Chapter IV: The Turn

And shine as you exalted are;
Two names of friendship, but one star:
Of hearts the union, and those not by chance
Made, or indenture, or leased out t’advance
The profits for a time.
No pleasures vain did chime,
Of rhymes, or riots, at your feasts,
Orgies of drink, or feigned protests:
But simple love of greatness and of good,
That knits brave minds and manners more than blood.

THE COUNTER-TURN

This made you first to know the why
You liked, then after, to apply
That liking; and approach so one the t’other,
Till either grew a portion of the other:
Each styled by his end,
The copy of his friend.
You lived to be the great sir-names,
And titles, by which all made claims
Unto the virtue; nothing perfect done,
But as a Cary, or a Morison.

THE STAND

And such a force the fair example had,
As they that saw
The good, and durst not practise it, were glad
That such a law
Was left yet to mankind;
Where they might read and find
Friendship, indeed, was written not in words;
And with the heart, not pen,
Of two so early men,
Whose lines her rolls were, and records;
Who, ere the first down bloomed upon the chin,
Had sowed these fruits, and got the harvest in.

PRÆLUDIUM.

AND must I sing? What subject shall I choose!
Or whose great name in poets’ heaven use,
For the more countenance to my active muse?

Hercules? alas, his bones are yet sore
With his old earthly labours t’ exact more
Of his dull godhead were sin. I’ll implore

Phœbus. No, tend thy cart still. Envious day
Shall not give out that I have made thee stay,
And foundered thy hot team, to tune my lay.

Nor will I beg of thee, lord of the vine,
To raise my spirits with thy conjuring wine,
In the green circle of thy ivy twine.

Pallas, nor thee I call on, mankind maid,
That at thy birth mad’st the poor smith afraid.
Who with his axe thy father’s midwife played.

Go, cramp dull Mars, light Venus, when he snorts,
Or with thy tribade trine invent new sports;
Thou, nor thy looseness with my making sorts.

Let the old boy, your son, ply his old task,
Turn the stale prologue to some painted mask;
His absence in my verse is all I ask.

Hermes, the cheater, shall not mix with us,
Though he would steal his sisters’ Pegasus,
And rifle him; or pawn his petasus.

Nor all the ladies of the Thespian lake,
Though they were crushed into one form, could make
A beauty of that merit, that should take

My muse up by commission; no, I bring
My own true fire: now my thought takes wing,
And now an epode to deep ears I sing.

EPODE.

NOT to know vice at all, and keep true state,
Is virtue and not fate:
Next to that virtue, is to know vice well,
And her black spite expel.
Which to effect (since no breast is so sure,
Or safe, but she’ll procure
Some way of entrance) we must plant a guard
Of thoughts to watch and ward
At th’ eye and ear, the ports unto the mind,
That no strange, or unkind
Object arrive there, but the heart, our spy,
Give knowledge instantly
To wakeful reason, our affections’ king:
Who, in th’ examining,
Will quickly taste the treason, and commit
Close, the close cause of it.
’Tis the securest policy we have,
To make our sense our slave.
But this true course is not embraced by many:
By many! scarce by any.
For either our affections do rebel,
Or else the sentinel,
That should ring ’larum to the heart, doth sleep:
Or some great thought doth keep
Back the intelligence, and falsely swears
They’re base and idle fears
Whereof the loyal conscience so complains.
Thus, by these subtle trains,
Do several passions invade the mind,
And strike our reason blind:
Of which usurping rank, some have thought love
The first: as prone to move
Most frequent tumults, horrors, and unrests,
In our inflamèd breasts:
But this doth from the cloud of error grow,
Which thus we over-blow.
The thing they here call love is blind desire,
Armed with bow, shafts, and fire;
Inconstant, like the sea, of whence ’tis born,
Rough, swelling, like a storm;
With whom who sails, rides on the surge of fear,
And boils as if he were
In a continual tempest. Now, true love
No such effects doth prove;
That is an essence far more gentle, fine,
Pure, perfect, nay, divine;
It is a golden chain let down from heaven,
Whose links are bright and even;
That falls like sleep on lovers, and combines
The soft and sweetest minds
In equal knots: this bears no brands, nor darts,
To murder different hearts,
But, in a calm and god-like unity,
Preserves community.
O, who is he that, in this peace, enjoys
Th’ elixir of all joys?
A form more fresh than are the Eden bowers,
And lasting as her flowers;
Richer than Time and, as Times’s virtue, rare;
Sober as saddest care;
A fixèd thought, an eye untaught to glance;
Who, blest with such high chance,
Would, at suggestion of a steep desire,
Cast himself from the spire
Of all his happiness? But soft: I hear
Some vicious fool draw near,
That cries, we dream, and swears there’s no such thing,
As this chaste love we sing.
Peace, Luxury! thou art like one of those
Who, being at sea, suppose,
Because they move, the continent doth so:
No, Vice, we let thee know
Though thy wild thoughts with sparrows’ wings do fly,
Turtles can chastely die;
And yet (in this t’ express ourselves more clear)
We do not number here
Such spirits as are only continent,
Because lust’s means are spent;
Or those who doubt the common mouth of fame,
And for their place and name,
Cannot so safely sin: their chastity
Is mere necessity;
Nor mean we those whom vows and conscience
Have filled with abstinence:
Though we acknowledge who can so abstain,
Makes a most blessèd gain;
He that for love of goodness hateth ill,
Is more crown-worthy still
Than he, which for sin’s penalty forbears:
His heart sins, though he fears.
But we propose a person like our Dove,
Graced with a Phœnix’ love;
A beauty of that clear and sparkling light,
Would make a day of night,
And turn the blackest sorrows to bright joys:
Whose odorous breath destroys
All taste of bitterness, and makes the air
As sweet as she is fair.
A body so harmoniously composed,
As if natùre disclosed
All her best symmetry in that one feature!
O, so divine a creature
Who could be false to? chiefly, when he knows
How only she bestows
The wealthy treasure of her love on him;
Making his fortunes swim
In the full flood of her admired perfection?
What savage, brute affection,
Would not be fearful to offend a dame
Of this excelling frame?
Much more a noble, and right generous mind,
To virtuous moods inclined,
That knows the weight of guilt: he will refrain
From thoughts of such a strain,
And to his sense object this sentence ever,
“Man may securely sin, but safely never.”

