Clio.
Up public joy, remember
This sixteenth of November,
Some brave uncommon way;
And though the parish steeple
Be silent, to the people
Ring thou it holiday.
2. Melpomene.
What though the thrifty Tower
And guns there spare to pour
Their noises forth in thunder;
As fearful to awake
This city, or to shake
Their guarded gates asunder?
3. Thalia.
Yet let our trumpets sound,
And cleave both air and ground
With beating of our drums;
Let every lyre be strung,
Harp, lute, theorbo sprung
With touch of dainty thumbs!
4. Euterpe.
That when the choir is full
The harmony may pull
The angels from their spheres;
And each intelligence
May wish itself a sense
Whilst it the ditty hears.
5. Terpsichore.
Behold the royal Mary,
The daughter of great Harry
And sister to just Louis,
Comes in the pomp and glory
Of all her brother's story
And of her father's prowess!
6. Erato.
She shows so far above
The feigned queen of love,
This sea-girt isle upon,
As here no Venus were;
But that she reigning here
Had got the ceston on!
7. Calliope.
See, see our active king
Hath taken twice the ring
Upon his pointed lance;
Whilst all the ravished rout
Do mingle in a shout,
Hey! for the flower of France!
8. Urania.
This day the court doth measure
Her joy in state and pleasure,
And with a reverend fear
The revels and the play
Sum up this crowned day,
Her two-and-twentieth year!
9. Polyhymnia.
Sweet, happy Mary! All
The people her do call.
And this the womb divine,
So fruitful and so fair,
Hath brought the land an heir,
And Charles a Caroline!
An Epigram to the Household, 1630
What can the cause be, when the king hath given
His poet sack, the household will not pay?
Are they so scanted in their store, or driven,
For want of knowing the poet, to say him nay?
Well, they should know him, would the king but grant
His poet leave to sing his household true;
He'd frame such ditties of their store and want
Would make the very Greencloth to look blue;
And rather wish, in their expense of sack,
So the allowance from the king to use,
As the old bard should no Canary lack.
'Twere better spare a butt than spill his muse.
For in the genius of a poet's verse
The king's fame lives. Go now, deny his tierce!
Epigram to a Friend, and Son
Son, and my friend, I had not called you so
To me, or been the same to you, if show,
Profit, or chance had made us; but I know
What by that name we each to other owe –
Freedom and truth, with love from those begot:
Wise crafts, on which the flatterer ventures not.
His is more safe commodity, or none;
Nor dares he come in the comparison.
But as the wretched painter, who so ill
Painted a dog that now his subtler skill
Was to have a boy stand with a club, and fright
All live dogs from the lane and his shop's sight,
Till he had sold his piece, drawn so unlike;
So doth the flatterer with fair cunning strike
At a friend's freedom, proves all circling means
To keep him off, and howsoe'er he gleans
Some of his forms, he lets him not come near
Where he would fix, for the distinction's fear;
For as at distance few have faculty
To judge, so all men coming near can spy.
Though now of flattery, as of picture, are
More subtle works and finer pieces far
Than knew the former ages: yet to life
All is but web and painting; be the strife
Never so great to get them; and the ends
Rather to boast rich hangings than rare friends.
To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of That Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison
The Turn
Brave infant of Saguntum, clear
Thy coming forth in that great year
When the prodigious Hannibal did crown
His rage with razing your immortal town.
Thou, looking then about,
Ere thou wert half got out,
Wise child, didst hastily return,
And mad'st thy mother's womb thine urn.
How summed a circle didst thou leave mankind
Of deepest lore, could we the centre find!
The Counter-Turn
Did wiser nature draw thee back
From out the horror of that sack?
Where shame, faith, honour, and regard of right
Lay trampled on; the deeds of death and night
Urged, hurried forth, and hurled
Upon the affrighted world:
Sword, fire, and famine with fell fury met,
And all on utmost ruin set;
As, could they but life's miseries foresee,
No doubt all infants would return like thee.
The Stand
For what is life, if measured by the space,
Not by the act?
Or masked man, if valued by his face
Above his fact?
Here's one outlived his peers
And told forth four-score years;
He vexed time, and busied the whole state;
Troubled both foes and friends,
But ever to no ends;
What did this stirrer, but die late?
