The Peasant History of Albino and Bellama
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The source of this document is the Early English Books Online (EEBO-TCP) website. Those books were transcribed in a character for character manner and can be very cumbersome to read since there was no standard spelling during that time. Many spelling variations such as "unlesse", "vnlesse", and "vnles" regularly appear.
This project was conceived to clean up those books as much as possible and make them more accessible to the interested reader, leading to the creation of a massive list of variant spellings and their corrections. This was used to clean up the text, but is of course only as complete as the list itself. Because of the nature of the original transcription, some words have missing characters or places where the original language (e.g., Greek) was not transcribed. This effort does not change that. Be aware that the original transcription can also be faulty and in some cases entire sentences may be missing.
Although this is no substitute for a properly compared, proofed, and scholarly edition, I believe that the result is a document which is far more accessible, particularly for searching for terms using standard spelling. The document has been cleaned and presented in what I hope is a pleasing and useful format for the vast majority of Christian brothers and sisters who just want access to read these spiritually nourishing works.
However, a word of warning: The Puritans were a very diverse group of people and their age was characterized with godliness, but also much upheaval, disputation and strife. They disagreed on many doctrines and some of these works contain less orthodox or Scriptural views than others. The reader is strongly advised to read with discernment, particularly if it is unknown whether author is trustworthy.
This project took a huge amount of time and skill to bring to fruition. I would particularly like to thank David Jonescue for the initial list of Puritans he found on EEBO and the concept behind this project as well as the continuous, unceasing efforts toward seeing this complete. Without his labor, this would not be available. Alex Sarrouf was invaluable in providing the initial list of over 7,000 spelling variations he had identified and corrected, as well as continuing to review more than 16,000 additions to that list for any typos.
Logan West
(with David Jonescue and Alex Sarrouf)
www.puritansearch.org
[illustration]
Le Hore di recreatione or The pleasante Historye of ALBINO and BELLAMA to which is annexed il insonio in: sonodado or the vindication of, Poesye by N: W: M: A:
London Printed for Charles Green 1637
Le Hore di recreatione or The pleasante Historye of ALBINO and BELLAMA to which is annexed il insonio in: sonodado or the vindication of, Poesye by N: W: M: A:
London Printed for Charles Green 1637
Le hore direcreatione: OR, THE PLEASANT HISTORIE OF Albino and Bellama.
Discovering the several changes of Fortune, in CUPIDS journey to HYMENS joys.
To which is annexed, Il Insonio Insonadado, or a sleeping-waking Dream, vindicating the divine breath of Poesie from the tonguelashes of some Cynical Poet-quippers, and Stoicall Philo-prosers.
By N. W. Master in Arts, of Queens College in Cambridge.
—Semel in anno ridet Apollo.
Ergo,
Nemeametratibi Musâ composta jocosâ,
Delibatapriùs quám sint contempta relinquas.
LONDON, Printed by J. D. for C. G. and are to be sold at the Princes Arms in Paul's churchyard.
1637.
TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE, RIGHT Worthy, and truly ennobled Hero, JOHN, Lord Loveliss, Baron of HURLEY, N. W. S. P. O.
THE Law-enactors, whilst time feared the rod,
Faign'd in their laws, the presence of a god,
Whose awful nod, & wisdom grave should b
•
As hand and signet unto their decree▪
And such commanding awe that sacred name
Struck in the vulgar breasts, it teen'd a flame
Of Love and duty to their pious hefts.
Thus
Rhadamanthus
in his laws invests
Him, whom profaner times stilled Heavens King▪
Minos
and others strike the self-same string.
The Moral's mine: for in this quirking season
When pride and envy steer the Helme of reason▪
Itis, has with Press-taskers been in use
To press the issue of their prose and Muse
Under the Ensigns of some worthy Peer,
Whose very name unsatyr can a jeer,
And lock detraction up in beds of clay
To sleep their suns as Reare-mice do the day.
Then do they bravely march with honor armed,
Which, as the gods, the people, charmeth, charmed,
On this known privilege feet I these lines,
In which, though dimmer then your native, shines
Your worth, en-fired by my kneed quill,
Which claims the scale not of deserts, but will,
In your acceptance and the worlds surmise
Then Cynics bark and Critekes beam your eyes.
My quill's no pensill to emblason forth
Your stainlesse honor and your matchless worth,
As dust-borne flies which 'bout the candle play
Glide throughits arch, en-circle, fan, survey,
Winke at the presence of days beamy blaze,
Pur on the glass, or on herb-pillows laze,
Just so my downy Muse in Distiques dare
Feet the perfection of a silklesse fair
Pumex each parr so trimly that her foe
Sweares her cheeks roses and her bosom snow,
Nay has strewd flowers of desertlesse praise
T' adorn the Tomb of good Sr worthy Crayse,
Under this (ah me) stone is laid (alas!)
A man,—a knight—the best that ever was
His prowess war, his wisdom state did prove,
His kindness kindred, and the world his love.
But when she should with her weak feathers soar
To court a star, or with her feeble oar
Strike such a sea of worth, ride honors ring.
She dares not touch, or snaffle, sails or wing,
Only as he which limb'd those tears and sighs,
Which
Iphigenias
death, from hearts and eyes
Of kindred drew, but ore her father's brow
(Telling the world he mourud without an how,)
He drew a veil spake sorrow in excess,
So with a—must my muse express
Your sacred worth, concluding it to be
Too high for any Bard, if not, for me,
Beside, the world of late has nicknam'd praise
Calls it an elbow-claw and scraping bayes,
Then pardon (Sir) this dearth, and judge the why
Is your worth soar'd above Parnasse's eye
Let not your slights or
nescio's
(though most just)
Condemne my muse to be en-seild with dust,
Nor let presumption h
•
yste to your embrace
But rather let your honor bate its place
And stoop unto my measures, since the name
Of Patron awes oft times the breath of fame
And by this honor shall you ere en-gage
The knee, hand▪ duty, air and thriving age
Of your honors ever humbly devoted, N. W.
To the Reader.
COurteous Reader: For to such I write,
With native candor view this checkred white,
Be truly eandid to a candidate,
Whom importunings force to ante-date
The travails of his quill, and like a grap
•
Ere ripened, press it, yet if I escape
The censure of these times, this Critick age,
My Muse (like Parrats) in a wyer cage
Shall not do penance; but I will not promise it,
Cause 't doth too much oth' lips of greatness s
••
.
And tis a fault for me to sympathize,
I bring no anticke mask in strange disguize,
No sharp invective, nor no Comick mirth,
Which may to laughter give an easy birth.
Though tis in use with them that seek to please
These humorous times (it being a disease
•
alfe Epidemical, to keep a phrase
Or fancy at staves end, naught merits praise,
Unless with quibbels every staff does end,
Conceited jests, which unto lightness tend)
Though every page swells with ingenuous
•
lots,
Yet cry our carpes, the Authors are but sots.
An Elbow-pillow or a motley coat,
With them are now the chiefest men of note,
But I, nor am, nor hope that name to gain,
Of Panto mimick yet did nature deign,
The Optick-glass of Humours to descrye,
Each man's rank humor only by the eye,
I would have tuned my Muse, that every page,
Might swell with humors suiting to this age,
This leaf should talk of love, and that of stat
•
,
This, of alarums, that of wonders prate,
This of Knights Errante, of Enchantement that,
This to the itching ears of nouels chat,
But—since my starved Fortunes mist that, I have drawn
A picture shadowd ore with double lawne,
Lest some quick Lyncist with a piercing eye,
Should the young foot-steps of a truth espy,
Yet something I confess was borne of late,
(Which makes me age it with an ancient date,
But let no antick-hunter post to
Stow,
To trace out truth upon his even snow,
Annalls are dumb of such and such a Lord,
Nor of our amorous pair speak half a word,
Monastic writs do not
Bellama
lim
Nor Abbey-roules do teeme a line of him,
This story has no syres (as 'tis the use)
But weak invention, and a feeble Muse,
These are the parents, that abortive birth
Give to this Embrion of desired mirth,
Which in the authors name, does humbly crave
A charitable censure or a grave,
The purest-boulted flour that is, has bran.
Venus
her Naeue,
Helen
her stain, nor can,
I think these lines are censure-frec, empalde,
By th' muses, and 'gainst envyes Iavelins mal'd,
Yet where the faults but whisper, use thy pen
With the
quodnon vis
of the Heathen men.
And if the crimes do in loud Ecchoes speak
Thy spunge, but not with lashing Satyrs break
That sacred bond of friendship, for t' may be
I may hereafter do as much for thee,
Nor do thou think to trample on my Muse,
Nor in thy lofty third-air braves accuse
My breast of faintness or the ballad-whine,
For know my heart is full as big as thine,
And as pure fire heats my octavo bulk
As the grand-fclio, or the Reamish bulk
If but opposed with envye but unless
I truly am what these few words express,
Thy ready Friend, N. W.
TO THE RIGHT virtuous and equally beautiful, Sra Inconstanza Bellarizza.
FAIREST,
WHEN by much gazing on those glittering beams,
Which (if unmaskt) from days bright Henchman streams,
The Rascians eyes do gain the curse of years,
The Load-stones swarfie hue their tapers clears.
When Unicorns have gluts or surfeits taine
By browsing Lycoras, they to regain
Their stomachs, and a cure, crash bitter grass:
I leave the application, 'tis a glass
Wherein the dimmest eye may plainly see
What's due to me from you, to you from me.
But—I will only tell the world, that for your sake
My willing Muse this task did underrake
At hours of recreation, when a thought
Of your choice worth, this, and this fancy brought.
Some to the bar will call the truth hereof,
Some wonder why? some pass it by, some scoff,
Because in this full harvest of your sex,
•
mongst such thousands glean your name toannex
Unto, and usher in these wanton verses,
Some will be apt to think my pen rehearses
Love passions 'twixt yourself and some choice he,
(The world I know will not suspect tis me)
And that I age it, lest quick eyes should see;
But in this thought I am silent, thoughts are free.
Indeed your worth doth just proportion hold
With this high worth which of
Bellama's
told,
And well my knowledge can inform my pen
To raise a spite in women, love in men.
And if the Fates befriend me, that my thread
Out-measures yours (your worth asleep, not dead,
For such worth cannot die) I then will say,
You equald her, and was—(but truth away)
If these, dull melancholy, grief, or sleep,
From any prone thereto, at distance keep,
Let unto you their tribute thanks be paid,
For my invention by your worth was rayd,
My fancy raised, enliv'ned and enspir'd,
That my quick Muse my agill hand has tired,
Nay more, me thinks I might unchidden call
You, subject, object of this Poem all,
And all in this acknowledgement may trim,
You pros'd this Poem, but 'twas versed by him
Who stiles himself your servant, N. W.
THE AVTHOVRS APOLOGIE.
SOme rigid Stoic will (I doubt not) shoot
A quipping censure at this wanton fruit,
And say, I better might have used my tallants,
Than tohumor Ladies, and perfumed gallants.
Know such, that pamphlets writ in meeter, measure
As much invention, judgment, wit, as pleasure,
All learning's not locked up in
si's
and
tum's.
Roses, Pinkes, Violets, as well as gums,
Some native fragour have to equal Civet,
Minerva
does not all her treasures rivet
Into the scrues of
Obs
and
Sols:
but we
Are sea-borne birds, and as our pedigree
Came sailing ore from
Normandy
and
Troy,
So we must have our pretty
Ermine
joy.
One part
Italian,
and of
French
the other,
Stout
Belgium
be her Syre, and
Spain
her mother.
So our apparel is so strange and anticke,
That our great grand-syres sure would call us frantic
And should they see us on our knees for blessing,
They'd scue aside, as frighted at our dressing.
We pack so many Nations up, that we
We are
Spain
in waste, and
France
below the knee.
Thus are our backs affected, and indeed
Our brains do travaie with the self-same meed.
We're Chaldees, Hebrews, Latins, Greeks, and yet
But few pure Englishmen are laptin Iet.
We scorn our mother language, and had rather
Say
Pater noster
twice, than once
Our Father.
This makes our Pulpits Linsey-wolsey stut,
When buskind stages in stiff satten strut.
Nay clownes can say, this Parson knows enough,
But that his language does his knowledge blough:
Is it not time to polish then our Welch,
When Hinds and Peasants such invectives belch?
Then English bravely study, 'tis no shame
For grave Divines to win an English fame.
I have heard a worthy man approved for learning,
Say, that in Plays and Rithmes we may be earning
Both wit and knowledge, and that
Sidney-prose
Out-musickes
T
•
lly,
if it scape the nose
Then purged from gall (ingenuous friends) peruse,
And though you chide the Author, spare the Muse.
N. W.
The Author to his Book.
GOe gall-less infant of my teeming Quill,
Not yet bedewd in Syracusa's rill,
And like a forward Plover gadst abroad,
Ere shell-free, or before full age has strowd
On thy smooth back a coat of feathers,
To arm thee 'gainst the force of weathers,
Doomd to the censure of all Ages,
Ere mal'd against the youngest rages,
Perchance some Nobles will thee view,
Smile atthee, on thee, like thee new,
But when white age has wrinkled thee,
Will slight thy measures, laugh at me,
At first view called pritty,
And perchance styled witty
By some Ladies, until thou
Wearest furrows on thy brow.
Some plumed Gallants may
Vnclasp thy leaves and say,
Th'artmirthful, but er
•
long
Give place unto a Song.
Some courteous Scholar
Purg'd from all choller,
May like, but at last,
Say thou spoylst his taste,
First, Lawyers will
Commend thy skil,
Last, throw thy wit
With Trin
•
ts writ
Chamber shees
On their knees
will thee praise,
and thy bayes,
At first,
till thirst
of new
death you,
then all
men shall
Flee
thee
Be
me.
THis is thy doom, I by prophetic spirit,
Presage will be the guerdon of my merit:
Yet be no Burre, no trencher-fly, nor hound,
To fawn on them whose tongs thy measures wound.
Nor beg those niggards eyes, who grudge to see
A watch unwinded in perusing thee.
And if state-scratchers do condemn thy jests,
For ruffling sattens, and bespangled vests,
Tell them they are cosend, and in vain they puff,
Thou neither aim'st at half-ell band or ruffe;
And if thy lines perchance some
Ermins
gash,
It is not thy fault, twas no intended lash.
Thy pensill limbs
Don Fuco's
portraicture,
And only dost his native worth immure
Within these tilick rindes: nor is thy rage
Against the Cow lists of this youngest age.
Thy rhythms cry
Pax
to all, nor dost thou scatter
Abuses on their shrines, their Saints, or water;
And if some civil Satyr lash thee back,
Because he reads my title, sees my black,
Answer ith' Poets phrase, and tell them more,
My tale of years had scarce out-summed a score
When my young fancy these light measures meant
The Press: but Fate since canceld that intent,
Nor claimed the Church as then a greater part
In me than others, bate my title Art—
But now the scean is changed? confessed it is
Must we abjure all youth, borne, bury this?
Such closet death's desertlesse, in this glass
Read not what now I am, but then I was:
In this reflection may the gravest see
How true we suite, I, this, and this with me.
These thorns picked out, whose venom might have bred
A gangrene in thy Reader, struck thee dead.
Thou mayst perhaps invited be to court,
And have a brace of smiles toapprove thy sport.
Those, whose grave wisdoms,
Wise
do them entitle▪
(Whose learned nods low dignorance can stifle)
Some of times numbers on thy lines will scatter,
If not called from thee bv some higher matter,
Laugh out a rubber, like, and say 'tis good
For pleasure, youth and leisure, wholesome food.
Some jigging Silk-canary, newly bloom'd,
When he is crisped, bathed, oyld, perfumed,
(Which till the second chime, will scarce be done)
Upon thy feet will make his chrystals run,
Commend the author, vow him service ever,
But from such things his Genius him deliver.
Some sleeked Nymphs, of country, city, court,
Will, next their Dogs and Monkies, like thy sport,
Smile, and admire, and wearied will (perhaps)
Lay thee to sleep encurtaind in their laps,
Oh happy thou! who would not wish to be
(To gain such dainty lodging) such, or thee?
Say, to please them, the Poet undertook
To make thee from a sheet thrive to a book,
And if he has to beauty given a gem,
He challengeth a deck of thanks from them:
And if some winning creature smile on thee,
She shall his L. and his
Bellama
be.
Betwixt eleven and one, some
pro
and
con
Will snatch a fancy from thee, and put on
A glove or ring of thine to court his lasse,
Twixt Tearme and Tearme, when they are turned to grass.
Some
Titius
will lay by his wax and books,
And nim a phrase to bait his amorous hooks.
But stay, I shall be chid, me thinks I hear
A censure spreadits wings to reach my ear,
Tell me I am conceited: then no more,
Go take thy chance, I turn thee out oth' door.
Mart. ad lib. suum. Epig 4.
Aetherias lascive cupis volitare per aur as,
I, fuge, sed poter as tutior esse domi.
Mart. lib. 4.
Sivis auribus Aulicis probari
Exhortor, moneoque te libelle,
Vt docto place as Apollinari,
Nam si pectore te tenebit ore,
Nec ronchos metues maligniorum
Nec scombris tunic as dabis molest as
Et cum carmina floridis Camoenis,
Litesque, gloriam can as poetum
Non est pollicem capitis ver áris.
To his loving friend the Author.
TO laud thy Muse, or thee, to crown with praise▪
Is but to light my Tapers to the rays
Of gold-locked
Phoebus,
since the Scheame
Of fabled truth, thy waking, seeming dream;
Thyever-living-loving fame in Arts,
Of Arts, to us in whole and part imparts.
In Arts, thy judgment, phrase, invention,
Of Arts, thy
Poets Vindication.
In mourning Elegies I admi'd thy skill,
In mirthfull Lays we now admire thy quill.
Let
Albine, Bellame,
by thee live in fame,
Riv'lezzo,
Beldame
Pazza
live in shame.
Lash on and slash the vice of shaved crowns,
In thy
Bardino,
Nuns, and Sylvane clownes.
Give virtue beauty, beauty desert and praise,
And that thy Monument of Brasse shall raise.
To the Reader.
REader take heed, complain not of the sting,
Lest others of thy galled sores do sing.
No faulty person, party here is meant,
Only the vice of theage and place is shent.
He that expounds it of himself, doth show
Some guilty fault, or vice from him doth flow,
If touched to th'quick, conceal and them amend,
So 'gainst thee shall all scourging Satyrs end.
William Purifey Rector Ecclesiae de Markefield.
To his loving Kinsman the Author.
WHen first I viewd the travels of thy quill,
I liked, approved, admired thy nimble skill,
In sudden raptures, fancies, judgment, phrase,
Invention, quickness, life, detraction, praise,
So that I favourd their conceit which faignd
The soul to be an harmony, and raignd,
Amongst the senses with accounts and measures▪
All which thy lofty Poefie en-treasures,
That quaintest warblers cannot with delight
Out-worth the Poet in his
Lyrick
height,
As those which with quick eyes where judgment sits,
Thy
Vindication of Poetic wits
Do read, may see, whose swelling meeters teach
All Aliens such high English, that to reach
Is harder than to like, or belch forth scandals,
Witness thy journey,
Somnus, Morpheus,,
Sandals,
The Orbs, God's, Muses, Critics, accusation,
The Poets names, employments, vindication,
These silenced my pen, it dared no more
Till voycit by thy
Bellame
again, her store
Of suitors, one approved by Friends, not her
Rivelezzo's
wrath (wherein most Parents err)
Her grief, encloystring, entertainment high,
Albino's
heart and hers met in their eye,
Their whispring, dalliance,
Piazzella's
care,
Bardino's
falsehood, their affections rare,
Her dis-encloystring: and his Nunning plot,
The Nuns thick bellies, his repentant grot,
His freedom, flight, encountering with his Saint,
His conjuration, prodegies, and plaint,
The Sheepheard lout,
Bellama's
second quest,
His Ghosting, coming from th'
Elizian
rest.
Their parles, his dis-enghosting, her denials,
His rage, her kindnsse, both their loves and trials,
Conrades
immuring,
Piazzlla's
fury,
His freedom,
Foppo,
and his Monkish Jury,
The Lovers Ale-house cheare, bed, course apparel,
The Monks strict quest, their finding, mirth & quarrel,
Their scape, fear, Raddle, kinsman, and at length
Their nuptial Tede, when malice lost its strength.
How thou hast shown (dear cooz) thy Art in Arts,
Let them express who brag of abler parts
Than I, which have a bigger partin thee,
Thy love, and blood, till Being cease to be.
JOHN WHITING▪ Master of Arts▪ Clare-Hall, Camb.
Amicosuo charissimo N. W. hujus Poematis authori Collegii Regnalis Canta. in artibus magistro.
PAN petat Arcadiam Druids effundite cantus,
Et juvenes flores spargite, Bardus adest.
Tu qui struxisti memoranda Trophaea Poes
•
,
Dicere multatibi nescio, nolo nihil
Vota, preces, calamus, cor, carmen, singula, laudes,
Vltro perdignas, concelebrare student.
An decus irgenium, tua laus, tua facta peribunt.
Dignum laude virum musa perire vetat
Corpore defuncto te ca
•
dida musa sequetur,
Admiratur opus, primitiasque tuas
Fata precor, faustae plectant tua slamina vitae,
Vt scribas oper â plurima digna tuâ.
IACOBUS BERNARD sacrosanctae & individuae Trinitatis Collegii in artibus magister.
In Authorem, amicissimum suum, Encomiasticon.
THE privilege that pen and paper find
'Mongst men, falls short, reflecting to the mind.
Virtue herself, no other worth displays,
Than eankred censure, leaves behind, as rays.
But mental Cabonets, are they, that yield
No forfiture to battring Critics shield.
If thoughts might character deserts, I dare
Challenge my pensill for the largest share:
But when the Vultures of our age must gnaw,
I will cease for modesty, and say, tis law.
It's safer far, to fail of debt, than tobe
Soaringin terms that badge of flattery.
I hate the name, and therefore freely give
My verdict thus, as may have power to live
'Gainst calumny. If wit and learning may
Passe with applause, the author hath the day.
Crownd be those brows with everlasting Bayes,
Whose worth a pattern is to future days.
It is not a Poem dropt from strength of grape,
That's debtor to the wines inspiring sap,
He to himself alone. Cease urging, earth,
The father well deserve, so fair a birth.
And if a witness may be lawful, then
I will undertakit shall fear no vote of men.
But where-in Artis bold it self to glory
Is that which crowns the verge of
Whitings
story.
Io. Ross.
To his friend, a Panagericke upon his lovers Albino and Bellama.
THough I have vowd a silence, and as yet
Resolved not to travel out in jet,
Chiefly in Print, yet your intending press
Makes me, my thoughts with courage, language, dress
With smooth-straind meeter, that the world may know
My strict engagements, & how much I owe
To you, your worth, which may command a line,
From him which swears gainst all, but what's divine,
The hignesse of your style, the quickness, life,
Will in judicious readers raise a strife,
(More than the Ball amongst th'engoddest three)
Which gains, the best, but all are best by me,
Matchless in my conceit: add then to these
The neatness of your plots, and swear a please
To the grim Stoic, and the Satyr'd brow
Forceth delight, through strictness, neatness, vow,
Grow abler still in fancy, imp thy quill,
Write anything, if something, fear not ill,
If poesie be thus revenged by thy dream,
How will it flourish when'ts thy morning theme?
Sleeping or waking, let us have thy quill,
And sleep and Vigils shall admire thy skill.
I. Pickerin.
Imprimatur.
Sa. Baker.
June 22. 1637.
THE PLEASING HISTORY OF ALBINO AND BELLAMA.
W
Hen
British I fles
begirt with moistened sand,
Neptunes
blew palace, & the
Tritons
walk,
Albania
hight, her name who first did land
Of all the Sisters, or from rocks of chalk;
From sad oppression had unyoakt their necks,
And paid obedience unto
Ad
•
ll's
beckes.
Then in those
Halcyon
days of peace and joy,
A virtuous Lady most transcendent creature,
Fairer then her whose beauty cyndar'd
Troy;
Grace decked her mind, her mind grace her feature,
So that each part made
Helen
out of date,
And every grace a goddess could create.
Virtue and beauty both in her did strive
Which should in worth and grace surpass the other,
Nor age of consistency, both did thrive
Till this
Dian'
out-rayde, that
Cupids
mother.
Nay men by beams of her clear beauty might
Scale
Titans
Chariot, and out-ray his light.
'Mongst Natures precious things we find a jem,
Blushed and purpled ore with
Amathisles,
Which fiery Carbuncles with sparkles hem,
And which the Emrauldes purest vert entwists,
Meeting so well that Lapidaries wist,
'Twas Emraulde, Carbuncle and Amathist.
So in this precious Payre, pure
Agathite,
Aurora's
purpling blush was clearly seen,
Saba's
bright Rose, and
Leda's
Swan-like white,
The true proportion of
Adonis
Queen.
Blended so well, that in this curious frame,
Aurora, Saba, Leda, Venus
came.
And as the honey-making waxen thigh'de
Inhabitants of
Hyblaes
fragrant veils,
Whom only Natures dim instinct does guide,
Choose their commander with their tunefull hailes▪
Pay homage, honor him, and fear his frowns▪
With same observance, as the people, Crowns.
So by the same instinct the blushing Rose,
Vail'd bonnet to her cheeks admired red,
The Lillies to her bosom, brow and nose,
The
Phoenix
stripped her self to Crown her head:
The chirping Choristers with willing choice,
Sat silent to admire her warbling voice.
Perfum'd
Arabia
with her Spice and Gummes,
Payde homage to the odors of her lips;
To her with fawning postures, lickes and hummes
The yellow Lyon and the Tiger skips:
Fire dares not scorch her face, nor winter chill he
•
And death himself looked pale whē called to kill he
•
The amorous Sun if she walked out by day
Would vein his j
•
nnets to behold her face,
And wrapped in admiration, by his stay
Had rather melt the Orbes than mend his pace;
And if the middle Air in walls of jet
Enjoyde his beams, he thawed into wet.
If in the reign of silent night, abroad
She rang'd, the Empresse of the lowest Sphere
Amaz'd at her perfections, left her road,
And rang'd about, where she appeared t' appear.
Nay mournd in darkness if denide her sight,
As when days Hanchman does deny her light.
The curled tapers of the Firmament
Did cease to twinke, but gaz'd with fixed eyes,
In their own Orbe refusing to be pent,
And strove to leap upon the lower skies:
Nay did oth' second Air like Comets hang
To dart their c
•
ispes at beauties only spang.
The Sea-borne-Planet popped out her Lamp,
And t' see her self out-shind by her, did rage,
The marching War-god did remove his campe,
With fair Lady Curtain war to wage:
Hermes
by
Jove
being of an errand sent,
Stay'd on her face, in her embraces pent.
Dull-aged
Saturn
(on whose sullen brow
Nere dwelt a Smile since
Jove
usurped his Crown)
To gaze on her his weighty head did bow,
And with a smile un-plaiced every frown;
Nay
Jove
himself descended from his chair
To take a full survey of this—this fair.
And more, her winning looks disperc'd such charms
All eyes commanding, and all hearts surprizing,
That
Venus
bad her Son provide him arms,
Fearing his setting by this bright Stars rising:
For though men say loves eyes are more then dim
Yet her fair beauty did enlighten him.
But with entreaties he had beat the Air,
And on the Tawney-moore his waters cast;
For having pow're to conquer, being fair,
Sh'ad pow're not to be conquerd, being chaste:
So that his amorous sleights and winged arrow
Could not have opit her breast o▪ pierced her marrow.
This Phoenix was
Bellama
called (a word
Well suiting her deserts) she daughter was
And heir apparent to a wealthy Lord,
Who had more acres, then an acre, grass:
He loved his lands, and hugd his minted treasure,
Yet his
Bellama
was his soul of pleasure.
His place of residence was in a Chace
Checkquerd with thick-grown thorns and sturdy oakes,
Wherein majestic Stags and Bucks did pace
That scornd the hounds, & dard th
•
barbed strokes;
'Twas called
Riuelount,
not distant far
From
Starley,
of that shire, the metro-Star.
The neighbouring swaines were pauld with coaches thunder,
And loud curvaitings of their foaming Steeds,
Whose irond hoofs did crash the rocks in sunder,
Happy was he, who (sheath'd in costly weeds)
Could win admission to this happy place,
Where Natur
••
wealth was locked up in a face.
