If of himself his thoughts are not employ'd Nor in himself they are by him enjoy'd. And since not in himself, his mind hath act, The mind's act chiefly being of thought Who works not in himself, himself not is; His being consorting, no true lover's mind, And he that lives not, dead is, Truth then That whosoever is in love is dead." A second life up, in the loved maid: Since death is conquer'd in each living Then came the Monster on, who being shown His charmed shield, his half he turn'd to stone, And through the other with his sword made way; Till like a ruin'd city, dead he lay Who would have set his hand to his design But in his scorn? Scorn censures things divine : True worth, like truth, sits in a groundless And none but true eyes see the depth of it. He for itself, with his own end went on, Dissolved her chains, and took her from Now wooing for his life that fled to her 44 me, In you I find myself; thought on by thee, Twixt two true lovers is this interchange; Before his love. The Nereids with a One only death and two revivals move; shriek, And Sirens (fearful to sustain the like), Before his hour, ran roaring terrified With constant magnanimity, like froth No wonder lasts but virtue: which no less Or flourish on it, fits the vulgar eye shine : If Perseus for such warrant had contain'd His high exploit, what honour had he gain'd? For he that loves, when he himself neglects Embraceth him, as he did her desire; Which two lives follow! O commerce Where, who himself doth for another Nor hath himself, nor ceaseth still to have: In mutual love the wreak most just is found, But churlish Homicides must death sustain, For who beloved, not yielding love again, And so the life doth from his love divide Denies himself to be a Homicide? For he no less a Homicide is held, PARCARUM EPITHALAMION. O YOU, this kingdom's glory that shall be That man to be born lets, than he that Accept of their lives' threads which Fate kill'd A man that is born. He is bolder far That present life reaves, but he crueller That to the to-be born, envies the light And puts their eyes out ere they have their sight; All good things ever we desire to have, We daily new beget. That things innate Her life alone, he her in marriage craved; Her royal father brought him to his court Th'admired nuptials: which great Heaven so prized That jove again stoop'd in a golden shower T'enrich the nuptial, as the natal hour Of happy Perseus; white-arm'd Juno too Deposed her greatness, and what she could do To grace the bride and bridegroom was vouchsafed. All subject-deities stoop'd too, and the shaft Golden and mutual, with which love compress'd Both th' envied lovers, offer'd to, and kiss'd. All answerable feasted to their states; In all the stars' beams, stoop'd to reverend Fates; And the rare banquet that foreran the bed With his presage shut up and seconded; And said they sung verse, that posterity In no age should reprove for perfidy. shall spin, As in each body there is ebb and flood, Of blood in every vein, of spirits in blood; Of joys in spirits, of the soul in joys, And nature through your lives this change employs To make her constant, so each mind re tains Manners and customs where vicissitude reigns; Opinions, pleasures, which such change enchains, And in this interchange all man doth last. Haste then who guide the web, kaste, spindles, haste. Who body loves best, feeds on daintiest meats, Who fairest seed seeks, fairest woman gets; Who loves the mind with loveliest disciplines, Loves to inform her in which verity shines; Her beauty yet, we see not, since not her; But bodies, being her forms, who fair forms bears We view, and chiefly seek her beauties there; The fairest then, for fair birth, see embraced. Haste ye that guide the web, haste, spindles, haste. Stars ye are now and overshine the earth; Stars shall ye be hereafter, and your birth In bodies rule here, as yourselves in heaven. What here detraction steals, shall there be "given; Left Cepheus' court; both freed and honoured The loving Victor, and blest Bridegroom led Home to the Seriphins his rescued bride, Who, after issue highly magnified, Both rapt to heaven, did constellations reign, And to an asterism was turn'd the chain That only touch'd his grace of flesh and blood, In all which stands the Fates' kind Omen good. APODOSIS. THUS through the Fount of storms, the cruel seas, Her monsters and malignant deities, Great Perseus made high and triumphant way To his star-crown'd deed, and bright nuptial day. And thus do you that Perseus' place supply In our Jove's love, get Persean victory Of our land-whale, foul