How well at twenty had he fallen or stood!
For three of his four-score he did no good.
The Turn
He entered well by virtuous parts,
Got up and thrived with honest arts;
He purchased friends and fame and honours then,
And had his noble name advanced with men;
But weary of that flight,
He stooped in all men's sight
To sordid flatteries, acts of strife,
And sunk in that dead sea of life
So deep, as he did then death's waters sup,
But that the cork of title buoyed him up.
The Counter-Turn
Alas, but Morison fell young!
He never fell: thou fall'st, my tongue.
He stood, a soldier to the last right end,
A perfect patriot, and a noble friend;
But most, a virtuous son.
All offices were done
By him so ample, full, and round,
In weight, in measure, number, sound,
As, though his age imperfect might appear,
His life was of humanity the sphere.
The Stand
Go now, and tell out days summed up with fears;
And make them years;
Produce thy mass of miseries on the stage,
To swell thine age;
Repeat of things a throng,
To show thou hast been long,
Not lived; for life does her great actions spell
By what was done and wrought
In season, and so brought
To light: her measures are, how well
Each syllabe answered, and was formed, how fair;
These make the lines of life, and that's her air.
The Turn
It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far, in May,
Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauty see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.
The Counter-Turn
Call, noble Lucius, then for wine,
And let thy looks with gladness shine;
Accept this garland, plant it on thy head;
And think, nay know, thy Morison's not dead.
He leaped the present age,
Possessed with holy rage
To see that bright eternal day,
Of which we priests and poets say
Such truths as we expect for happy men;
And there he lives with memory, and Ben
The Stand
Jonson, who sung this of him, ere he went
Himself to rest,
Or taste a part of that full joy he meant
To have expressed
In this bright asterism;
Where it were friendship's schism
(Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry)
To separate these twi-
Lights, the Dioscuri;
And keep the one half from his Harry.
But fate doth so alternate the design,
Whilst that in heaven, this light on earth must shine.
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 indentured, or leased out to 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 tother,
Till either grew a portion of the other:
Each styled, by his end,
The copy of his friend.
You lived to be the great surnames
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 in deed 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 on the chin,
Had sowed these fruits, and got the harvest in.
To the Right Honourable, the Lord High Treasurer of England an Epistle Mendicant, 1631
My Lord,
Poor wretched states, pressed by extremities,
Are fain to seek for succours and supplies
Or princes' aids, or good men's charities.
Disease, the enemy, and his engineers,
Want, with the rest of his concealed compeers,
Have cast a trench about me, now, five years;
And made those strong approaches, by faussebraies,
Redoubts, half-moons, horn-works, and such close ways,
The muse not peeps out one of hundred days;
But lies blocked up and straitened, narrowed in,
Fixed to the bed and boards, unlike to win
Health, or scarce breath, as she had never been.
Unless some saving honour of the crown
Dare think it, to relieve, no less renown
A bed-rid wit than a besieged town.
To the King, on His Birthday 19 November 1632 an Epigram Anniversary
This is King Charles's day. Speak it, thou Tower,
Unto the ships, and they from tier to tier,
Discharge it 'bout the island in an hour,
As loud as thunder, and as swift as fire.
Let Ireland meet it out at sea, half-way,
Repeating all Great Britain's joy, and more,
Adding her own glad accents to this day,
Like echo playing from the other shore.
What drums or trumpets, or great ordnance can,
The poetry of steeples, with the bells,
Three kingdoms' mirth, in light and airy man,
Made lighter with the wind. All noises else,
At bonfires, rockets, fireworks, with the shouts
That cry that gladness, which their hearts would pray,
Had they but grace of thinking at these routs
On the often coming of this holiday:
And ever close the burden of the song,
Still to have such a Charles, but this Charles long.
The wish is great, but where the prince is such,
What prayers, people, can you think too much?
On the Right Honourable and Virtuous Lord Weston, Lord High Treasurer of England, upon the Day He Was Made Earl of Portland, 17 February 1632. To the Envious
Look up, thou seed of envy, and still bring
Thy faint and narrow eyes to read the king
In his great actions: view whom his large hand
Hath raised to be the port unto his land!
Weston! That waking man, that eye of state,
Who seldom sleeps, whom bad men only hate!