Each glance she sent the object did engem,
And he that wan a smile possessed a mine,
A hair was prized at a Diadem,
A ribban made the tread the ecliptick line;
A ring out-face a thunder, but a kiss
Was the elixar, heart and soul of bliss.
Some, of their lands, some, of their valours spoke,
Some, of their Falcons and their merry bells;
Some, read the price of such a suite and cloak,
And one of hounds and running horses tells;
All speak of something, yet but few with wit,
All aimed at wise, yet few could purchase it▪
Some spake in oaths, as if they thought the earth
Was peopled ore with faithless infidels,
Another swore, because he feared a dearth
Of other Language, yet in oaths excels:
All swear enough, and he that did it least
Might be grand swearer at
Ven-Bacchus
feast.
Others there were that could not bigly prate,
Who did their evidences bring with them;
One brought his halls to plead, one his estate,
This brought a Watch to court and that a Gem;
One brought a large descent white and black,
Which derived from old
Pergams
Sack.
One brought a reverent Syre, whom he called Father,
To be the tongue of his reserved Son;
Others with much expense of wax did gather
Some printed Rimes to speak when they were gone▪
All had their speakers w
ch
unclasp'd their graces,
Yet their court-language dwelt on plaits & places.
One of these Suters was approov'de to be
A match whose thousands aequi-ballanc'd hers,
The parents oft would say, this shall be he,
The mother then a bill of love prefers.
But still
Bellama
faults, and vows, that gold
Shall never force her love to have and hold.
The testy Father with a surrow'd brow
Comes to
Bellama
with demanding why?
Says mine own girl thou must be ruled now,
Each tener pays duty to Don
Fuco's
eye:
And age well knows Bean-mannours, lands and treasures
Do cement lovers hearts, & enjoy their pleasures.
Thou must not Wench be coy, alas! we find
Beauty as easily bought when money bids,
(Thoughit be ith' Non-such of the female kind,
As Horse or Cow, the Lamb, or frisking Kids▪
If he be rich, we bear his witless brags,
A wealthy fool's more worth then witty rags.
Bellama
with a look fraught with disdain,
(Though hatred did not make her anger bold)
Says Sir, I am sorry you do entertain
Such high conceits of folly hemde with gold:
Think you no marriage good if equal lands
Be not match-makers and do join their hands.
Don
Fuco
has ten thousand pounds a year,
With weighty titles would oreloade a Mule,
A piece of Arras finely wrought and dear;
But does he square his life to vertu's rule?
With vice, as wealth to count-less sums he thrives
But is, in virtue, full as poor, as wives.
He knows to steer an horse, and holloe hounds,
But not to guide his actions, less his tongue:
He speaks in state, but every sentence sounds
Of Comick fragments, or some Tavern song.
And shall I him, hail'd by unworthy pelf,
Take to rule me, who cannot rule himself?
Shall I see other female vessels thrive
With mine own Nectar, and they fee'd with money,
Whilst I, like careful Be, do keep my hive,
And work the comb for them to suck the honey?
No, I will no sharers have in my delight,
I will have it one, and only, else good night.
'It is a fine thing to see a Satten paint
That fears to loose her beauty in a press,
That only cares to be precisely quaint,
And spends a twelve-months pleasure on a dress:
To see this stroke his honor, and he clip her,
Span every part, and unresisted lip her.
But I do notin a rank humor rail
'Gainst sober purples, and discreeter robes,
Nor lock up virtues in the paper-jayle
With Ink-horns, Pens, Spheres, Globes and Albo-globes,
Religion on my heart does love en-neale
To those bright Tapers of our Common-weal.
Yet where, instead of state, proud looks do dwell,
Where wit and wisdom are unlocked with oaths,
Courte-ship and comeliness are in the shell,
And honor only sits▪ upon the clothes.
Pardon, if unto such I pl
•
it my brow,
And steer my thought unto a virgins-v
•
w.
Fye, says the father, you'r a foolish girl,
'Gainst
Ermins
with that heightened spleen to rail,
Dost think there's vice and folly in an Earl?
Then virtue sure does penance in the jayle.
To kiss and sport with us is held no sin,
If that our dalliance do not pass the skin.
Perchance 'tis not a point of state to have
To large a stock of wisdom in this age,
The Epithet to greatness is not grave;
Those that the Muses in their celles incage,
Let them speak oil and civet: but we are Lord's
Can speak by signs, and not express'
•
by words.
Wherefore do we to
Sable
give the room,
And greater numbers far of
Adels
stamps,
Then to our Stewart, or our Ladies groome,
'Cause with reproofs he our choice pleasures damps?
No, cause indedications he should name us,
And by some witty pamphlet make us famous.
Our moral virtues are no guiding rule
To high Nobility, or looking glass,
No more then toearth the
ne plus ultra's
Thule,
As 'fore
America
was found, it was.
It is fit for those, whose bosom-friends are lice,
To know the pain, not sweet delights of vice.
Dost see yon' tender webs
Arachne
spins,
Through which with ease the lusty Bumbles break,
But to the feeble gnats that mesh their gins,
So those sage precepts which our Sophies speak,
Fetter the passions of each worthless slave;
But over us no sovereign awe they have.
My Lord, the name of Father strikes, quoth she,
An awful dread, and makes my ear obey,
Yet slip my duty down unto the knee,
And in my silent thoughts, check, chide, and say,
Can they that taste forbidden waters, thrive?
My chaste demeanour I will never survive.
T'avoid the doom of—therefore I will make choyc
•
▪
Of one, whose virtue outs all love to vice,
Not those s
•
eek skins which am'rous are in voice,
Lip-love, which as soon borne, dies in a trice.
Our loves reciprocal shall be still dust,
Whi
•
h into exile packes unlawful lust.
As they discourst,
Don Fuco
entered in,
With stately garbes befitting such an one,
His body shelled in a Satten skin
Of a zure die, bestar'd with Topaz stone,
A milk white Bever, with an Ostrich plume,
His very rowels spake a loud perfume.
Having composed his hinged looks, he glanc'd
With piercing eyes upon her curious face,
And steeping sighs in tears and sweat, advanced
Himself to plead with courtly garb and grace.
But
Fu
••
s
lead by most mimetick Apes,
Could not depinge
Don Fuco's
antick shapes.
Such were the postures of his hands and eye,
That had he treasured up his mirthfull tones,
They wereingredients for a Comedy,
Would into laughter change a widows groans:
And since that time
(Bellama
smiled so then)
Love in her dimpled cheeks has found a den.
Madam, says he, be pleased to trutinate,
And wisely weigh your servants graceful voice,
Give due attendance to the airs of state,
I have engraven you
Don Fuco's
choice.
Give free assent, and let the scornful no
Be quite expunged from the Chrisse-cross row.
Alas, I am not beholding unto letters,
Wherewith our Rabbies stuff their swelling books,
I have a way of complementing better,
To win thy love with comely garbes and lo
•
kes.
And if these fail, the name of
Countess
w
•
ll
Speak with a power above the
Sidney-skill.
I hate long-winded sentences, which do
Vnbreath a man, and hazard
•
uch his bellows,
Or pocket-flashes, which instr
••
t to woo,
The only virtues of some Ink-horn fellows.
I scorn their trothes, indods, their ifs or ands.
Or their
O Lord sir,
when their wit's oth' sands.
A fluent Rascall that can speak in oil,
And clothe his words with silken eloquence,
I know may give a virgins strength the foil.
But a blunt Earl, that scarcely speaks in sense,
Whom thousands honor with the cap and leg,
Beates down a Fortress like a
Roaring M
•
g.
He needs no
Roscian
language, but does send
His velvet-coated Herald to proclaim
The noble Titles which his worth attend:
For honor is th' ambitious Ladies aim.
Feature and spiced words but lead the Van,
Honor the Front, the Noble is the Man.
My Lord, says she, your valor I approve,
That with three
Selves
thus warranteth your suit,
With
Self▪ conceit, Self-confidence, Self-love,
Such trees w
•
ll bear your Lordship glorious fruit,
It well befits your greatness not to think,
There can denials dwell in air or ink.
Your trencher clokes, and your Recognizance,
Your coat of Arms with noble Ermines dight,
Your
Russian
Satten, with the cut of
Fra
•
ce,
Your talking rowels, and your feathred white,
Are battring rams & guns, that spe
•
kin thunder,
To crack a breast, and split a heart in sunder.
But my mind is,
Diana's
chastest seat,
O're which the breath of greatness hath no power,
The quiver-bearing boy sounds a retreat,
And
love
avails not with his yellow shower,
The vestall fire out-shines blind
Cupids
flame,
Which oft's eclipsed with sorrow, damped with shame.
And, troth, my Lord, had I but wit enough,
T'assist your Lordship in your nuptial
tede,
Your Lordship should not pl
•
y a
•
blind man's blough,
(Else heavens should renounce their
Ganimede)
For they that purblind are, may plainly se
•
,
You grossly hood winked are in courting me.
The faults of state I cannot
Virtues
name,
And bear myself upon the wings of pride,
Nor light my Taper at another's flame,
Or use the Art at beauties eventide.
I brook not dalliance, or the
Venus
kiss,
That way o
•
am'rousnesse, or that, or this.
I cannot seal a welcome with an oath,
To those whose absence I had rather have,
Nor venture hundreds at that paper-sloth
Of Mistress
Isbel
and the
Pennell-knave.
I know no masking postures, nor with grace,
Can tread the
Brawles,
or true
Currantoe
pace.
I cannot at the feast of riot sit,
When sea, land, air, are served up in plate,
Nor like
Tripherus,
with a carving wit,
Read precepts this and this to dissecate,
Nor in dear Murrin charged to the brim,
Health it about until our mullets swim.
I do not love to have my husband be
Discreet by
Pioxee's,
by his Chaplains wise,
Nor do I like the too much cringing knee,
Whose formal bends his black conceits disguise.
Those fawning sharkes I cannot call to table,
Which into
Ermins
change your Lordships sable.
To have my usher press his masters saddle,
In my opinion cannot pass for good,
I do not love to have my pillow addle,
Mean while my woman lets your Lordship blood.
I am no
Androgyne,
nor do delight
To diet Pages, or your
Catamit.
Madam, what passion does untune your mind?
What fiend (says he) in you thus rails on greatness?
Who viceth honor, lies, and he is blind
That says Court-sattens are not trimd with neatness.
Speak then in Balms, forget the peevish, why?
And to the
Wilt thou have this?—
answer I.
No, no, says she, yet might I know your Saint,
If my endeavors can advantage you,
With your endowments I would her acquaint,
And limb your rare perfections in her view.
In this one act I may myself approve
More loving, then in entertaining love.
I will say with what dexterity you can
Run over the postures of the court-salute,
How trimly you can kiss a Ladies Fan,
And neatly manage an embroydred suit.
How finely Spanish leg-shells you can plaite,
And tune your rowels at the court retraite.
I might say you are witty, ifit be true,
That jests and gingles are in brother-hood,
I will speak your skill in Haukes, at flight in mue,
And at all hunting ceremonies good:
How gracefully you wave your gallant plumes,
And deeply are engaged to deep perfumes.
How kind you are unto our chamber-shees,
How to our Marmosets and trencher-pages,
How oylie-fingerd unto supple knees,
How fain to th'music of our wyer cages.
How quaintly you supply the Vshers room,
How sweetly you can act the privy-groome.
Much more in blazoning your matchless worth,
And counting all your specials, might I say
But nature never a second did bring forth,
Which to such known perfections can say nay.
I will cease to praise them, lest my praises make
Your veins of pride with self-conceit to ache.
I will perform what I have promised, Sir,
Please you toimpart your Lady to my maid,
I see my words your liver-wort does stir
Into your face, which in your channels straid.
No more of trouble then, my Lord adieu.
This courteous door divorceth me and you.
Away flings she, and leaves my Lord alone,
More pensive then a widow, which bedewes
Her husbands corps with tears, a woman's moan,
Or then the
Lupa
of diseased stews:
So that who saw his jigging head would swear,
Wisdom nor wit did never inhabit there.
Don Riuelezzo
sent a smiling glance,
That they might his consent read in his eye;
But seeing
Fuco
in a stupid trance,
He was possessed with equal phrentezy,
The mother came to th' rescue, and well nigh
Sent her own wit to boar theirs company.
Faine would he tell the cause of his disasters,
And eagerly her parents strove to know it,
Yet strangely, them this passion over-masters,
That neither they could ask, nor he could show it,
As though an
Incubus
with vaprous throngs,
Enclaspt their bosoms, and un-voiced their tongues.
At length
Don Fuco
cried,
Bellama
cruel,
What evil planet revelld at thy birth,
Or what incensed god provided fuel
To make me feel hells tortures upon earth?
Was there no way to punish me for sin,
But by a maid? No, there our woes begin,
When I with admiration viewed her face,
I boldly durst give any tongue the lie,
That dared to say, with such supernal grace
There dwelt one
Atom
of this tyranny.
But—if that virgins Hierogliphicks be
Of love and mildness, take them all for me.
I will make a casement with this steely blade,
In my full breast, through which my soul shall peep,
And make my heart in sanguine liquor wade,
And entrails all in juice of liver steep.
Nay, straight-way give hells Ferry-man his pay,
For wafting me over black
Cocytus
Bay.
Or unto
Proserpine
I will post a sprite,
To fetch m' a cup of moist oblivion,
Wherewith the Fairy Queen exiled quite
Fury from her stout knight, and
Oberon,
That I not only may forget disgrace,
But quite forget I ever saw her face.
Let not, says
Rinelez,
a peevish girl,
Hang fetters on your heart, untune your soul:
Dwels there not courage with a worthy Earl,
Blind
Cupids
bow and quiver to control.
My Lord, take heed, the squinting boy works treason,
By passions to divest your soul of reason,
He by his sly insinuations oft
A good opinion in the heart doth win▪
The most obdurate are by him made soft,
And homage pay to
Love
their sovereign sin,
Fire's in, nor hurts the Flint, but
Cupid
can
With flames to cinders waste the Flinty man.
A wily sisher-man hath store of baits,
Wherewith for Amorists he wisely angles,
With glittering pomp he for th' ambitious waits,
The greedy Carle with silver twists entangles:
The silk-lascivious with a wanton eye,
The austere Stoic with a modest Fye.
The studious Templant he with
Ergo
calls,
The grave precisian with a matron g
•
a
•
e,
The virtuous mind with virtue he enthrailes,
A landed heir with a blusht-lilly face.
For Epicurean love he wisely trowles,
With spiced rarities and frothing bowles.
The cross-adorers he with crossing catches,
Yet strange it is that crossing should join hands,
But to Sir
Love-all,
all are equal matches,
Grace, beauty, feature, honor, virtue, lands,
This has a dainty hand; that, lip, or eye,
This chaste, that seeming, that will not deny.
None are love-free, unless uncapable
Of those choice blessings
Venus
sole-son proffers,
None, whom age, fortune, nature does enable
With peevish noes, neglecteth
Hymens
offers.
All are inclined to love, and all must bow,
If
Cupids
arrow do but write,
Love thou.
Invest your noble thoughts with courage,
Don,
Let reason, maugre love, triumphant ride,
Millions of Ladies breath in
Albion,
Have more Rose-lilies, and less store of pride.
I will warrant, though
Bellama
now say no,
She I find ere long, denial was her foe.
Hah! quoth
Don Fuco,
with a far-fetched sigh,
Which all that time was drenched over-head in griese,
Am I to black
Cocytus
yet drawn nigh?
Where are th'
Elizian
shades, thou totrred thief?
Call
Rhadamanthus
forth, justice I will have,
Or in his breast my steel shall dig a grave.
Call forth the
Furies
with their snakie hairs,
Pale-cheekt
Erynnis,
and her sister Hagges,
Tell
Nemesis
I will fetch her down the stairs,
And try what truth dwells in her wrathful brags.
Dispoyson Vipers, Toads, and crawling Adders,
And with their venom stretch her spacious bladders.
Bid
Cerberus
belch from his triple jaws,
A barking thunder which the earth may shake:
I will fetch the Dragons and the Scorpions paws
From the full Zodiaque, her face to rake.
Come forth
Demagoras,
thy cunning try,
To masque all beauty with a leprosy.
We will no more our Lily-stems transplant,
And set our Roses on their cheeks and lips,
Their fairness shall not hence surpass the Ante,
Their crymson die, the brick or writh led hips.
Beauty shall be exilde, despite shall end her,
Or else we'l change her to another gender.
The
Thracian
Harper was a silly Ass,
That for his wife past through the
Stygian
stench.
The
Club-man's
foolerie did his surpass,
That spun and carded for a
Lidian
wench.
The
Greeks
were fools, that for a light-skirt strumpet,
Changed the still vial to a loud-mouthd trumpet.
Ioves
Black-smith was no privy Counselor,
To many
Venus
for the sore-head flag,
The jolly Huntsman sure did something err,
To see a goddess, and become a stagge.
Jove
was no golden shower, sure 'twas a gull,
Nor e're transformed him self into a Bull.
Peace good my Lord,
Don Rivelezzo
says,
What uncoth passion doth your soul en-trance,
Your words are like the
Bacchinalian
lays,
Where with the Priests their god of wine enhance.
What, man, though this fond she from you did start,
Another'l say,
My Lord, with all my heart.
Observe the practice of Doves masculine,
Which woo their females, with
I come to woe,
Not in a fit of woman cry and whine,
Straight to another haste, if she says no.
If to one face, our stock of love we ope,
We pinion
Cupids
wings, and fetter hope.
Bellama
slights; what then? shall we conclude,
All women will deny you their assent?
A strange induction; Call all Ladies lewd:
'Cause
Flora
and some few to
Venice
went
Amongst a thousand maids, theres scarcely two,
As coy
Bellama
now hath done, will do.
Wherefore created were those glorious lights,
Which in the azure firmament appear?
Why was days Charrioter with luster dight?
Only to gu
•
ld with rays his proper Sphere?
No, to lend bright nesse to the borrowing lamps,
And clear the earth from nights obscuring damps.
Why has Dame
Nature
so much brightness lent
To Diamonds, Topazes, and other gems?
Only toenrich themselves? no, to augment
The glory of our rings and Diadems,
The Ostridge for himself wearesnot his plumes,
Nor for's own nose the Civet Cat perfumes.
So on our sprucest Ladies, matchless graces
Were not bestowed, to delight themselves.
Pandora
was not treasured up in faces,
To bring content unto possessing elves.
But 'cause our
Hero's
should the comfort find
Of winning beauty and a willing mind.
The maid of
Babylon,
I know, was fair,
And rich in all the lineaments of beauty;
Yet was she kind, which did not them impair,
But showed to Natures hestes her forward duty:
For Natures bounty best requited is,
By yielding free assent to
Hymens
bliss.
The Queen of
Carthage
dear respects bestowd
Upon the straggling Prince of ruined
Troy.
Choyce love unto
Leander, Hero
showd:
The
Cyprian
goddess wooed her sappey boy.
All fraught with pity, but that peevish girl,
'Bout whose sleek waste hells vipers wind & twirle.
Nor such examples wants our latest age,
Of virgins-lovers these to parallel
Who, every way, those former equipage,
With whom records and moderne pamphlets swell.
Then courage
Don,
fear not to find a face,
That hath more pity, and more lovely grace.
Much ease (quoth
Fuco)
to my love-sick heart,
My Lord, is by your sage advisement brought,
For I supposed, th'
Idalian
yonkers dart,
Had festered so, no easement could be bought:
I on her looked through such a pleasing glass,
As though that sex in her contracted was.
I thought t' have sent my Physic Doctor forth
Unto his Herbal, to address my ill,
T'ask
Aesculapius
for some earth-borne worth,
Which might accomplish my intended will.
But that tis said,
Apollo
once complaind,
No herb to cure loves fevers could be gaind.
Whilst an opinion of her matchless grace,
Scorched my bosom with affections gleames,
Mine eyes never straggled to another face,
Nor could I bathe my thoughts in
Lethes
streams;
But now I will sound retrait, reclaim my mind,
Not catch a falling star, nor grasp the wind.
This said, with sparkling sack he washed the lane,
Which to the Limbeck of his body leads,
Health to
Bellama,
and a health again,
Till, where his feet, his winged Bever treads,
So well he took his sack without a tost,
That 'stead of kissing her, he kist the post.
Dispassiond quite, as in a breathless calm,
Don Rivelezzo
bids
Don Fuco
diew,
But hooted loudly like a shrill-ton'd shalme,
When his swift stee
•
took farewell o
•
his view.
Accursing Fate, and railing on his daughter,
Which might beget in
Heraclitus
laughter.
Have I (says he) such
Crassian
heaps of gold,
Condemn'd to sleep in iron-ribbed chests?
Did I delight in vestments course and old,
Wherein
Anthropoph
•
ges
have dug them nests?
Nay, wisht there were no taverne-juice, or sports,
Or change of fashions, but in Princes Courts?
Have I sat brooding over my treasured plate,
And summed the surplusage of each years rent,
Confin'd my spendings to a weekly rate,
Enjoynd a penance when th'allowance spent?
And when an Earl tuned every grace to win her,
She slights his vows, nor gales nor gold can pin her.
But since she slights my matches, I will match her,
She shall of peevishness the harvest reap,
Since this
Dons
matchless fortunes could not catch her.
I shall ere long make her affections cheap.
Her love shall stoop to court a common Farm,
A Lordship then shall scorn to fold an arm.
My Lord, her mother Lady
Arda
said,
A parents
•
re ought not to force assent,
Wealth blend with vice can never disheart a maid,
To whom blest virtue is the choice content.
There's other things do maids affections stir,
Beside a Manor, and a
Please you Sir.
Madame (quo
•
h he) in vain you do excuse
Your daughters folly with your friendly air,
The next I offer she shall not refuse.
Sirrah, go harness straight my wheeling chair:
I will try if less content and pleasure dwells
In Princes courts, then in Monastic cells.
When he was coach'd, the Lady
Arda
went
To fair
Bellam',
bedew'd with streaming tears,
The gods, said she, have ravel'd thy content,
Sorrowes uncomfort will thy virgins years:
For unto
Darwey
does thy father haste,
Where he will vow thee everlasting chaste.
Madam, says she, I feed on naught but gall,
Aloes and Rue, 'cause of my fathers wrath,
Th' occasion though of his displeasure, shall
With Bayes, instead of Cypress, strew my path.
When virtue seals the contract, welcome
Hymen,
But till that, ever shall my heart deny men.
Thus sat they parling: Lady
Arda
urged
Producing reasons to enforce assent:
Bellama
answered, begged, excused, and purged
Herselfe from blame, by urging love, content.
But urging and excusing, let them sit,
And see the father champing on the bit.
Who coming to the cage of virgins-pride,
Knockt at the wicket with the iron ctow,
To whose small neck white phillets nere were tide,
Which in more ancient days did child-bed show.
He wrapped so hard, the sound did fright the air,
Yet still none came, none was not locked in prayer.
At length the Ianitor, of stature large,
With Crozier staff, girt in a hair-clothe Frock,
Whose meagre looks did call for
Charons
Barge,
And all whose body was a sapless stock,
Came, and with churlish voice, demanded who
With such shrill hoh's rejoycit their civil croe?
Friend, says my Lord, my errand wings my speed,
Speakes high importance with the Prioresse:
Thou in these Angel-looks my haste mayst read;
Help me to th' presence of the Abbatesse.
The Porters heart soon stepped into his eye,
Tuning his language to a quick reply.
My Lord, says he, obedience is my duty,
Whilst your commands speak in so high a tone,
Yet lest your
smooth chind youths
lay siege to beauty,
Your Lordship spite of state must walk alone.
I am an Eunuch, else in vain I vowed,
I had mistook my pillow in a crowd.
Him he conducted to the Kitchen, where
Store of Anatomies employed was;
Some did the candle-sticks, some lavers clear,
Some scoured pewter, some reburnisht brass,
Don
asks the cause: the Porter him acquaints,
'Twas gainst a Feast of high account,
All-Saints▪
Within the Hall, a younger sort of Girls,
Yet course enough, did brush vermilion looks,
Some, crosses rubbed; some, ropes of praying pearls:
Some dusted vestments; some, their guilded books.
Some kneaded wafers, and his effige stamped,
Whose purple streams the Dragons sulphures damped.
All at
Don Rivelezzo
were amazed▪
And, looking, one rubbed off a nose of wax,
A second raz'd a cheek, another gaz'd,
And plucked from
Kath'
her periwigge of flax.
One blinded
Serrat,
and did rend her silk,
One broke the cruse, and spilled the virgins-milk.
Don
past through these into an inner room,
Where was another rank of virgins-fry,
Some weaving Arras on the nimble loome,
And inter-twisting gold with tapestry,
With silk of
Naples
twisted in small ropes,
Some did the
Cowles
embroider, some the
Copes.
At last he came into an upper place,
Climbing thereto by richly guilded stairs,
Where sat another troop of nobler race,
On quilted Cushions, and in Ivorie Chaires.
About the center, in a robe of state,
The matron
Vesta
of the Virgines sat.
These were employd about far nobler things:
For some of Sainted hair did bracelets twine:
Others strung Beads to stint the knees of Kings:
Some trimmed with costly Gems the Ladies shrine.
One tuned the music, and a witty other,
Footed an
Ave
to the Virgin-mother.
The grave old Matrone crawling from her throne
Of Indian teeth, archt over with cloth of gold,
Upon her aged knees with zealous tone,
Says, Heavens messenger, what isit you would?
Th'amazed Lord with wonder quarreld long,
E're he could unvoyce his silenced tongue.
Madam, says he, why pay you reverence?
Why are you guilty of th'adoring sin?
'It is a delusion of your weakened sense,
I am no
Cherub, Pow're,
nor
Seraphin:
The Heralds style me
Rivelezzo's Don,
Your friend and servant with a cap and con—
My Lord, quoth she, excuse my fond mistake,
For over my sight I we are a duskish glass,
My zeal in pious actions sure did make
Me give you more respects then civil was.
But take your seat, and if my power or skill,
Can crown your wishes, be you sure I will.
Madam, says he, I have a scornful Lasse,
Whom Nature has enriched with special grace,
To whose perfections her reflecting glass
Is parasite; adds pride unto her face:
So that, though Earldomes court her, her disdains
Non-suites their service, and her brow un-plains,
Into your number of chaste-zealous shees,
Entrance unto this girl vouchsafe, I pray,
Unto your order, I the constant fees
Of gold and acres, and of vows will pay:
Since she
Don
slighted, I have vowd to see
How long she'l honor the religious knee.
Quoth she, those virgins which my hallowd roof
Does canopy, my prudence does protect:
I make blind love and folly stand allofe,
And all loves paper-plots I do detect.
Great ones have oft assayd, but yet my care
Has buried their entreaties in the air.
With godly precepts I enrich their minds,
And make them (which is rare) at eighteen good
I'dmit no Roysters, only Maids and Hind
•
s
To do them service, and prepare us food▪
Please you to send your daughter, she
〈…〉
Crownd with delights of most
〈…〉
Heavens, says
Don,
crown your ensuing days
With all delights which wait your holy orders:
May the sad Cypress, and the Bridall Bayes,
Ne're sprigge nor blossom in your quiet borders.
I will plume my swift endeavors, I will make haste,
T'invest
Bellama
with your habits chaste.
When
Dons
farewell had ceased to move the air,
Says
Piazzella
to her virgins train,
We, with th'enjoyment of this Lady fair,
Shall stuff our Carkanets with mickle gain.
We'l frolic it, and taste the choicest pleasures,
Nor shall our joys be listed in with measures.
The credulous world we gull with silver shrines,
Our grave behaviours, and retired lives,
When we in naked truth are Libertines,
And taste the pillow-joys of sprightfull wives,
When through the vault our lusty shavelings pace,
All the choice measures of delight to chase.
Thus leave them with their hair-lack crowns,
And see
Rivelezzo
now ariv'd at home,
Who by that time had plaind his brow from frowns,
And all be-calmd with sugared words doth come:
Then tells his Lady he had found a tower,
Would guard
Bellama
from
Ioves
yellow shower.
Servants are posted to the old Exchange,
Others to sellers of the silk-worms spoils,
Some to briske
Proteusses,
smirke Tailors range.
Some to the
Stationers,
some haste for oils.
One carves the image of a martyrd Saint,
Another breathes a soul with gold or paints.
None must be idle, till in marshald ranks,
All things be ordered for this virgins-vow.
Farewell ye spongie teates, and puffed-paste flankes,
Bellama's
brid all
tede
is lighted now.
Her husband is
Vlrginitie,
yet look,
Her beads for rings, for songs she'l change her book.
