The Works of George Chapman ...

And now she wish'd this night were never done,

And sigh'd to think upon th' approaching

sun;

For much it grieved her that the bright day-light

Should know the pleasure of this blessed night,

And them, like Mars and Erycine, display Both in each other's arms chain'd as they lay.

Again, she knew not how to frame her
look,

Or speak to him, who in a moment took
That which so long, so charily she kept;
And fain by stealth away she would have
crept,

And to some corner secretly have gone,
Leaving Leander in the bed alone.
But as her naked feet were whipping out,
He on the sudden cling'd her so about,
That mermaid-like, unto the floor she slid;
One half appear'd, the other half was hid.
Thus near the bed she blushing stood up-
right,

And from her countenance behold ye
might

A kind of twilight break, which through the air,

As from an orient cloud, glimpsed here and there;

THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY.

TO MY

BEST ESTEEMED AND WORTHILY HONOURED LADY THE

LADY WALSINGHAM,

ONE OF THE Ladies of hER MAJESTY'S BED-CHAMBER.

I PRESENT your ladyship with the last affections of the first two Lovers that ever Muse shrined in the Temple of Memory; being drawn by strange instigation to employ some of my serious time in so trifling a subject, which yet made the first Author, divine Musæus, eternal. And were it not that we must subject our accounts of these common received conceits to servile custom, it goes much against my hand to sign that for a trifling subject, on which more worthiness of soul hath been shewed, and weight of divine wit, than can vouchsafe residence in the leaden gravity of any money-monger; in whose profession all serious subjects are concluded. But he that shuns trifles must shun the world; out of whose reverend heaps of substance and austerity, I can and will ere long, single or tumble out as brainless and passionate fooleries as ever panted

in the bosom of the most ridiculous lover. Accept it, therefore, good Madam, though as a trifle, yet as a serious argument of my affection: for to be thought thankful for all free and honourable favours, is a great sum of that riches my whole thrift intendeth.

Such uncourtly and silly dispositions as mine, whose contentment hath other objects than profit or glory, are as glad, simply for the naked merit of virtue, to bonour such as advance her, as others that are hired to commend with deepliest politique bounty.

It hath therefore adjoined much contentment to my desire of your true honour to hear men of desert in court, add to mine own knowledge of your noble disposition, how gladly you do your best to prefer their desires; and have as absolute respect to their mere good parts, as if they came perfumed and charmed with golden incitements. And this most sweet inclination, that flows from the truth and eternity of Nobles, assure your Ladyship doth more suit your other ornaments, and makes more to the advancement of your name and happiness of your proceedings, than if, like others, you displayed ensigns of state and sourness in your forehead, made smooth with nothing but sensuality and presents.

This poor Dedication (in figure of the other unity betwixt Sir Thomas and yourself) hath rejoined you with him, my honoured best friend; whose continuance of ancient kindness to my still-obscured estate, though it cannot increase my love to him, which hath ever been entirely circular; yet shall it encourage my deserts to their utmost requital, and make my hearty gratitude speak; to which the unhappiness of my life hath hitherto been uncomfortable and painful dumbness.

Without preserve of virtue, nothing lasts. What man is he, that with a wealthy eye Enjoys a beauty richer than the sky, Through whose white skin, softer than soundest sleep,

With damask eyes the ruby blood doth peep,

And runs in branches through her azure veins,

Whose mixture and first fire his love attains; Whose both hands limit both love's deities, And sweeten human thoughts like Paradise; Whose disposition silken is and kind, Directed with an earth-exempted mind ;Who thinks not heaven with such a love is given?

And who, like earth, would spend that dower of heaven,

With rank desire to joy it all at first? What simply kills our hunger, quencheth thirst,

Clothes but our nakedness, and makes us live,

Praise doth not any of her favours give:
But what doth plentifully minister
Beautious apparel and delicious cheer.
So ordered that still excites desire,
And still gives pleasure freeness to aspire,
The palm of Bounty ever moist preserving;
To Love's sweet life this is the courtly
carving.

Thus Time and all-states-ordering Ceremony Had banish'd all offence; Time's golden thigh

Upholds the flowery body of the earth
In sacred harmony, and every birth
Of men and actions makes legitimate;
Being used aright, the use of time is fate.
Yet did the gentle flood transfer once

This prize of love home to his father's shore;

Where he unlades himself of that false wealth

That makes few rich; treasures composed by stealth;

Love-blest Leander was with love so fill'd, That love to all that touch'd him he instill'd.

And as the colours of all things we see,
To our sights' powers communicated be,
So to all objects that in compass came
Of any sense he had, his senses' flame
Flow'd from his parts with force so virtual,
It fired with sense things mere insensual.

Now, with warm baths and odours
comforted,

When he lay down, he kindly kiss'd his bed,

As consecrating it to Hero's right,
And vow'd thereafter, that whatever sight
Put him in mind of Hero or her bliss,
Should be her altar to prefer a kiss.

Then laid he forth his late-enriched arms, In whose white circle Love writ all his charms,

And made his characters sweet Hero's limbs,

When on his breast's warm sea she sideling swims:

And as those arms, held up in circle, met, He said, "See, sister, Hero's carcanet! Which she had rather wear about her neck Than all the jewels that do Juno deck."