Why do I irritate or stir up thee,
Thou sluggish spawn, that canst, but wilt not, see?
Feed on thyself for spite, and show thy kind:
To virtue and true worth be ever blind.
Dream thou couldst hurt it; but before thou wake
To effect it, feel thou hast made thine own heart ache.
To the Right Honourable Jerome, Lord Weston an Ode Gratulatory, for His Return from His Embassy, 1632
Such pleasure as the teeming earth
Doth take in easy nature's birth,
When she puts forth the life of every thing,
And in a dew of sweetest rain
She lies delivered, without pain,
Of the prime beauty of the year, the spring;
The rivers in their shores do run,
The clouds rack clear before the sun,
The rudest winds obey the calmest air;
Rare plants from every bank do rise,
And every plant the sense surprise,
Because the order of the whole is fair!
The very verdure of her nest,
Wherein she sits so richly dressed,
As all the wealth of season there was spread,
Doth show the graces and the hours
Have multiplied their arts and powers
In making soft her aromatic bed.
Such joys, such sweets doth your return
Bring all your friends, fair lord, that burn
With love, to hear your modesty relate
The business of your blooming wit,
With all the fruit shall follow it,
Both to the honour of the king and state.
O how will then our court be pleased,
To see great Charles of travail eased,
When he beholds a graft of his own hand
Shoot up an olive fruitful, fair,
To be a shadow to his heir,
And both a strength and beauty to his land!
Epithalamion; or, a Song, Celebrating the Nuptials of that Noble Gentleman, Mr. Jerome Weston, Son and Heir of the Lord Weston, Lord High Treasurer of England, with the Lady Frances Stuart, Daughter of Esmé, Duke of Lennox, Deceased, and Sister of the Surviving Duke of the Same Name
Though thou hast passed thy summer standing, stay
Awhile with us, bright sun, and help our light;
Thou canst not meet more glory on the way
Between thy tropics, to arrest thy sight,
Than thou shalt see today:
We woo thee, stay
And see what can be seen,
The bounty of a king, and beauty of his queen!
See the procession! What a holy day
(Bearing the promise of some better fate)
Hath filled with caroches all the way
From Greenwich hither to Roehampton gate!
When looked the year, at best,
So like a feast?
Or were affairs in tune,
By all the spheres' consent, so in the heart of June?
What bevy of beauties, and bright youths at charge
Of summer's liveries and gladding green,
Do boast their loves and braveries so at large
As they came all to see, and to be seen!
When looked the earth so fine,
Or so did shine,
In all her bloom and flower
To welcome home a pair, and deck the nuptial bower?
It is the kindly season of the time,
The month of youth, which calls all creatures forth
To do their offices in nature's chime,
And celebrate (perfection at the worth)
Marriage, the end of life,
That holy strife,
And the allowed war:
Through which not only we, but all our species are.
Hark how the bells upon the waters play
Their sister-tunes from Thames's either side!
As they had learned new changes for the day,
And all did ring the approaches of the bride;
The Lady Frances, dressed
Above the rest
Of all the maidens fair,
In graceful ornament of garland, gems, and hair.
See how she paceth forth in virgin white,
Like what she is, the daughter of a duke,
And sister; darting forth a dazzling light
On all that come her simplesse to rebuke!
Her tresses trim her back,
As she did lack
Nought of a maiden queen,
With modesty so crowned, and adoration seen.
Stay, thou wilt see what rites the virgins do!
The choicest virgin-troop of all the land;
Porting the ensigns of united two,
Both crowns and kingdoms in their either hand;
Whose majesties appear,
To make more clear
This feast than can the day,
Although that thou, O sun, at our entreaty stay!
See, how with roses and with lilies shine
(Lilies and roses, flowers of either sex)
The bright bride's path, embellished more than thine
With light of love, this pair doth intertex!
Stay, see the virgins sow
Where she shall go
The emblems of their way:
Oh, now thou smil'st, fair sun, and shin'st, as thou wouldst stay!
With what full hands, and in how plenteous showers,
Have they bedewed the earth where she doth tread,
As if her airy steps did spring the flowers,
And all the ground were garden, where she led!
See, at another door,
On the same floor,
The bridegroom meets the bride
With all the pomp of youth, and all our court beside.