The Coach is harnessed,
Bellama
come,
The father says, Hence with that dew of grief,
Give not a sad adieu unto our home,
But in thy thoughts let comfort rule as chief.
She craved a blessing on her globe-like joints,
Then coached thither where her Sire appoints.
As the sweet-voiced
Philomele
does sit
I'th piked
Eglantine,
with sorrow dressed,
▪ Cause some rude Sylvane in a raging fit,
Snatcht her faint chickens from their downy nest.
So did the Lady
Arda
dight with mourning,
Deplore
Bellama's
loss with her returning.
As when sly
Reynald
in his widened jaws,
Is seizing on the nimbly-frisking lamb,
Or when the Tiger with his sharpened paws,
Hath caught the infant of the becking damme.
And then the Shepherds care prevents the sharks,
One loudly howles, the other hoars
•
y barks▪
So semblably, when as the waiting crew,
Saw the departing of their golden age,
One gives
Bellama,
with eye-dew, adieu,
Another s
•
griefunlockt the frenzy cage
Some tore their hair, some rent their shouldring bands▪
Some thwackt their breasts, and wrung their oylie hands▪
But all in vain, their
Indian
Mine was gone,
Their minting house deprived of the stamp,
Their costly gems were changed to pebbell stone
Their Hemisphere forsaken by their lamp,
Saturn's
exilde,
Jove
awes this massy Ball,
And now the Iron age un-goldeth all.
The wandering wheels be-stud with Iron knobs,
Posted
Bellama
to the Virgin-tower,
Which freed her from the noise of servile throbs;
Is ēntertained like a goddy power,
Led by the seeming Saints, unto the place,
Where sat
Pazzella
with a Matrone grace.
If
Rivelezzo's
presence frighted them,
Much more they at
Bellama
were amazed:
They called her
Phoenix,
beauties only gem,
And all with fixed tapers on her gaz'd:
Some had a mean, some curious were before,
But her first sight showed self-conceit the door.
For as when
Tithons
bride breaks out a far,
And through th'expanse spreads forth her youngest light
She by degrees, pops out each twinkling star,
And dims at length the mistress of the night.
As winter Chapel-clarks, when prayers are done
Dis-light each flazing wax, or tallow Sun.
So when
Bellama
brightly did appear,
With mourning rays in the Monastic hall,
She veiled each face that moved in that sphere:
And further, by degrees un-faced all.
Nay, at the last, the mistress of the train,
Lookt like pale
Phoebe
in her darkened wane.
And as days Prince, light lustres archy-beam,
Lends to the Moon her silver mid-night rays,
As from the Ocean watery current stream,
Though every cadent to that Chaos strayes,
As to a room be-fog'd with mists of night,
Th'incensed weeks do lend a mid-day light.
So to each brow,
Bellama's
brow gives white,
To every cheek,
Bellama's
cheek gave rosies:
To every eye,
Bellama's
eye gave sight:
To every breath,
Bellama's
breath gave posies▪
To every part,
Bellama's
part gave grace:
To every face,
Bellama
gave a face.
Some called her goddesle of the
Cyprian
I will,
Some said
Troyes
ruin was untombd again,
Some her the self-enamourd boy did style,
Some said the Boat-boy did delude their train.
One named her thus, one said she was another,
But all confessed sh'exceeded
Cupids
mother.
The aged Patronesse with palsi'd lips,
Muttred a welcome to her lovely guest,
But at that time the Moon was in eclypse,
Which with en-feebling fears did them arrest.
Some shrilly screamd, some brazen pans did clang,
To ease her travel, and abate her pang.
And when the monthly-horned Queen had got▪
Her face again with silver glitter rayd,
Save only what the Dragons tail does spot,
On their pale Lilies blushing Clarret strayd:
Then did the aged voice repeat again,
Welcome fair Lady to my Mayden-
•
rain.
Her instauration was some what strange,
Led by nine vestals (for th'odd number was
Highly esteemed in their sacred range,
As by the Poet in his quaffing glass)
Each of her jointed Lilies one did hold,
Save only that which waits the wedding gold.
Adornd with vestures, white as bleached snow,
A Cypress mantell, over which was cast,
So lightly hung, 't would not abide a blow,
A milk white Ribben locked unto her waste,
Grac'd with a crucifix: her slender wrists,
With praying beads were wreath'd on sable twists.
Grave
Piazella
usherd her along,
Bravely attended with her choicest Nuns,
Without Drum, Trumpet, or an armed throng,
Or champing coursers, or the wide-mouthed Guns,
Each held religion in some holy right,
With holy water, which the devils fright.
Into the place of holy worship, they
Entred, where gawdie superstition was,
Saints, Altars, store of crucifixes gay.
Whose stately worths my weak expression pass.
Scarce was there known a canonized Saint,
Which carving did not there beger, or paint.
With strong devotion all the virgins prayed,
At the direction of the praying Bead,
Their
Ave-Mary's, Santo, Salve's
said,
Invoking every Saint to intercede.
Piezza
then,
Bellama
kneeling down,
Did wreath her temple with the virgins-crown.
These rites performed, behind an iron grate
Appeared breathing cowles, and walking copes,
Whose writhed looks their births did ante-date,
And change the cyphers girdled in with ropes.
Their hair had purchased wings, and flew away.
So did their brains as some did whispring say.
Unto this Monastry in gloomy shades,
From Cros
•
sull Priory those shavelings pace,
D
•
stant from hence not two
Italian
stades,
Ear
•
hs bloodless womb was wimbled all the space▪
Under the craggy rocks and champian did
A road-way lie, from vulgar prying hid.
This dark some path they usually did tread,
To traffic with their she-sequestered zeal,
With whom for curtain-dalliance oft they plead,
But their success my muse dares not en-neale.
These loving sportings are not faults, the sin
Is, when our walls keep not the scand all in.
Amongst the holy men that hither came,
To join their issue with the sister-hood,
A votary,
Albino
called by name;
Not
Fortunes
white-boy, yet of Abby-blood:
His great-grand-father some few ages since,
Of
Glastenbury
Primate was, and Prince.
His stature did not reach the tip-toe height,
Nor with the long neckt
Cranes
did conflicts wage,
Something complete by nature, not by slight,
Some twenty circled snakes summed up his age,
Discreet as
Tyro's
are, had store of wit,
In that he knew to use, and husband it.
By civil carriage, and his modest look,
He gaind the love of his Lord Priorist,
He bowled, coursed, angled in the brook,
His pleasure was his joy and pleasures list.
Oft would he rove (had his content a dearth)
Through th'hollow belly of th'un-boweld earth.
Sometimes permitted, sometimes by command
From his Lord Prior to the holy mother,
Convaying voices, or the paper-hand
Oft-times alone, scarce sorted with another.
The Matron did with courteous eye respect him,
Knowing no ill of him, did not suspect him.
She oft would praise his Monkship to her train,
Calling his breast blest virtues choyces shrine,
And vowd she seldom saw such beauty reign
Upon a face thats purely masculine.
And 'twas not common at his years to find
So neat a person with so pure a mind.
He'd freedom of discourse, not privacie,
Jests, sporting, laughter, and lip-dalliance;
Oft on
Bellama
would he fix his eye,
And she to him would answer glance for glance.
They gazd so long and oft, till they did tie
Their hearts together only by the eye.
Loves fever at the casements of the soul
Entring, enflamed every secret part,
That passion now his reason doth control,
And with the gyves of Love en-chains his heart:
And walking with
Bardino,
seeking pleasures,
He did
Bellama
sing in lofty measures.
To his Companion in praise of BELLAMA.
DO'st see you towering hills, you spreading trees,
Which wrap their lofty heads in clouds? dost see:
Yon house of little worth, and lesser height?
Dost think a Jewel of ten thousand weight
Can dwell within that sooty Carkanet?
Dost think the gawdie Sun each night does set
And riseth from yon roof? Dost think the Moon
With double horn, and glittering tapers, soon,
Will issue thence? Didst ever see an eye
Which checked the beams of awful Majesty?
Dost think an earth-borne beauty can be found,
Which darts forth luster from the sullen ground,
To kiss the glorious skies? or canst thou think
The Queen of beauty dwells in such a chinke?
Dost think? tis poor, why do I question so?
Thou darest confirm all this by oath, I know,
Since my
Bellama's
there, all life, all breath,
Whose presence can enlive the soul of death,
Despight of sickly Nature: she is all fair
And truly meriteth
Bellezza's
chair.
All those fair treasures which dispersed lie
'Twixt Poles and Parallels pay to her eye
And, with her span, contracted in her meet,
As radiant, red, white, smooth, soft, rich, and sweet,
She is the worlds Epitomy and soul,
And with her inch of earth, out-worths the whole▪
She's beauties Archy-fount: as riv'lets small
Borrow from greater currents, and they all
Pay tribute to the Ocean, just so
The dimmer shafts of winged
Cupids
Bow,
Borrow from brighter, the brightest pay
Homage unto
Bellama,
beauties day.
I tell thee, there's not one small worth of hers,
But loudly says, that foppish nature errs
In other beauties: nor is this all, for why?
Her thoughts pluck stars, and dark th'imperial sky.
Virtue and Beauty both: why 'tis as rare
As frosts in June, or Comets in the air,
As Crowes in Africa, Ae
•
lus want puffs,
Or she-precisians want
Geneva
ruffes.
Yet my
Bellam'
alone, and one unites
The beauteous colors, noble red and whites,
With heavens issue, Virtue: darest then deny,
If not divine, her half a Deity?
Tip Cynthia's horns with wonder, wind all
•
ud,
And mount the saddle of a wi
•
ged cloud:
Then circle earth, and see if thou canst find
Halfe such a feature with so rare a mind.
I know when thou returnst thou wilt say with me,
Bellama's
beauty is a
A percee.
Thus he to rocks and bushes did discover,
The secret flames which scorched his heated breast,
Though he as yet was not a vocal lover,
But shrouded his close love in smiles and jest;
Yet
Fortune
ftentimes does
Venus
grace
He got lip-freedom in an eye-less place.
For there a Turks
Elyzium
was the stage
Whereon the Virgines acted parts of mirth,
Which Nature did with nobler gifts engage,
And decked more than other parts of earth:
And
Bellam's
breath was such a powerful thing,
It here did keep an everlasting spring.
The angry puffings of congealing East,
And sturdy North, cold Winters stoutest roysters,
Durst never o
•
curled locks the trees devest,
Nor e're were heard to whistle in their cloisters.
Such vernall blasts came from
Bellama's
mouth,
Kept here
Favonius,
and the dropping south.
And if sharp frosts did in her absence steal
Into this place, and glaz'd the tattling streams,
Then into crystal would the springs congeale,
And every flower was rayd with silver beams:
Yet if
Bellama
did but glance her eye,
The crystal and the silver thence did fly.
Nay, strange it was to hear the purling wet,
The saucy frost with angry murmurs chide,
And with its constant jars and strugglings fret,
Then thaw to tears, and on the
Venice
slide.
Yet oft
Bellama
would call in her rays,
To view the silver purles, and crystal ways.
Into this garden once
Albino
got;
Yet ah, but once, and met his sovereign fair,
Hoping their hearts should ty the
Gordian
knot,
He fand her beauty with such courting air:
For though he was a Monk, love did instruct him;
And to
Loves
palace
Fortune
did conduct him.
He oftentimes with trembling thombe would press
Her dancing vein, way to her heart to find,
Whilst conscious she her looks with red would dress,
Fearing her pulse was traitor to her mind:
For 'tis entruth'd by some, that by this vain
We may the knowledge of affections gain.
Such knowledge gaind, he by her pulses touch,
Which leapt to meet, not chide his busy thombes,
That he desired a kiss, and found it such,
Whose sweetness far out-sweets
Hybla's
combes:
Then cryd, give for each lip a cherry-sweet,
And then a third, in which they two may meet.
Such quickening heat was from those kisses lent,
That thawd his voice, and did unfreeze his tongue,
Packt thence despair, exiled discontent,
And made him vent what was concealed long:
For though desire and love each minute bid him,
Yet fear, his habit, and her beauty chid him.
Madam, quoth he, vouchsafe a courteous ear
Unto my words, sent from an amorous heart,
Which hath long time been wracked with hope & fear▪
Grisely despair, and
Cupids
awful dart:
And till this time (restrained by black disasters)
Could never apply lip-love, or vowell-plasters.
Be pleased to know (yet sure you needs must know it
A beauty so divine, must needs divine,
Though I should want heart, hand, or voice to show (it)
When first your beauty in mine eyes did shine,
They slipped into my breast, and told my heart,
The god of love by them had sent adart▪
My heart made quick reply, (if hearts have voice)
You ever have such faithful servants been,
That what you like, I will freely call my choice,
For beauty brought by you, does fires teen;
Carry this message back, tell her 'tis best
That hers should heat my bosom, I her breast.
Peace, peace, quoth she, speak not a word oflove,
For fear my anger, scorns, and folly writes,
Eagles love Eagles, and the Dove the Dove:
Hankes brook not Buzzards; or the Pheasant Kites,
Equals love equals: but un-equal flame
Is teen'd wi
•
hfolly, and expires with shame.
True, quoth he, likeness does the heart incline,
Greatness loves greatness, without farther search,
Yet crawling Ivies lofty Elmes en-twine,
And gall-less Turtles with the Eagles pearch.
I baulk your greatness; for as good, not great,
I homage pay, and loves alarums beat.
Those airy titles, which ambition swell,
And puff like bladders, or like bladders burst,
The worldlings goddess, which in chests does dwell,
Is gnawne with rust, and makes the chesters cursed,
Honor is tied unto the Princes eye,
And wealth to Fortunes mutability.
I have not wealth (nor do I want) what then▪
Must
Hymen
stoop unto the nods ofgold?
Must I veil Bonnet unto
Ermin
men?
And Virtue by the Herald be controlde?
No, love does blaze the noblest arms: and she,
That can maintain herself, in love can me.
Stay, stay, quoth she, you will be out of wind,
Me thinks the voice of greatness speaks delight:
Our Poets only then fain
Cupid
blind,
When children of the Sun do dote on Night.
Or folly mounted on
Icarian
wings,
Courts Queens affections, & does gaze on Kings.
No, says
Albino,
'tis the contrary,
Love never is more purblind then when earth
Joynes house to house, and pedigrees do tie
Scutcheons to Scutcheons in pure virtues dearth,
For Regal flames blest goodness only teenes,
And virtue ought to court the love of Queens.
We all are borne for public good: 'tis vain
With torch-light to embellish
Titans
rays,
Or cast our stock of water in the main;
Such love from laws of love and nature strayes:
But those that
Fortune
hath enriched with goods,
Should darne up natures wants, by mixing bloods
Was I the
Caesar
of the
Roman
stemmes,
(Once only darling to the King of skies)
Did both the
Indies
pay me tribute-Gemmes,
I'd not unite a double Majesty.
For being no distinction in degree,
She would assume that honor due to me.
She'd chide me sooner than I durst check her,
And as the proverb,
quarrel for the breeches,
On some choice mean that honor I'd confer,
Should sue with humble
Sirs,
and low beseeches.
Thus was she tide to payment of respects,
I licenc'd with state-love to mixe neglects.
Where beauty does indite, and virtues seal,
Greatness is not required to set his hand:
Though greatness here may virtues acts repeal;
Yet virtues acts in
Cupids
courts must stand.
Then where I find grace, feature, virtues dwell,
I have greatness, wealth, and honor: tole the bell.
Then with kind airs, life of my wishes speak,
Bid honor know his distance, wealth depart,
And let the day of true contentment break
From thy clear lips, to cheare my misted heart.
O with own circle, let my arms enfold
The soul of honor, and the heart of gold.
Sir, quoth
Bellama,
wealth is not my aim,
Nor does the gales of honor heave my soul,
I higher prize an action than a name,
And value more a pamphlet than a roll.
Where I with come linesse find virtue mixed,
My love, eyes, thoughts, are on that object fixed:
I speak not much of love, lest you presume;
And speak a little, lest you should despair,
I would not have my words your hopes deplume,
Nor feather them to reach the highest air,
I sum up all in this, when as I say,
I will not with disdains thy service pay.
Oh happy words! oh more than sacred breath!
Albino
live,
Bellama
says thou must:
Confront dire Fate, and challenge meagre death,
'It is not in them to molder thee to dust:
Yet be advised, let not proud folly in,
The conquest is as great to hold as win.
Our Anchorist with all the words that joy
Hearting a lover, was acquainted with,
Accosts his Saint, rewards the winged boy,
And congies to the Queen of heat and pith,
Smiled and glanc'd, paid thanks, desired a kiss,
And prayed time give an age unto his bliss.
But when days lamp had wan the western clyme,
And wrapped his head in Sea-green
Thetis
lap,
Our lover must observe the chaunting time,
And bids his Saint adieu: oh hard mishap!
Oh tis a hell to think what hellish pain
True lovers by unkind divorcement gain!
Yet by that time the hoary headed Syre
Had summed twelve sixty minutes, he again
Returnd tohis Lady, when bright
Tytans
fire
Was newly risen from the brackish main,
And common greetings past amidst their pleasures,
He, in his Ladies hands these lines entreasures.
Upon Bellama's walking in the Garden, and with him.
MY teeming fancy strives (choice fair) to chain
Eternity to time, that nere shall wane;
And make those garden minutes see the Sun
Entombd in darkness, and the earth un-spun
Ere they expire, that all succeeding times
May know and tell the subject of these rimes.
Assist me
Flora,
that I may with grace
Worthy its honor, shadow forth that place▪
Of spreading trees, sweet herbs, and fragrant Flowres▪
Enricht with pleasing walks, and shady Bowres.
Each twig with amorous touch embracit his Mate,
Like
Bacchus
sacred tree his propping state;
Or Ivy, Elm, that neither Sun nor Wind
To his retired conclaves passage find.
Within whose walls a half-nights darkness dwells,
Which Satyrs growing palaces excelles,
Or
Anchorets
secluding Hermitage.
Here, like a common Theater, or Stage,
Each spiced child of earth in Summer robe,
And
Iris
mantle, opes his closed globe,
Knowes his appearing cue, and freely plays
Oth' wisht-for presence of your quickening rays:
Such perfect vivifying influence
Dwells in your looks, Lights Chariot driven hence,
That your sole presence can create a Spring,
From Winters frozen bands can loose each thing,
From Earths entombing Sepulcher can raise
Each sleeping Flowre to chaunt forth
Maia's
praise:
This made amazement seize my mind to view
Halfe-aged Winter bid so soon adieu
To this
Elyzium
of the Pagans joy,
And
Chloris
with ber new-brusht clothes so coy
Before, and hardly to be won, come forth
Crownd with the glory of her springing worth,
To court our eyes: nay more, the bare-faced Earth,
Coverd with Carpets green, befringed round
With smiling Rosie trees, with glorious store
Of Dazies, Suckles, Cow-slips, studded ore
Like hunting Vestes of
Satonisco
green,
Embost with Gems, by Fawns and wood-nymphs Queen
Worne, when the tushed Boar, Bear, panting Hart
Th'unkennell, rouse, dis-frank with nimble art.
And lest your spotless soles should suffer ill,
Ayres fleeting tuns C
•
rystalline streams distill
To wash the grassie-tufted tapestry,
Which whistling winds with murm'rings hasle to dry.
Andev'ry tender branch whereon you tread,
To make your traci
•
g, pacing, moves its head.
Alcinous
Orchard, or that precious root,
Which bore old
Atlas
daughters golden fruit:
Th' Idalian mount, where
Cytherea
strayd,
Or that where
Ceres
lucklesse daughter played,
When as the King of shades surprised her.
Nor may the Romans pride with this confer,
For here all
Maia's
treasures are united,
Which do, which shall, or senses e're delighted,
Yet summer'd by your eye, each Flower does bud,
Bl
•
ssomes, sprouts, opens, blooms and chewes the cud.
Your presence hearts them all: O be as kind
As unto them, to me! shoot through my rind.
Shine through my heart with one, one smiling ray,
So shall it open, blossom, sprout as they,
Spicit with the choicest sweets e're
Venus
bad,
In all the postures of true service clad,
Trimd with the beauties of the richest spring.
All fertile too, all store of fruit shall bring:
This, choice affection; that, chaste loyalty;
This, vows; that, service; and that, constancy,
Made up into a nose-gay, circled in
With twists of love, which youth and virtue spin.
Then Breath and Ray, make and accept the Posy,
And seal a contract twixt the Lil
•
' and Rosie.
En-spheared thus with virgins, oft he would
Tell pretty tales, fraught with conceited mirth,
Discourse of foreign states: sometimes unfold
A sudden jest, may give to laughter birth:
Thus to beguile the time he oft would do,
And unsuspected did his Lady woo.
Then privately sometimes with her would walk
Along a paved way, where lofty trees
Bore only witness of their am'rous talk,
Plaiting their branched pride, that none might see,
And lest quick envy should their dalliance spy.
Themselves about the trees the brambles tie.
Here in soft whispers did he court her love,
And strove by oath their loves to ratify.
Madam, says he, this reason may you move,
That day and malice have too many eyes,
When my lips are seald, and I attempt in vain,
To send the children of my teeming brain.
Not half so vigilant the Dragon was,
Which
Colchos
treasure watched, as is your Dame,
So that they must through
Argus
head-piece pass,
Which seek here to enkindle
Cupids
flame.
I know your jealous Matrone does discover
How my faint heart about your breast does hover.
Sir, says
Bellama,
there is no such haste,
Time will appoint our loves some fitter seasons,
My father must ungirdle first my waste,
Love will not be repeld by force, but reasons▪
And more, you know it is in vain to strive,
Heres no escaping this Monastic hive.
When as the third days Sun, three hours or more,
Our Zenith has behind him left, hither
Return, and I will meet thee; not before:
My thoughts (quoth he) do in your absence wither,
Pincht with the sharpest blasts cold winter breathes
But your,
your looks
my heart with
blossoms
wreathes
That foolish glass which measures time with sand,
Enough of gravel has to meet a year,
With lesser trouble I could
Hermes
wand,
Than the sad torture of your absence bear:
Change then those hours to minutes; days, today,
If you say 't shall be so, time must obey.
Alas! quoth she, my faith is not so strong,
To think reality with language dwells,
Nor can I think you count those minutes long,
When you'r employed with your Beads and Bells.
Ye
•
t' has the face of truth, I will therefore try
If time will pay such duty to mine eye.
These words have lent my body a new soul,
And shot (quoth she) a fire through every vein,
Doubt not, your voice times circle can control,
And make the Sun his hasty Iennets reyne.
Nay more, me thinks m'enlightened eyes, discover
'Bout you the gods with veiled bonnets hover.
I am half persuaded, 'twas not blasphemy
For me to say your nod can ravell Fate,
Thaw into Chaos this firm globe of dry,
Beck
•
n the planets, and their towers un-slate.
Me thinks I see the Sun naild to his sky,
Vn-nath his Carre, and throw his whip-staff by
Peace, peace, quoth she,
Albino,
thou dost rave,
Why dwells such language on thy wretching tongue?
Wilt thou just vengeance force to dig thy grave?
Thinkst thou stern Fate will suffer such a wrong?
Pinnion thy words, let them not soar so high,
Lest they should gash the clouds, and ope the sky.
We must not play with sharpes, nor kiss the flame,
Dally with heaven, or up-braid the gods,
Lest their just anger make their powers tame
Such saucy scandals with their plagues and rods.
Then wing no more
Bellama's
name, but let
The Pearl be called Pearl, the Iet but Iet.
Go home in clouds, lest Envy see thy face,
And come not till those minutes task the watch.
Madam, says he, I will bid them mend their pace,
It is just with lovers every hair ro catch,
That dights occasions brow▪ change date for date,
Entrench sometimes upon the rights of Fate.
Yet your command shall stand, I will not transgress,
But watch the hand until it joint the hour,
And all my paths with gloomy shades will dress,
That undiscoverd I may win this boure:
May all the blessings which a lovers voice
Breathes on his Lady▪ wait on you my choice.
Here did they meet to rivet fast their heart,
Where not a breath their private joys disturb;
They thought no eye a saucy ray durst dart,
Or any voice had power their loves to curb.
So credulous are lovers, and so fain
To their conjectures would
conclusum's
chain:
But this bright Sun of joy eclypsed was,
And pitchy clouds their glorious sky did smutch,
Then
Venus
joys were like to
Venice
glass,
Poor glass-like toys, that perish with a touch,
A Guardians anger, or a parents frown,
Nips loves fresh blossoms, and a wish uncrowne.
The jealous matron from her to wring loft,
O're-look
•
th' ambitious trees which hem'd them in
Or'e-heard their vows, their sighs, & language soft,
And saw how
Cupid
leapt from skin to skin.
The traffic of their lips, and how thin balms,
Did glue and cement fast their melting palms.
When she perceived the progress of their love,
Religious care impanneld straight a Jury
Of thoughts and plots, this stranger to remove,
Soothed with profit, and enflam'd with fury,
Vsh'ring her language with a threatening frown,
She asked her business with that shaved crown.
Why was that sickly voice, whose feeble gales
Can raise no echoes, hand, and elbow chat,
Eye-dialogues discourse, and wanton tales
That way of am'rousnesse, and this, and that?
Speak truth
Bellama,
has thy heart, as voice,
Decreed that youthful monk thine only choice?
Bellama
startled at this sudden news,
Yet did her answers all consist of noes,
But yet, alas! her hloud observed the cues,
And called by guilt, her Lily banks ore-flows:
So that though she with settled vows denyde,
Yet to the eye her blushes guilty cryde.
When as the matrones busy eyes had read
Love on her cheeks in bloody letters writ,
She asked her why blind folly thus had lead
Her reason, 'gainst religion, state or wit?
Or if she needs must love, why did she scowle
Upon state-sattens, and embrace a cowle?
Bellama
to excuses tuned her air,
Framing pretences for her amorous saith,
But yet alas, such was
Pazzella's
care,
From her excuses she withheld her faith.
And with a voice shrill and as fierce as thunder,
Sware she would knap their silly loves in sunder.
Those scarlet gowns, which doom-offenders, death,
Or the proscriptions of the Roman state,
Had not the tithe of that affrighting breath,
Although they weakened hell, and threatened Fate,
As had these words which feeble love did shiver,
Snap his weak strings, & crack his empty'd quiver
But all this while,
Albino
sat with pleasure,
And on his trencher joy and mirth attend,
Nor to delight will he allow a measure,
As, at one sitting, he his stock would spend.
Nay, if he slept, he dreamed of naught but rings,
Gloves, fans, masks, monkies, & such pretty things.
And when the time of his approach, approachit,
His eye did travel with the Dyals hand,
Then started up to see
Don Phoebus
coachit,
Bad him make haste, and at that minute stand,
That this blest day may count more moments flight
Than could the stout
Alcides
geniall night.
But oft we see before a sudden dash,
The Sunsalutes the earth with hottest gleames:
So here before misfortunes harshest lash,
Joy on
Albino
shot his choicest beams.
That evety thought was crowned with a star,
And rid with
Venus
in her silver Carre.
Rose out of thevault, with love and hope adust,
And in conceit fed on his future sweet,
Thinking what most may please, not what's most just.
And with what phrase he should his Lady gree
•
Vowing in this full heat of lust and pride,
To try how fast
Bellama's
girdle's tide.
But as our Alchemists do study much,
Spend all their wits and wealth to find that stone,
Which baser metals doth en-gold with touch,
(As he which once did awe the
Phrygian
throne)
And when they long have dreamed of a mass,
Their silvers's turned to tin, their gold to brass.
Just so our Amorist stuffed full with hope,
Came to this walk for his expected treasure,
The crystal casements of his soul did ope,
To letin th'object of his joy and pleasure;
But when he thought tohave found hi
•
lovely lasse,
His love was Lady-smocks, his Lady grass.
He searched with stricter care, each bush and bowre,
Then did the Fairy King, and
Hob
his man,
Throwing his eyes into each branched tower,
And midst the sharpened pikes of brambles ran.
Prickt forward with desire, enraged with spite,
And venteth here what love and hate endite.
Upon his Bellama using and forsaking the Walk.