But, as he shook with passionate desire To put in flame his other secret fire, A music so divine did pierce his ear, As never yet his ravish'd sense did hear; When suddenly a light of twenty hues Brake through the roof, and, like the rainbow, views

Amazed Leander: in whose beams came down

The goddess Ceremony, with a crown

Of all the stars; and Heaven with her descended :

Her flaming hair to her bright feet extended,

By which hung all the bench of deities;
And in a chain, compact of ears and eyes,
She led Religion: all her body was
Clear and transparent as the purest glass,
For she was all presented to the sense :
Devotion, Order, State, and Reverence,
Her shadows were; Society, Memory;
All which her sight made live, her absence
die.

A rich disparent pentacle she wears,
Drawn full of circles and strange characters.
Her face was changeable to every eye;
One way look'd ill, another graciously;
Which while men view'd, they cheerful
were and holy,

But looking off, vicious and melancholy.
The snaky paths to each observed law
Did Policy in her broad bosom draw.
One hand a mathematic crystal sways,
Which, gathering in one line a thousand

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In which, with plain neglect of nuptial rites,

He close and flatly fell to his delights:
And instantly he vow'd to celebrate
All rights pertaining to his married state.
So up he gets, and to his father goes,
To whose glad ears he doth his vows dis-
close.

The nuptials are resolved with utmost power:

And he at night would swim to Hero's tower,

From whence he meant to Sestos' forked bay

To bring her covertly, where ships must stay,

Sent by his father, throughly rigg'd and mann'd,

To waft her safely to Abydos' strand. There leave we him; and with fresh wing

pursue

Astonish'd Hero, whose most wished view I thus long have forborne, because I left her

So out of countenance, and her spirits bereft her :

To look on one abash'd is impudence, When of slight faults he hath too deep a

sense.

Her blushing het her chamber: she look'd out,

And all the air she purpled round about;
And after it a foul black day befell,
Which ever since a red morn doth foretell,
And still renews our woes for Hero's
woe;

And foul it proved, because it figured so The next night's horror; which prepare to hear;

I fail, if it profane your daintiest ear.
Then ho, most strangely-intellectual

fire,

That, proper to my soul, hast power t'inspire

Her burning faculties, and with the wings
Of thy unsphered flame visit'st the springs
Of spirits immortal! Now (as swift as
Time

Doth follow Motion) find th' eternal clime
Of his free soul, whose living subject stood
Up to the chin in the Pierian flood,
And drunk to me half this Musæan story,
Inscribing it to deathless memory:
Confer with it, and make my pledge as
deep,

That neither's draught be consecrate to sleep;

Tell it how much his late desires I tender (If yet it know not), and to light surrender

My soul's dark offspring, willing it should die

To loves, to passions, and society.

Sweet Hero, left upon her bed alone, Her maidenhead, her vows, Leander gone, And nothing with her but a violent crew Of new-come thoughts, that yet she never knew,

Even to herself a stranger, was much like Th' Iberian city that war's hand did strike

By English force in princely Essex guide,

When peace assured her towers had fortified,

And golden-finger'd India had bestow'd
Such wealth on her, that strength and em-
pire flow'd

Into her turrets, and her virgin waist
The wealthy girdle of the sea embraced;
Till our Leander, that made Mars his
Cupid,

For soft love-suits, with iron thunders
chid;

Swum to her towers, dissolved her virgin

zone;

Led in his power, and made Confusion Run through her streets amazed, that she supposed

She had not been in her own walls en-
closed,

But rapt by wonder to some foreign state,
Seeing all her issue so disconsolate,
And all her peaceful mansions possess'd
With war's just spoil, and many a foreign
guest

From every corner driving an enjoyer,
Supplying it with power of a destroyer.
So fared fair Hero in th' expugned fort
Of her chaste bosom and of every sort
Strange thoughts possess'd her, ransacking
her breast

For that that was not there, her wonted

rest.

She was a mother straight, and bore with pain

Thoughts that spake straight, and wish'd their mother slain;

She hates their lives, and they their own and hers:

Such strife still grows where sin the race prefers.

For as a glass is an inanimate eye,
And outward forms embraceth inwardly,
So is the eye an animate glass, that
shows

In-forms without us; and as Phoebus
throws

His beams abroad, though he in clouds be
closed,

Still glancing by them till he find opposed
A loose and rorid vapour that is fit
T' event his searching beams, and useth it
To form a tender twenty-colour'd eye,
Cast in a circle round about the sky;
So when our fiery soul, our body's star
(That ever is in motion circular),
Conceives a form, in seeking to display it
Through all our cloudy parts, it doth con-
vey it

Forth at the eye, as the most pregnant
place,

And that reflects it round about the face.
And this event, uncourtly Hero thought,
Her inward guilt would in her looks have
wrought;

For yet the world's stale cunning she re-
sisted,

To bear foul thoughts, yet forge what looks
she listed,

And held it for a very silly sleight,
To make a perfect metal counterfeit,
Glad to disclaim herself, proud of an art
That makes the face a pander to the
heart.

Those be the painted moons, whose lights
profane

Beauty's true heaven, at full still in their

wane ;

Those be the lapwing faces that still cry,
"Here 'tis !" when that they vow is nothing
nigh:

Base fools! when ever moorish fowl can
teach

That which men think the height of human
reach.

But custom, that the apoplexy is
Of bed-rid nature and lives led amiss,
And takes away all feeling of offence,
Yet brazed not Hero's brow with impu-
dence;

And this she thought most hard to bring
to pass,

To seem in countenance other than she
was,

Love is a golden bubble, full of dreams,
That waking breaks, and fills us with ex-As if she had two souls, one for the face,

trem.es.

One for the heart, and that they shifted
place

As either list to utter or conceal
What they conceived, or as one soul did

deal

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