wound doth print, And each speck hath a sting within’t;
Till he but one new blister is,
And swells his own periphrasis.
Then fainting, sick, and yellow-pale, She baths him with her sulph’rous stale; Thus slacked is her Stygian fire,
And she vouchsafes now to retire.
Anon the toad begins to pant,
Bethinks him of th’ almighty plant, And lest he peece-meal should be sped,
Wisely doth finish himself dead.
Whilst the gay girl, as was her fate, Doth wanton and luxuriate,
And crowns her conqu’ring head all or With fatal leaves of hellebore.
Not guessing at the pretious aid
Was lent her by the heavenly maid.
The neer expiring toad now rowls
Himself in lazy bloody scrowls,