WHen walking I sentforth my watchfulleyes▪
To fetch in objects, like
Bellona's
spies,
Along this swelling way, which checkerd was
With smooth-facit pebbles, not with piked grass,
Bellama
Pacit, whose only pacing set
Upon the paved walk a Coronet
Of
Flora's
pride, Carnations, Tulips, Lilies,
Pansies, Pinkes, Roses, Daffa-down-dillies:
Nay more, me thought I saw the rubbish way,
Sapphires, Pearls, Rubies, Onix-stones, out-ray
The very channel proud of her blest weight,
Sweld up with pride unto the ridge's height
To kiss her feet, and made the way an alley,
With this choice Faire mine eyes (ah) once did dalle
•
▪
Natures Epitomy, whose curious brow
Was like a smoothed mount of bleached snow,
At whose clear foot Nature divine did place
Two Diamonds, which did enlighten all her face:
So that twas like those orbs wherein do stray
The planet-lamps, or
Cupids
sucking way,
And from these gems such silver rays were sent▪
Which hatched over her light accoutrement.
So that dull fancies would have thought she had
In Cambricke, Holland, or pure Lawne been clad▪
Nay I, at first, thought it had
Cynthia
been
Deckt in her brothers sun-shine
Ermilin.
She shot such glorious beams: but now alas!
She's gone, she's fled, and lo, the mournirg grass
Is hayd already, and th'ungemd stone
At feathers catch to fly where she is gone.
The branched Beech, the Oke, and towering Ash,
Bend both their brows and boughs my face to lash:
The angry thorns, my hands, though armed, scratch,
And testy brambles at my vestures catch:
(Which was before the curse of human sin,
But now, by her, out-smeld the Eglantine)
I wonder-stricken, asked a holy Thistle
Which with his sharpened-pikes began to bristle:
(But know, at first twas but an homely weed,
Her presence made it holy, not its seed)
Why all with ireful looks thus threatened me?
It is supposed
Bellama
fair (quoth he)
The goddess of this walk, was for
•
't by you
To this benighted path to bid adieu.
Alas! quoth I, (mean while the thistle paus'd)
Their wrath is undeserv'd, I never caused
By any ill demeanes that Saint to leave
This place, and widow every branch and greave,
Unto your testates I myself refer▪
How choycely I have ever honourd her,
Have paid my tribute-complements, and gave
Respects as much as due, or she would have.
But people (worse than those that people slewes)
Whose only joy consists in telling news,
Or
Pazzell
else with ber envenomdlips
Your glory and my comfort do eclypse,
It is them they ought to chide, sor only they
Compel her to forsake this gloomy way.
Yet spite of all disasters, Fate and Hell,
Albino's
heart shall with
Bellama
dwell,
And though chill winter nip both you and me,
We shall ere long our Suns and Summers see.
This said, he straight forsook his silent grove,
Trimming his looks which passion did untrim,
And hastes to find the object of his love,
But such an eye the matron cast on him,
That fury on her looks did seem to dwell
And envy to her face transplanted hell.
Heartlesse
Albino
with much pain did view
How on her looks madness and anger rang'd,
And on
Bellam
he private glances threw,
To bring him word if that she stood unchang'd,
If she continued square despite of them,
Whose jealous eyes did all their actions hem▪
Bellama
knew the language os his eye,
But could not give respect to
Cupids
law,
For
Piazella
to her eyes did tie
A constant watch, which kept her eyes in awe,
That she was forced to peep within her veil▪
For there the matron did her eyes en-jayle.
The ragged crew which are en-wrapped in chains,
Through grates more freedom have of sight than she,
Which in them both produced such griefs and pains
Too sharp and loud to be expressed by me.
Albino
now does judge his absence better,
And chose a proxee to present a letter.
One of his order, (deemd a trusty friend
Endeard to him by favors, oath and vow)
Was his
Talthibius,
ordained to send
To her, whose beauty makes stiff
Atlas
bow.
The Monk embracit the office, and did sware
By all our scarlet oaths, faith, truth, and care.
Albino
now to every
Santo
prays,
And for success his hands with zeal does rear,
Courting his Lady in some Irish Lays,
And robbed his finger of its golden sphere
En-neald,
(I live in hope)
and sure griefs waves
If Anchorlesse, had been 'twas wishes graves.
To me's fair Metres, Vandebrad Islile of te fine town of Vaschester▪
ICk predee metres be not coy,
But intertaune me's love vit joy:
For me be not a snottee boy.
Vat tough me russell not in silk,
And keep me's servaunts vit capes ilke,
Yet me be not a sop of milk.
Vat tough me vil not stautly stret,
And ilke de Peacock poudely jet;
Yet me be vary pruce and neat.
Vat tough me vil not lie vit pimpes,
And pend me's coin on light-teale shrimpes,
Yet me can hug, busse prettee nymphes.
Vat tough me have Hauke ne Hound,
And vil not suare begot, idzound,
Yet faith me's frolique, plumpe and sound.
Vat tough me cannot Maudam say,
And vil ty Fan an Monkee play,
Yet me con
•
latter vel as they.
Vat tough me cannot honor tee
Vit titles laudee C or D,
Yet tou sault a good Metress be.
Vat tough, vat tough, Ick say, vat tough,
Ick say, udsnigs, in feck I trough,
Yet Ick drive not te Caurt and Plough.
Then pretee, pretee, Buxome fair,
Let me not launguish in depaire,
But say me's suits all gaunted are.
Let ne me's Irish Borrell speech,
In tyne affection mauke o breach,
For me con better say so teach.
And me can be as blyth and free
As auny push or saunten he,
Ten say, and ved, and bed vit me.
Tyne faytfull friend and good servaune, Patrick Applous, te fine, te • ave, te gallaun Irish-mon▪
Upon the Ring sent to his Bellama.
GVpid
ofttimes disdains to dwell
In lofty palace, but does shell
Himself in straw-thatched roof; and choice
For novel, a September rose
Before a Diamond to present
Or time in silver seilings pent▪
Great gifts enforce, but small ones woo,
And forced respects will never do.
He questions his own worth, that fears
To whisper in his mistress ears
With smallest gifts, since true worth hates
A boune which for him loudly prates,
And female worths may justly slight
Those that, but with guilt swords, dare fight.
These make me send this little ring,
(An Emblem of a greater thing)
'It is bruis'd, hence representeth true
My heart bruis'd, bent and bowd for you▪
Anatomists conclude by art,
A vein is stretched to the heart
Froth' smallest finger of the left,
From vein and finger comes this geft:
Hence merits better, since we find
Many send presents, few their mind.
UPON THE POESIE I live in hope▪
TIs hope that makes me live, and when
My hope's transferred to other men,
Divorcit from me, health cannot give
A strength to make my rent heart live,
A rented heart tis truly called,
For love of virtues you enthrall'd
Tenant at will to you, and pays
Large rents of sighs each hour and days,
But to what number they amount,
Puzzles Arithmetic to count.
Then courteous Land-lady be please
To seal my heart a life-long lease.
Else every slight and frown of yours,
Will turn your tenant out of doors,
Yet hope persuades me not to doubt
My heart shall not be turned out:
For you have promised to come
An live with it, or exchange home,
So I be Land-lord unto thine,
And you be Land-lady to mine.
Say I to this, and only Fate
Shall change the tenor of our state.
Bardino
from the Coven posts with speed
Unto
Albino's
only Polar star,
Loaden with blessings, and beware, take heed,
As the great grand-dames son prepared for war,
Or as a widows son, whose only joy
Hangs on the nuptials of her lusty boy.
Like as a Pilot to some floating keele,
When as the bustlers from old
Aeol's
cave,
On
Neptunes
furrowd back make it to reel,
And at his death shoot billow after wave:
So tost in seas of grief
Albino
tide,
His loves choice pinnace to
Bardino's
guide.
But Bishop Guts, tun-belly'd, all-pancht Friar,
In sight of
Lesbia's
towers split his fair Galley,
Prov'd a dissembling and perfidious liar,
From his foul breast deceit and hate did salley.
The seeds of every sin in him did bud,
Nothing did wither but this one thing,
Good.
For to win credit with the Lady-mother,
And raise a liking of himself in her,
He proved a traitor to his Abbey-brother,
With Abbatesse in private does confer,
And unto her imparts his amorous news,
She, not
Bellam'
his vowed service views.
But to
Albino
he returned with faith,
(Yet 'twas an oath) I importuned thy Saint,
Prest her tounlock thy secrets; but she saith,
What pur-blind folly does thy heart attaint?
Thou knowest what offers I refused, and thou'le
Confine my love unto a starved cowl.
Away flings she, and leaves me disconsolate,
Nor after dain'd to me a wonted look:
Now is
Albino
pinched with cruel Fate,
Which is the better,
Cupid,
or thy book?
Hadst viewd her beauty with a scornful eye,
Thou hadst not tasted of her pride and fie.
Haplesse
Albin',
and haplesse so much more,
Because
Albin',
rest quiet with thy lot,
If
Nile
over-flow his sandy floor
Above twelve cubits, it procures a rot.
When at too high a pitch affections tower,
Fate with misfortunes oft their hopes doth sour.
Wound not the harmless air with mournful hoots
Steere not 'gainst
Volgo's
stream thy feeble keele,
Be not like him who 'gainst a whirl-wind shoots,
Or like the Cockatrice in pecking steel,
For acts 'gainst nature wrougt, despite do gain,
And love over-looking Fortune, reaps disdain.
But let us see what strange effect this news
Writes in his breast (disasters fatal book)
What stronger plot his working fancy brewes,
If's lofty thoughts be at this answer shook,
Alas! they are, so weak a thing is man,
Crasht into
Atoms
with a slighting fan.
His blood retires unto his throbbing heart,
His wanned cheeks with lawne were over-spread▪
An aspin trembling loosened every part,
His spirits fainted, and his vitals fled,
And his quick heart with such strong motions beat
•
▪
That it, though chil'd with fear, his body heated.
Entring his chamber, strewed over with rue,
He lean'd his head upon his swelling pillow,
And sighing, cryde,
Bellama
is this true,
Must I be doomed to the barren willow?
I thought, exempted from my pedants art,
I should no more have felt the willows smart.
Thy eyes spake love, and every glance you sent,
Writ on my heart,
Albino is approved,
Whenso'ere my eyes unto thy feature went,
And met with thine, they brought me word
you loved
Then can
Bellama
not
Bellama
be?
She may
Bellama
be, but not to me.
Blest heavens! how have men deserved your ire,
That made you frame this curse, this thing called
Woman,
So comely and so useful? giving fire
To sear us men, and yet disdain to know man?
Why on their faces have you placed such charms,
To make us court with sighs the worst of harms?
Pandora's
box of woes was opened then,
When first they took in hand to make a woman,
And all the Furies joined to torture men;
Yet women first were rare, but now grown common,
And mischiefs high, when once they common grow.
Entombe great states, and commons overthrow.
Thou Love, (what should I call thee?) doest entice,
Nay checkst rebellion in the awful gods,
Women thy weapons are, of such high price,
That beat with them, they humbly kiss the rods.
No life, no joy, no sweet, without a lasse,
And yet no sweet nor joy since woman was.
Our eyes do never mistake the day for night,
Nor can the pale-hewd pinkes for roses pass,
But when on women's colors they do light,
Then (bribed) they look as through a painted glass,
So that what women are we never see,
But what we wish and fancy them to be.
'Mongst thousand virgins which do suck this air,
I never knew but one, but one—one good,
Whom I supposed full as good as fair,
And she was making e're
Deucalions
flood:
But she alas! what should I say? but she
Is woe to man, a woman unto me.
Thus in his heightened fury he condemns,
Both Fate and Fortune, honor, wealth and worth,
Raileth on virgins and their beauteous gems,
And curseth nature, that did bring herforth,
But above all, his sharp incensed Muse,
In wrathful Odes Don
Cupid
does accuse.
An Invective against CVPID.
THou love, if thou wilt suffer this, be blind,
Deafe, dumb, and stupid, and unwisely kind,
More unto slights than merits, and reward
Respects and negligence with same regard.
If Sattens difference, and maids adorn,
Then nature has with beauty, more with scorn,
That they must fligger, scoff, deride and jeer,
Appoynt their servants certain hours toappear,
Affoord by number, kisses, sights by tale,
Command a certain distance, and empale
Loves game from taste or touch, and if at all
Men do transgress, steep all their words in gall:
Check but the least presumption, and with frown
••
Strike as much terror unto us, as crowns;
Love,
if thou wilt suffer this, and wink at them,
Make us esteem a pebble for a gem,
Stoop, crindge, adore, sue, flatter, and admire,
And in our bosoms teenst thy amorous fire,
May all the haggish Furies soundly lash
And with their snaky whips thy sinews gash:
May all the tortures Hell encloseth, fall
On thee, if not enough, and, more then all;
But we—we men will be no more thy slaves,
And women's too, we'l pack unto our graves:
And in our silent beds of earth will court
The slender-wasted worms, and with them sport,
Dally, hug, toy, and vow their wimbling busse
Is full as sweet as women's was to us.
En-wall'd with dust we'l lie, till nature shall
Perceive thy malice
(Cupid)
and her fall,
And woos with sighs and tears in loving guise,
For a replantage of the world, to rise,
Then shall our wills un-god thee, and thy mother,
And
Cupids
be ourselves one to another.
Then in thy Temples shall no voice be heard,
But Scriech-owls, Dors, and Daws, no Altarreard
Whereon to sacrifice true lovers hearts,
Scalded with sighs, and galled with thy darts.
For we ourselves, ourselves will temples call,
And make our bosoms Altars, whereon shall
From fourteen to fourscore the females fairs
Burn Frankinsence of love with sighs and praires,
And change the custom so, that maidens then
Shall court, admire, adore and woo us men.
This said, he strove tounbillow all with slumbers,
But th'more he strove to rest, less rest he takes,
His watchful thoughts each tattling minut numbers,
Bellama's
wakening beauty him awakes.
And having purchased sleep, though they were dim,
Bellama's
beauty darted rays at him▪
Then starting up, her substance fair to catch,
He lost the shadow, and did rave again,
Can groveling Brambles lofty Cedars scratch?
Or wadling Ducks over-top the towering Crane?
Yet virtues imp'd with person, reach a sky,
And to an higher pitch then Fortune fly.
There is a tree, (as our Historians write)
Alpina
hight, of fair and glorious gle
•
▪
With branches fine, and glorious blossoms dight,
But never tasted by the witty Be,
Fearing death lodgeth there, and this he fears,
Cause to the eye so glorious it appears.
Not much unlike to these our women are
Whom Nature has in dainty colors dressed,
And of our women likest are the fair,
For with much beauty virtues seldom rest.
Would
Jove
all women I had judged to be
Alpina-like,
or if not all, yet she.
The Queen of beauty strumpet was to
Mars,
Officious Bawd unto lascivious
Jove,
A patronesse of those that ride in Carres,
And in her Court nor virtue reigns, nor love,
But lust and vanity with wily trains,
That he repentance buys, which beauty gains.
Sh' as many trulls, like
Menelaus
wife,
And she such light-skirt things for chaste ones sels,
With whom dissembling and deceits are rife,
Smiles, tears, sighs, looks, with such enchanting spells.
If they but bend their brows, & shoot out frowns,
They crack a scepter, and distemple crowns.
Yet stay: but by the sour we know not sweet,
White's silver hue adjoynd to black, shines best,
How should we know our hands, but by our feet?
Healths only prized, when sickness doth arrest.
This principle perhaps
Bellama
holds,
Summer is known by Winters chilling colds.
Perchance
Bellama
did not breath that woe
Which by
Bardino
was conveyd to me:
Nor dwelt upon her lips that scornful No,
'Twas only forged by her Dame and he.
But—why should suspicion steal into my bre
Suspect a friend, deceit with friendship rest?
No:
Phaeton
base son to days bright blaze,
Daring his Chariot felt
Ioves
thunder fire.
Astronomers, whilst on the stars they gaze,
Oft-times do sink into the dirty mire:
Only the Eagle without purblind damps,
Can fixe his eyes upon the prince of lamps.
The son of
Daedalus
soar'd up so high,
That
Phoebus
plucked his waxen jointed wings;
It was her pride checked my ambitious eye,
True love to hatred changed by slights has stings.
I will write invectives: no, I will only try
What virtue dwells in slighting Poesie
To his Bellama slighting him.
I will bore the heavens, pierce the clouds a vain,
Make them full torrents weep of brackish rain,
To second my laments, me thinks the Sun
Knowing my clue is raveld and undone,
That my
Bellama
slights, should vext resign
T'his sisters Chariot his Ecliptick line.
Bid
Phoebe
run horn mad, and loudly cry,
Froth, howl, as in a fit of lunacie,
Nay, throw a poison on
Endimions
lips,
Threaten to drown the world, the Sun eclypse,
Keep the stars order still? or can they stir,
And not digress? Know they how not to err?
Sure no: I saw bright
Paphos
snuff her lamp,
Yet vowd to quench it with eternal damp,
Hurle all away, if that her servants love
Be had in no regard, and awful
Jove
Hurry along the milky way to find
That snifling deity, that winged, blind—
And vowd to clip his wings as short as Munkes,
Their stubbed beards more short than pained runkes▪
Unless he shot a dart with more than speed,
To make
Bellama's
heart affections bleed.
Bold Ocean foames with spite, his neb-tides roar,
His billows top and top-mast high do soar.
Nature herself is sullen, keeps her bed,
And will not rise so much as dress her head,
Regardlesse of the seasons, will not see
Loude winds deplume the bush and to wring tree.
The Ploughman furrows earth, sows seedith'tides,
But nature weeps for me, his pains derides
Copernicus
his t
•
net's verify'd,
The massy Globe does 'bout its center ride.
All things dis-rankt, nothing observes it state,
Change time and tide, or post or ante-date
But thou
Bellam'
art deaf to me and blind,
Steelst thine affections, flintst thy hardened mind,
And strik'st fire thence toenflame my tinder heart,
Thou oil'st the flame, but I endure the smart.
How oft have I, when others eyes have slept,
Like sentinels to armies, watchings kept?
And when the thoght of thesaints thrice blisful home
(which ah! too seldom) mongst my thoughts did come
Then spite of goodness blessed E was lost
And you the haven of me tempest-tost:
Have I made envious art admire thy worth,
Toucht the
Ela
of praise, toemhlazonit forth?
Bid sleep good night, quiet and rest adieu,
Made myself no self to entitle you.
And after this sad purgatory, must
My hopes be laydith' dust for want of dust?
Then know
Bellama,
since thou aimst at wealth,
Where Fortune has bestowd her largest dealth,
That wealth may puff a clod of earth like leaven,
But virtuous want alone ensouleth heaven.
Know more, I scornd thy fortune, 'twas thyself
I courted, not thy slight adored pelf,
And had not Mortals curse blest thee and I
Had sweld with honor and nobility.
My love once fixed on virtue, parents hate
In both, might shake, but never everts loves state.
I aim at virtues bliss, and if I find
The heart and bosom good, I slight the rind.
But since
Bellama,
thou regardst not me,
I scorn to cringe, adore, and flatter thee.
For he that rules his thoughts, has a nobler soul,
Than he that awes the world from Pole to Pole.
Thus, Faire, adieu, with love these measures scan,
And know my love was but a fit of man.
We'l leave
Albino
in this phrentick mood,
And view
Bellama
parged ore with fear,
Asking a member of her sister-hood,
(For love and vertves unto her most dear)
Amongst their sportings, and their chaste delights,
Wherefore
Albino
did refrain their sights.
Barraba
(her the Font those letters gave)
Sayd, I presume, I rightly guess the cause,
Bellama
urged (thanks to the pur-blind knave)
'Twas thus, quoth she, yet made a two-days pause,
At length with importunings over-come,
She told her why
Albino
kept at home.
Bardino
did deceive his trust, quoth she,
Told all, yet sung another song to him,
His love came laptin paper unto thee,
He with quaint words did his affections lim,
Vowd service, but
Bardino
(ah though shame▪)
Vnclaspt his secrets to our jealous dame.
Am I an Infidel? or dare I tie,
Quoth fair
Bellama,
unto this, belief?
Shall just revenge in my soft bosom die?
And shall I melt my heart with secret grief?
I will scold with him, Says chaste
Barraba,
no:
For by that, others will your wishes know.
What she should do (plunged in this depth of woe)
Bellama
knew not, nor durst counsel ask,
More dangers wait her, if she send or go,
Than if she under went
Alcides
task▪
Distracted were her thoughts in silence tide,
Till love and honor buzzled, then she cryde,
Ah false
Bardino!
shame of holy Orders!
Whither, ah! whither didst thousend thy troth?
To be grand factor in the frozen borders,
For them whose deckes do make old Ocean froth?
And truthlesse thou, locktin this gloomy Cell,
Plotst baseness to enlarge the crown of hell.
Unjust
Bardin',
unworthy of a cope,
Or (whose employments holy) other vest,
Didst, oh didst thy conscience scour with sope?
And washed all faith from off thy glazed breast?
And faithless thou esteemest less of vow,
Than clownish whistlers, which do steer the plow
Where didst incage thine eyes? durst thou behold
(Acting this crime) the castle of the stars?
How stopst thine ears? didst hear the heavens scold,
And chide in wind and thunder, threatening wars?
Durst touch the hallowd water, spittle, salt,
The Cross or Pax, and yet attempt this fault?
Those sacred Bagno's wherein Pagans wash
Their sullyd limbs for their Moschea's door,
The pottage-penance, and repentant lash,
The hair-cloth shirt, skin-shoes, & thousand more,
Th' Arch-vicars pardon, and the purging flame,
Can never absolve thy crime, or clear thy fame.
Pack then from human eyes, and shroud thy sin
Under the curtains of eternal night;
Perfidiousnesse does make thee near of kin
To hells black fiends, with robes of horror dight:
Pack, pack, be gone, the Ferry-man does stay,
To waft thy paunch over th' Acherontick Bay.
But peace
Bellama,
dost thou think it fit
To value at so mean a price thy pearl?
Applaud thyself' count it a point of wit,
To take a Cowlist, and refuse an Earl.
The world shall be un-centerd, ere 'the said,
Beauty takes lodging in an humble maid.
What the
•
? shall every fashion fashion me?
As in religion, by the Churches eye,
So by the worlds, must I in loving see?
No, I the worlds supremacy deny.
Hence with those loves, which profit only measures
I hate that he
•
t which only shoots at treasures.
The
Cyprian
goddess is not fed with ploughes,
Nor
Cupids
arrow guided is with acres:
Vulcan
permitted was to shake the boughs;
But
Mars
sucked in the sweets without partakers.
Youth youth pursues, for with Autumnall looks
Cupid
does seldom bait his eighteen hooks.
Who in pleuretick passions does deny
To open veins, to shut death out oth' doors?
Who will notin sharp Fevers
Galen
try,
To weaken humors, and unstop the pores?
The quickest eye does want the quickening Sun,
And to the Sea the drilling cadents run.
Who, when Sir
Cupid
enters at the eye,
With pride and coy disdain shuts comfort forth?
I will make ambition stoop, now love says I,
And satten thoughts shall veil to Tammey worth:
By lovely maids, the lovely loved are,
And by the fair most favourd are the fair.
Thus did she rage, her resolution love,
Which spite of all disastets she will harbor,
Hoping blest fate will so propitious prove,
T'enclose her Monk and her in
Cupids
Arbour:
But leave her surfeiting with hope, and view
When to Monastic vows she'l bid adieu.
Till
Cynthia
twice twelve times repaired had
Her silver horns, she was in cloysterd here,
When some kind planet moved her loving Dad
To fetch her thence, his frosty'd age to cheare;
Hence virgins vow, away black vestments hurld,
Bellama's
borne again into the world.
He with his Lady mounted on his Ien.
Net, to the Nunnery, with haste does ride,
Accompany'd with troops of harnes
•
men,
And vowd a siege, if
Piazzell'
denyde,
To batter down the holy walls with guns,
And fright the Hag with all her simpring Nuns.
He in an ambush placit his iron crew,
Bad them prepare when as the trump did call,
Dismounting then, the Ianitor him knew,
And lead the Lordly couple through the hall,
Parlors and chambers, to the conclave, where
The pious Nuns their branched Lilies rear.
Bellama
craved a blessing, they it gave:
Then
Rivelezzo
he did softly ask
If the Monasticke roof should be her grave?
If now she grieved for
Don Fuco's
task?
If after two years bondage now she would
Answer more kindly to the voice of gold?
My Lord, quoth she, with humble knee and voice,
I am not tired with my nicer vow,
Nor hate I
Hymen,
might my eyes make choice,
Ask when I will marry? and I will answer now.
A man (quoth he) for face and virtue choose,
And on mine honor, I will not refuse.
P
•
azzella
fearing that their whispring would
Presage no good unto her huffing waste,
Broke off their parle, and
Rivelezzo
told
That his fair daughter zealous was and chaste:
And that her mind no evil did attaint,
She almost has attained to be a Saint.
Such high-prized comforts, joys, rewards and glory
Our happy walls en-feel and curtain in,
That we alone survive all praise and story,
Are called Hels tortures, and the whips of sin.
The local motion of our souls in heaven,
We hate blind Turkism, and the Jewish leaven.
Madam, quoth
Don,
you need no advocate,
Since you yourself can plead your cause so well,
But that my sex does interdict this state,
What your words might effect, I cannot tell;
But sure it does unscrue a virgins heart,
To hear of love, and never fecle his dart.
Madam, for sooth, quoth Lady
Arda,
I
Ne're found such comfort in theinnupted life,
Nor think the blessings of virginity
Can equal the contentments of a wife.
My voice should not assent unto her vow,
To wreath with willow sprigs her melting brow.
Quoth
Piazzella,
I am grieved sore
To hear such scandals thrown upon our vow,
To hear
Diana,
whom all ought t' adore,
And her chaste votaries depraved now.
I know not what contents attend a wife,
But sure they equal not th'innupted life.
Again, your honors you do much impeach,
To force your daughter from this happy state;
Twixt her and happiness you make a breach,
And pull upon your heads a cursed Fate.
Heavens un-buckle will their clouds of rain,
Death or diseases, if you part our train.
The body's better than the sheathing skin,
And ought with greater care to be maintained,
The guest is far more worthy than the Inn,
And ought with greater study to be traind.
The soul mounts heaven, when earrhs aged womb
The Skeleton (her issue) does entombe.
Away with arguments, in vain you plead,
Our vow (quoth they) locked not her girdle ever,
I (quoth
Pazzella)
do abjure the
Tede,
Hymen
shall never my holy orders sever:
But spite of all the tricks the world does nurse,
I will keep my virgins from the bridal curse.
Without demurs,
Don Rivelezzo
then
With shrill-voycit trumpet made an echo speak,
Straight was the house environed with men,
Which with their leaden gloabes an entrance break▪
The air was frighted with the powder-thunder,
The bellowing noise did split the rocks in sunder
Affrighted thus, the Matrone bid them gang,
And to
Bellama
gave a sad adieu:
Yet in her heart she grypt with Envies fang,
And over her looks a veil of sorrow drew.
The joyful parents having got their daughter,
Gave a farewell unto the house with laughter.
Leaving the Coach and Cloister, we'l take part
With poor
Albino
in his woe and grief,
Who seeing Fortune his designs did thwart,
And
Neptunes
grand-child brought him no relief:
Did think to win her presence in disguise:
He that but one way tries is hardly wise.
He plotted to invest himself with robe
Might speak him nobly borne, and gallant hair,
To some vast measures of this wealthy globe,
Seated aloft in honors Ovall chair:
Procure him then some store of laced capes,
To wait on him with servile garbes and shapes
Pretending to be one oth' Spanish court,
Giving strange accents to our moderne speech,
And hither came, his wandering mind to sport,
But that he faces lackt to tune each breech.
Besides, he knew the Matrones care was such,
She love untwisted in the eye or touch.
Then a new project did he get on's brain,
And sheard the downy moss from his smooth chin,
Intending to be one oth' Virgin-train,,
Like
Jupiter
huskt in a female skin▪
But that he feared religion could not bridle,
His active heat twixt linen to be idle.
He thought his breaking voice would him betray,
Unless he said, he ever had a cold:
He feared the curte fie and the female play,
Or that his face would make him seem too old:
But above all, he feared he should not lock
His legs within the compass of a smock.
In costly vestures he would be arrayde,
Of high descent, and fearing lest his Sire
Would force him to an hated pillow, strayd
With them to teene the holy vestall fire.
He would be nobly borne, not out of pride,
But to be sheeted by
Bellama's
side.
He had no treasure, but would promise fair,
That settled there, he should be fed in state,
Hoping to win the porter with kind air,
That with
Bellama
he might thread the gate.
He all would venture, and upon this plot,
Would place his fortunes, and the
Go
•
dian
knot.
