Chapter XV: Epilogue: Gentlemen, (6)

Like infant babes, bearing their nature’s shell 25
Upon the tender heads of tenderer wit,
Which tongue-tied are, having no tale to tell,
To drive away the childhood of their fit;
Unfit to tune their tongue with wisdom’s string,
Too fit to quench their thirst in folly’s spring.

But they were trees to babes, babes sprigs to them,
They not so good as these, in being nought;
In being nought, the more from vice’s stem,
Whose essence cannot come without a thought:
To punish them is punishment in season,
They children-like, without or wit or reason.

To be derided is to be half-dead, 26
Derision bears a part ’tween life and death;
Shame follows her with misery half-fed,
Half-breathing life, to make half-life and breath:
Yet here was mercy shewn, their deeds were more
Than could be wip’d off by derision’s score.

This mercy is the warning of misdeeds,
A trumpet summoning to virtue’s walls,
To notify their hearts which mischief feeds,
Whom vice instructs, whom wickedness exhales:
But if derision cannot murder sin,
Then shame shall end, and punishment begin.

For many shameless are, bold, stout in ill; 27
Then how can shame take root in shameless plants,
When they their brows with shameless furrows fill,
And plough[467] each place which one plough-furrow
wants?
Then being arm’d ’gainst shame with shameless face,
How can derision take a shameful place?

But punishment may smooth their wrinkled brow,
And set shame on the forehead of their rage,
Guiding the fore-front of that shameless row,
Making it smooth in shame, though not in age;
Then will they say that God is just and true;
But ’tis too late, damnation will ensue.

CHAP. XIII.

The branch must needs be weak, if root be so, 1
The root must needs be weak, if branches fall;
Nature is vain, man cannot be her foe,
Because from nature and at nature’s call:
Nature is vain, and we proceed from nature,
Vain therefore is our birth, and vain our feature.

One body may have two diseases sore,
Not being two, it may be join’d to two;
Nature is one itself, yet two and more,
Vain, ignorant of God, of good, of show,
Which not regards the things which God hath done,
And what things are to do, what new begun.

Why do I blame the tree, when ’tis the leaves? 2
Why blame I nature for her mortal men?
Why blame I men? ’tis she, ’tis she that weaves,
That weaves, that wafts unto destruction’s pen:
Then, being blameful both, because both vain,
I leave to both their vanity’s due pain.

To prize the shadow at the substance’ rate,
Is a vain substance of a shadow’s hue;
To think the son to be the father’s mate,
Earth to rule earth because of earthly view;
To think fire, wind, air, stars, water, and heaven,
To be as gods, from whom their selves are given:

Fire as a god? O irreligious sound! 3
Wind as a god? O vain, O vainest voice!
Air as a god? when ’tis but dusky ground;
Star as a god? when ’tis but Phœbe’s choice;
Water a god? which first by God was made;
Heaven a god? which first by God was laid.

Say all hath beauty, excellence, array,
Yet beautified they are, they were, they be,
By God’s bright excellence of brightest day,
Which first implanted our first beauty’s tree:
If then the painted outside of the show
Be radiant, what is the inward row?

If that the shadow of the body’s skin 4
Be so illumin’d with the sun-shin’d soul,
What is the thing itself which is within,
More wrench’d,[468] more cleans’d, more purified from
foul?
If elemental powers have God’s thought,
Say what is God, which made them all of nought?

It is a wonder for to see the sky,
And operation of each airy power;
A marvel that the heaven should be so high,
And let fall such a low-distilling shower:
Then needs must He be high, higher than all,
Which made both high and low with one tongue’s call.

The workman mightier is than his hand-work, 5
In making that which else would be unmade;
The ne’er-thought thing doth always hidden lurk,
Without the maker in a making trade:
For had not God made man, man had not been,
But nature had decay’d, and ne’er been seen.

The workman never shewing of his skill
Doth live unknown to man, though known to wit;
Had mortal birth been never in God’s will,
God had been God, but yet unknown in it;
Then having made the glory of earth’s beauty,
’Tis reason earth should reverence him in duty.

