A DRAMATIC PASTORAL. AUTHOR UNKNOWN, 1655.
True Love irremoveable by Death.
SERPILLA. PHILLIS.
Ser. Thyrsis believes thee dead, and justly may
Within his youthful breast then entertain
New flames of love, and yet therein be free
From the least show of doing injury
To that rich beauty which he thinks extinct,
And happily hath mourn'd for long ago :
But when he shall perceive thee here alive,
His old lost love will then with thee revive.
Phil. That love, Serpilla, which can be removed
With the light breath of an imagined death,
Is but a faint weak love; nor care I much
Whether it live within, or still lie dead.
Ev'n I myself believ'd him long ago
Dead, and enclosed within an earthen urn;
And yet, abhorring any other love,
I only loved that pale-faced beauty still;
And those dry bones, dissolved into dust:
And underneath their ashes kept alive
The lively flames of my still-burning fire.
CELIA, being put to sleep by an ineffectual poison, waking believes herself to be among the dead. The old Shepherd NARETE finds her, and re-assures her of her still being alive.
Shep. Celia, thou talkest idly; call again
Thy wandering senses; thou art yet alive.
And, if thou wilt not credit what I say,
Look up, and see the heavens turning round;
The sun descending down into the west,
Which not long since thou saw'st rise in the east ;
Observe, that with the motion of the air
These fading leaves do fall :
In the infernal region of the deep
The sun doth never rise, nor ever set;
Nor doth a falling leaf there e'er adorn
Those black eternal plants.
Thou still art on the earth 'mongst mortal men,
And still thou livest. I am Narete. These
Are the sweet fields of Scyros.
The meadow where the fountain springs? this wood? Euro's great mountain, and Ormino's hill;
The hill where thou wert born?
THYRSIS, upbraided by PHILLIS, for loving another, while he supposed her dead, replies
Thyrsis. O do not turn thy face another way.
Perhaps thou thinkest, by denying thus
That lovely visage to these eyes of mine,
To punish my misdeeds: but think not so.
Look on me still, and mark me what I say,
(For, if thou know'st it not, I'll tell thee then,)
A more severe revenger of thy wrongs
Thou canst not have than those fair eyes of thine,
Which by those shining beams that wound my heart
Punish me more than all the world can do.
What greater pain canst thou inflict on me,
Than still to keep as fire before my face
That lovely beauty, which I have betray'd;
That beauty, I have lost?
NIGHT breaks off her speech*.
Night. But stay! for there methinks I see the Sun, Eternal Painter, now begin to rise,
And limn the heavens in vermilion dye;
And having dipt his pencil, aptly framed,
Already in the colour of the morn,
With various temper he doth mix in one
Darkness and Light and drawing curiously
Strait golden lines quite thro' the dusky sky,
A rough draught of the day he seems to yield,
With red and tawny in an azure field.—
Already, by the clattering of their bits,
Their gingling harness, and their neighing sounds,
I hear Eous and fierce Pirous
Come panting on my back; and therefore I
Must fly away. And yet I do not fly,
But follow on my regulated course,
And these eternal Orders I received
From the First Mover of the Universe.
A TRAGEDY. BY G. CHAPMAN, 1631.
CATO's Speech at Utica to a Senator, who had exprest fears on his account.
Away, Statilius; how long shall thy love
Exceed thy knowledge of me, and the Gods,
Whose rights thou wrong'st for my right? have ot I Their powers to guard me in a cause of theirs,
Their justice and integrity to guard me
In what I stand for? he that fears the Gods,
For guard of any goodness, all things fears;
Earth, seas, and air; heav'n; darkness; broad day-
Rumour, and silence, and his very shade :
And what an aspen soul has such a creature!
How dangerous to his soul is such a fear!
In whose cold fits, is all Heav'n's justice shaken
To his faint thoughts; and all the goodness there,
Due to all good men by the Gods' own vows;
Nay, by the firmness of their endless being;
All which shall fail as soon as any one
Good to a good man in them: for his goodness
Proceeds from them, and is a beam of theirs.
O never more, Statilius, may this fear
Faint thy bold bosom, for thyself or friend,
More than the Gods are fearful to defend.
Poor Slaves, how terrible this Death is to them!-
If men would sleep, they would be wrath with all
That interrupt them; physic take, to take
The golden rest it brings; both pay and pray
For good and soundest naps: all friends consenting
In those invocations; praying all
[Death,
"Good rest the Gods vouchsafe you." But when
Sleep's natural brother, comes; that's nothing worse,
But better (being more rich-and keeps the store-
Sleep ever fickle, wayward still, and poor);
O how men grudge, and shake, and fear, and fly
His stern approaches! all their comforts, taken
In faith, and knowledge of the bliss and beauties
That watch their wakings in an endless life,
Drown'd in the pains and horrors of their sense
Sustain'd but for an hour.
His Discourse with ATHENODORUS on an After Life.
Cato. As Nature works in all things to an end,
So, in the appropriate honour of that end,
All things precedent have their natural frame;
And therefore is there a proportion
Betwixt the ends of those things and their primes:
For else there could not be in their creation
Always, or for the most part, that firm form
In their still like existence, that we see
In each full creature. What proportion then
Hath an immortal with a mortal substance?
And therefore the mortality, to which
A man is subject, rather is a sleep
Than bestial death; since sleep and death are called
The twins of nature. For, if absolute death,
And bestial, seize the body of a man,
Then there is no proportion in his parts,
(His soul being free from death) which otherwise
Retain divine proportion. For, as sleep
No disproportion holds with human souls,
But aptly quickens the proportion
"Twixt them and bodies, making bodies fitter
To give up forms to souls, which is their end:
So death, twin-born of sleep, resolving all
Man's body's heavy parts, in lighter nature
Makes a re-union with the sprightly soul;
When in a second life their Beings given
Hold their proportions firm in highest heaven.
Athenodorus. Hold you, our bodies shall revive;
Our souls again to heaven?
[resuming
Cato. Past doubt; though others
Think heav'n a world too high for our low reaches,
Not knowing the sacred sense of Him that sings,
"Jove can let down a golden chain from heaven,
Which, tied to earth, shall fetch up earth and seas".
And what's that golden chain but our pure souls
That, govern'd with his grace and drawn by him,
Can hoist the earthy body up to him?—
The sea, the air, and all the elements,
Comprest in it; not while 'tis thus concrete,
But 'fined by death, and then giv'n heav'nly heat.-
We shall, past death,
Retain those forms of knowledge, learn'd in life :
Since if what here we learn we there shall lose,
Our immortality were not life, but time:
And that our souls in reason are immortal,
Their natural and proper objects prove;
Which Immortality and Knowledge are:
For to that object ever is referr'd
The nature of the soul, in which the acts
Of her high faculties are still employ'd;
And that true object must her powers obtain,
To which they are in nature's aim directed;
Since 'twere absurd to have her set an object
Which possibly she never can aspire.
Come, Cæsar, quickly now, or lose your vassal.
Now wing thee, dear Soul, and receive her heaven.
The earth, the air, and seas I know, and all
The joys and horrors of their peace and wars;
And now will see the Gods' state and the stars.
Vulcan from heav'n fell, yet on 's feet did light,
And stood no less a God than at his height.
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