In such accoutrement he veiled was,
That to himself
Albino
was not known,
He looked for
Albino's
faceith' glass,
But nothing of himself tohimself was shown:
Each way a maid enriched with special grace,
As though he had unflowr'd
Adonis
face.
He stilled himself
Phaeliche,
only child
To him, who at that time was
Folco's
Duke,
And was so like to her whom he was stilled,
That she could scarcely say twas not her look:
For what's of
Issa
and her picture writ,
Was found in them, they taskt the Poets wit.
Unto this Virgin-cage she fast did pace,
And knocking at the gate, the Porter came,
Who seeing riches on her back and face,
With humble voice desired to know her name.
My name (good friend) quoth she,
Phaeliche
is,
I come to taste your choice Monastic bliss.
Madam,
Avaro
said, our rubbish stone
With cement joined shall precious straight be made▪
In that they shall enspheare so fair an one.
Phaeliche
smiling at the porter, said,
Hath time with Iron jaws eat out this pare,
Which now these Masons do repair by Art▪
And truth it was,
Phoeliche (Folco's
heir)
Flying the disaster of an hated
Tede,
Coucht in disguises at a cottage bare▪
(But how? when? where? task not my amorous lede]
So that
Pazzella's
faith writ on her brow,
The noble treasures of
Phoeliches
vow.
Not time it was, but an unhappy hour,
The porter said, we had a virtuous fair,
Daughter unto a man of mighty power,
Begirt our holy walls with sulphur fire,
And summond harnest men which close did lie▪
They with their leaden worlds at us did play,
And frighted (as you see) these stones away.
Phaeliche
knowing that her Adamant,
Th'impulsive cause of this her virgin-vow,
Was vanished thence, and gleames of joy did want,
And wanning sorrow reveld on her brow▪
Scarce could she speak, & every jointing trembled,
Yet feared the Porter, and her fear dislembled.
Pazzella
and the virgins her esteemed,
Seeing her feature, and un-equald grace,
Before they knew his parentage, or deemed
He was descended from high
Folco's
race;
But knowing that, their joys did swell so high
That grief for sorrow slinkt aside to cry.
But ere the next days Sun, to let out day
Nights Ebon box unlocked, she did not brook
To hear their private whispers, talk, and pray,
Erect the host, and kiss a guilded book:
For, her,
Bellama
has possessed solely,
So that their water could not make her holy.
Instead of Virgin-mother, she would say,
My dearest Lady, hear my sad complaint,
Nor to she-Saints would she devoutly pray,
'Cause none but her
Bellama
was a Saint
Unto
Loretta,
as
Bellam'
she swears,
And calls their holy water but her tears.
She wondered oft how her
Bellama
did
Two years continue in this hated cell;
And in her thoughts she often-times her chid,
For dwelling where but formal good does dwell,
Since in her absence she could scarce abide
To sojorne here a double eventide.
Her brains acquainted was no whit with sloth,
But plotted how she might escape that Jail,
And to this end she vowd her virgin-oath
Should for her quick returning put in bail:
She thought her breach of virgin-oath no sin,
Because she only wore the formal skin.
She mist, in ransacking her Cabbinet,
A precious jewel far exceeding rare,
Which on her brow the Lady Duchess set,
As a true pledge of her indulgent care,
Far richer than that pearl which Egypt's Queen,
Quaft to her mark dissolved in liquor keen.
But for all this, a curious fit of man,
Did force her, for assay, to enter in,
To see if fasting did their Rosies wan,
Or folly led not in the
Paphian
sin,
Thinking her wit could manumisse her straight,
From that lank cloister, by some nimble sleight.
This she pretended to have lost, as she
(Fainted with fears, and with her travels tired)
In the cool shade of a well-haired tree,
Threw water on her joints with labor fired:
For heavens parch the air with hotter rays,
When with his flaming tongue the dog-star bayes
Madam, quoth she, with feigned tears and sigh,
Grant me your license to go seek my Gem,
The place of my reposure is but nigh,
Swore by those fires that did enlighten them.
By her virginity and virgin-vow
Return ere time could pace a triple now.
Quoth
Piazzella,
I will send a maid
To seek your jewel out with studied care,
Direct her to the shade, wherein you stayed,
For you forbidden are the common air;
Our gardens beautifide with
Maya's
glee▪
Your farthest journey must and ought to be.
She urged again, but all in vain she asked,
The Prioresse remembered still the Earl,
And feared
Phoeliche
his departure maskt
Under pretence of seeking for a pearl:
And more suspicious thoughts unto her came,
'Cause she so often kist
Bellama
's name.
She seeing that this plot did want a stamp
To make it currant pass, like lawful coins,
Fear'd her departure from this lanky came,
And vowd to try the virgins skill at foynes:
Yet ere she would attempt that amorous play,
She would attempt escapes some other way.
She veiwd the casements, and did boldly wrench
With courage masculine, the squared bars,
But they did scorn the vigor of a wench,
Like sturdy Okes which slight the windy jars.
Nay more, deep waters did begirt them round,
That from the glass he could not see the ground
Then on the porter did she kindly smile,
And by full tale gave free respects to him,
Thinking to gull
Avaro
by this wile,
Ioyned with language, oyld, perfumed and trim,
Quoth she thy trust and skill I must employ,
And for thy pains thou shalt have treasures boy.
The greedy Porter like a Goshauke seaz'd
With griping tallons on this Pheasant Cock:
Madam, says he, my skill
•
s not diseas'd,
Nor dwells dissembling with the honest frock▪
Disclose your secrets, and be sure, if man
Can do you service, then
Avaro
can.
Phoeliche
then, as prologue to her suit,
Gave him a purse full fraught with pseudo-gold,
Told him her bounty brought no worser fruit,
If in th'achievement he'd be true and bold.
Thou must some evening let me pass the gates,
And straggle half a mile to gather dates.
Madam, I will doit, it is a small request,
Since you do merit better at my hand;
If fortune be propitious to my hest,
You on the common shore this night I will land:
My hands have eyes, and only what they see
Will they believe: give me my minted fee.
Phoeliche
then plucked out a silken purse,
Great, and as musical as the other was,
Pretending it was stuffed with metal curse,
Whenit only was with circled rags of glass;
Which purposely she did with Dimonds cut,
To gull the Porters hopes, and fill his gut.
Heavens augment your store, Madam, quoth he,
I will wait you at the middle age of nighr;
Come to my lodge, and softly cal
•
for me:
This handsome cheat
Phoeliche
did delight.
To cozen the deceivers is no fraud,
To use a Pimpe, and cheat a rusty Baud:
She scarcely knew what letters spelled grief,
For all her thoughts with regal crowns were wreath'd
Yet 'mongst them all,
Bellama
ruled as chief:
At time of rest her body she unsheath'd,
And house'd within the linen walls her limbs,
Till night and sleep did their quick tapers dim:
Avaro
(when days sisters misty fog
Had popped out
Apollo's
searching eye,
And gen'rall silence human tongues did clog,
Locking all senses up with Lethargy)
Stept to his purses, and began to think
How he should order his beloved chinke.
He'd hang his lodge with Arras, weav'd with gold,
That his successor there might sleep in state,
Or else, if some revenues would be sold,
He'd give them
Darwey
bought at any rate,
That all the Nuns with prayers and holy names,
Might fetch his soul from out the purging flames.
I will mend high-ways, or hospitalls repair,
Else build a College, and endowit with mines.
Thus did he build his castles in the air:
For all's not cash that gingles, gold that shines,
His glassie coin leap out of the mint,
Ere on his brow the stamp did currant print.
Thus was he guld, as once a king of France
Payd a French Monsieur for a prauncing steed,
Gave him a purse whose richness did enhance
Th'enclosed gem, supposed a noble meed;
But when for golden mountains he did gape,
He opit the purse, and only found a rape.
Oh what full anger redded ore his looks!
What tides of rage and fury sweld his spleen!
He curseth her with candles, belles, and books,
And vowd ere long on her to wreak his teen.
Ah me! quoth he, such brittle things are lasses,
Which one poor letter changeth unto glasses.
Phaeliche
now perceiving all was quiet,
Hearing no noise, unless a belly-blast,
Which might proceed from an un wholesome diet,
Tide her apparel on with nimble haste;
And coming to the lodge with knuckle knock,
She strove to summon out the lazy frock.
But the grim
Tartar
was so soundly luld
Without a dram of
Opium
steeped in Ale,
Tyred with vexing that he was so guld,
That all
Phaeliches
rappings naught avail,
Till vexed with demurs she knocked so loud,
It raised a thunder like a breaking cloud.
Just at that instant did
Pazz
•
ll
awake
From an affrighting dream, wherein she saw
A dreadful Lion her
Phaeliche
take,
And tear her body with his sharpened paw:
And hearing this shrill noise, fear said twas true,
Danger did threaten her Monastic crew.
Her frostied limbs she heaved out of bed,
And sheld her body in her night apparel,
Arming her hands with pistols stuffed with lead,
Which anger firing, with the air did quarrel:
And g
•
oping in the dark, her foot did slip,
Which out oth' barrels made the bullets skip.
Phaeliche
at that thunder-clap amazed,
With haste retired from the Porters cell,
And meeting her, on one another gaz'd,
The Porter starting up, did ring the bell;
The virgins shreekt, which all made murmurs shrill
Like
Irish hubbubs
in pursuit of ill.
When reason somewhat had becalmd their rage,
The Abbatesse
Phoeliche
sharply checked:
Madam, says she, I only came toasswage
Intestine heats, which all my body decked
In scarlet die, and being much appald,
With frisking Fairies I the Porter called.
Go, go, you are a wanton girl quoth she,
That fain would tempt my Porter unto folly,
Madam,
Phoeliche
said, you injure me,
Sure, if lascivious I had been so jolly,
I might have met with many men more able,
Before I did invest myself with sable.
Oh madam, madam, mad
Avaro
cryde,
Why, do you think she could overcome your frock?
I never did yield, yet have been often tryde,
My courage hath withstood a greater shock.
Yet sure she would—she would have past the gates,
Th
•
reason why? forsooth to gather dates.
I am afraid your dukedome, girl does long,
Not for the Porter, he is out of date;
But for an oylie Cavalier that's strong,
May teach her virginship a mothers fate.
Madam, look well, see if you miss no glass,
I am sure with brittle coin she guld an Ass.
Then told the story▪
Piazzella
fretted,
This is the Jewel which you would have sought,
When in all haste from hence you would have jetted
What your intendments were, my wisdom thought,
I will have no gadders; and toallay your heat,
I have a diet will prevent a sweat.
In a retired room she locked her up,
Devoyd of lustful mates with her to play;
Allowd her pulse, and juice of clouds to sup,
And bad her scores of
Ave Mary's
say.
Three artificial days she lodged there,
Where every day to her did seem a year.
When she had paid this penance for her crime,
Which in her judgment was accounted bad,
She was again amongst the virgins prime,
On promise that she would not henceforth gad▪
Ye
•
still she plotted, but where ere she went,
The angry destines thwarted her intent
Then from
Bellam'
since walls did her en-cell,
She thought toemploy her talent to the best:
One of the vitgines had some vogliarell,
And earnestly desired with her to rest.
Who ere the morne did
P
•
ac
•••
o
sing,
And wore her blushes on her ruby'dring.
Next night she chose another, then another;
Her curious palate so to novels stood.
That everyone had hope to be a mother,
And near of kin, united in one blood▪
But yet, alas! this pleasure lasted no
•
,
Their virgins girdles could not keep
〈…〉
▪
Not many fort
•
nights after they had
〈◊〉
These physic potions from their
〈…〉
One told her folly by her meag
•
e
〈…〉
Another had more blew than
〈…〉
Others were qualmish, and
〈…〉
All spake their pleasures▪
〈…〉
One longed for Citrons, and another grapes
That grew on Alps steep height, others for peaches▪
One strangely did desire the tales of Apes
Steeped in juice of Mirtles, holmes and beaches.
Some palates must be fed with implum'd Quails,
And nothing must approach this tongue but rayls.
Some longed for Creevish, shrimps, Cods, Plaice and oysters,
One for a Limmond that doth grow on though
•
nes,
Another longeth for some blood of Roysters,
Spicit with the scrapings of pale
Cynthia's
horns,
One on the bosom of the Matrone skips,
And spite of her full nose did gnaw her lips.
One bad them fill an Orke of
Bacchus
water,
Her thirsty soul she said would dreane a tun,
One from her window bids a poor translater
Cut her a cantell of the gawdie Sun:
But above all, I like that witty gi
•
le,
Which longed to feed upon a glorrah Earl.
The jealous matron with suspicious eye,
Did read their common ill in every face,
Espyde the breach of their virginity,
And feared a plantage with an infant race.
Yet still supp
•
est her knowledge, till at last
Their heaving bellies kist their thickened waste▪
She then with friendly summonings did call
The grave Lord Abbot, and his smooth-chin race,
Who coached came unto the virgin-hall,
But all the rabble through the vault did pace:
Arrived here, she cooked dainty cates,
To please the Abbot, and his
Tempo-pates,
So called a counsel 'bout her
quondam
maids,
Each one admiring who durst be so bold,
Since none had entrance, nor the virgins strayd,
And for the Porter he was known too cold:
The Pryor feared lest one of his square caps
Should guilty be of those up-heaving laps.
It was decreed that they all should be
Shreev'd, being sejoyned from each others ken,
But ere that time the teemers did decree,
What answer to return the shreeving men:
Phaeliche
did instruct them to deny.
That she gave birth unto their pregnancie.
But they should say, and to that saying seal,
With strong asseverations, that into
Our fast-locked room a youthful blade did steal,
And with the best of wooing did us woo:
Our cases are the same with
Merlins
mother,
W
•
e think our lover was his fathers brother.
Twas one man's act, or clothed with human shape,
He was Angelical, and this we thought,
Because there was no semblance of a rape:
We gave him our assent as soon as sought.
We judged un-maiding better in the dark,
Than
Daphne-like,
an husking ore with bark.
The shreevers to their Lord
•
return with smiles,
And on their looks a joy ovall chhriots had,
Sayd, they confessed them with zeal and wiles,
And by a plain narration knew the dad:
One of those ever-youthfuls came from heav
•
n,
And in the virgins wombs did lay a leaven.
The Abbot at this news did much rejoice,
Since with a kind aspect the virgins Ladee,
Viewing this Nunry, did ordain this choice,
And for the issue did appoint this dadee,
They shall be Prophets, Priests, of high renown,
And Virgins which shall keep their bellies down.
Provide them child-bed linen, mantles, swadles,
Rockers and Nurses, all officious shees,
With Rattles, Corals, little Carres and Cradles,
And give them beads to wait upon their knees,
Rome's high Arch-vicar shall a testate be,
To the first borne whom nature makes a he.
Take pens, & smooth-strain
Anthems
write in bayes,
Make new
Orizons
unto all the Saints,
And to
Lucina
chaunt
•
nvoking lays,
To move her pity these young mothers plaints
Say, her fair temple need not fear the flame,
Whilst here she wins her an eternal fame.
Phoeliche
smiled to see their studied care
To foster whom she at her pleasure got▪
But
Piazz
•
lla
starting from her chair,
Called
Phoeliche
to survey her knot,
And finding it as at the first 'twas tide,
How scaped you this Goddy Sire she cryde?
Madam, quoth
He-Phoeliche,
I confess,
I was a party in those spruce delights;
But nature curseth some with barrenness,
As I have heard
Albertus Magnus
writes.
So that though my desires were full as big,
I was not heaved with that curtain jigge.
Reason
fortasse's
on her words did stamp,
Which did en-truth thē (though they were but squibs)
This done, the Prior did remove his campe,
And all the Friers with hemp-girdled ribs,
All great with expectation, and as fain
Would be delivered as the full-flankt train.
They sung
Canzone's
ere the Sun could rise,
And
Ave-Mary's
out of number said,
Lucina
wondered at this strange disguise,
That Nuns and Monks to her devoutly prayed:
All Beads were ratled, and all Saints invoked,
Some squeald, some tenourd, and some hoarsly crooked.
With this conceit
Phoeliche
frolique grew,
And sported bravely in the silent hours,
Her bed-mates called her Angel, yet none knew
That 'twas
Albino
which had cropped their flowers:
But though they reveld in the night, the day
Threw hail-storms on their lust, to chill their play.
Yet had their pleasure not a grand-sire life:
For tattling slumbers did their joys untone,
You vowd
Phoeliche,
I should be your wife,
Says
Chloe,
ere you loos'd my virgins-zone:
But ah! so wakit, and feared her vocal slumber,
Would from her eye-lids force a
Trent
&
Humber▪
Says
Phill', Phoeliche,
had I known at first,
You only wore the name of
Folco's
daughter,
I would have suffered an untamed thirst,
Ere lust had brought mine honor unto slaughter:
But oh! and starting up, she feared her dream,
Would ere twas long, obscure joys mirthful gleam▪
Well, well, says
Floris,
tis an happy change,
To loose mine honor for an Angel-mate,
But Angels will not house in such a grange,
This is the offspring of
Phaeliches
pate:
But ah! so sighit, and sighing caused fears,
Lest her plump Rosies should be plowd with tears
Yet you must know the virgins did not use
To blab their private actions in a dream,
But that the cunning Matrone did infuse
Some atoms of the Quiris into cream,
And ere they were enclosed in
Somnus
arms,
She drenched their fancies in these liquid charms.
Then with un-sealed eyes she made her ears
Keep privy watch to intercept their talk,
Yet would have washed her knowledge out with tears
And wisht it written in her mind with chalk:
One while she thanked the God of slumber, then,
Her curses threw him down to
Pluto's
den.
But when
Aurora
in her Tissue vest,
Mantled with blushes, rose from
Tithons
side,
And through a casement of th'adored East,
Sent
Phosphorus
to usher in her pride,
Ere
Phoebus
our horizon did array,
With silver glitter of the blooming day.
She snatched her termers from the sweet embrace
And golden fetters of deaths elder brother,
Bidding them hence those deadding slumbers chase,
T'implore the favor of the Virgin-mother.
They starting up with more than common speed,
Each sheld her body in her modest weed.
So called to chapel those whose pregnant wombs
The Angels pills had heav'd above their wastes,
Like to a surfeit taine of
Hybla's
combes,
When we are too indulgent to our tastes:
But left
Phoeliche
out to cut or sue,
Or to embroider with the lankee crew.
Which made a sudden faintness loose each part,
And every joint was like an Aspin leaf,
Her rosie twins retired to her heart,
Her looks were colourd like a Sun-burnt sheaf,
As the stiff bristles of an aged Boar,
Were her smooth locks which ore her cheeks she wore.
And juster cause had none than she to fear,
For as from quiet slumber s
•
e awoke,
She heard the ptisick pick
Pazzella's
ear,
That she had knowledge of what
Floris
spoke,
And now she doubted all would come toth'scanning
Their longing, swelling, and their sudden wanning.
The Virgines wondered at
Phaeliches
change,
To see her eyes fixed in a white-lim'd wall,
Each feared herself, and each conceived twas strange.
Lest the disease was Epidemical,
'That
Merlins
unkle changed
Phaeliches
hue,
And streakt their temples with a purple blew.
But leave her sighing with these sterile Dames,
We'l crowd into the house of sacred vows,
Where consciousness begetting female shames,
Spred scarlet carpets on their cheeks and brows,
They looked and blusht, & glancit on one another,
Each cursed the minute which did dub her, Mother.
The holy brethren through the mouldy pipe
At that same time did unexpected come,
To know if th'goddy issue yet was ripe,
To give adieu unto their skin-seeld home.
But viewing still their wombs with zealous hands,
They prayed
Lucina
to untie their bands.
Their chauntings dead, the Abbatesse began,
Brethren, you see what sad misfortune haps
Unto my virgins by the oil of man;
Witness the heaving of their spongie paps:
We of an Angel dreamed; but if he was,
He shall hereafter for an evil pass.
I made their slumbers vocal, so they told
T was
Folco's
Dukes supposed daughters work,
Larv'd with that name, it seems some Royster bold
Them to un-virgin cunningly did lurk
But since tis so, the proverb shall stand good,
Tart sawces must be mixed with lushious food.
I knew him to be wanton, and to chill
The raging heat of his unbridled lust,
I doomed him three days penance, judged an ill▪
Would make him sapless, as the Summers dust.
But since that faild, days shall be changed to years,
Minutes to months, till paid his tribute tears.
I will try if grief will drean his melting reins,
And hang a crutch upon his able back:
If sorrow will unbloud his swelling veins,
And make his sinews, shr
•
nke with famine, crack.
I will make a purgatory, where, with hunger,
Frost, flame, & snow, I will tame my virgin-monger.
••
e give command, a dungeon shall be made,
To whose close womb the Sun shall never pry,
Nor
Cynthia
dare to peep: for gloomy shade
Like cloudy night shall purblind every eye:
Bare measure four-foot broad, and for the height
'Tshall make him by constraint, not, court lie sleight.
A bed-stead hewn out of the craggy rock,
Not archt with Cedar wainescoat, knobd with gold,
His bed no shrinker, but a sturdy flock:
Swans shall not be dplum'd his limbs toinfold:
Nor curtaind with the travails of the loome
Of poor
Arachne
ere she had her doom.
I will not spend the ransom of a crown
For curious dainties to delight his taste:
I will fetch no fowls from off the
Parthian
down,
Or
Phaenicopter
for luxurious waste.
I will no Mullet from
Corsica
take,
Oysters from
Circes,
or the
Lucrine
lake.
I will allow him pottage thickt with bran,
Of barley meal a chenix every day:
A sovereign diet for a frolique man
That is affected with the
Paphian
play:
And lest his stomach should too cholricke grow,
I will afford him some congealed snow.
The bald-pate crew this penance well approov'd,
And in a trice all things she ready got:
So well she stirred her stumps (as it behoov'd)
She being hatcher of this starving plot,
This done, with friendly words and courteous air,
She called
Phoeliche
to her house of prayer.
It suits not with your greatness, Madam fair,
Being sole daughter to so great a man,
To lodge with those which your inferiors are,
As much as is an inch unto a span,
And I am afraid the Duke will fume and swear,
Should but your lodging step into his ear.
Madam, quoth she, you harbor needless fears,
Goodness, not greatness, differenceth maids,
My father's no Tobacconist, and swears
In point of honor, like our scarlet blades:
And, by my faith, it more contenteth me,
To sheet with maidens, though of mean degree.
I am surcharged with the black-hew'd cholar,
Which strikes my fancy with most ugly shapes,
I durst not rest a darkness for a dollar,
Without a pillow-friend to scare those Apes:
Let
Chloe
with conceits my spirits wing,
Or melancholy will my
Requiem
sing.
You shall says she, have
Sesamoidesse,
For all intreats are of too dull a print,
We must respect your fathers worthiness,
His honor must your love and passions stint.
And your own worth must highly be regarded,
How shall I else expect to be rewarded?
Then did she take her by the tender hand,
And led her to her grot in princely state,
She feared not much, nor did her will withstand,
Iudging divorcement was her harshest fate:
But when she saw the entrance was so narrow,
A sudden fear did eat up all her marrow.
Pazzella
viewing her supposed Lasse,
Repented her of her intended ills;
But injuries engraven are on brass,
And women's joynters are to have their wills.
And lest remorse should chill her angry mood,
Fewell was added by the brother-hood.
Then, says she, Madam you behold the cage
Which I prepared for your honors good,
Where you may spend the Autumn of your age,
Till age and winter have congeal'd your blood.
You may retire to ease, for envy can
Nor dares to say, you'r not an able man.
When twice ten circled snakes are crawld away.
You shall enjoy companions masculine,
To give instructions in that youthful play
Is fed with
Ceres
and the god of wine:
And if my virgins shall hereafter be
Lascivious given, I will send for thee.
Into this Coven was
Phoeliche
thrust,
With bars and locks the entrance sealed fast,
Now must he pay a dear rate for his lust,
His Curtain-vezzo, and the Corrall taste.
Sure, his repentance will be full as dear,
As the Philosophers
non tanti
were.
Ah foppish Monk! did not
Bellama's
no,
Give thee a warning-piece, presaging danger,
But thou must headlong rush upon thy woe?
Happy's that man which is to lust a stranger:
If this of dalliance is the constant fee,
Let them d—dally that do lift for me.
Here, when the barking star his scepter wav'd,
When in our clyme we feel an
Aethiope's
heat,
An under-vault the subtle matron pav'd,
With fire and flame to force a constant sweat;
That as from flowers, hot Limbecks water still,
So by this stove from him sweat-currents drill.
Then for the winter season she provided
A melting cloud full fraught with feathred rain,
(Whose curious art the air-borne clouds derided)
Which through some oylet holes might passage gain▪
His cabine should have been like Alps cold hight
Mantled and strewed ore with winters white.
And twas so dark I cannot see to write:
Nay, at a non-plus it all pencils sets;
Twas helles epitomy, the cage of night,
Wal'd in with pitch, and roofed ore with jets.
The Linx at mid-day here would wish for day,
And Cats without a torch, must grope their way.
But leave him labyrinth'd, and thus distrest,
And see
Bellama,
and examine how
She brooks the absence of her bosom-guest;
If discontent does revel on her brow;
It does: for why she dreams, and never sleeps:
She feeds, and fats not; laughs, but ever weeps.
Disaster hangs upon
Albino
gyves,
Says she, else Envy keeps him prisoner,
Or a new Bull does interdict them wives,
So seals the lips of my petitioner;
Else the smirke knave is so devout in pray'r,
He has no time to kiss the common air.
But does he love? or isit a fit of mirth?
Which like to children's fancies soon expire,
Ere language or employment give them birth,
Flashing affections, ag'd like thunder-fire:
His eyes shot
Cupids
at my yielding heart,
But his firm breast repeld my feeble dart.
Perchance he judged my forwardness to love,
By too much curtsy and my frequent glances,
So thought in jest my willingness to prove,
Not with that sober passion which entrances:
But with lip-love, which to the heart ne
•
e sinks,
And paper-vows which take their birth from inkes.
But stay: does greatness use to be denied?
Beauty and bravery command a grant;
Yet might my looks and carriage plum'd with pride
His humble and untowring Spirit daunt,
Daunt? no
•
his soul's a temper most divine,
Dares soar aloft to kiss the Suns near shine.
Then love he does: but must this action, Wooe,
Be tide by patent only unto men?
Some unsrequented paths of love I will go,
And in some riddles court him by my pen:
Yet first to th' Abbey I will dispatch a post,
To make enquiry where my Monk doth host.
The Merchant is not with desires so big▪
When as he plows the Seas for Indian mines,
With slower steps the sons of
Bacchus
trigge
To Sack-shops for the French and Spanish wines.
Then she to
Tagus
bids her servant go
To
Croftsull
Abbey where her wishes grow,
Gone is the messenger, but small success
Waites on his travels, for he back returns,
With Madam, where
Albino's
none can guess,
They think his ashes are enclosed in urnes:
For time, say they, has counted forthnights many,
Since his choice feature object was to any.
This answer shot an hail-storm at her heart,
Whose sudden chilnesse jelly'd all her blood,
Sh'applied
Holco
to unscrue the dart,
But her assayments brought her little good:
For but
Albino
none can cure
•
er ill,
Not Physic potions, or the druggards skill.
Ah me! Has Fate my dear
Albino
tane?
Then farewell Music, and you sprucing trade,
Either my tears shall body him again,
Or send my ghost to wait upon his shade:
For she is judged a light inconstant lover,
Whose flame the ashes of neglect can cover.
Have you beheld how, when the moores and marsh
Belch vapors to blemish bright
Titans
eye,
They with his rays wage conflicts long and harsh,
Confining them unto their proper sky,
(Bribed perchance by envious night to wrap
Day and his champion in his sooty lap.)
So that to us appears nor Sun nor day,
And only faith persuades us there is both,
Till day and Sun call in each straggling ray,
And force a passage spite of fume and froth;
Yet then the day but newly seems to dawn,
And ore che Sun a veil of Cypress drawn
•
.
Just so diseasing sorrow, armed with tears,
Sighes and black melancholy vaild her face,
So that no ray of loveliness appears,
And only faith persuades us she has grace:
Her eyes retyr'd, her double blush was wan'd,
Her locks dissever'd, and her Lilies tan'd.
And as in her which arted looks does ware,
Men look for natures steps, and cannot trace her,
Since she by nature nothing less than fair,
Hath purchased from the shops such worth to grace her,
Though foul, now fair & sleek, though age did plow
And made long furrows in her cheek a
•
d brow.
