NATURE'S bright eyesight, and the

Night's fair soul,2

3That with thy triple forehead dost control Earth, seas, and hell; and art in dignity The greatest and swiftest planet in the sky.

fate,

In perfect circle of whose sacred state
The circles of our hopes are compassed:
All wisdom, beauty, majesty, and dread,
Wrought in the speaking portrait of thy
face.

Great Cynthia, rise out of thy "Latmian palace,

"Wash thy bright body in th' Atlantic

streams,

Put on those robes that are most rich in beams;

And in thy all-ill-purging purity (As if the shady7 Cytheron did fry In sightful fury of a solemn fire), Ascend thy chariot, and make earth admire

Thy old swift changes, made a young fix'd prime,

O let thy beauty scorch the wings of time, That fluttering he may fall before thine eyes,

And beat himself to death before he rise : And as heaven's genial parts were cut away

By Saturn's hands, with

adamantine9

harpey, Only to show that since it was composed Of universal matter, it enclosed No power to procreate another heaven, So since that adamantine power is given To thy chaste hands, to cut off all desire Of fleshly sports, and quench to Cupid's fire:

Let it approve: no change shall take thee hence,

Nor thy throne bear another inference; For if the envious forehead of the earth Lour on thy age, and claim thee as her birth,

Tapers nor torches, nor the forests burning,

Soul-winging music, nor tear-stilling mourning

(Used of old Romans and rude Macedons In thy most sad and black discessions),

love:

When men as many as the lamps above, Arm'd Earth in steel, and made her like the skies,

That two Auroras did in one day rise. Thus with the terror of the trumpets' call, The battles join'd as if the world did fall : Continued long in life-disdaining fight, Jove's thundering eagles feather'd like the night,

Hovering above them with indifferent wings,

Till Blood's stern daughter, cruel10 Tyche, flings

The chief of one side, to the blushing ground,

And then his men (whom griefs and fears confound)

Turn'd all their cheerful hopes to grim despair,

Some casting off their souls into the air, Some taken prisoners, some extremely maim'd,

And all (as men accursed) on fate exclaim'd. So, gracious Cynthia, in that sable day, When interposed earth takes thee away (Our sacred chief and sovereign general), As crimson a retreat, and steep a fall, We fear to suffer from this peace and height,

Whose thankless sweet now cloys us with receipt.

"The Romans set sweet music to her

charms,

To raise thy stoopings, with her airy arms: Used loud resoundings with auspicious brass:

Held torches up to heaven, and flaming glass,

Made a whole forest but a burning eye, T'admire thy mournful partings with the sky.

The Macedonians were so stricken dead, With skill-less horror of thy changes dread;

Persuade our sorrows to a vain applause.

Time's motion, being like the reeling sun's,

Or as the sea reciprocally runs,
Hath brought us now to their opinions;
As in our garments, ancient fashions
Are newly worn; and as sweet poesy
Will not be clad in her supremacy
With those strange garments (Rome's
hexameters),

As she is English; but in right prefers
Our native robes (put on with skilful hands
English heroics) to those antic garlands,
Accounting it no meed, but mockery,
When her steep brows already prop the sky,
To put on start-ups, and yet let it fall.
No otherwise (O queen celestial)
Can we believe Ephesia's state will be
But spoil with foreign grace, and change
with thee

The pureness of thy never-tainted life,
Scorning the subject title of a wife,
Thy body not composed in thy birth,
Of such condensed matter as the earth.
Thy shunning faithless men's society,
Betaking thee to hounds, and archery
To deserts, and inaccessible hills,
Abhorring pleasure in Earth's common ills,
Commit most willing rapes on all our

hearts:

Old men are blind of issue, and young wives

Bring forth abortive fruit, that never thrives.