The savage people have a supreme head, 6
A king, though savage as his subjects are;
Yet they with his observances are led,
Obeying his behests, whate’er they were:
The Turks, the Infidels, all have a lord,
Whom they observe in thought, in deed, in word.

And shall we, differing from their savage kind,
Having a soul to live and to believe,
Be rude in thought, in deed, in word, in mind,
Not seeking him which should our woes relieve?
O no, dear brethren! seek our God, our fame,
Then if we err, we shall have lesser blame.

How can we err? we seek for ready way; 7
O that my tongue could fetch that word again!
Whose very accent makes me go astray,
Breathing that erring wind into my brain:
My word is past, and cannot be recall’d;
It is like agèd time, now waxen bald.

For they which go astray in seeking God
Do miss the joyful narrow-footed path—
Joyful, thrice-joyful way to his abode!—
Nought seeing but their shadows in a bath;
Narcissus-like, pining to see a show,
Hindering the passage which their feet should go.

Narcissus fantasy did die to kiss, 8
O sugar’d kiss! died with a poison’d lip;
The fantasies of these do die to miss,
O tossèd fantasies in folly’s ship!
He died to kiss the shadow of his face;
These live and die to life’s and death’s disgrace.

A fault without amends, crime without ease, 9
A sin without excuse, death without aid;
To love the world, and what the world did please,
To know the earth, wherein their sins are laid:
They knew the world, but not the Lord that fram’d it;
They knew the earth, but not the Lord that nam’d it.

Narcissus drown’d himself for his self’s show, 10
Striving to heal himself did himself harm;
These drown’d themselves on earth with their selves’
woe,
He in a water-brook by fury’s charm;
They made dry earth wet with their folly’s weeping,
He made wet earth dry with his fury’s sleeping.

Then leave him to his sleep; return to those
Which ever wake in misery’s constraints,
Whose eyes are hollow caves and made sleep’s foes,
Two dungeons dark with sin, blind with complaints:
They callèd images which man first found
Immortal gods, for which their tongues are bound.

Gold was a god with them, a golden god; 11
Like children in a pageant of gay toys,
Adoring images for saints’ abode;
O vain, vain spectacles of vainer joys!
Putting their hope in blocks, their trust in stones;
Hoping to trust, trusting to hope in moans.

As when a carpenter cuts down a tree, 12
Meet for to make a vessel for man’s use,
He pareth all the bark most cunningly
With the sharp shaver of his knife’s abuse,
Ripping the seely[469] womb with no entreat,
Making her woundy chips to dress his meat:

Her body’s bones are often tough and hard, 13
Crooked with age’s growth, growing with crooks,
And full of weather-chinks, which seasons marr’d,
Knobby and rugged, bending in like hooks;
Yet knowing age can never want a fault,
Encounters it with a sharp knife’s assault;

And carves it well, though it be self-like ill, 14
Observing leisure, keeping time and place;
According to the cunning of his skill,
Making the figure of a mortal face,
Or like some ugly beast in ruddy mould,
Hiding each cranny with a painter’s fold.

It is a world to see,[470] to mark, to view, 15
How age can botch up age with crooked thread;
How his old hands can make an old tree new,
And dead-like he can make another dead!
Yet makes a substantive able to bear it,
And she an adjective, nor see nor hear it.

A wall it is itself, yet wall with wall 16
Hath great supportance, bearing either part;
The image, like an adjective, would fall,
Were it not closèd with an iron heart:
The workman, being old himself, doth know
What great infirmities old age can shew.

Therefore, to stop the river of extremes, 17
He burst into the flowing of his wit,
Tossing his brains with more than thousand themes,
To have a wooden stratagem so fit:
Wooden, because it doth belong to wood;
His purpose may be wise, his reason good:

His purpose wise? no, foolish, fond,[471] and vain;
His reason good? no, wicked, vild,[472] and ill;
To be the author of his own life’s pain,
To be the tragic actor of his will;
Praying to that which he before had fram’d,
For welcome faculties, and not asham’d.