So knowledge here was in a maze, the eye,
That knew
Bellama,
did
Bellama
seek,
And looking on her, nothing could descry,
Spake her
Bellama
or in eye or cheek.
To loves harsh laws she gave such constant duty,
Sh'ad only left an Anagram of beauty.
She threw her self upon her couch of ease,
And marshald all her thoughts in just arayes,
This brought small comfort, that did ha
•
dly please,
And in that thought despair the scepter sways,
Yet thought she not death could a period set,
Unless he did some strange advantage get.
He's young and lusty, everv vein does swell
With
Aqua-vitae,
corrall juice of life,
His skill in Magic else can frame a spell,
To distance meagre death and
Atrops
knife:
Yet love gives birth to fear, I will send to search
The Lions flinty bed, and Vultures pearch.
I and my woman will attend the quest,
Vaild in disguises os some country Lasses▪
No state-distinction, for my humble breast
Shall leave all pride with silks, perfumes and glasses;
And if with
non inventus
we return,
I will
Venus
witchcraft hate, and
Cupid
spurn.
When as the sovereign of the day had drawn
A veil of brightness ore the twinkling lamps,
And threw on
Cynthia's
brow a double lawne,
Clearing the welkin from benighting damps,
They in the habits of a milking maid,
(All but skin-linen) did their beauties shade.
And in these course attires they hasted out
To seek
Albino,
through each wood and plain,
Whom we will leave to pace the world about,
And see
Phaeliche
wet with eye-lid rain,
Whose bondage was the greater, since despair
Blasted all hopes which promised her the air.
The brazen Bull, Strappado, or the rack,
The Faggot-torture, and the piked barrel,
Ballancit with his, degrees of sorrow lack,
It is with a bull-rush to decide a quarrel:
The famine where withal the
Thracian
knight
Was sent to
Pluto
wants a little weight.
He that stole sire fro th' Chariot of the Sun,
Whose liver's vulture gnawne at
Caucasus:
He that the counsels of the gods un-spun,
Like wantons eyes stone-rolling
Sy
•
phus,
Hold best proportion with these sharpened woes,
Which stern misfortune on
Phoeliche
throws.
She that was glutted with most curious cates,
Had every pleasure to content her lust,
Who had command ore Fortune, and the Fates,
Now sups up pulse, and gnaws a fleeced crust.
She that had many girls, is now alone,
And of so many cannot compass one.
Had I a fancy steeped in sorrows brine,
Invention witty in the threnes of woe,
Could sad experience dictate every line,
A dearth of words would to my muse say no.
I may as well go fathom all the spheres,
As measure her disasters, count her tears.
Oft on remembrance of that harmless bliss,
Which (coaped) she enjoyd, her thoughts would feed
Of on
Bellama's
beauty, touch and kiss,
Till stricken dead with thought of present need.
Then would she raise her thoughts, & hope for day,
And starting up from silence, boldly say,
Despite of Envies vipers, tricks and wiles,
My cradle-play-mate,
Mirth,
I will nere forsake,
But taste
Sardinian
herbs shall raise up smiles,
Though I was wafting ore the
Stygian
lake:
Tortures shall nere un-man me, but I will be
Albino,
malice, spite of her and thee.
Delayes ofttimes from times secluded parts
Bring help to helpless not expecting aid,
Some of the gods will pity these my smarts,
Not suffer them to whet the Sextons Spade.
Or if the gods midst flames then scorpion-like,
I will g
••
e my breast, and fall on mine own pike.
Yet had I suffered for a courteous one,
These woes should never had power tohave raised a sorrow
But when mine eyes did in my breast enthronc
Her—her of whom, hell cruelty may borrow.
This is the height of woe, death and diseases,
Nay, hell it self, to this compared, pleases▪
Yet stay, say
Neptunes
palace shall be land,
And this firm ball of earth a liquid brack:
Say the North-pole with
Phoebus
shall be tand,
And to the South the Lilies shall be black.
Say this, and more, before thou dare to say
Bellama
is
Màboun
or
Mà bellà.
No more of this, we'l for her freedom plot,
A pious Monk perceiving well her smart,
With diligence assayd to purge each spot,
With holy Creuse from her diviner part.
But still her answer was, nor man nor lover,
Nor she, the virgins ankles did discover.
Alas! my brother, I am not a male,
But a weak Sience of the weaker sex
The Ladies spake the truth (might truth prevail)
But me with torture
Piazell
doth vex;
'Cause at my entrance I did promise fair,
Yetit proves court-language, merely, purely, air.
But all this time she would not license deign
That I three yards behind should leave the gates,
And fumed when I would have left her train,
T'have sought a jewel, and to gather Dates.
So that the Duke my father never had ken
Of my encloystring in this hate-light den.
But gainst it now resolving, I intend
To turn the stream of his munificence
On you dear brother, if you will be my friend,
And plot how I may be delivered hence:
Lend your endeavors, and I will lend my wit,
Vow farthfulnesse, and I will warrantit.
I will woo my father for his free assent,
If to your barren Cowle you will bid farewell,
That
Hymens
rites may perfect our content
By joyful echo's of the marriage bell.
'Cause youin person do resemble him
Whom 'mongst all men I only judged trim.
The Monk gave ear unto her winning prate,
And gazed on her beauty mascu
•
ine,
Whose feature might delude a wiser pa
•
e,
Assisted only by a tallow-shine:
For by an unctious salve, she kept her chin
From the hair-mantle of an aged skin.
Madam, says he, I judge your language true,
And to your vows I dare my credence lace:
Your virgin-blushesinnocence do show,
And modesty is printed on your face.
Faith, truth, and honesty reside with me,
My best endeavors shall your servants be.
Well, says
Phoeliche,
I have now decreed
(Since
Phoebus
has forsook our hemispheare)
To sheath my body in your holy weed,
Then through the private walk my course will ste
••
e.
So from your holy walls I will take my flight,
Or by permission, or in silent night.
And when I am arrived at
Folco's
towers,
My Father shall your matchless kindness know,
Who, I am sure, will summon all his powers
To fetch thee from this house of flame and snow:
And who with much contentment will not brook
Some three days penance to be made a Duke.
For by inheritance the Duke dome's mine,
When death unbody shall my fathers soul,
Since no heir-males descended from our line,
The
Salique
law cannot my right control.
And to assure thee that I am only thine,
I swear by all the powers that are divine.
Then did she circle with ensphearing arm,
Conrado's
neck, and amorously him lipt,
Which did the amorist so strongly charm,
That he with haste out os his vestments skipt,
And bad
Phoeliche
change, for in good deed,
He should full well become her virgins weed.
Phoelich
undrest, and dressed, and having made
Herselfe a Monk, put on
Conrado's
face,
And some few minutes with her Monkship played,
Then gave a farewell to that hated place.
But ere her quick dispateh could post her thence,
Her beauty shot a fire through every sense▪
Fear now exilde the confidence he tide
Forcit by affection to
Phoeliche's
words,
Revokt his promise now, all aid denyde,
And with majestic looks and gestures lords,
His flaming lust dissolved his pious snow,
And now his Iowd desires will have no No.
But vows to dis-encloath her, and to break
Her virgins-seal, despite of force or smiles,
Till
Folco
strove, and made his noddle leak
Sardonick
liquor to new-paint the tiles,
So hasted out, and to the Matrone gave
The Iron Porter of
Conrado's
grave.
Imping his haste, he threads the vaulted lane,
Not wounded by his soles, this many a day,
Like those, which, when arraigned, a pardon gain,
Dare neither at the jail nor gallows stay.
And coming to the postern gate, he knocked:
Which at devotion time was always locked.
But when the last
Amen
had silencit prayer,
The
Porter
to
Albino
entrance gave,
Who straight was brought unto the judgment chair,
Where, furd with state, did sit the Abbot grave,
Who said,
Conrade,
why was your stay so long?
You mist the Manna of the Even-song.
Pseudo-Conrado
answered him, My Lord,
I found
Phaeliche
so oppressed with grief,
That charity commanded me toafford,
By learning, prayers and Anthems some relief
•
.
And truly on my faith, I am persuaded,
A virgins-lady with these weeds is shaded.
I moov'd to pity by her streaming tears,
Her sighing gales, loud threnes, and sad laments,
Won by her beauty, and her tender years,,
Have promised aid, confirmd by your assents.
And in all haste will tell her fathers grace,
What clouds of woe bemist
Phaeliches
face.
She promised me, when as her freedom's seald,
When she shall re enjoy the glorious light,
When the sad sentence of her woe's repeald,
She will be mine in spite of envies might.
Nay more, she from the Duke dome will extract
Some Lordships to perform a pious act.
Forthwith a Synod of the holy men
Was called to broach the wisdom of their pates,
The questions were proposed, Who? what? and when?
The who is
Folco's
daughter; what, estates▪
The when, so soon as she by
Folco's
powers
Shall shell her body in proud
Gurby's
towers.
This answer smelt of profit, and did gain
The Abbots liking, and his griping crew,
Says he,
Conrado
true content does reign
And triumph in our thoughts, we yield to you,
Success wait on thy voice, for to thy care
Our wishes, hopes, desires, entrusted are.
Fear not, quoth he, my faith dares warrant all,
All things are real, as my words are true;
My self will pace unto fair
Gurby
hall,
And with emphatick language plead and sue:
So that old
Folco's
lungs shall crack with laughter,
To hear me chat the travels of his daughter.
First, she mistrusting that she should be forced
By his proud nod, unto a hated pillow,
From folly,
Folco,
Folke herself divorcit,
To twist for scorned mayds, some wreathes of willow,
How zealously she prayed, and looked demurely,
She is in thought, and word, a virgin surely.
But the conceit is this, who bridles laughter?
That virgins holy, p
•
re and Nuns to boot,
Should thicken with the pilles of
Folco's
daughter,
Sing lullaby's, and to
Lucina
hoot,
T'increase the wonder then, & imp his pleasures,
To
Folco
I will present these waggish measures.
Behold, admire, and some contentment gather
From Nuns that teeme, mand by a virgin-father.
WOnder and admiration cease to gaze
On slashing mete
•
rs, stars, and comets blaze,
Let not
Vitruvius,
or th'
••
honian
beast
Putzol
or
Ae
•
na
slide into your breast:
Ope not your ears unto those crackes of thunder,
Whose Canon ec
•
ho's split the orbs in sunder.
Lend not your audience to those fond reports
Of
Obr'on, Mabell,
and their Fairy sports,
Nor tie your credence to the Poets pen,
Which writes the noble acts of warlike men,
Of Monsters, Moon calves, merry games, & maskes,
Atlas
stiff shoulders, and
Alcides
tasks,
Amazement flies these babbles, and does pin
Faith, eyes, and thoughts, unto this curtain-sin.
That a pure virgins should un virgins others,
And though a virgins, yet make many mothers.
Make them heave up, be qualmish, pale, and cry,
A Mid-wife (hooh) a Mid-wife, else we die.
It is an Afric crow, a sable Swan,
To have a vestall puffed up with man.
But that so many Nuns un-maydend are,
B'
a Nun without a man, is more than rare.
The
Syhils
virgins is not worth a rush,
And
Merlins
mother may with envy blush.
These, though they soard above the pitch of reason,
Yet crossed not natures order, course or season,
For women teemd as women, but a woman
As man, makes virgins teeme, and yet is no man,
This—this is object unto fame and wonder,
Then make each clime with this
Mirandum
thunder.
About this time, night summond them to rest,
And each repaired to his sturdy bed.
Albino's
fears his hopes and joys suppressed.
But in the rest, content struck sorrow dead:
They slept until the bright enlightened air
With silver glitter called them up to prayer.
But our
Albin'
took earlier leave of sleep,
And sheath'd his body in his Monkish vests,
Knockt at his lodge which did the entrance keep,
Who, that he could not wake himself, protests,
Thou art some Fury, Hag, or Hob, I troe,
That boldly at my lodge dost thunder so.
Albi
•
o
says, what frenzy damps thy reason?
Arise, my haste commands a frequent rap.
Begone, quoth he, entreates are out of season,
Worshipful Hob, I will have another nap,
It is not mine hour to rise until I hear
The clapper sound a
surge
in mine ear.
When our young Monk had many minutes spent,
And could not
Foppo
from his pillow rear,
About that time lights charioter had sent
Days trusty Herbinger his Orbe to clear.
He searched the walls, and traffickt with the lock,
But all in vain, he must implore the frock.
The Chapel-clarke as constant to his hour,
As is days Herald, which at breaking crows,
Seeing
Aurara
did his windows scour,
And leapt into his chamber, straight arose,
Making the shrill-ton'd bell in echoes speak,
Awake and rise to prayer, the day does break.
Foppo
was at that time in
Morpheus
court,
Where he with apparitions was affrighted,
The Scoene was changed, then came a dainty sport,
Whose sudden neatness every sense delighted,
Then dreamt
Albine
their runnigado Monk
Was knocking at his lodge the other
Nunc.
Then dreamt he saw a table richly spread,
With all the dainties riot ever felt:
All birds of warrant which in woods are bred,
With Salmon, Mullet, Turbot, Trout and Smelt.
The Princely-pacing Decre entombd in paste,
Enbalmd with spices to delight the taste.
A sparkling wine-drawn newly from the cheek▪
Of some chaste fair, which blushes colourd red,
With brisk Canary, and enlivening Greek,
Poetic Sherry, which can sharpen lead.
This ravished
Foppo
with a taste-content,
Till to his ear the Bell an errand sent.
When starting up, he deemd the bell did call
His able stomach to a Founders feast,
And with all speed was swogging to the hall,
But that
Albino
stayed him by the crest,
And lue-warm claret from his hogshead drew,
To make his stomach give the Deare adieu.
Quoth he, thou son of
Somnus,
drowsy slave,
Why didst thou not at my loud summons rise?
But in a fit of lunacie didst rave,
As though thy wit had tane some new disguise?
I will be your
Hob,
your
Hag,
and though I am loath,
Will now chastise thee for thy feigned sloth.
But whilst his passion took a breathing space,
The wakned Portcr from his fists did creep,
Fixed his goggles on his youthful face,
And then remembered his propheticke sleep.
Tels him he's not
Conrado,
for he knows
That brow, those checks, lips, eyes,
Albino
owes.
And though your wrath should grind me unto powder,
Without a warrant, I will ope no gate,
This answer made
Albino's
anger louder,
And vowd a passage bought at any rate:
So leapt upon the slave with nimble strength,
And measurd on the earth his ugly length.
Albino
hastes to th'postern, having got
The keys, but 'mon
•
st so many much was puzzled
To find the right,
Fo
•
po
mean while did trot
Unto some chambers where the
•
havelings nuzzled.
And them with our-cries rayfed to surprise
Albino,
•
arved
•
n
Courado's
guise.
Like penancers, with linen on their backs,
The bald-pates ran to seize upon their pray;
But yet their haste a femi-momont lacks,
Albino
through the gate had found a way.
And snatching ou
•
the keys, did them encage,
R
•
ising a Bulw ark to withstand their rage.
Then thanked his stars, that thus delivered him
From dangers which did threaten naught but death,
For he by th'verge of
Mare mort
did swim,
And did expect his latest gale to breath.
Nay, these late troubles had him so dis-hearted,
That every shadow 'lmost the union parted.
You, whose disasters some proportion hold,
Help my weak fancy to express his fears,
Teach me my rhythms in
Cypress
to enfold:
From thwarted lovers borrow me some tears,
Fetch me some groans from the ascending thief,
And from the inquisition fetch me grief.
Without demurs
Albino
left the wicket,
Fearing the Monks should bribe the faithless lock,
And steerd his course unto a well-grown thicket,
Whose lofty hill was armed with many a rock,
He envies sculls, that wait on spit and oven,
And vows nere more to see that hated coven.
Have you beheld the stately pacing stagge
Flying the echoes of some deep-mouthed hounds,
How first his brow does wear a ferny flaggc,
And with curvaitings beats the quaking ground.
Telling the Fawns & wood-nymphs that he scorns
The hounds, horse, huntsmen, and their warbling horns.
But when he is embost in blood and sweat,
When travail on his swifrnesse fetters hangs,
He then is frighted with the shrill recheat
And fears a pinking with the yellers fangs▪
Seekes e'ry where for shelter, and dares rush
Maled with fear into the sharpest bush.
So far'dit with
Albino,
whilst he had
Fate at a beck, commanded fortunes wheel,
Was called by his
Donnes
active lad,
He thought his joys were walled in with steel,
Slighted misfortune, envy set at naught.
And braving malice dar'din every thought.
But when his towering heart was taught to know
Humiliation, and self-confidence,
Was stricken dead with famine, flame and snow,
Although his geniall stars had freed him thence.
He fears the Monkish rabble, and he shrowdes
Himself in caves, encurtaindround with clouds.
In his dark house he heard a feeble voice,
Breathd from the corrals of some weakened maid,
At first concealment was his better choice,
Till pitry set an edge upon his blade.
Then guidcd by the cry, he saw a Royster
Did in his arms perforce a Nymph encloyfter▪
Yet seeing home-spun russet, stopped his pace▪
Saying by this, what honor shall I gain?
But in his eye so curious was her face,
Though maskt and blubbered ore with brackish rain,
That he forthwith unsheathd his trusty Turk,
Cald forth that blood which in his veins did lurk,
So stepping forward, cries, Injurious slave,
Unto what baseness does thy folly tempt her?
Who answered him, Fond soole; thy foolish brave
From my decreed end shall not exempt her.
Bef
•
iend me Queen of
Cypress,
and in spite
Of force or Fortune, I will have my delight.
Desist,
Albino
says, or olse I vow
By all those tapers which enrich the night,
I will make pale death strew
Cypress
on thy brow,
And to th' infernal shades thy soul will fright.
Cease from thy brutish rape, or else prepare
Thy cursed lungs to draw the
Stygian
ayte.
Quoth the rude
Sylvan,
I'am past that age,
Which with Bug-bears the foppish nurse does fright.
Hence curtain-squire, smock-groom, & nrine-page,
I will have no testates unto my delight.
Pack hence with speed, or by
Actaeons
head,
My weighty falcheon shall pronounce thee dead.
Well, says
Albino,
since thou wilt not dcsist,
Prove the adventures of a bloody duel,
One of our threads fell
Atrops
shall unt wist,
For to my rage kind pity lendeth fuel.
To free a virgins from thy gryping paws,
I judge well pleasing unto natureslawes.
They claspt their Helms, and buckled to their fight,
Twixt whom no umpire was but meagre death,
The wooddards green with
Tyrian
die was dight,
Who now desires a minutes space to breath,
Albino
gave the truce, yet but to breath,
His valor scornd to crowd into the sheath.
Then did his nimble slight and courage show
Baining a stroke, but pointed at his breast,
Which opit a door, whereat his spirits flew,
And well nigh set his fainting soul at rest.
With that th'enfeebled
Sylvan
weakly cries
Hold, hold thy hand, or else
Sylvanus
dies.
Dost call for mercy, says
Albino,
now,
And all thy thoughts erstwhile triumphant rid?
I seek not murder may I save my vow,
That I should joy in blood my stars forbid,
I am content the virgins voice shall seal
Thy death or pardon, if thou make appeal.
Faire virgins, quoth
Sylvanus,
pity is
The only grace that gives a virgin price.
Remission crowns a heart with greater bliss,
Then to hang iron on weak natures vice.
The rays of your bright beauty urged desire,
Your feature kindled lust, love blowd the fire.
The virgin answered, I did never suck,
The Tigers dugges, the Lioness and Bare.
Nor from a reeking breast an heart did pluck
Never will I in blood with vultures share.
But since submission speaks from voice and knee,
Kind pity thins the fault, and pardons thee.
Then to
Albino
says, Heroic youth,
May all the blessings which attend on man,
Felicitate thy life, and to buy truth
To words, I dare do more than virgins can.
But above all I wish, may natures pride,
Lilies and Roses inter-twine thy bride.
But yet alas! to recompense by airs
So large a bounty, and so free, is poor:
Yet why may not a spotless virgins prayers,
Wingd with desire, unclaspe high heavens door,
Accept of this, and if the Fates befriend me,
These blessings which I wish for, shall attend thee
Natures sole wonder, beauties only gem,
Quoth he, my valor and my feeble arms,
(If your perfections had not strengthened them)
Could not have freed you from intended harms.
Ascribe the honor to your matchless face,
My courage merits not the meanest place.
Yet had I swom through seas of steaming blood,
And past through Nitre flames, that belch forth led,
Had all the Furies armed with vipers stood
T'have stopped my passage, or pronouncit me dead,
I would have thrown the die, my fortune tryde
T'have bought you freedom, though in crymson dyde.
For when mine eyes sent forth the farthest glance,
To fetch th'Idea of your beauty in,
That very sight my senses did intrance,
And made my thoughts excuse
Sylvanus
sin:
For sure your quickening rays can melt a snow,
On which the winds of age and sorrow blow.
But why do I upon the
Ela
raise
Thy noble worth, and yet intend to woo,
Since beauty oft displays her plumes at praise,
Then by this doing, I myself un-do.
Yet where I virtues find refinde as gold,
Despair shall never make affections cold.
Be pleased then to think the god of Love
With guilded arrow has transfixt my heart,
And let my purpled breast your pity move,
With Balsam of regard, allay my smart,
Send thy quick eyes into my breast to see
What tortures prick my heart to purchase thee.
Sir, I am grieved, quoth she, you are allyde
To him, whose quiver crowns a lovers wish,
Else at a twelve score distance mighty 'ave spyde
You cast your net to mesh a simple f
•
ish.
Your worth and feature does entitle you
To
Cytherea
with her silver hue.
When I, alas! am but an homely maid,
Borne to a spindle, and to serve a plow
To milk my spongie-
•
eated cows, I strayde,
Which here amongst these tender hazels low.
My starved fortunes cannot think of love,
Nor does my envy wound the billing Dove:
This answer silenced
Albino's
hopes,
Which spake as loud as though they kist the sheets,
He in his thoughts commends the quiet copes,
Which taste no sour in hunting after sweets.
Alcides
life, quoth he, compared to mine;
Is trouble-free, spicit with contents divine.
Faire maid, what hatred frosteth your desires?
What steams of envy choke bright
Venus
lamp?
Give some kind fuel to maintain my fires,
A frow
•
e of yours will all my vitals damp.
Oil oremy writhled heart, or let me know
From what black heads these bitter cadents flow.
Your favors Sir, have such commanding power,
That tis unjust your wishes to deny,
Accurst with all black tempests be that hour
In which my heart gave credit to mine eye,
Else would I not have been so much averse,
T' a mind so noble, and a feature terse.
But now alas! myself, myself am not,
For heartless I, my heart have gin away,
An Abbey-brother has that treasure got,
Albino
hight, he
's Phoebus
of my day.
Your habit speaks you a Monk, Sir, if you can,
Tell me where I may find that (ah me) man.
Be pleased, quoth she, to tell me where I may,
Or go myself, or else a servant send.
Faire maid, quoth he, it is a gloomy way
Leads to the bed of your benighted friend.
His ashes are in
Darwey
Abbey laid,
But his faint Ghost walkesith'
Elizian
shade.
But is he dead, says she, and loudly shreekt,
Which wakit
Narcissus
hate to second her,
Her rosyes dewd with melting crystal, reckt,
And sorrow did her trembling heart interre.
Symptoms of sad deplorings nere were know ne,
Which were not in her sharp lamentings shown.
Choyce maid (quoth he) do not destroy your rosyes,
And blast your beauty with such scalding sighs,
In natures garden there are choycer posyes,
More comely features, and more agile thighs,
What though
Albino's
dead, another may
Be trulier tearmd the
Phoebus
of your day.
Oh, do hot stain, says she, his spotless name.
Within his bosom every virtue rang'd,
Equals to him dull nature cannot frame,
Though she should labor till herself be changed.
It is a shame to ask more favors, yet
Grant me this one, because my sun is set.
My pity saved, when as your fury had
The rough-pawd Sylvan minced with your skeane,
Oh with same courage let your mind be clad,
With your sharp Cemeter my liver dreane,
Why should I be a liver, since he's dead,
Who was my hope, my health, my heart, my head.
How am I changed, quoth he? my heart does beat,
The fainting summons of the child of sin,
My knees do quarrel, and a chilling sweat
Cold as the dew of winter, oils my skin,
Fear snatcheth from my roseat banks their blood,
And drowns my siver in a sanguine flood.
It is strange a naked breast of bleached snow,
And crystal mounts, enriched with corrall heads,
(On which the purple violets do grow)
Should dare mine arm, and strike my courage dead.
My steel a breast of iron has unhing'd,
And knees of brass have to my fury cring'd.
Had some vast Gog, or he whom
Tcllus
brought,
One got by Fury, or
Gradivus
mate;
Who, but with monsters, never conversed with ought,
Dar'd with a look, mine arm had weakened Fate.
But at this feeble voice my blood does start,
And into pity melts my swelling heart.
Then name no more those words: for they at once,
Do both un-edge my valor and my steel,
Too safely do your virtues keep the sconce,
My steadiest thoughts, struck with these letters, reel:
My sacrilegious hand shall never stain,
Virtues sole Temple, and the g
•
aces fane.
Dry up those furrowing cadents: will you give
Your lovely self in marriage unto him,
If I shall say
Albino
yours does live,
And in your view his comely portraict lim.?
Say, I to this, and I will t
•
y my skill,
To make him pace along yon craggy hill.
It is th'countenance which my wishes crave,
Nought half so sweet, says she, as
Hymens
tedes,
Albino
then the haired earth did shave,
And hedged two circles in with ropes of beads:
Then quartring them, did take the virgins hand,
And bad her with unshaken courage stand.
Thou must not be surprised with shivering fear,
Though
Cerberus
the Ianitor o
•
Hell,
Though seven-headed Hydra, Panther, Bear,
The Lyon, Tiger, or the Dragon yell,
Although a monster spits forth flashing powder,
Thogh clouds & winds strive which should bellow louder.
This said, with creuze of holy water he
Besprinkled ore himself, besprinkled her,
And zealously did cross: the same did she,
Like a devour
Romezzo
conjurer.
This done: fair maid quoth he, if Fates be friend me,
The servant of your beauty shall attend thee.
Then gan to invoke, or seem toinvoke,
With uncoth language, the infernal crew,
Vitz, Allafoun, Trallasht,
with elfish poake,
Trollox
and
Chimchish,
with your grisly hue,
Gnarzell
and
Phrizoll,
which in
Styx
do wade,
Lê porte Albin
•
from the
Stygian
shade.
When from his lips these words had tane their flight
A shuffling whirl-puff roar'd amongst the trees,
Th' affrighted leaves took flight, the grass looked white,
The quaking poplars fell upon their knees.
Ioves
sacred tree stood cringing unto it,
And bowd his head, else twas in sunder split.
Then from a breaking cloud a sheet of fire
Encircled them, and dashed against an Oke,
Vshring a thunder, whose untamed ire,
Like dreadful tyrants, naught but terror spoke.
And as unwilling to depart from them,
Hisirefull cracks the trembling grove did hem.
These suddenly succeeding so the first,
And at that instant when he feigned a spell,
Did make
Albino
judge him self accurst,
Thinking his voice unhing'd the gates of hell,
Bellama's
rosyes wore as white as snow,
As though the
Phyma
did upon them blow.
And justly, for though these but common were,
Yet at that time, when faintness kept the wicket,
Which at each shadow opit the gate to fear,
In that dark place, that unfrequented thicket.
I blame not, though her courage hab been colder,
And in Art Magic wish
Albino
bolder.
But wheo the storm was past, his courage got
The conquest of his fear, made his quick eyes
Stand Sentinel, toadvantage more his plot,
And looking, from the mountain he espies
A man descending, as he told the maid,
Which the loud tempest of his fears allayed.
Then says, behold the object of your hope,
Away springs she from off that gloomy place,
Posts to the hill, forsakes her Magicke cope,
Mean while
Albino
doffes
Conrado's
face,
And set upon his looks
Albino's
die,
So impt with love, unto the mount did fly.
Where he espyde
Bellama
rove about,
Crying,
Albino,
dost thou fly from me?
The man was but a silly shepherd lout,
That climbd the hill, his fleesie train to see.
And when his eyes had health'd his wealthy flocks,
Trudg'd to his cote, wald in with sturdy rocks.
Albin'
encountering her, says, Lovely maid,
Wasit your small voice that did
Albino
call?
Twas I▪ poor I, the fainting virgin said:
Why was I forced from
Rhadamanthus
hall?