But then how bless'd are they thy favour graces,

Peace in their hearts, and youth reigns in their faces:

Health strengths their bodies, to subdue the seas,

And dare the Sun, like Theban Hercules, To calm the furies, and to quench the fire:

As at thy altars, in thy Persic empire, 15Thy holy women walk'd with naked soles

Harmless, and confident, on burning coals:
The virtue-temper'd mind, ever preserves,
Oils, and expulsatory balm that serves
To quench lust's fire in all things it
anoints,

And steels our feet to march on needles' points:

And 'mongst her arms hath armour to repel

The cannon and the fiery darts of hell :
She is the great enchantress that com-

mands

Spirits of every region, seas, and lands, Round heaven itself, and all his sevenfold heights,

Are bound to serve the strength of her conceits.

A perfect type of thy Almighty state, That hold'st the thread, and rulest the sword of fate.

Then you that exercise the virgin court Of peaceful Thespia, my muse consort, Making her drunken with 16Gorgonean dews,

And therewith all your ecstasies infuse,

That she may reach the topless starry brows Of steep Olympus, crown'd with freshest boughs

Of Daphnean laurel, and the praises sing
Of mighty Cynthia: truly figuring
(As she is Hecate) her sovereign kind,
And in her force, the forces of the mind:
An argument to ravish and refine

An earthly soul, and make it mere divine. Sing then withal, her palace brightness bright,

The dazzle-sun perfections of her light; Circling her face with glories, sing the walks,

Where in her heavenly magic mood she stalks.

Her arbours, thickets, and her wondrous game,

(A huntress, being never match'd in fame), Presume not then ye flesh-confounded souls,

That cannot bear the full Castalian bowls, Which sever mounting spirits from the

senses,

To look in this deep fount for thy pre

tences:

The juice more clear than day, yet shadows night,

Where humour challengeth no drop of right:

But judgment shall display, to purest eyes With ease, the bowels of these mysteries.

See then this planet of our lives descended

To rich Ortygia, gloriously attended,
Not with her fifty ocean nymphs; nor yet
Her twenty foresters: but doth beget
By powerful charms, delightsome servitors
Of flowers and shadows, mists and me-

teors :

Her rare Elysian palace she did build With studied wishes, which sweet hope did gild

With sunny foil, that lasted but a day : For night must needs importune her away. The shapes of every wholesome flower and

tree

She gave those types of her felicity.

And Form herself she mightily conjured Their priceless values might not be obscured,

With disposition baser than divine,
But make that blissful court others to shine
With all accomplishment of architect,
That not the eye of Phoebus could detect.
Form then, 'twixt two superior pillars
framed

This tender building, Pax Imperii named,

Which cast a shadow like a Pyramis,
Whose basis in the plain or back part is
Of that quaint work: the top so high ex-
tended,

That it the region of the moon transcended:
Without, within it, every corner fill'd
By beauteous form, as her great mistress
will'd.

IsHere as she sits, the thunder-loving Jove
In honours past all others shows his love,
Proclaiming her in complete Empery,
Of whatsoever the Olympic sky

With tender circumvecture doth embrace, The chiefest planet that doth heaven enchase.

Dear goddess, prompt, benign, and boun

teous,

That hears all prayers, from the least of us Large riches gives, since she is largely given,

And all that spring from seed of earth and heaven

She doth command: and rules the fates of all,

Old Hesiod sings her thus celestial. And now to take the pleasures of the day, Because her night-star soon will call away, She frames of matter intimate before (To wit, a white and dazzling meteor), A goodly nymph, whose beauty, beauty stains

Heavens with her jewels; gives all the

reins

Of wished pleasance; frames her golden wings,

But them she binds up close with purple strings,

Because she now will have her run alone,
And bid the base to all affection.
And Euthimya is her sacred name,
Since she the cares and toils of earth must
tame :

Then straight the flowers, the shadows and the mists

(Fit matter for most pliant humourists), She hunters makes: and of that substance hounds

Whose mouths deaf heaven, and furrow earth with wounds,

And marvel not a nymph so rich in grace To hounds' rude pursuits should be given in chase.

For she could turn herself to every shape Of swiftest beasts, and at her pleasure 'scape;

Wealth fawns on fools; virtues are meat for vices,

Wisdom conforms herself to all Earth's guises,

Good gifts are often given to men past good,

And Noblesse stoops sometimes beneath his blood.

