But if perchance there did a riband come,
Not the train-band so fierce with all its drum;
Yet with your torch you homeward would retire,
And heart'ly wish your bed your fun'ral pyre.
With what a fury have I known you feed,
Upon a contract, and the hopes 't might speed;
Not the fair bride, impatient of delay,
Doth wish like you the beauties of that day;
Hotter than all the roasted cooks you sat
To dress the fricasse of your alphabet,
Which sometimes would be drawn dough anagram,
Sometimes acrostic parched in the flame;
Then posies stew'd with sippets, motto's by,
Of minced verse a miserable pie.
How many knots slipp'd ere you twist their name,
With th' old device, as both their heart's the same:
Whilst like to drills the feast in your false jaw,
You would transmit at leisure to your maw;
Then after all your fooling, fat, and wine,
Glutton'd at last, return at home to pine.
Tell me, O Sun, since first your beams did play To Night, and did awake the sleeping Day; Since first your steeds of light their race did start, Did you ere blush as now? Oh thou that art The common father to the base pismire,
As well as great Alcides, did the fire,
From thine own altar which the gods adore,
Kindle the souls of gnats and wasps before?
Who would delight in his chaste eyes to see,
Dormice to strike at lights of poesy?
Faction and envy now is downright rage,
Once a five knotted whip there was, the stage,
The beadle and the executioner,
To whip small errors, and the great ones tear.
Now as ere Nimrod, the first king, he writes,
That's strongest, th' ablest deepest bites.
The muses weeping fly their hill, to see
Their noblest sons of peace in mutiny.
Could there nought else this civil war complete,
But poets raging with poetic heat,
Tearing themselves and th' endless wreath, as though Immortal they, their wrath should be so too;
And doubly fir'd Apollo burns to see
In silent Helicon a naumachie.
Parnassus hears these as his first alarms,
Never till now Minerva was in arms.
O more than conqu'ror of the world, great Rome! Thy hero's did with gentleness o'ercome Thy foes themselves, but one another first, Whilst Envy stripp'd, alone was left, and burst. The learn'd decemviri, 'tis true, did strive, But to add flames to keep their fame alive;
Whilst th' eternal laurel hung i'th' air;
Nor of these ten sons was there found one heir,
Like to the golden tripod it did pass,`
From this to this, till 't came to him whose 'twas:
Cæsar to Gallus trundled it, and he
To Maro, Maro, Naso, unto thee;
Naso to his Tibullus flung the wreath,
He to Catullus thus did each bequeath,
This glorious circle to another round,
At last the temples of their god it bound.
I might believe, at least, that each might have
A quiet fame contented in his grave.
Envy the living, not the dead, doth bite,
For after death all men receive their right*.
If it be sacrilege for to profane
Their holy ashes, what is't then their flame?
He does that wrong unweeting, or in ire,
As if one should put out the vestal fire.
Let Earth's four quarters speak, and thou Sun bear Now witness for thy fellow-traveller,
I was allied, dear uncle, unto thee
In blood, but thou alas not unto me;
Your virtues, pow'rs, and mine differ'd at best,
As they whose Springs you saw, the east and west:
Let me awhile be twisted in thy shine,
And pay my due devotions at thy shrine.
Might learned Waynman rise, who went with thee
In thy heav'ns work beside divinity,
I should sit still; or mighty Falkland stand,
To justify with breath his pow’rful hand;
The glory that doth circle your pale urn
Might hallow'd still and undefiled burn;
But I forbear; flames that are wildly thrown
At sacred heads, curl back upon their own;
Sleep, heav'nly Sands, whilst what they do or write,
Is to give God himself and you your right.
There is not in my mind one sullen fate
Of old, but is concentred in our state.
Vandal o'er-runners, Goths in literature,
Ploughmen that would Parnassus new manure;
Ringers of verse that all-in chime,
And toll the changes upon every rhyme.
A mercer now by th' yard does measure o'er
An ode which was but by the foot before;
Deals you an ell of epigram, and swears
It is the strongest, and the finest wears.
No wonder if a drawer verses rack,
If 'tis not his 't may be the spir❜t of sack;
Whilst the fair bar-maid strokes the Muse's teat,
For milk to make the posset up complete.
Arise, thou rev'rend shade, great Jonson, rise! Break through thy marble natural disguise; Behold a mist of insects, whose mere breath Will melt thy hallow'd leaden house of death.
What was Crispinus that you should defy
The age for him? he durst not look so high
As your immortal rod, he still did stand
Honour'd, and held his forehead to thy brand.
These scorpions with which we have to do,
Are fiends, not only small but deadly too.
Well might'st thou rive thy quill up to the back,
And screw thy lyre's grave chords until they crack.
For though once Hell resented music, these
Devils will not, but are in worse disease.
How would thy masc'line spirit, father Ben,
Sweat to behold basely deposed men,
Justled from the prerog'tive of their bed,
Whilst wives are per'wig'd with their husbands head? Each snatches the male quill from his faint hand,
And must both nobler write and understand,
He to her fury the soft plume doth bow,
O pen, ne'er truly justly slit till now!
Now as herself a poem she doth dress,
And curls a line as she would do a tresse;
Powders a sonnet as she does her hair,
Then prostitutes them both to public air;
Nor is't enough that they their faces blind
With a false die, but they must paint their mind;
In metre scold, and in scann'd order brawl,
Yet there's one Sappho left may save them all.
But now let me recall my passion,
Oh (from a nobler father, nobler son!)
|