Calling to folly for discretion’s sense, 18
Calling to sickness for sick body’s health,
Calling to weakness for a stronger fence,
Calling to poverty for better wealth;
Praying to death for life, for this he pray’d,
Requiring help of that which wanteth aid;

Desiring that of it which he not had, 19
And for his journey that which cannot go;
And for his gain her furtherance, to make glad
The work which he doth take in hand to do:
These windy words do rush against the wall;
She cannot speak, ’twill sooner make her fall.

CHAP. XIV.

As doth one little spark make a great flame, 1
Kindled from forth the bosom of the flint;
As doth one plague infect with it self name,
With watery humours making bodies’ dint;
So, even so, this idol-worshipper
Doth make another idol-practiser.

The shipman cannot team dame Tethys’ waves
Within a wind-taught capering anchorage,
Before he prostrate lies, and suffrage craves,
And have a block to be his fortune’s gage:
More crooked than his stern, yet he implores her;
More rotten than his ship, yet he adores her.

Who made this form? he that was form’d and made; 2, 3
’Twas avarice, ’twas she that found it out;
She made her craftsman crafty in his trade,
He cunning was in bringing it about:
O, had he made the painted show to speak,
It would have call’d him vain, herself to wreak!

It would have made him blush alive, though he 4
Did dye her colour with a deadly blush;
Thy providence, O father! doth decree
A sure, sure way amongst the waves to rush;
Thereby declaring that thy power is such,
That though a man were weak, thou canst do much.

What is one single bar to double death? 5
One death in death, the other death in fear;
This single bar a board, a poor board’s breath,[473]
Yet stops the passage of each Neptune’s tear:
To see how many lives one board can have,
To see how many lives one board can save!

How was this board first made? by wisdom’s art,
Which is not vain, but firm, not weak, but sure;
Therefore do men commit their living heart
To planks which either life or death procure;
Cutting the storms in two, parting the wind,
Ploughing the sea till they their harbour find:

The sea, whose mountain-billows, passing bounds, 6
Rusheth upon the hollow-sided bark,
With rough-sent kisses from the water-grounds,
Raising a foaming heat with rage’s spark:
Yet sea nor waves can make the shipman fear;
He knows that die he must, he cares not where.

For had his timorous heart been dy’d in white,
And sent an echo of resembling woe,
Wisdom had been unknown in folly’s night,
The sea had been a desolation’s show;
But one world, hope,[474] lay hovering on the sea,
When one world’s hap did end with one decay.

Yet Phœbus, drownèd in the ocean’s world, 7
Phœbe disgrac’d with Tethys’ billow-rolls,
And Phœbus’ fiery-golden wreath uncurl’d,
Was seated at the length in brightness souls;
Man, toss’d in wettest wilderness of seas,
Had seed on seed, increase upon increase:

Their mansion-house a tree upon a wave; 8
O happy tree, upon unhappy ground!
But every tree is not ordain’d to have
Such blessedness, such virtue, such abound:
Some trees are carvèd images of nought,
Yet godlike reverenc’d, ador’d, besought.

Are the trees nought? alas, they senseless are! 9
The hands which fashion them condemn their growth,
Cut down their branches, vail[475] their forehead bare;
Both made in sin, though not sin’s equal both:
First God made man, and vice did make him new,
And man made vice from vice, and so it grew.

Now is her harvest greater than her good,
Her wonted winter turn’d to summer’s air,
Her ice to heat, her sprig to cedar’s wood,
Her hate to love, her loathsome filth to fair:[476]
Man loves her well, by mischief new created;
God hates her ill, because of virtue hated.

O foolish man, mounted upon decay, 10
More ugly than Alastor’s[477] pitchy back,
Night’s dismal summoner, and end of day,
Carrying all dusky vapours hemm’d in black;
Behold thy downfal ready at thy hand,
Behold thy hopes wherein thy hazards stand!

O, spurn away that block out of thy way,
With virtue’s appetite and wisdom’s force!
That stumbling-block of folly and decay,
That snare which doth ensnare thy treading corse:
Behold, thy body falls! let virtue bear it;
Behold, thy soul doth fall! let wisdom rear it.