AN ELEGY.

THOUGH beauty be the mark of praise,
And yours, of whom I sing, be such
As not the world can praise too much,
Yet is ’t your virtue now I raise.

A virtue, like allay, so gone
Throughout your form, as though that move,
And draw, and conquer all men’s love,
This subjects you to love of one,

Wherein you triumph yet: because
’Tis of yourself, and that you use
The noblest freedom, not to choose
Against or faith, or honour’s laws.

But who could less expect from you,
In whom alone Love lives again?
By whom he is restored to men;
And kept, and bred, and brought up true?

His falling temples you have reared,
The withered garlands ta’en away;
His altars kept from the decay
That envy wished, and nature feared;

And on them burns so chaste a flame,
With so much loyalty’s expense,
As Love, t’ acquit such excellence,
Is gone himself into your name.

And you are he: the deity
To whom all lovers are designed,
That would their better objects find;
Among which faithful troop am I;

Who, as an offering at your shrine,
Have sung this hymn, and here entreat
One spark of your diviner heat
To light upon a love of mine;

Which, if it kindle not, but scant
Appear, and that to shortest view,
Yet give me leave t’ adore in you
What I, in her, am grieved to want.

FOOTNOTES

{11} “So live with yourself that you do not know how ill yow mind is furnished.”

{12} Αυτοδίδακτος

{14} “A Puritan is a Heretical Hypocrite, in whom the conceit of his own perspicacity, by which he seems to himself to have observed certain errors in a few Church dogmas, has disturbed the balance of his mind, so that, excited vehemently by a sacred fury, he fights frenzied against civil authority, in the belief that he so pays obedience to God.”

{17a} Night gives counsel.

{17b} Plutarch in Life of Alexander. “Let it not be, O King, that you know these things better than I.”

{19a} “They were not our lords, but our leaders.”

{19b} “Much of it is left also for those who shall be hereafter.”

{19c} “No art is discovered at once and absolutely.”

{22} With a great belly. Comes de Schortenhien.

{23} “In all things I have a better wit and courage than good fortune.”

{24a} “The rich soil exhausts; but labour itself is an aid.”

{24b} “And the gesticulation is vile.”

{25a} “An end is to be looked for in every man, an animal most prompt to change.”

{25b} Arts are not shared among heirs.

{31a} “More loquacious than eloquent; words enough, but little wisdom.”—_Sallust_.

{31b} Repeated in the following Latin. “The best treasure is in that man’s tongue, and he has mighty thanks, who metes out each thing in a few words.”—_Hesiod_.

{31c} _Vid._ Zeuxidis pict. Serm. ad Megabizum.—_Plutarch_.