Our court, and all the grandees; now, sun, look,
And looking with thy best inquiry, tell,
In all the age of journals thou hast took
Saw'st thou that pair became these rites so well,
Save the preceding two?
Who, in all they do,
Search, sun, and thou wilt find,
They are the exampled pair, and mirror of their kind.
Force from the phoenix, then, no rarity
Of sex, to rob the creature; but from man,
The king of creatures, take his parity
With angels, muse, to speak these: nothing can
Illustrate these, but they
Themselves today,
Who the whole act express;
All else we see beside are shadows, and go less.
It is their grace and favour that makes seen
And wondered at the bounties of this day:
All is a story of the king and queen!
And what of dignity and honour may
Be duly done to those
Whom they have chose,
And set the mark upon
To give a greater name and title to: their own!
Weston, their treasure, as their treasurer,
That mine of wisdom and of counsels deep,
Great say-master of state, who cannot err,
But doth his carat and just standard keep
In all the proved assays,
And legal ways
Of trials, to work down
Men's love unto the laws, and laws to love the crown.
And this well moved the judgement of the king
To pay with honours to his noble son,
Today, the father's service, who could bring
Him up to do the same himself had done.
That far all-seeing eye
Could soon espy
What kind of waking man
He had so highly set, and in what Barbican.
Stand there; for when a noble nature's raised
It brings friends joy, foes grief, posterity fame;
In him the times, no less than prince, are praised,
And by his rise, in active men his name
Doth emulation stir;
To the dull, a spur
It is: to the envious meant
A mere upbraiding grief, and torturing punishment.
See, now the chapel opens, where the king
And bishop stay to consummate the rites:
The holy prelate prays, then takes the ring,
Asks first, Who gives her? (I, Charles): then he plights
One in the other's hand,
Whilst they both stand
Hearing their charge, and then
The solemn choir cries, Joy, and they return, Amen.
O happy bands! and thou more happy place,
Which to this use wert built and consecrate!
To have thy God to bless, thy king to grace,
And this their chosen bishop celebrate
And knit the nuptial knot,
Which time shall not,
Or cankered jealousy,
With all corroding arts, be able to untie!
The chapel empties, and thou mayst be gone
Now, sun, and post away the rest of day:
These two, now holy church hath made them one,
Do long to make themselves so, another way:
There is a feast behind
To them of kind,
Which their glad parents taught
One to the other, long ere these to light were brought.
Haste, haste, officious sun, and send them night
Some hours before it should, that these may know
All that their fathers and their mothers might
Of nuptial sweets, at such a season, owe,
To propagate their names,
And keep their fames
Alive, which else would die,
For fame keeps virtue up, and it posterity.
The ignoble never lived, they were awhile
Like swine, or other cattle here on earth:
Their names are not recorded on the file
Of life, that fall so; Christians know their birth
Alone, and such a race
We pray may grace
Your fruitful spreading vine,
But dare not ask our wish in language fescennine.
Yet, as we may, we will with chaste desires
(The holy perfumes of the marriage bed)
Be kept alive those sweet and sacred fires
Of love between you and your lovelihead:
That when you both are old,
You find no cold
There; but, renewed, say
(After the last child born), This is our wedding day.
Till you behold a race to fill your hall,
A Richard, and a Jerome, by their names
Upon a Thomas, or a Francis call;
A Kate, a Frank, to honour their granddames,
And 'tween their grandsires' thighs,
Like pretty spies,
Peep forth a gem; to see
How each one plays his part of the large pedigree.
And never may there want one of the stem
To be a watchful servant for this state;
But like an arm of eminence, 'mongst them
Extend a reaching virtue, early and late:
Whilst the main tree, still found
Upright and sound,
By this sun's noonstead's made
So great; his body now alone projects the shade.
They both are slipped to bed; shut fast the door,
And let him freely gather love's first fruits;
He's master of the office; yet no more
Exacts than she is pleased to pay: no suits,
Strifes, murmurs, or delay,
Will last till day;
Night and the sheets will show
The longing couple all that elder lovers know.