Say, art thou young or old, tree or a bud? 11
Thy face is so disfigurèd with sin:
Young I do think thou art; in what? in good;
But old, I am assur’d, by wrinkled skin:
Thy lips, thy tongue, thy heart, is young in praying,
But lips, and tongue, and heart, is old in straying:

Old in adoring idols, but too young
In the observance of divinest law;
Young in adoring God, though old in tongue;
Old and too old, young and too young in awe;
Beginning that which doth begin misdeeds,
Inventing vice, which all thy body feeds.

But this corrupting and infecting food, 12
This caterpillar of eternity,
The foe to bliss, the canker unto good,
The new-accustom’d way of vanity,
It hath not ever been, nor shall it be,
But perish in the branch of folly’s tree.

As her descent was vanity’s alline,[478] 13
So her descending like to her descent;
Here shall she have an end, in hell no fine,
Vain-glory brought her vainly to be spent:
You know all vanity draws to an end;
Then needs must she decay, because her friend.

Is there more folly than to weep at joy, 14
To make eyes watery when they should be dry?
To grieve at that which murders grief’s annoy?
To keep a shower where the sun should lie?
But yet this folly-cloud doth oft appear,
When face should smile and watery eye be clear.

The father mourns to see his son life-dead,
But seldom mourns to see his son dead-liv’d;
He cares for earthly lodge, not heaven’s bed,
For death in life, not life in death surviv’d:
Keeping the outward shadow of his face
To work the inward substance of disgrace.

Keeping a show to counterpoise the deed, 15
Keeping a shadow to be substance’ heir,
To raise the thing itself from shadow’s seed,
And make an element of lifeless air;
Adoring that which his own hands did frame,
Whose heart invention gave, whose tongue the name.

But could infection keep one settled place,
The poison would not lodge in every breast,
Nor feed the heart, the mind, the soul, the face,
Lodging but in the carcass of her rest;
But this idolatry, once in man’s use,
Was made a custom then without excuse:

Nay, more, it was at tyranny’s command; 16
And tyrants cannot speak without a doom,
Whose judgment doth proceed from heart to hand,
From heart in rage, from hand in bloody tomb;
That if through absence any did neglect it,
Presence should pay the ransom which reject it.

Then to avoid the doom of present hate,
Their absence did perform their presence’ want,
Making the image of a kingly state,
As if they had new seed from sin’s old plant;
Flattering the absence of old mischief’s mother
With the like form and presence of another:

Making an absence with a present sight, 17
Or rather presence with an absent view;
Deceiving vulgars with a day of night,
Which know not good from bad, nor false from true;
A craftsman cunning in his crafty trade,
Beguiling them with that which he had made.

Like as a vane is turn’d with every blast,
Until it point unto the windy clime,
So stand the people at his word aghast,
He making old-new form in new-old time;
Defies and deifies all with one breath,
Making them live and die, and all in death.

They, like to Tantalus, are fed with shows, 18
Shows which exasperate, and cannot cure;
They see the painted shadow of suppose,
They see her sight, yet what doth sight procure?
Like Tantalus they feed, and yet they starve;
Their food is carv’d to them, yet hard to carve.

The craftsman feeds them with a starving meat
Which doth not fill, but empty, hunger’s gape;
He makes the idol comely, fair, and great,
With well-limn’d visage and best-fashion’d shape,
Meaning to give it to some noble view,
And feign his beauty with that flattering hue.

Enamour’d with the sight, the people grew 19
To divers apparitions of delight;
Some did admire the portraiture so new,
Hew’d from the standard of an old tree’s height;
Some were allur’d through beauty of the face,
With outward eye to work the soul’s disgrace:

Adorèd like a god, though made by man;
To make a god of man, a man of god,
’Tis more than human life or could or can,
Though multitudes’ applause in error trode:
I never knew, since mortal lives abod,
That man could make a man, much less a god.

Yes, man can make his shame without a maker, 20
Borrowing the essence from restorèd sin;
Man can be virtue’s foe and vice’s taker,
Welcome himself without a welcome in:
Can he do this? yea, more; O shameless ill!
Shameful in shame, shameless in wisdom’s will.