Who wasit quoth he, that with commanding air,
Snatcht me forth' arms of
Proserpina
fair?
It was a courteous Monk, quoth she, whom I
Humbly entreated to deliver thee.
Alas, sweet maid, quoth he, Fates do deny
Freedom from thence, nor can I pay the fee.
Fee, says she, fearc not, if an Earldo me can
Purchase thy freedom, I will give it man.
Thou canst not ransom one from
Pluto's
jayle,
Shouldst thou lay down the gaudy triple crown,
With steely hearted Fate naught can prevail,
On whose harsh brow there ever dwells a frown.
Speak fair, thy business, for I must begone,
Grim
Charon
waits sor me at
Acheron.
Ah me, quoth she, and is it truth I hear?
Then dear
Albino,
I will wait on thee:
You'r like to findc, quoth he, but homely cheare,
If in my diet you partake with me.
Famine's a favor unto me, says she,
Bridewell a bride-house, if I live with thee.
But prythee, what is
Radamanthus
fell,
And she whom thou didst
Proserpina
call?
Sweetest, quoth he, he is the judge of hell
That dooms us tortures, or does us enthrall.
For if our innocence do plead for us,
We▪ re led t'
Elizium
from dark
Erebus.
That other was the
Thracian
harper mate,
Whom
Pluto
forced unto his gloomy house,
His divelship with smiler to recreate,
Full bowles of his
Nepenthe
to carouse.
I am glad I know, quoth she, for jealous fears
Unto my heart did travel from my ears.
Why, lovely maid, did ever I behold
Before this time, quoth he, your comely face?
How dear
Albino,
must you now be told.
Who your
Bellama
is? tis high disgrace,
Sure you of
Lethes
streams have deeply drank,
Which doth the powers of your mind disranke.
Hah! quoth
Albino,
can my dullness think
That homely russets my
Bellama
veil?
I deeply of oblivion sure did drink,
Did I not know her from a milking paile?
Peace pretty fair, do not my Saints profane.
Her beauty has not such course lodging
•
ane.
Well, quoth
Bellama,
will you me discard,
When for yoursake I have run through all disasters?
Must slights and
•
escios
now be my reward?
Will you make ulcers, and apply no plasters?
Cloath'd in this course arraay, I rov'd abroad,
To find the place of thy secure abode.
Sweet, says
Albino,
let not anger dress
Thy stainlesse lilies in distractions die,
Let ignorance plead pardon, for I guess,
Some other beauties may
Albino
cry,
Might now a ghost permitted be to kiss,
My lips should suck from thine a cherry-bliss.
Why, says
Bellama,
has a ghost no lips?
Is there no pleasure dwells in spirits veins?
This (might a ghost) does all my joys eclyys
•
,
For now I have my labor for my pains.
Pray, what was
Merlins
father? isit not said,
Spirits have power a damsel to unmayd?
These words proceeding from
Bellama's
lips,
Did make
Albino
Myrrine juice carouse,
To raise an active heat, which nimbly skips
In every vein, like Fayes in
Obrons
house.
But when he was no ghost, and hopit to merit
Love for love, he found her of another spirit.
Away, fond Monk, quoth she, dost think that I
Into a sea of grief will wade with thee?
And drown my fortunes, make an Earldom die?
Dost think humility resides with me?
Canst think I will choose a pebble, slight a pearl?
Marry a thread-bare cowle, and scornd an Earl?
What door to thy presumption did I ope?
What symptoms of affections did I show?
What actions gainful birth unto thy hope?
Or from what vow did thy assurance grow?
Cease then, sor I take it in high disdain,
To thy course worth my smallest ray to chain.
Disdaine? quoth young
Albino,
can this be
The voice of my
Bellame?
Is there such odds?
If not in birth, in worth I equal thee:
Although my Muse shot love into the gods,
Disdain's a pitch too high for maids to reach.
Scarce will the queen of pride such doctrine teach.
Presumption too? Does he deserve that brand,
Who dallies with consent, invited to 't?
What firmer seal, then language, lip and hand?
What better warrant, than desired to doit?
Say, he is saucy that with crustyed fists,
Pawes a court-silk, and melts her balmy wrists.
Who feeted that aenigma, whose kind air,
Spake me the only high in thy esteem?
Was I not bosomd more than parents (Faire?
Did not thine own voice that saint-secret seem?
Who bribed your full face-gazings? and what she
Judge'd none praise, lip, deserving of but me?
Did not you in misterious postures woo me?
And gainst
Bardino
levied all your spite?
Nay, by
Barraba
sent invitements to me?
And dub'd me by your knot the
Red-rose Knight?
Did not your wish glue feathers on your feet,
To thread a casement when I pacit the street?
And after these, ah, thousand more, and nearer
Seals of thy love, must slights unseele your lips?
A puny-mistress-hunter well may fear her,
When pride at high noon can my sun eclips.
Fury lend me thy poison, rage thy breath,
That I by pride doomd, may doom beauty death.
You pale-facit shadows of the gloomy Isles,
Fill up my gall, and lend me all your pours,
To torture women, who enriched with wiles,
From their moist eyes send forth dissembling showers
Would
Jove
the mount had barren been of stones
Whereof old
Pyrrha
ftam'd the female bones.
Would
Sea's
daughter that same Queen of faces,
Her alabaster box would deign to me,
Once
Pnao's
ferry pay, that gave such graces,
Which till that time the Sun did never see.
That I not only might, as others are,
Be counted comely, but oth' fairest, fair.
Then would I slight those formal tricks of love,
Those sighs, tears, vows, complaints, & folded arms,
Caps, cringes, oaths, and complements to move
Th'affections of a Girle expecting charms.
For wealth, wit, wisdom, eloquence & greatness
Are less inducements unto love than neatness.
How now
Albino,
is your doublet grown
Too strait, says she, that you do puff and swell?
Peace, peace, let not your choler thus be shown.
A thing impossible, says he, you tell.
In vain we call for peace, and calmness praise,
When love and hate intestine wars do raise.
Women have double pupils, so they can,
Kill like the Basilisk, but with a glance,
Their very praise does blast and wither man,
Like frost and winter, or his soul intrance:
They're all like
Glaucus
wife whose filthy charms
Won poor
Ulysses
to her lustsull arms.
They're
Holgoy, Africanes,
and fiends they are—
Words know not what they are, they are hell to me,
Would
Jove
I had the
Heliostrophio
fair,
To touch all mayds, or if not all, yet thee.
Or had been borne under the Scorpions head,
With Amulets tohave struck thy beauty dead.
Ah faithless Polupists! that thus can change
Into an hundred thousand shapes, your minds?
Phaebe
to you is constant, tides do range,
Yet back return: more settled are the winds.
Mere
Pompholix,
which with each breath does stray
Your loves with catch-feathers too, and fly away.
Sometimes a fit of sullens seals your jaws,
In contemplation big, (of
Jove
knows what)
And then again, as if your tongnes made laws,
You weary time with your eternal chat.
Ah
Mantuan, Mantuan,
thy pen is not a liar,
Although thy habit says thou wert a Frier!
Erst while a sober Nun
Bellama
was,
Then a
Lucretia,
at another gale
I know not what, a straggling country lasse,
A quinque-letterd, 'haps, which set to sale,
Now none more willing unto love than she,
And now more further off from love or me.
Yet call that hasty language back a while,
Bellama
is not such, she's
Cupids
dart,
Teach me, great
Jove,
to make
Bellama
smile,
And with one ray sun her
Albino's
heart.
Thou purblind boy, teach me to gain Bellama▪
Straight
Echo's
voice returned him answer,
Ama.
Thanks gentle
Echo;
might thy voice divine
Speak truth in this, that love commandeth love.
I would through every mood and tense decline
Amo,
and saint thee too, my Joy, my Dove:
Nay, thou shouldst be, what ere fond babblers prate,
Albino's
godd
•
sse, though
Narcissus
hate.
Oh would to Jove I were in courteous
France,
Or else that happy place in
France
with me,
That with more tongs thou mightest make
ama
dance
Within these silent woods, from tree to tree.
Or would thou hadst imperial power from
Jove,
In the impcrious mood to bid her love!
Quoth she, unworthy of a conquest's he
That for a Canons roar his ensigns veils,
Vnworthy of a Rose, or Rosie glee
Is he, whose courage at her javelins fails,
They're feeble amorists that for a fie,
Run from their colors, and in silence lie.
It is our prerogative to have entreat,
With every phrase that flattry does inhance,
To win our loves, though every stroke they beat,
Our hearts beat
Cupids
march, tune
Venus
dance.
In their desires they never yet did perish,
Which feed our humors and our passions cherish.
To prove the truth of thy affections, I
Shot forth that language, headed with disdain,
My heart is thine, which till death close mine eye
With steely thumb, thy bosom shall retain,
Caes
•
rs
proud nod shall not command that bliss,
Whose sweets are promised by this melting kiss.
Hah quo h
Albino,
dare I trust mine ears
With this blest air? And am I sure I wake?
Or isit a dre
•
me, which wakeneth into tears?
It is truth: then crawl hence Furies, toad and snake.
The earth her mines, sea vomit shall their pearl,
Ere I leave her, who for me left an Earl.
Then sat they dallying in a shady bowre,
Where Maples, Ash, and Thorn did them embrace,
Whilst her enlivning breath produced each flower
In curious knots to damaske ore the place.,
Oh! who would not his soul and substance tenter,
To be circumference to such a center?
Now have our Amorists attained the height
Of true content, and sat like billing Doves,
She tells her quest, he his monasticke flight,
Whilst both recount their passions, fears and loves,
Till
Titans
hasting to moist
Thetis
arms,
Bad them provide against his sisters harms.
Then joining heart and hand, with easy pace,
They travaild to a Pague adjoining near,
Where in a straw-thatched roof (an homely place
For such a pair) they entertained were,
And what fine cates old
Kathrine,
could afford,
Was served in state unto an aged board.
Their table with rich damaske clothes was spread,
Whose every twist out-vyde the double cable,
The napkins Diaper, of equal thread,
The mourning trenchers clothed were in sable:
A curious salt; cut out oth' bolder stone,
And for their plate—sincerely there was none.
The dropsied Host, like to a Sewre did strut
To marshall every dish: and first did bring
Aspatious bowle to scour the narrow gut
of nut-brown Ale, a liquor for a King.
And says, My
Bona Roba,
drink this boule,
Twill clear thy throat, and cheer thy drooping soul.
Next came the mumping hostesse, and set down
A lusty dish of milk, sky coloured blew,
Crumb'd with the ludgets of the lusty brown,
Which two months since was piping hot and new,
Yet 'tis, says she, as savory in goodlaw,
As wheaten trash, which crams the Ladies maw.
This good old
Chtone
was troubled so with wind,
Her coats did dance toth' music of her belly:
Next came a barley dumpling, whose harsh rind,
Was oiled ore with a fine tallow jelly,
Brought by a mincing
Marget,
passing trim,
Whose juycie nose did make the pudding swim.
Next came some
Glotrah
(which the plough-man flanks,
Ioyn'd with a pudding on a holy day)
Brought by a jetting dame, on whom in ranks
And discipline of state, whole troops did stray
Of—I for bear to say, lest these rude feet,
With queasy dames, and Lady readers meet.
Last, a tough cheese must lock the stomachs door,
Milkt from a cow that fed on naught but Burres,
Hadlaine five winters on spongie floor,
To gain an harness, and a coat of furs,
So neatly peopled too, twas judged a court,
Such herds of gentles did about it sport.
Qualmish
Bellama
could not eat a bit,
'Cause luscious mears a surfeit soon provoke
Albino
ventred, but was fain to spit,
Lest those harsh viands should his Monkship choke.
And whilst he hauked, and
Bellama
laughed,
The trumping hostesse stole a thumping draught
Are you so dainty
•
oothed, quoth mine host,
That country vittails will not down with you?
You shall be fed with Custards, pyes and roast,
Cannot your chops a bonelesse pudding chew?
I trow far worser is than this your fare,
Unless you kitchen sculs, and lick-spits are.
Ma' gep, ma' faw, the crabbed hostesse said,
Letthem een fast, if they'll not eat their sowle,
Is not my daughter
Maudge
as fine a maid,
And yet by mack you see she troules the bowle.
I have dressed a supper sure, has pleased those,
Had wider purses far, and better close.
Pray mother, gainst the young mon do not rage,
Says full-lipt
Maudge,
for he must be your son,
We are alike in face, of equal age,
Then hoh, the match is soon concluded on.
Kusse me, my honest
Dick,
for we this night
With crickle crackle will the Gobblins fright.
Mass, says mine Host, I like the fellow well,
To suckle barns, I will give him tidee Mull,
And my brown Maure, as sound as any Bell,
With ten good shear-hogs to afford him wool;
And if they please me, after me they shall
Sell nappy yale within this trusty wall.
Feck, says mine hostesse, they shall have a bed
With good strong sheets, to pig together in,
A brazen pot, a kettle and a led,
Platte
•
s, bowles, pailes and an old kilderkin,
And if they please m', a brace of wheels to spin,
Mantles and clouts to wrap their bantlins in.
Our lovers at this pretty talk did smile;
Then says
Albino,
there is no such haste,
I like, but yet we'l respite it a while,
Thou shalt be (duck) some three nights longer chaste
I will man my sister at days next attiring,
Then back, and give my
Maudge
a curtain spring.
When as his yielding had appeased the billows
Of their loud passions, and their meat digested,
Nights middle age invited to their pillows,
But tell I dare not, how the lovers refted,
Whether co-sheeting was allowd as fit,
Monastic vows dispensing well with it.
But this I say, there was but one guest-room,
Hangd with a pentice clothe spoke age enough,
The spiders here had one continued loome,
Here rats and mice did play at blind man's blough.
Their bed had many tasters, but no teaster,
Their bedding usherd in thin-sided Easter.
Repentant Mattresse for chastising Lent,
Stout as a face of steel, which never will yield,
Their sheets were tenants, weekly paid rent,
The pillow was with juice of noddles steeld,
And therefore fit to bolster any sin:
Their coverlet was of a bullocks skin.
Their urine-vessel was of Ticknell make,
Whose in-side was with unshorne vellet clad,
Their bed-stead floted in a springing lake,
Where Frogs and Newts their randevouzes had.
This was their guest-bed, and there was no other,
Think you
Bellama
then lodged with her brother?
No, such pure virtues saint
Bellama's
breast,
And such clear sparks of honor heat his soul,
That such a thought would stain her virgins crest:
And blur the sacreds of
Albino's
roll.
Then die black thoughts,
Bellama's
chaste denials
Repeld all charms of love, and
Venice-trials.
Nay, he nere tempted, nor attempted once
To scale the fortress of her virgins-tower:
For her chaste Noes, and vows did guard the sconce
That twas impregnable, not forced by power.
And though he did enspheare her naked waste,
Yet durst my faith and oath conclude her chaste.
This longing on
Albino
worked so strong,
That when the god of slumbers did entreat
Him to his court, into his thoughts did throng
His house of
•
enance, hunger, cold, and sweat.
So powerful was his dream,
•
ntruth'd with fear,
That his strong faith concluded he was there.
And in some sort he was: for when the East
Was purpled with the blushes of the morne,
When his benumbed senses were releast
By the shrill sound of
Gallus
bugle horn.
He heard a sound of words, and looking out,
He saw a legion of the Monkish rout.
For you must know that when
Albino's
wit
Had won him freedom, and
Conrado
thrall,
The jealous matron somewhat feared it,
And the next morning did
Conrado
call;
Who (brooking ill his lodging) struck with fear,
Made answer to the matrones question here.
So when her eyes suspicion truth had made,
She asked
Conrado
how that came to pass?
Quoth he, credulity my fear ore-swayd,
I was deluded with the dukedome lasse.
She promised me a dukedome for my pains,
And I, poor I, thought it sufficient gains.
Hah, quoth the Matrone, could thy falsehood serve
Thus to dishonor me, and all my train?
His penalty is thine, till every nerve
Shrinke up with famine, thou shalt here remain,
Time will not measure years, e're thou wilt say,
A Dukedom for thy penance is no pay.
Madam, quoth he, my senses were bewitched
With that pure white which dwelt upon her brow,
I scratched and pinched, but still my humors itched,
I stood upright, but still my heart did bow.
Who would not twice ten minutes in a brook,
Chin high and thirsty stand, to be a Duke?
Quoth she, I see that folly over-sways,
And
Venus
sovereign is of every sect,
To beauty every order homage pays,
Whilst only age and blackness gain neglect.
I'xcuse thy frailty, haste unto thy dell.
The sentence of
Phoeliches
flight repel.
Conrado
thanked her, and away did pack,
(As one reprieved from the gallow tree,
Still fearing that stern justice plucked him back)
Lest
Ianus-like
her face should changed be:
For well he knew, the monthly horned queen
No oftener fills her orbe, than she her spleen.
He nature blamed, he could no faster run,
But coming to the gate, the porter opit,
Who much appald to see a youthful Nun,
Says, Mistress, do you travel to be coapit?
Give me my fee, for sure a plumpe-cheekt lasse
Shall not the Porters lodge unkissed pass.
He could not quiet his impatient lust,
Till he had shown the ensigns of his habit,
His pared crown with
Venus
rays adust:
Then le
•
t the mongrell his supposed rabbit,
And slinkt away from his monastick veil,
Just like a dog that newly hurnt his tail.
Wh
•
n he had cast his woman, and put on
The habit of his order, he made haste
Unto his Lord, told him
Phoeliche's
gone,
And that his conscience did conclude her chaste.
She
Folco's
large endowments must inherit,
And promised me to recompense my merit.
The Prior smiling at his folly, checked
Him for
Apella's
faith, and said his lasse
Was young
Albino
in Nun-vestments decked,
(If that our Porter had his double glass)
And since thy coming cleareth every doubt,
Harnesse yourselves to seek the yonker out.
As the attendants of an hunting Prince,
Intending to disfrank an ore-grown Boar,
View the impressions of his f
•
et, which since
Last eve were printed on the sandy shore,
Beating each bush, and in each cabben searching
To find his frank, & not the pheasants pearching.
And as when
Reynald
with his wily plot,
Into the squadron of the geese is crept,
And grand-sire Gander on his back has got,
Th' affrighted geese like them which watch-towers kept,
With shrill-ton'd gabblings wake the slumbering towns▪
By
Phaebe's
candle to go seek the downs.
Some arm themselves with spits, one with a ladle,
Some snatch up pick-forkes, one a bill or knife.
The ambling nurse runs out, and leaves the cradle,
And the awd mid-wife flies the teeming wife,
Old grand-sire gray-beard his tuffe bilbow gets,
And grandame
Grissel
with her distaff jets.
Just so our hair-lack Monks pursued their quest,
Searcht for his view, and threaded every grove,
With bells, beads, books, and holy water blest,
And armed with envies whips, about did rove.
Their runnigado
Reynald
to surprise,
And came to
Stean
ere the Sun could rise.
Which sight unspirited
Albino
quite,
That his invention could not teeme a plot:
For in his looks his fear was writ in white,
And to his heart his frighted blood did trot.
Yet calling courage to appear oth' stage,
He sheath'd his body in his woven cage.
Then hasting to the Host, bad him awake,
Desir'd his counsel, and assisting hand,
Says now his life and safety lay at stake,
For at his door a troop of shave lings stand,
I am their errand, I must bid adieu
To lovely
Maudge,
mine hostesse, and to you.
Hoh, quoth mine host, and rubd his gummy eyes,
Whot says my son? Must thou be whurld away?
I warrant, boy, my club shall still their cries,
When 'bout their costards I shall make it play.
I will dy their stark nakit crowns with their own blood,
Then let 'em come, if that they think it good.
Good Sickerlin, says
Maudge,
ere they shall have
My honey-sweeten
Dick,
I will scratch and bite,
With scalding water I will their noddles shave:
Then busse me
Dick,
thy
Maudge
will for
•
he fight.
Thanks, quoth he, Duck, but yet it cannot be,
That thy endeavors should advantage me▪
But yet methinks I see some comfort dawn,
Yon tinkers budget strengthens every joint,
Lend me some cloths, by times harsh grinders gnaw
•
And I will be a Tinker in each point,
My sister must have rags, and be my trull:
Thus vaild & clothed we will the shavelins gull▪
Accoutred in thief robes of state, he made
His face and hands in sooty vestures mourn,
Then wakit
Bellama,
who was sore afraid
To see a Tinker, and away does turn.
But grasping only air, she shrilly cryde,
Art fled
Albino,
from thy sweet-hearts side?
Which words so shrilly spoke, made echo babble,
Who wing'd with envy, out oth' window flies,
Carries
Albino
to the Monkish rabble:
They hearing that, Perduers made their eyes,
And sweld with rage, against the door did knock,
Whose aged breast could not endure the shock.
This stroke
Albino's
heart did almost break,
Yet bids
Bellama
sheath her body in
These homely
•
agges, which only safety speak,
Care not for coursenesse, so they hide the skin,
And at this Tinkers habit do not wonder,
It is but the curtain thy
Albino's
under.
What tispyde fellows at my door do beat
Thus early, quoth mine host, is this your manners?
What must mine hostesse wait upon th' entreat
Of Tailors, Cobblers, Carpenters and tanners?
If drinking be your errand, where yey got
Your last nights fudling-cap, this morning tro
•
▪
Impatient they, did make the door unhinge,
Which gave an entrance to enraged
Bardino,
He to the reverend host did lowly cringe,
Told him his errand was to seek
Albino.
And as they did his homely cottage hem,
Albino's
name came leaping unto them.
Hoh, quoth mine host, unto mine house there came
Last night for lodging, a stout Tinker knave,
Who now is ticking with his ragged dame,
Go, if with him yey any business have:
But who
Albino
is, I cannot tell,
Heres no sike mon does penance in my cell.
Into the Arras-ceiled parlor then
The coapsters went, in every corner snookt,
The Tinkers visage none of them did ken,
But for
Albino,
on
Albino
looked;
Well might he cozen them, when as his saint
Knew not his face under that mask of paint.
Then as they searched every place, by chance
Conrado
did his Monkish vestments own
He lent
Phaeliche
at their affiance.
The host perceiving that the clothes were known,
Sayd, yesterday about the after three
A fellow came, and pawn'd those clothes to me.
They asked
Bellama
then, why she did call
Upon
Albino?
Why forsooth said she,
I was a servant once in
Darwey
hall,
Where that young Monk I oftentimes did see,
Who oft in private would disport with me,
And promised that I should his sweeting be.
But by misfortune being turned away,
This Ioviall Tinker took me unto wife,
So as this morne by his warm side I lay,
I of
Albino
dreamed, my joy, my life.
He's not thy mon, quoth
Maudge,
thou lie'st base drab,
Peace housewife, says mine host, you tattling blab.
Thus had the Scean been changed, had not the Sire
Supprest her babblings with a check and grin.
The Monks well satisfide, gang to the fire
To taste the juice of
Kates
old Kilderkin
The Tinker and mine host would always cry,
Fill hostesse, fill, the Monks are still a-dry.
Canzone.
Drink full ones Tinker, me thinks the Monks are dry,
Drink healths mine host, the Monks do fear a thirst:
Are the Monks thirsty? the Monks will quickly try
If they or the Tinker want a pillow first,
Else will we jig and hay unto the black pots sound,
Til to that music the house shall dance the round.
Then fill a dozen hostesse, we'l have a merry cup,
And make the Tinker forfeit his budget & his brass.
Faith, says the tinker, I will make your monkships sup
Till yey sing
Requiems,
in reading of the mass.
Then fill a gallon hostesse, we'll health it all about,
Till all complain oth' headache, the falling or the gout.
Come on dropping shavelins, let's see you count your beads,
I am half afraid you will stutter in the mass.
Gramercy lovely pots, and nimble
Ganimedes,
That brought more water than what holy was.
Well saucy tinker, well, pray finger you your brass.
And let the monks alonelone, they'll finger well the mass.
Pray Gaffer Cowlists why are yey so bald
To cool your
Pia maters
in a sweat?
Or did the water your wise noddlcs scald,
Which your devotions and hot zeal did heat?
Or are yey given unto
Venus
play?
I am afraid there went the hair away.
But base
Bardino
did this mirth eclipse,
(In his monastick life
Albino's
friend)
Viewing the travail of his hand, his lips.
He by a secret mark
Albino
kend:
For by some strange mishap, was set a brand,
An azure spot upon his abler hand.
Says he, me thinks you are too frolic Tinker,
Your mirth I fear presageth your disgrace,
You must no longer be mine hostesse Skinker,
For you will say, unless y'ave braz'd your face,
That you both see, and do
Albino
know,
If you denyit, I have your hand to show.
During the time that you were cowld and coapit,
On your right hand there dwelt a coerule mark,
Which nere would off, although twas often soapt.
Well, quoth mine Host, but pray your worship hark,
May not two men be like, may there not be
The self-same spot of him, and you, and me.
This could not yet appease
Bardino's
hate,
Still teeming mischief, and with envy big,
So starting up, he fum'd, and loud did prate,
And snatched off
Albino's
periwigge.
Now gainst two witnesses he could not stand,
When as his head bore witness with his hand.
Albine
excused, it was by nature so,
Saying no razor ere did touch his scull:
No, says
Bardino?
it again does grow,
Thou canst not with this fop my wisdom gull.
Keep him my brethren, and mean while I will
Fetch the watch-beggar, and his rusty bill.
Bellama
did mean while what language can,
With oiled words, and pity-pleading tears,
Beseeching these to free her wedded man;
But to her voice they cottond had their ears,
Until an Angel did appear unto them,
And with his goldy looks and music woo them.
Then did they yield to let them go away,
And they mean time would fain a deadding sleep,
They for a second license would not stay,
But hasting out, along the ditches creep.
And as they went a Raddle-man they meet,
Whom with kind airs, and high-way phrase they greet.
And greeting past,
Albino
did require
To change apparel with him, and his trade,
Giving him cash to hasten his desi
•
e.
With all my heart the Raddle-yonker said,
(Nere questioning the cause) yet by the mass,
My Dames will say, I am a podging Ass.
Thus changed they clothes & budgets; then with lead
On the new Tinkers hand
Albino
made
A mark like his, to gull his envious bead:
With Raddle-crimson then fit for his trade,
He cloathd his face, and gave
Bellama
some,
So trudgd away, for fear the Monk should come.
Have you beheld a hound in sudden fright,
Whom powder feared, or else the staff did beat,
How oft he turns and looks, yet keeps on flight,
So they with glancing eyes would oft retreat,
Yet moved forward still, as in a ship,
The P
•
lots backward look, yet forward skip.
But our new Tinker swelled with content,
Fearing no colors, to the town did p
•
sse,
Crying, as he along the hamblet went,
Hay
•
ny need, hooh, of a Tinkers brass?
Bardino
now returned in a chafe,
And asked the Tinkers name, who answered,
Rafe.
Where dwelst thou? anywhere? how long
Hast tinkring used? I cannot tell.
Then bout the Tinker all the Monks did throng,
Whilst he, poor fellow thought h'had been in hell:
For till that day, he never saw such creatures,
And what they were, he knew not by their features
Bardino
feared this was but a gull,
And says, good fellow, let me see thy hand.
I am not ashamed to showit, by cock and bull.
Bardino
viewingit well, espyd the brand,
And says, Sir youth, before you couzend me:
But now in sooth, I will be meet with thee.
Devil or Frier, whatsoever thou art,
What taunting language dost thou give to me?
Hah▪ quoth the Tinker. Quoth
Bardino, Smart
Shall give a comment of my words to thee.
Smart,
quoth the Tinker, swigge for
Smart
& you.
I bid defiance unto all thy crew.
Talke not to me of
Smart:
for if you prate,
This knotty staff shall bastenado you,
I will set a scarlet cap upon thy pate,
And lace thy shoulders with a purple blew.
Peace, honest Tinker, say the other Monks▪
I, I will peace it, if I catch the hunkes,
But let the Monks and Tinker take their chances,
We'l view the travails of our Raddle-man,
With faint
Bellam'
whom every fear entrances,
And every trance does make her roses wan.
Thus far their loves have Tragi-comick been,
Thwarted by Fate, and the inconstant Queen.
But every planet with kind aspect now
Viewes their long traveled loves, and
Venus
boy,
Smiles on their wishes with auspicious brow:
Now a full harvest must they have of joy,
Though sowd with black disasters, dangers, fears,
Despair, hope, doubtings, sad complaints & tears.