{32a} “While the unlearned is silent he may be accounted wise, for he has covered by his silence the diseases of his mind.”

{32b} Taciturnity.

{33a} “Hold your tongue above all things, after the example of the gods.”—_See_ Apuleius.

{33b} “Press down the lip with the finger.”—Juvenal.

{33c} Plautus.

{33d} Trinummus, Act 2, Scen. 4.

{34a} “It was the lodging of calamity.”—Mart. lib. 1, ep. 85.

{41} [“Ficta omnia celeriter tanquam flosculi decidunt, nec simulatum potest quidquam esse diuturnum.”—Cicero.]

{44a} Let a Punic sponge go with the book.—Mart. 1. iv. epig. 10.

{47a} He had to be repressed.

{49a} A wit-stand.

{49b} Martial. lib. xi. epig. 91. That fall over the rough ways and high rocks.

{59a} Sir Thomas More. Sir Thomas Wiat. Henry Earl of Surrey. Sir Thomas Chaloner. Sir Thomas Smith. Sir Thomas Eliot. Bishop Gardiner. Sir Nicolas Bacon, L.K. Sir Philip Sidney. Master Richard Hooker. Robert Earl of Essex. Sir Walter Raleigh. Sir Henry Savile. Sir Edwin Sandys. Sir Thomas Egerton, L.C. Sir Francis Bacon, L.C.

{62a} “Which will secure a long age for the known writer.”—Horat. _de Art. Poetica_.

{66a} They have poison for their food, even for their dainty.

{74a} Haud infima ars in principe, ubi lenitas, ubi severitas—plus polleat in commune bonum callere.

{74b} _i.e._, Machiavell.

{81a} “Censure pardons the crows and vexes the doves.”—Juvenal.

{81b} “Does not spread his net for the hawk or the kite.”—Plautus.

{93} Parrhasius. Eupompus. Socrates. Parrhasius. Clito. Polygnotus. Aglaophon. Zeuxis. Parrhasius. Raphael de Urbino. Mich. Angelo Buonarotti. Titian. Antony de Correg. Sebast. de Venet. Julio Romano. Andrea Sartorio.

{94} Plin. lib. 35. c. 2, 5, 6, and 7. Vitruv. lib. 8 and 7.

{95} Horat. in “Arte Poet.”

{106a} Livy, Sallust, Sidney, Donne, Gower, Chaucer, Spenser, Virgil, Ennius, Homer, Quintilian, Plautus, Terence.

{110a} The interpreter of gods and men.

{111a} Julius Cæsar. Of words, _see_ Hor. “De Art. Poet.;” Quintil. 1. 8, “Ludov. Vives,” pp. 6 and 7.

{111b} A prudent man conveys nothing rashly.

{114a} That jolt as they fall over the rough places and the rocks.

{116a} Directness enlightens, obliquity and circumlocution darken.

{117a} Ocean trembles as if indignant that you quit the land.

{117b} You might believe that the uprooted Cyclades were floating in.

{118a} Those armies of the people of Rome that might break through the heavens.—Cæsar. Comment. circa fin.

{124a} No one can speak rightly unless he apprehends wisely.

{133a} “Where the discussion of faults is general, no one is injured.”

{133b} “Gnaw tender little ears with biting truth.”—_Per Sat._ 1.

{133c} “The wish for remedy is always truer than the hope.”—_Livius_.

{136a} “Æneas dedicates these arms concerning the conquering Greeks.”—_Virg. Æn._ lib. 3.

{136b} “You buy everything, Castor; the time will come when you will sell everything.”—_Martial_, lib. 8, epig. 19.

{136c} “Cinna wishes to seem poor, and is poor.”

{136d} “Which is evident in every first song.”

{139a} “There is a god within us, and when he is stirred we grow warm; that spirit comes from heavenly realms.”

{146a} “If it were allowable for immortals to weep for mortals, the Muses would weep for the poet Nævius; since he is handed to the chamber of Orcus, they have forgotten how to speak Latin at Rome.”

{148a} “No one has judged poets less happily than he who wrote about them.”—_Senec. de Brev. Vit_, cap. 13, et epist. 88.

{149a} Heins, de Sat. 265.

{149b} Pag. 267.

{149c} Pag. 270. 271.

{149d} Pag. 273, _et seq._

{149e} Pag. in comm. 153, _et seq._

{160a} “And which jolt as they fall over the rough uneven road and high rocks.”—_Martial_, lib. xi. epig. 91.