The river of his vice can have no bound,
But breaks into the ocean of deceit;
Deceiving life with measures of dead ground,
With carvèd idols, disputation’s bait;
Making captivity, cloth’d all in moan,
Be subject to a god made of a stone.

Too stony hearts had they which made this law; 21
O, had they been as stony as the name,
They never had brought vulgars in such awe,
To be destruction’s prey and mischief’s game!
Had they been stone-dead both in look and favour,
They never had made life of such a savour.

Yet was not this a too-sufficient doom,
Sent from the root of their sin-o’ergrown tongue,
To cloud God’s knowledge with hell-mischief’s gloom,
To overthrow truth’s right with falsehood’s wrong:
But daily practisèd a perfect way,
Still to begin, and never end to stray.

For either murder’s paw did gripe their hearts, 22
With whispering horrors drumming in each ear,
Or other villanies did play their parts,
Augmenting horror to new-strucken fear;
Making their hands more than a shambles’ stall,
To slay their children ceremonial.

No place was free from stain of blood or vice; 23
Their life was mark’d for death, their soul for sin,
Marriage for fornication’s thawèd ice,
Thought for despair, body for either’s gin:
Slaughter did either end what life begun,
Or lust did end what both had left undone.

The one was sure, although the other fail, 24
For vice hath more competitors than one;
A greater troop doth evermore avail,
And villany is never found alone:
The blood-hound follows that which slaughter kill’d,
And theft doth follow what deceit hath spill’d.[479]

Corruption, mate to infidelity,
For that which is unfaithful is corrupt; 25
Tumults are schoolfellows to perjury,
For both are full when either one hath supt;
Unthankfulness, defiling, and disorders,
Are fornication’s and uncleanness’ borders.

See what a sort[480] of rebels are in arms, 26
To root out virtue, to supplant her reign!
Opposing of themselves against all harms,
To the disposing of her empire’s gain:
O double knot of treble miseries!
O treble knot, twice, thrice in villanies!

O idol-worshipping, thou mother art,
She-procreatress of a he-offence!
I know thee now, thou bear’st a woman’s part,
Thou nature hast of her, she of thee sense:
These are thy daughters, too, too like the mother;
Black sins, I dim you all with inky smother.

My pen shall be officious in this scene, 27
To let your hearts blood in a wicked vein;
To make your bodies clear, your souls as clean,
To cleanse the sinks of sin with virtue’s rain:
Behold your coal-black blood, my writing-ink,
My paper’s poison’d meat, my pen’s foul drink.

New-christen’d are you with your own new blood;
But mad before, savage and desperate;
Prophesying lies, not knowing what was good;
Living ungodly, evermore in hate;
Thundering out oaths, pale sergeants of despair;
Swore and forswore, not knowing what you were.

Now, look upon the spectacle of shame, 28
The well-limn’d image of an ill-limn’d thought;
Say, are you worthy now of praise or blame,
That such self-scandal in your own selves wrought?
You were heart-sick before I let you blood,
But now heart-well since I have done you good.

Now wipe blind folly from your seeing eyes,
And drive destruction from your happy mind;
Your folly now is wit, not foolish-wise,
Destruction happiness, not mischief blind;
You put your trust in idols, they deceiv’d you;
You put your trust in God, and he receiv’d you.

Had not repentance grounded on your souls, 29
The climes of good or ill, virtue or vice,
Had it not flow’d into the tongue’s enrolls,
Ascribing mischief’s hate with good advice;
Your tongue had spill’d[481] your soul, your soul your
tongue,
Wronging each function with a double wrong.

Your first attempt was placèd in a show,
Imaginary show, without a deed;
The next attempt was perjury, the foe
To just demeanours and to virtue’s seed:
Two sins, two punishments, and one in two,
Make[482] two in one, and more than one can do:

Four scourges from one pain, all comes from sin; 30
Single, yet double, double, yet in four;
It slays the soul, it hems the body in,
It spills the mind, it doth the heart devour;
Gnawing upon the thoughts, feeding on blood,
For why she lives in sin, but dies in good.