The Humble Petition of Poor Ben. To the Best of Monarchs, Masters, Men, King Charles
– Doth most humbly show it,
To your Majesty your poet:
That whereas your royal father,
James the blessed, pleased the rather,
Of his special grace to letters,
To make all the muses debtors
To his bounty; by extension
Of a free poetic pension,
A large hundred marks' annuity,
To be given me in gratuity
For done service, and to come:
And that this so accepted sum
Or dispensed in books, or bread,
(For with both the muse was fed)
Hath drawn on me from the times
All the envy of the rhymes
And the rattling pit-pat noise
Of the less poetic boys;
When their pot-guns aim to hit,
With their pellets of small wit,
Parts of me they judged decayed,
But we last out, still unlaid.
Please your majesty to make
Of your grace, for goodness' sake,
Those your father's marks, your pounds;
Let their spite, which now abounds,
Then go on and do its worst;
This would all their envy burst,
And so warm the poet's tongue
You'd read a snake in his next song.
To the Right Honourable, the Lord Treasurer of England an Epigram
If to my mind, great lord, I had a state,
I would present you now with curious plate
Of Nuremburg, or Turkey; hang your rooms
Not with the Arras, but the Persian looms.
I would, if price or prayer could them get,
Send in what or Romano, Tintoret,
Titian, or Raphael, Michelangelo,
Have left in fame to equal, or outgo
The old Greek hands in picture, or in stone.
This I would do, could I think Weston one
Catched with these arts, wherein the judge is wise
As far as sense, and only by the eyes.
But you I know, my lord, and know you can
Discern between a statue and a man,
Can do the things that statues do deserve,
And act the business which they paint, or carve.
What you have studied are the arts of life:
To compose men and manners, stint the strife
Of murmuring subjects, make the nations know
What worlds of blessings to good kings they owe,
And mightiest monarchs feel what large increase
Of sweets and safeties they possess by peace.
These I look up at with a reverent eye,
And strike religion in the standers-by;
Which, though I cannot as an architect
In glorious piles or pyramids erect
Unto your honour: I can tune in song
Aloud; and (haply) it may last as long.
An Epigram to My Muse, the Lady Digby on Her Husband, Sir Kenelm Digby
Though, happy muse, thou know my Digby well,
Yet read him in these lines: he doth excel
In honour, courtesy, and all the parts
Court can call hers, or man could call his arts.
He's prudent, valiant, just, and temperate;
In him all virtue is beheld in state:
And he is built like some imperial room
For that to dwell in, and be still at home.
His breast is a brave palace, a broad street,
Where all heroic ample thoughts do meet;
Where nature such a large survey hath ta'en,
As other souls, to his, dwell in a lane:
Witness his action done at Scanderoon,
Upon my birthday, the eleventh of June;
When the apostle Barnaby the bright
Unto our year doth give the longest light;
In sign the subject and the song will live,
Which I have vowed posterity to give.
Go, muse, in, and salute him. Say he be
Busy, or frown at first, when he sees thee
He will clear up his forehead, think thou bring'st
Good omen to him in the note thou sing'st,
For he doth love my verses, and will look
Upon them (next to Spenser's noble book)
And praise them too. Oh, what a fame 't will be!
What reputation to my lines and me,
When he shall read them at the Treasurer's board
(The knowing Weston) and that learned lord
Allows them! Then, what copies shall be had,
What transcripts begged; how cried up, and how glad
Wilt thou be, muse, when this shall them befall!
Being sent to one, they will be read of all.
A New Year's Gift
New Years expect new gifts: sister, your harp,
Lute, lyre, theorbo, all are called today;
Your change of notes, the flat, the mean, the sharp,
To show the rites and to usher forth the way
Of the New Year, in a new silken warp,
To fit the softness of our Year's-gift, when
We sing the best of monarchs, masters, men;
For, had we here said less, we had sung nothing then.
A New Year's Gift Sung to King Charles, 1635
Rector chori.
Today old Janus opens the New Year
And shuts the old. Haste, haste, all loyal swains,
That know the times and seasons when to appear,
And offer your just service on these plains;
Best kings expect first-fruits of your glad gains.
1. Pan is the great preserver of our bounds,
2. To him we owe all profits of our grounds:
3. Our milk, 4. Our fells, 5. Our fleeces, 6. And first lambs;
7. Our teeming ewes, 8. And lusty-mounting rams.
9. See where he walks, 10.
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