Barbarism, and all His brood of pride, and lives Atheistical: That more their palates and their purses prize Than propagating Persean victories: Take monsters' parts, not author manly parts; For monsters kill the man-informing Arts: And like a loathed prodigy despise The bond that here you freed shall triumph The rapture that the Arts doth naturalize. You then, that in love's strife have over come The greatest subject blood of Christendom, The greatest subject mind take, and in both Be absolute man: and give that end your oath. So shall my sad astonish'd Muse arrive He that in paper can register things That brass and marble shall deny even kings; Should not be trod on by each present flash; The monster slain them, with your clear seas, wash From spots of earth, Heaven's beauty in the mind, In which, through death, hath all true noblesse shined. VOL. II. A Justification of Perseus and Andromeda.* As Learning hath delighted from her cradle to hide herself from the base and profane vulgar, her ancient Enemy, under divers veils of Hieroglyphics, Fables, and the like, so hath she pleased herself with no disguise more than in mysteries and allegorical fictions of Poesy. These have in that kind been of special reputation, as taking place of the rest both for priority of time and precedence of use, being born in the old world long before Hieroglyphics or Fables were conceived; and delivered from the fathers to the sons of Art without any author but Antiquity; yet ever held in high reverence and authority as supposed to conceal within the utter bark, as their Eternities approve, some sap of hidden Truth: as either some dim and obscure prints of divinity, and the sacred history; or the grounds of natural, or rules of moral Philosophy, for the recommending of some virtue, or curing of some vice in general (for howsoever physicians allege that their medicines respect non Hominem sed Socratem, not every, but such a special body; yet poets profess the contrary, that their physic intends non Socratem sed Hominem, not the individual but the universal); or else recording some memorable examples for the use of policy and state; ever, I say, enclosing within the rind some fruit of knowledge, howsoever darkened; and, by reason of the obscurity, of ambiguous and different construction. EσTI TE VOEL TOιntikǹ ʼn Šúμwaσa aiviyμarwdns,† &c. Est enim ipsa Naturâ universa Poesis ænigmatum plena, nec quivis cam "A Free and offenceles Iustification of a Lately publisht and most maliciously misinter preted Poeme: entitled Andromeda liberata. Veritatem qui amat, emat. London, Printed for Lavrence L'isle and are to be sold at his shop in Pauls church-yard at the signe of the Tigershead. 1614." 1 Plato. in Alcibid., ii. [147 b]. dignoscit. This ambiguity in the sense hath given scope to the variety of expositions; while poets in all ages, challenging as their birthrights the use and application of these fictions, have ever been allowed to fashion both, pro & contra, to their own offenceless and judicious occasions. And borrowing so far the privileged licence of their professions, have enlarged or altered the Allegory with inventions and dispositions of their own, to extend it to their present doctrinal and illustrous purposes. By which authority, myself, resolving amongst others to offer up my poor mite to the honour of the late nuptials betwixt the two most noble personages whose honoured names renown the front of my poem, singled out, as in some parts harnilessly and gracefully applicable to the occasion, the nuptials of Perseus and Andromeda, an innocent and spotless virgin rescued from the polluted throat of a monster, which I in this place applied to the savage multitude; perverting her most lawfully-sought propagation, both of blood and blessing, to their own most lawless and lascivious intentions; from which in all right she was legally and formally delivered. Nor did I ever imagine till now so far-fetched a thought in malice (such was my simplicity) that the fiction being as ancient as the first world, was originally intended to the dishonour of any person now living; but presumed that the application being free, I might, pro meo jure, dispose it innocently to mine own object; if at least in mine own writing, I might be reasonably and conscionably master of mine own meaning. And to this sense I confined the Allegory throughout my poem; as every word thereof, concerning that point, doth clearly and necessarily demonvow to God, against any noble personage's strate; without the least intendment, I free state or honour. Nor make I any noble, whose mere shadows herein the |