The hounds that she created, vast, and fleet

Were grim Melampus, with th' Ethiop's feet,

White Leucon; all-eating Pamphagus, Sharp-sighted Dorceus, wild Oribasus, Storm-breathing Lelaps, and the savage Theron,

Wing'd-footed Pterelas, and hind-like Ladon,

Greedy Harpyia, and the painted Stycté, Fierce Trigis, and the thicket-searcher Agre,

The black Melaneus, and the bristled Lachne,

Lean-lustful Cyprius, and big-chested Aloe.

These and such other now the forest ranged,

And Euthimya to a panther changed, Holds them sweet chase; their mouths they freely spend,

As if the earth in sunder they would rend. Which change of music liked the goddess

When straight, within the woods some wolf or bear,

The heedless limbs of one doth piecemeal tear,

Affrighteth other, sends some bleeding back,

And some in greedy whirl-pits suffer wrack.

So did the bristled covert check with wounds

The licorous haste of these game-greedy hounds.

In this vast thicket (whose description's task

The pens of furies, and of fiends would ask:

So more than human-thoughted horrible)
The souls of such as lived implausible,
In happy empire of this goddess' glories,
And scorn'd to crown her fanes with sacri-
fice,

Did ceaseless walk; exspiring fearful groans,

Curses and threats for their confusions. Her darts, and arrows, some of them had slain,

Others her dogs eat, painting her disdain, After she had transform'd them into beasts:

Others her monsters carried to their nests, Rent them in pieces, and their spirits sent To this blind shade, to wail their banish

And all their riders furious of their sport, A fresh assault they gave, in desperate sort:

And with their falchions made their ways in wounds,

The thicket open'd, and let in the hounds. But from her bosom cast prodigious cries, Wrapt in her Stygian fumes of miseries: Which yet the breaths of these courageous steeds

Did still drink up, and clear'd their venturous heads :

As when the fiery coursers of the sun,
Up to the palace of the morning run,
And from their nostrils blow the spiteful
day:

So yet those foggy vapours made them way.

But pressing further, saw such cursed sights,

Such tnas fill'd with strange tormented sprites,

That now the vaporous object of the eye
Out-pierced the intellect in faculty.
Baseness was nobler than Nobility:
For ruth (first shaken from the brain of
Love,

And love the soul of virtue) now did

Stretcheth her silver limbs loaded with wealth,

Hearing our horse were marching down by stealth.

(Who looking for them) war's quick artisan Fame-thriving Vere, that in those countries

wan

More fame than guerdon; ambuscadoes laid

Of certain foot, and made full well appaid The hopeful enemy, in sending those The long-expected subjects of their blows To move their charge; which straight they give amain,

When we retiring to our strength again, The foe pursues, assured of our lives, And us within our ambuscado drives; Who straight with thunder of the drums and shot,

Tempest their wraths on them that wist t

not.

Then (turning headlong) some escaped us

So,

Some left to ransom, so to overthrow,
In such confusion did this troop retire,
And thought them cursed in that game's
desire:

Out flew the hounds, that there could nothing find,

Of the sly panther, that did beard the wind,
Running into it full, to clog the chase,
And tire her followers with too much solace.
And but the superficies of the shade,
Did only sprinkle with the scent she made,
As when the sunbeams on high billows fall,
And make their shadows dance upon a wall,
That is the subject of his fair reflectings.
Or else; as when a man in summer evenings,
Something before sunset, when shadows be
Rack'd with his stooping, to the highest
degree,

His shadow climes the trees, and scales a hill,*

While he goes on the beaten passage still: So slightly touch'd the panther with her scent,

This irksome covert, and away she went,
Down to a fruitful island sited by,
Full of all wealth, delight, and empery,
Ever with child of curious architect,
Yet still deliver'd ; paved with dames select,
On whom rich feet in foulest boots might
tread,

And never foul them: for kind Cupid spread
Such perfect colours on their pleasing faces,
That their reflects clad foulest weeds with
graces.

* Simile ad eandem explicat.