Alas! I have lost my heat, my blood, my prime,
Winter is come a quarter ere his time.
My health will leave me; and when you depart,
How shall I do, sweet mistress, for my heart?
You would restore it! no; that's worth a fear,
As if it were not worthy to be there :
O keep it still; for it had rather be
Your sacrifice, than here remain with me.
And so I spare it: come what can become
Of me, I'll softly tread unto my tomb;
Or, like a ghost, walk silent amongst men,
Till I may see both it and you agen.
ET me be what I am as Virgil cold,
As Horace fat, or as Anacreon old;
No poet's verses yet did ever move,
Whose readers did not think he was in
love.
Who shall forbid me then in rhyme to be
As light, and active as the youngest he
That from the Muses fountains doth endorse
His lines, and hourly sits the poet's horse?
Put on my ivy garland, let me see
Who frowns, who jealous is, who taxeth me.
Fathers and husbands, I do claim a right
In all that is call'd lovely; take my sight,
Sooner than my affection from the fair.
No face, no hand, proportion, line or air
Of beauty, but the muse hath interest in :
There is not worn that lace, purl, knot, or pin,
But is the poet's matter; and he must,
When he is furious, love, although not lust.
Be then content, your daughters and
your wives,
If they be fair and worth it, have their lives
Made longer by our praises; or, if not,
Wish you had foul ones, and deformed got,
Curst in their cradles, or there chang'd by elves,
So to be sure you do enjoy, yourselves.
Yet keep those up in sackcloth too, or leather,
For silk will draw some sneaking songster thither.
It is a rhyming age, and verses swarm
At every stall; the city cap's a charm.
But I who live, and have lived twenty year,
Where I may handle silk as free, and near,
As any mercer, or the whale-bone man,
That quilts those bodies I have leave to span;
Have eaten with the beauties, and the wits,
And braveries of court, and felt their fits
Of love and hate; and came so nigh to know
Whether their faces were their own or no:
It is not likely I should now look down
Upon a velvet petticoat, or a gown,
Whose like I have known the tailor's wife put on,'
To do her husband's rites in, ere 'twere gone
Home to the customer: his letchery
Being the best clothes still to preoccupy.
Put a coach-mare in tissue, must I horse
Her presently? or leap thy wife, of force,
When by thy sordid bounty she hath on
A gown of that was the caparison?
So I might doat upon thy chairs and stools,
That are like cloth'd: must I be of those fools
7 Whose like I have known the tailor's wife put on, &c.] Whether this be the original sketch of the countess Pinnacia Stuffe in the New Inn, or be itself taken from that unfortunate play, as the lines are not dated, cannot be told; the resemblance, however, is perfect: "Master Stuffe,
When he makes any fine garment that will suit me,
Or any rich thing that he thinks of price,
Then must I put it on," &c.
Of race accounted, that no passion have,
But when thy wife, as thou conceiv'st, is brave?
Then ope thy wardrobe, think me that poor groom
That, from the footman, when he was become
An officer there, did make most solemn love
To every petticoat he brush'd, and glove
He did lay up; and would adore the shoe
Or slipper was left off, and kiss it too ;
Court every hanging gown, and after that
Lift up some one, and do-I tell not what.
Thou didst tell me, and wert o'erjoyed to peep
In at a hole, and see those actions creep
From the poor wretch, which though he plaid in prose,
He would have done in verse, with any of those
Wrung on the withers by lord Love's despite,
Had he the faculty to read and write!
Such songsters there are store of; witness he That chanc'd the lace, laid on a smock, to see, And straightway spent a sonnet; with that other That, in pure madrigal, unto his mother Commended the French hood and scarlet gown The lady may'ress pass'd in through the town, Unto the Spittle sermon. O what strange Variety of silks were on the Exchange! Or in Moor-fields, this other night, sings one! Another answers, 'las! those silks are none, In smiling l'envoy," as he would deride Any comparison had with his Cheapside; And vouches both the pageant and the day, When not the shops, but windows do display The stuffs, the velvets, plushes, fringes, lace, And all the original riots of the place.
8 Unto the Spittle sermon.] The Spittle sermons were preached at that time, in a pulpit erected for the purpose, in what is now called Spittle Square. They lasted through the Easter week.
9 In smiling l'envoy,] i. e. in a kind of supercilious close. For l'envoy, see vol. iii. p. 460.
Let the poor fools enjoy their follies, love
A goat in velvet; or some block could move
Under that cover, an old midwife's hat!
Or a close-stool so cased; or any fat
Bawd, in a velvet scabbard! I envý
None of their pleasures; nor will ask thee why
Thou art jealous of thy wife's or daughter's case;
More than of either's manners, wit, or face!
AN EXECRATION UPON VULCAN.
ND why to me this? thou lame Lord of
Fire!1
What had I done that might call on thine
ire?
Or urge thy greedy flames thus to devour
So many my years' labours in an hour?
I ne'er attempted aught against thy life;
Nor made least line of love to thy loose wife;
Or in remembrance of thy affront and scorn,
With clowns and tradesmen, kept thee clos'd in horn.2
And why to me, &c.] This poem has no date affixed to it: it was printed in 4to. and 12mo. 1640, and again in the folio of that year; the present text has been formed from a careful collation of all the copies.
There is a degree of wit and vivacity in these verses which does no little credit to the equanimity of the poet, who speaks of a loss so irreparable to him, not only with forbearance, but with pleasantry and good humour. The lame lord is from Catullus :
Scripta tardipedi deo daturum
Infelicibus ustulanda flammis.
2 With clowns and tradesmen kept thee clos'd in horn.] This is a joke of very ancient standing: Heus tu, qui Vulcanum conclusum in cornu geris! Plaut. Amphytr. WHAL.
'Twas Jupiter that hurl'd thee headlong down,
And Mars that gave thee a lantern for a crown.
Was it because thou wert of old denied,
By Jove, to have Minerva for thy bride;
That since, thou tak'st all envious care and pain
To ruin every issue of the brain?
Had I wrote treason here, or heresy,
Imposture, witchcraft, charms, or blasphemy;
I had deserv'd then thy consuming looks,
Perhaps to have been burned with my books.
But, on thy malice, tell me, Didst thou spy
Any least loose or scurril paper lie
Conceal'd, or kept there, that was fit to be,
By thy own vote, a sacrifice to thee?
Did I there wound the honour of the crown,
Or tax the glory of the church, or gown?
Itch to defame the state, or brand the times,
And myself most, in lewd self-boasting rhymes?
If none of these, then why this fire? Or find
A cause before, or leave me one behind.
Had I compiled from Amadis de Gaul,
The Esplandians, Arthurs, Palmerins, and all
The learned library of Don Quixote,
And so some goodlier monster had begot;
Or spun out riddles, or weav'd fifty tomes
Of Logographes, or curious Palindromes,
Or pump'd for those hard trifles, Anagrams,
Or Eteostics, or your finer flams
Of eggs, and halberds, cradles, and a herse,
A pair of scissars, and a comb in verse;
Acrostichs, and telestichs on jump names,
Thou then hadst had some colour for thy flames,
3 Acrostichs, and telestichs, &c.] All these fooleries in verse were practised ages ago, by writers who atoned for want of genius by the labour of their compositions. This is Whalley's remark, and it was undoubtedly so; but the folly was again become epidemic, in consequence of the publication of Puttenham's Arte of English
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