For aged
Starley's
towers (that fatal stage,
Where Danes did act their juries once in blood,
When bellowing cannons belched out their rage)
Within the kenning of our lovers stood:
And the well-tuned bells did loud proclaim
Joy to the lovers in great
Hymens
name.
A near allye,
Albino
in this town
(By order a devout Carthusian) had,
Whose voice, he hopit, with joy their loves should crown.
But he a slave in Raddle vestures clad,
And a rag'd
M
•
rget
seeing, started back,
Bidding his knaveship to some other pack.
He would have no commerce with such as he,
He had no Ewes, whose backs did want his raddle,
And if he over-saucy needs would be,
With a good bat he would his gaskins swaddle.
The Provost Marshall else, if this does fail,
Shall show you lodging in the whip-stock jayle.
This language sounded in
B
•
llama's
ears,
Like the sad voice of death, yet fear no flaughter,
To joy straight changed shall be this scean of tears,
And stead of grief, the child of pleasure, laughter,
My promise stands unshakit, for this short anger
Brings not their loves nor safeties unto danger.
Sir, quoth
Albino,
there was once a time,
When you esteemed those winged minutes sainted
You spent with me (when Fortune was in prime)
For you and I have better been acquainted,
Though some disasters, and stern Fate have made
Me take this homely garb, and homelier trade.
Some blood which in your azure channels glide,
Dwels in my veins, I am
Albino
hight,
And lest you think this smells too much of pride,
View this triangle on my able right.
That sight unto rejoicings beat alarms,
His kinsman then ensphear'd him in his arms.
So led them both under his arched roof,
Breathing kind welcomes from his courteous lips,
Excus'd his ignorance, and sharp reproof,
Askt what misfortune did his worth eclipse?
Demanding how coy Fortune dealt with him?
And who she was, that was so passing trim?
Unless high heavens do forbid the bane,
This maid shall be my bride, though homely dressed,
Clothes oftentimes the purest beauty stain,
And
Venus
most uncloath'd, is clothed best.
Under this roof of rags
Bellama
dwells,
Franght with diviner worth than nature spells.
Hymen
enrich your wishes with content,
As benign heaven has enriched your face
With natures glory, beauties orient,
Says the Carthusian with a comely grace,
Thrice welcome, welcome, for your lovely grace
Will add a luster to my homely place,
Sir, my endeavors shall be wholly spent
Henceforth, quoth she, to recompense your air;
This is no time (
•
orsooth) to complement,
Prythee adjourn thy words of courtship (fair)
For till our hands be joined as well as hearts,
I fear (quoth he) supplanting envies darts.
Good Cozen, ere the next days sun be rold
Th'
Apogaeum,
our Meridian point,
Favor our wishes with the have and hold,
Tye us so fast, fate may not us dis-joint.
Forenvie like a snake does crawl about,
And winds her tail in where she holes her snout
Omit no nuptial rites, with holy oil
Let her anoint the posts with virgins hand,
To
Ianus
consecrate the weathers spoil,
And to those gods which for our house-holds stand,
Procure horn torches to be borne along,
And cry
Thalassus
with a bridal song.
Provide me store of nuts to throw about,
With a full hand unto the gaping boys,
That from the tumults of the struggling rout,
All voices may be damped, that speak not joys,
Over us two, let the same
Flamine
fall,
And let the wheaten cake consummate all.
Nor will we manumisse these robes of state,
Within whose walls blest safety only dwells,
Lest our known faces and apparel prate
In louder echo's than the marriage belles
Then say (fair Lady) truth I do not jeer,
Will you be wedded to a scarleteere?
Quoth she (with blushes carpetting her cheek)
And is that question (prythee) yet to ask?
Your worth does merit the unequald Greek,
Without Nun-penance, or
Alcides
task.
Then pray you (in truth it is no gull)
Will you be married to a Tinkers trull?
Thus sleep and mirth did cut the night, and e're
The sovereignty was tane from
Cynthia's
horn,
When at Easts casement newly did appear
The orient brightness of the rising morne,
Albino
rose, and to the Church did haste,
T'un-Nun
Bellama,
and un-gird her waste.
When the Carthusians voice had crowned their amors
With an assurance of
Thalassian
joys,
The air was thinned with the joyful clamors
(Not of state-sattens) but of Grammar boys,
And our fresh sponsants in that height of mirth.
To every pleasure gave an easy birth.
Now are they landed on the I will of bliss,
Where every joy courts their desires with pleasure,
Envy did then her snakie train dismiss:
For their espousals did all sweet entreasure.
Dead grief bequeathed her stings to thorn & thistle
Nor durst a sigh within those borders whistle.
Then, as Sea-merchants, when their reeling Gally,
Drunk with salt Neptune, hazard
•
th their bteathes,
To calm bold tempest, and the
••
i
•
ons
val
•
ey,
Hack on the quiet shore th
•
ir bracked sheathes.
So did our Amorists, (h
•
l
•
e wra
•
kt with eye-men)
Devote their radd
•
e vestes to
Love
and
Hymen.
Some marrow-lancing eye perchance may quarrel,
'Cause with the bridal torch my muse expi
•
es,
And in loud jeeres his to wring voice apparel,
Taxing the faintness of my Metricke fires,
Because my lines tread not the common path
Of Fortune, issue, and appeasing wrath.
Perhaps I dare not lengthen out my story
With those events succeeding time begot,
Lest some disaster should eclypse their glory,
And the pure Ermins of their pleasures spot:
For having scru'd them into firm embrac
•
s,
I will not waken hate, or rouse disgraces.
Yet beauty (know) when virtue shines upon her,
And virtues (know) skin-perfections gloss 'em,
Awe Fortunes nath, and challenge heavens honor,
Hell cannor cancel them, nor envy dross 'em.
Love,
if to me the same content thou wilt yield,
I will limb thy mother on
Minerva's
Shield.
TO THOSE WORTHY HERO'S OF OUR Age, whose noble Breasts are we • and watered with the dew of Helicon, N. W. wisheth ever-flourishing Laurels.
YOu noble Laureats, whose able Quills
In framing Odes, do drean the sacred rills
Of
Aganippe
dry, within whose breasts
The Syre of
Aesculapius
safely rests;
And all the Muses Temple, deign your rays
To cheare the measures of an infant Bayes,
Spread forth the Banners of your worths to shield
His younger Muse, unable yet to wield
Arms, 'gainst the Monsters of this Critick age,
Envy, detraction, and Saturnine rage.
I to myself assume not double worth,
Or that my teeming fancy can bring forth
Words to make wonderstand amazed, doetrye
To vindicate the breath of Poesie.
In such a thought I am silent, but because
I have heard invectives belched from the jaws
Of
Nil-scientes,
whose audacious brags
Have rays'd a thunder like a shoale of dagges
T' affright endeavors:
In writing which, if my weak studies hit
Of any fancy speaking worth or wit,
If I have snatched any fainting Muse
From the black jaws of envy and abuse,
Shooting a soul into her, and new breath,
Maugre those tongues that doomed her to death.
Echo forth thanks unto coy
Daphnes
lover
(About whose Fane the sacred Nine do hover)
Whose kindness smild on my uncrusht designs,
And locked a Muse in my unworthy lines
Able to blunt the dar
•
s of envy, pare
The sharpest hoofed Satyr, and with air
Shrill as the voice of thunder, chide those gaules,
That belch forth scandals and invective bawles:
Nay, he, befriending me above my merit,
Vnseen of any, heav'd my winged spirit
T' a higher court than the Star-chamberis,
Where souls may surfeit with immortal bliss.
And taught my fancy in those quiet slumbers,
What, waking, I have folded up in numbers,
To tell the brood of Critics, that there are
Some few, or if not some, yet one, that dare
(Backed by your thrice-sacred worths) expose
These lines and letters to the ken of prose.
The humble admirer of your Muses N. W.
Il in sonio insonnadado.
WHhen (in the silent age of sable night)
The silver way with
Phaebes
glimring light,
And her attendants was adornd, and when
Fast slumbers scald the eyes of drowsy men,
I entered
Morpheus
Court, that Iv'ry port,
Whereat benighted fancies pass that sort
With real good, sleep was the Ianitor,
Who let me in without one crumb of Ore,
Into the spacious hall, whose darksome flour,
With downie beds and quilts was paved ore,
Instead of Marble stones: here nuzzled both
The hated spawn of idleness and sloth,
Icilone
and
Phantaso,
the one
Wrapt in a mantle set with stars and stones,
Checkerd with flowers, and trimd with antick shape
•
Playing with children, feathets, flies and Apes,
Blowing up spittle bladders: and the other
Stretcht on the bosom of his quiet mother,
Folded in furs and feathers, would not stir
To earn a penny, or to please you Sir
With cap and curtsy: wondering much, to me
The winged post came with an Embassee,
I, frighted with his strange apparel, shrunk
Away, and closely into feathers sunk.
He smiling said, let not my strange arraying,
Kind youth, beget amazement, or dismaying▪
I will show thee where in marshald order stray
Whole troops of Laureats ensphear'd with Bay,
Then spread his winged sails, and caught my hair,
Without a sense of motion through the air,
Conducting me, through where the Salamander
(If faith b'historlcall) does breath and wander,
Then through those glorious orbs, enriched with gems,
The palaces of seven Diadems.
Then through the firmament, where glittering spangs,
Like blazing Topazes, in Crystal hangs,
Three stories higher was the Galupin
Where
Jove
was frolic with his goddy kin;
Hither was I uplifted, then mine eye
Besprinkled was by nimble
Mercury,
With liquor, which with strength did me endue
T' abide the presence of th' immortal crew,
The whispring vaults I opened of my brain,
The counsels of the gods to entertain,
And fearing memory, with short-lived chalk,
(Wanting the tongue of paper) writ their talk;
The Patron of Parnassus and the nine,
To IOVE presented and the rest divine,
Their suites with comely grace and majesty.
But
Phoebus
was the Orator; Loe I,
Thy daughters undertook to patronize,
Great Emperor of the Crystal spangled skies,
And shield their measures from the sullen rage
Of envious ignorance this Criticke age;
(For none inveigh against Poetic measures,
But those that never had
Pandora's
treasures)
Yet such a shoale of ignorants I find,
'It is thought the greater part oth' world is blind,
That maugre all my scourges, in the dark
Against the Muses they will snarl and bark.
Let winged-sandald
Hermes
post to call
And summon them unto thy judgment Hall,
That you may know their rage is want of brains.
Hermes
took post, and brought the silly trains,
Jove
wav'd his scepter, and commanded hush,
Then calls a gawdie piece of empty plush,
And asked what he could say 'gainst Poetry?
Hah, hah, quoth he, and fleer'd with blinking eye,
I have a mistress (then begins a tale,
Which made
Jove
call for some Nectarean Ale,
To arm his ears 'gainst non-sense, and his side
'Gainst laughters fury) has too much of pride,
She's fair, as is a wall new parg'd with lime,
She's wise enough; for age, she's in her prime,
I vow her service, but she slights me, why?
Marry, I dave noveine in Poesie,
But what I take on trust, oth' second hand,
She jeeres and says, this cannot well be scand,
This has a foot too little, that too much,
This is a borrowed line, she knowesit byth' touch,
Tells me the double
Indies
shall not gain
Her love, without the smirke, Poetic vain,
Despairing I against the Muses rail,
And wisht my hands had crusted been with flail,
Then should not I have needed Proxee-verse,
T'have won a milk-maid, neither coy nor terse,
T
•
ush, say I, Madam, this sameragged crew
Ofrithming dizzards, are not worthy you.
Plato
exiled them from his common-weal,
Their tongues will flatter, and their fingers steal.
M
•
resycophants, that for a trencher-bit,
Will swear y'ave beauty mixed with purest wit.
And if you anger them, will in a rage
Vnsayit, and rail gainst you, your sex, and age.
Hundredinvectives more, I often use
Against the Poet and his strumpet Muse;
But I protest, tis to dissuade my Lady:
For had I wit,
Phoebus
should be my Dady.
Then sacred sisters I emplore your Bayes,
Make me a Bard, and I will descant your praise.
No quoth the Muses
Helicon
nere brooks
T
•
have servants which do wear such simple looks▪
So sent him packing with a flea in's ear,
Apollo
called another to appear,
A feeble brain, that at a gen'rall die
Had got the sable hue of infamy:
He buzzles like a bustard in a wind,
And with his aio's strikes the vulgar blind,
In whom, if we believe
Pythagoras,
I think the soul of
Battus
housed was:
He is demanded why he thus does bawle
Gainst soaring wits, not worms that earthly crawl?
Clothing his face with impudence, his looks
With pride; and with high self-conceit (his books,
So are his words, he speaks in print) why, why,
Have I not cause toexclaim on Poe
•
ic?
I am a Divine, not a fond prattling Poet,
I am a Preacher I would have you know it.
Peace arrogant, says
Hermes,
else I will drive
Thee quick into the black infernal hive.
There was a time when thou admir'dst with praise
Each sprig of Laurel, slip of youthful Bayes.
But Envy's master now, or thbecause of it
Is, thou nere hop'st toattain that height of wit.
Bur say the truth, (yet truth will scarce abide thee)
Are there not some that jeer and do deride thee
In lofty measures, and thou wanting skill
To vindicate thy credit by thy quill?
Do'st scold? Quoth he, I do acknowledge it,
I blamed the Muses, 'cause I wanted wit,
And darted scandals at
Apollo's
Lyre,
Yet pardon, mighty
Aesculapius
Syre,
And ye blest goddesses, my grand offense,
And on your Altars I will burn srankincense.
Nay, buildrich Trophies unto Poetry.
It is good to see a convert mind, stand by
Apollo
said; says
Vulcan
by the Mass,
I have espyd a plumpe-cheekt bonnie lasse,
She is a wrig I warrant, where's my wife?
Oh! tis a hell to live a coupled life.
Thus did the Black-smith mutter, till
Apollo
Cited the damsel with a gentle hollo.
Up comes the
Margit
with a mincing pace,
A City-stride, Court-garb, and smirking face,
So curtsy'd to the gods, yet twas but short.
Then says
Apollo,
(meaning to make sport)
What occupation use you, Art or Trade?
Are you a Virgin? Yes, a chamber-maid
Forsooth I am, I have my virgins seal,
To honest
Vulcan
I dare make m'appeal,
Heel pawn his head, had I kept
Venus
room,
Mars
had not dub'd him with
Actaeons
doom.
A merry wench in faith says
Jove:
yet stay,
To serious parle let's fall from wanton play,
You are accused, as one that does condemn
And boldly scoff the Laurell Diadem.
I once, quoth she, admired them all, until
I found my praise returned but traffic ill:
For when I praised, they praised me again,
So I had only praises for my pain.
Then wittily I oftentimes would flout,
And say the Poets was a needy rout:
Of all professions sure it was the worst,
Just like the Cockatrice, ith' shell accurst,
With many more, yet though our tongues did jar,
Our quarrel ended in a lippy war.
We kist, to friendship like the nurse and child,
And there she stopped: where at the heavens smild.
Then came a Serving-man, a blunt old knave,
That dared
Parnassus
with a saucy brave,
In youth says he, I rim'd, and framed notes
To
Pans
choice music, & the shepherds
•
hroats,
And many a lusty bowle of cream have got
For
Kates
three brace of rimes, which was God wot,
But once removed from prose, and for a song
The iron-hoofed Hobs 'bout me did throng,
But now old age my wit and fancy nips,
I gaule the Muses with satyricke quips,
Yet might I with the Eagle cast my Bill,
And gain my youth, I would regain my skill.
This done, the Pursuivant
Apollo
posts
T'Elizium,
to call the Poets ghosts,
That paid th'infernal Ferry-man his fee:
There saw I
Homer,
but he saw not me,
Lascivious
Ovid,
and
Virgilius
grave,
Satyricke
Juvenal,
and
Martial
brave,
Splay-footed
Plautus,
limping
Ennius,
Propertius, Horace,
and
Boethius.
Amongst the Modernes came the Fairy Queen,
Old
Geoffrey, Sidney, Drayton, Randolph, Green,
The double
Beaumonde, Drummond, Brown,
Each had his chaplet, and his Ivy crown.
How rested ye amidst those gloomie shades?
Says
Jupiter?
see ye not other trades
Learnings and Sciences have constant springs,
Summers and Autumns without winterings?
They'l have no hail-storms, fleezie rain, nor frost,
They'r kin to rimes: winter must not be lost:
A pregnant witted Bard did silence break,
Homer
'twas not, he could not see to speak.
Virgil
it was not, he had got a wrench,
Nor
B.
nor
M.
for they had got a wench.
Ennius
was lame, and much did fear his shins,
Horace
was busy with the kilder kins.
Ovid
employd with his beloved Flea,
Old
Geoffrey's
language was not fit for plea:
Draiton
on's brains a new Moon Calf was getting,
And testie
Drummond
could not speak for fretting▪
I knew the
Roscians
feature, not his name,
Yet tis engraven on the Shaulme of Fame;
With settled grace he boldly did advance
Father of gods, king of the large expanse.
We oft have heard proud Envy belching forth
Fogs, mists and fumes, tocclipse the metrick worth,
And know the teeming world did never nurse
So great a mischief as the Griticke curse:
Our souls one minute have not rested quiet,
Since carpes we know was
Ignoramus
diet.
If Wisedomes
Faecial
call to the sand,
We have revenge, our standish is at hand.
That rights our wrongs, but gainst
Don Sillies
rails
The fist is heav'd, for paper naught avails:
We sat in counsel, did intend to sue
With a petition to this noble crew,
The substance this, that ye would either give
Wit and discretion unto all that live,
Or make them Idiots, deprived of reason,
Else but to speak, let it be counted treason.
But we appeal, great gods, tis now my theme,
To clear from mud pure
Aganippa's
stream:
Assist
Pierides,
maintain your sires
With greater care than can the Vestals theirs,
It is merely loss of time and papet both,
By refutation to chastise their sloth.
Then I the juice of
Helicon
will sup,
Not in nut-shell, but
Colocassian
cup,
Shall make my fancy catch at naught but gems,
And wreath the Muses brows with diadems.
Me thinks this draught such virtue does infuse,
As if in every sense there dwelt a Muse,
A spirit of valor, to un-god great war,
Should he but send a ram; but to the bar,
Who knows not
Vaticinium
does imply
In equal measures verse and prophesy.
An inspiration, a celestial touch,
Such is the Poets raptures, Prophets such:
Vates
a Bard, and him that does presage
Vaticinor
possessed with either rage.
Poema
is a book in numbers framed,
Fast cemented with sense, by working named,
To which the choicest Orator stands bare,
Poesies does in a sublimer air,
Things human and divine expose to view.
The first Philosophy that Fame ere knew,
Was honourd with the name of Poetry,
Enricht with rules of pure morality.
Reading instructions unto heathen men,
With more contentment than the Stoics pen,
The ancients unto Poets only gave
The Epithites of wise, divine and grave,
Because their meeters taught the world to know
To whom they did their holy worship owe.
The Greek is free and kinder in her praise
Which she bestows upon Poetic Lays,
She calls all that which takes not essence by
A matter pre-existent, Poesie.
So makes the world a Poem, and by this
The great creator a great Poet is.
Nay more, that language on the Nine bestows,
(As every callent of that Idiom knows)
In her etimologues an higher grace,
Calles them
〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉
, and whose measures trace▪
The steps of Nature, human and divine,
The abstruse mysteries of both untwine,
Vnlock the
exta
of each Science, Art,
By cunning search: again, not as a part
Nor a grand columne only, but entreasures
The soul of learning in the Poets measures.
All other Arts (which use and learning gave)
Precepts and rules, as sure foundations, have,
When as the Poets pen alone's enspir'd
With high Enthusiasmes, by heaven fired,
Ennius
them holy calls, and
Plato
says,
Furies divine are in the Poets lays;
Nor wanted he himself the Poets wit,
He
Dithyrambos
and love passions writ.
The Regal Prophet was a true borne Poet,
As to the life his well-tuned meeters show it,
Compos'd to music by that holy man,
Ere
Hopkins
and
Sternhold
knew how to scan.
Hence Chicken-Augures with your crooked staves,
Whose rash conjectures crown and dig us graves.
A lofty fancy steeped in the fount
Of
Pegasus,
an higher pitch can mount.
Sibylline
Oracles did speak in verse,
Their scatterd leaves in measures did rehearse
The mysteries of man's redemption, by
The incarnation of a deity.
Grave
Maro,
I remember, in an Ode,
An Eclogue, treads the same Prophetick rode.
Those famous
Druids
renownd of late,
Treated at large oth' souls immortal state.
Mans spirit does not to the gloomie shade
Of
Erebus,
ore black
Cocytus
wade.
Death sets no period, is the lesser part
Of human life, for the same breath does dart
Vigor to every sinew in the bulk.
Man lives as freely in another hulke,
Who readeth
Ovid's
Metamorphosin,
And thinks not
Moses
soul was sheathed in
His body, by a transmigration?
He from the chaos tells the worlds plantation.
Maro
accords, and gives the world a soul,
Which does this well-compacted lump control;
And by illumination he discovered
How then the spirit ore the water hoverd.
Th'inspired pen of old
Pythagoras
By
Nasos
guide, relates, how in this mass
All things do alter shape, yet soon Dame Nature
Of one form lost, informs another feature,
No substance's nothinged in this large globe,
But gainst some feast puts on a newer robe.
The earth resolved to water, rarefies,
Into pure air the thinner water flies,
The purer air assumes a scorching heat:
They back returning, orderly retreat,
Those subtle sparks converted are to breath,
The spissye air, being doomed unto death,
Turnes into sea, earth's made a thickened water.
Thus wily Nature is a strange translater.
My Lady Readers, I refer to sands,
But the grave learned unto
Ovid's
hands.
Nor
Seneca
divine wants prophesies,
Neare to the death of time an age shall rise,
In which, says he, the Ocean shall untie
The watery bands of things, and to the eye
Of
Typhis,
anew world appear
Vnheard before, by the mostitching ear,
In glory matching this▪ Then
Thule
no more
Shall be th'earths
ne plus ultra,
bound or door,
Our eights in thehundred would large heaps of treasures
Set in their wills to buy
Zorastus
measures.
Mass-priests for Dirges then would loose their fee,
These would the surest
de profundis
be.
Shopsters and gallants to his house would hop,
More than toExchanges, or Canary-shop.
And Poets briske would have a larger dealth
Than holy Confessors, of dead men's wealth.
I might be infinite, should I but show
For what grave Arts the world to Poets owe.
Apelles
had not been without
Parnasse,
The pensils worth had only dwelt on glass,
Or dusty tablets, guided by those Apes,
In imitation of some antick shapes.
Venus
a portraict had,
Pygmalion
mist
That speechless female which he hugd and kist,
Had not th'enlivening breath of Poetry
T'a higher pitch reard up dull fantasy.
How quickly worthy acts of famous men,
Dy'd in the wane of our poetick pen?
How rudely by the Monks (which only had
The key of learning) were their actions clad,
King
Ethelbert
's closed in his
Poliander,
To Christ for Church buildings, he's gone without
Maeander
Such stuff the tombs of
Bede
and
Petrarch
have,
The razor from all Monkey pates did shave
Wit with their hair, except in
Mantuan
Re-teind by
Vida
and
Politian,
And many others was this glorious Sun
Which glitter shall till earths last thread be spun,
We raise shall Obeliskes by
Apollos
breath,
Which owe no homage to the rage of death.
By pen
Honterus
creatures limb'd to life,
Better than could the Cynicke with his knife.
Pliny
compared unto him, did err,
He was a Chymick and Cosmographer.
How bravely does the Scottish Bard depinge
The planets order, and the Sphericke hinge.
Brave
Petrarch,
Latin'd by our learned clarke,
Lights us a lamp to guide us in this dark
And critic age, says, that stout
Alexander,
(Whose warlicke steps ore all this globe did wander)
Fixing on brave
Pelides
tomb his eye,
Wrapt with a noble envy, loud did cry,
Happy, O happy thou, whose actions still
Live, being enbreath'd by the immortal quill,
Of worthy
Homer!
nay, when his sword had gaind
Those wealthy realms, ore which
Darius
raignd.
He mongst his treasures found a casket fair,
So set with gold and gems, it rayd the air,
And called in day despite of clouds or nights,
Yet the best use (as grave
Patricius
writes)
This cabinet could serve to, was toentombe
Homers
choice Iliads in his glorious womb.
Of
Zoaraflus
now some wonders hear,
And barrel his disciples in thine ear,
Whose rhythms could charm foul
Cerbers
bawling tongue,
And pickhels lock with his enchanting song.
From
Stygian
shade conducting whom they listed,
And whom they pleased with hellish fogs bemisted.
Oh golden meeters, rimes out-worthing gold,
At what high prices would they now be sold
If they were extant! Friend for friend would sell
Lordships, books, banners, to redeem from hell
How many ages has those Greeks surviv'd,
(Than all their predecessors longer lived)
Which showd their noblc worths at
Iliums
grave?
Yet thrice
Nestorean
age them
Homer
gave:
How bravely
Lucan
tells succeeding ages
The seven-hilled cities bloody rages.
Moyst clouds long since, have washed the purpled grass,
Yet red as ever 'tis in
Lucans
glass.
To
Carthage
Queen the wandering
Trojan
Prince
Pretended love, but dead it is long since,
And dust are they, yet
Virgil's
lofty verse
Makes him speak wars, she love, from under th 'herse.
Long since did
Hellespont
gulpe in
Leander,
When he presumed on naked breast to wander.
Hero's
watch-candle's out, they vanished quite,
Yet
Ovid
fayes, all was but yester-night.
A great while since the cheating Miller stole
The Scholars meal by a quadruple tole,
They gave him th'horn-book, taught his daughter Greek
Yet look in
Chaucer,
done the other week.
I'rne-sinewd
Talus
with his steely flail,
Long since ith' right of justice did prevail
Under the Scepter of the Fairy Queen,
Yet
Spencers
lofty measures makes it green.
Dun
was a Poet, and a grave Divine,
Highly esteemed for the sacred Nine,
That after times shall say whilst theres a Sun,
This Verse, this Sermon was composed by
Dun.
What by heroic acts to man accrues,
When grisely
Charon
for his waftage sues,
If his great grand-child, and his grand-childes son,
May not the honors, which his sword hath won.
Read, grav'd on paper by a Poets pen,
When matble monuments are dust, and when
Time has eat off his paint, and letterd gold,
For verse alone keeps honor out oth▪ mold.
The press successively gives birth to verse:
Shall steely Tombes out-live the Buckram herse?
To otherthings the same proportion hold,
Pure rimes, which lofty volumes do enfold.
Aut umnall frosts would nip the double Rose,
If cherished only by the breath of Prose.
Beauty of beauty's not the smallest part,
Which is bestowed by our liberal Art.
Orpheus, Arion,
and the scraping crew,
To wyre and parched guts may bid adieu,
Or audience beg, wert not for sprightfull Bayes,
Which to the strings composeth merry Lays,
But with the Muses I am so fallen in love,
That I forget thy presence, mighty
Jove,
And through the spacious universe do walk,
Bur this shall set a period to my talk.
Jove
stretched his Scepter then with frolic grace,
And joy triumphed on the heavens face,
The Orbes made Music, and the Planets danced,
The Muses glory was by all enhanced:
Jove
thenintended for to ratify
Decrees in the behoove of Poesie,
Giving the Bards his hand to kiss, and made
Chaplets of Laurel, which should never fade.
But
Vulcan
to Gradive placit in oppose,
Was nodding fast, and bellowing through the nose,
His armed brow fell down, and lighting right,
His antlers did the marching god unsight.
Mars
fum'd, the gods laughed out, the spheres did shake
At which shrill noise I starting did awake,
And looking up, (East having opit his doors)
Amazed I beheld a troop of scores,
And wondering, thought they'd been Ale-debts, but found
I them had chalked in my dreaming swound.
I trow not the decree, 'twas
Vulcans
fault,
Yet dreams are seldom sound, like him they halt.
Take this, and if I can so happy be,
I will write in my next slumbers, the Decree.
FINIS.
GEntle Reader, hear with some faults, which through the obscurity of the copy, and the absence of the Author have escaped; as page 3. line 24. for vein read reyne. p. 3. l. 6. for enjoyd read enjayld, p. 6. l. 10. for tener read knee. p. 12. l. 24. for Satamit read Catamite. Two staves there are misplaced, to the reforming whereof the sense will direct thee: what other errors thou findest, let thy pen amend, excusing the press, and un-staining the Author.