Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

Senseless trees they cannot hear thee;
Ruthless beasts, they will not cheer thee;
King Pandion, he is dead;

All thy friends are lapp'd in lead:
All thy fellow birds do sing,
Careless of thy sorrowing.
Even so, poor bird, like thee,
None alive will pity me.

Whilst as fickle fortune smiled,
Thou and I were both beguiled,
Every one that flatters thee,
Is no friend in misery.

Words are easy like the wind;
Faithful friends are hard to find.
Every man will be thy friend,
Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend;
But if store of crowns be scant,
No man will supply thy want;
If that one be prodigal,
Bountiful they will him call;
And with such-like flattering,
"Pity but he were a king."

If he be addict to vice,
Quickly him they will entice;
But if fortune once do frown,
Then farewell his great renown:
They that fawn'd on him before,
Use his company no more.
He that is thy friend indeed,
He will help thee in thy need;
If thou sorrow, he will weep;
If thou wake, he cannot sleep:
Thus of every grief in heart
He with thee doth bear thee part.
These are certain signs to know
Faithful friend, from flattering foe.

145

Poems.

That island of England breeds very valiant creatures; their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage. And the men do sympathize with the mastiffs in robustious and rough coming on, leaving their wits

with their wives: and then give them great meals of beef, and iron, and steel, they will eat like wolves, and fight like devils.

146

20-iii. 7.

O England!-model to thy inward greatness,
Like little body with a mighty heart,-

What might'st thou do, that honour would thee do,
Were all thy children kind and natural!

147

20-ii. Chorus.

Kent, in the commentaries Cæsar writ,
Is term'd the civil'st place of all this isle :
Sweet is the country, because full of riches;
The people liberal, valiant, active, wealthy. 22-iv. 7.

148

Yon island carrions, desperate of their bones,
Ill-favour'dly become the morning field:
Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose,
And our air shakes them passing scornfully.
Big Mars seems bankrupt in their beggar'd host,
And faintly through a rusty beaver peeps.
Their horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks,
With torch-staves in their hand: and their poor jades
Lob down their heads, dropping the hides and hips;
The gum down-roping from their pale-dead eyes;
And in their pale dull mouths the gimmal bit
Lies foul with chew'd grass, still and motionless;
And their executors, the knavish crows,

Fly o'er them all, impatient for their hour. 20-iv.2.

149

Alas, poor country;

Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot

Be call'd our mother, but our grave: where nothing,
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
Where sighs, and groans, and shrieks, that rent the air,
Are made, not mark'd; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstasy; the dead man's knell

Is there scarce ask'd, for who; and good men's lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying, or ere they sicken.

15-iv.3.

• Colours.

f Ring.

8 Common distress of mind.

150

Tell me, he that knows,

Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land?
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war;
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week:h
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day?

151

'Tis the soldiers' life,

36-i. 1.

To have their balmy slumbers waked with strife.

152

The tyrant custom

37-ii, 3.

Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war
My thrice-driven bed of down: I do agnize1
A natural and prompt alacrity,

I find in hardness.

153

37-i. 3.

What rub, or what impediment, there is,
Why that the naked, poor, and mangled peace,
Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births,
Should not, in this best garden of the world,
put up her lovely visage?

Alas! she hath too long been chased;
And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps,
Corrupting in its own fertility.

Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,
Unpruned dies: her hedges even-pleached,-
Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,-
Put forth disorder'd twigs: her fallow leas
The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory,
Doth root upon: while that the coulter rusts,
That should deracinate' such savagery:
The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth
The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover,
Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,

k Ploughshare.

h Fourth Commandment. i Acknowledge.
1 To deracinate, is to force up the roots.

Conceives by idleness; and nothing teems,
But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs,
Losing both beauty and utility.

And as our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges,
Defective in their natures, grow to wildness;
Even so our houses, and ourselves, and children,
Have lost, or do not learn, for want of time,
The sciences that should become our country;
But
grow, like savages,- -as soldiers will,
That nothing do but meditate on blood,-
To swearing, and stern looks, diffused attire,
And every thing that seems unnatural.

154

In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man,
As modest stillness, and humility:

20-v. 2.

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage:
Then lend the eye a terrible aspéct;

Let it pry through the portage of the head,
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it,
As fearfully, as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty" his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.

Now set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide;
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit

To his full height!—On, on, you noblest English.
20-iii. 1.

155

Thy threat'ning colours now wind up,
And tame the savage spirit of wild war ;
That, like a lion foster'd up at hand,
It may lie gently at the foot of Peace,"
And be no farther harmful than in show.

156

Our arms, like to a muzzled bear,

Save in aspéct, have all offence seal'd up;
Our cannons' malice vainly shall be spent

m Worn, wasted.

16-v. 2.

П A mole to withstand the encroachment of the tide. • Exquisite allegorical painting!

Against the invulnerable clouds of heaven;
And, with a blessed and unvex'd retire,
With unhack'd swords, and helmets all unbruised,
We will bear home that lusty blood again,

Which here we came to spout against your town,
And leave your children, wives, and you, in peace.

157

16-ii, 2.

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise;

This fortress, built by nature for herself,
Against infection," and the hand of war;
This happy breed of men, this little world;
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands;
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this
England :-

Dear for her reputation through the world. 17—ii.1.

158

The natural bravery of your isle; which stands
As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in
With rocks unscaleable, and roaring waters;
With sands, that will not bear your enemies' boats,
But suck them up to the top-mast. A kind of conquest
Cæsar made here; but made not here his brag
Of, came, and saw, and overcame: with shame
(The first that ever touch'd him), he was carried
From off our coast, twice beaten; and his shipping,
(Poor ignorant baubles!) on our terrible seas,
Like egg-shells moved upon their surges, crack'd
As easily 'gainst our rocks: For joy whereof,
The famed Cassibelan, who was once at point
(O, giglota fortune!) to master Cæsar's sword,
Made Lud's town with rejoicing fires bright,
And Britons strut with courage.

31-iii. 1.

P Should it not be insection?

9 Strumpet.

« AnteriorContinuar »