She taught their souls to stray, their tongues to swear,
Their thought to think amiss, their life to die,
Their heart to err, their mischief to appear,
Their head to sin, their feet to tread awry:
This scene might well have been destruction’s tent,
To pay with pain what sin with joy hath spent.

CHAP. XV.

But God will never dye his hands with blood, 1
His heart with hate, his throne with cruelty,
His face with fury’s map, his brow with cloud,
His reign with rage, his crown with tyranny;
Gracious is he, long-suffering, and true,
Which ruleth all things with his mercy’s view:

Gracious; for where is grace but where he is?
The fountain-head, the ever-boundless stream:
Patient; for where is patience in amiss,
If not conducted by pure grace’s beam?
Truth is the moderator of them both,
For grace and patience are of truest growth.

For grace-beginning truth doth end in grace, 2
As truth-beginning grace doth end in truth;
Now patience takes the moderator’s place,
Young-old in suffering, old-young in ruth:
Patience is old in being always young,
Not having right, nor ever offering wrong.

So this is moderator of God’s rage,
Pardoning those deeds which we in sin commit,
That if we sin, she is our freedom’s gage,
And we still thine, though to be thine unfit:
In being thine, O Lord, we will not sin,
That we thy patience, grace, and truth, may win!

O grant us patience, in whose grant we rest, 3
To right our wrong, and not to wrong the right!
Give us thy grace, O Lord, to make us blest,
That grace might bless, and bliss might grace our
sight!
Make our beginning and our sequel truth,
To make us young in age, and grave in youth!

We know that our demands rest in thy will;
Our will rests in thy word, our word in thee;
Thou in our orisons, which dost fulfil
That wishèd action which we wish to be;
’Tis perfect righteousness to know thee right,
’Tis immortality to know thy might.

In knowing thee, we know both good and ill, 4
Good to know good and ill, ill to know none;
In knowing all, we know thy sacred will,
And what to do, and what to leave undone:
We are deceiv’d, not knowing to deceive;
In knowing good and ill, we take and leave.

The glass of vanity, deceit, and shows, 5
The painter’s labour, the beguiling face,
The divers-colour’d image of suppose,
Cannot deceive the substance of thy grace;
Only a snare to those of common wit,
Which covets to be like, in having it.

The greedy lucre of a witless brain, 6
This feeding avarice on senseless mind,
Is rather hurt than good, a loss than gain,
Which covets for to lose, and not to find;
So they were colourèd with such a face,
They would not care to take the idol’s place.

Then be your thoughts coherent to your words,
Your words as correspondent to your thought;
’Tis reason you should have what love affords,
And trust in that which love so dearly bought:
The maker must needs love what he hath made,
And the desirer’s free of either trade.

Man, thou wast made; art thou a maker now? 7
Yes, ’tis thy trade, for thou a potter art,
Tempering soft earth, making the clay to bow;
But clayey thou dost bear too stout a heart:
The clay is humble to thy rigorous hands;
Thou clay too tough against thy God’s commands.

If thou want’st slime, behold thy slimy faults;
If thou want’st clay, behold thy clayey breast;
Make them to be the deepest centre’s vaults,
And let all clayey mountains sleep in rest:
Thou bear’st an earthly mountain on thy back,
Thy heart’s chief prison-house, thy soul’s chief wrack.

Art thou a mortal man, and mak’st a god? 8
A god of clay, thou but a man of clay?
O suds of mischief, in destruction sod!
O vainest labour, in a vainer play!
Man is the greatest work which God did take,
And yet a god with man is nought to make.

He that was made of earth would make a heaven,
If heaven may be made upon the earth;
Sin’s heirs, the airs, sin’s plants, the planets seven,
Their god a clod, his birth true virtue’s dearth:
Remember whence you came, whither you go;
Of earth, in earth, from earth to earth in woe.

No, quoth the potter; as I have been clay, 9
So will I end with what I did begin;
I am of earth, and I do what earth may;
I am of dust, and therefore will I sin:
My life is short, what then? I’ll make it longer;
My life is weak, what then? I’ll make it stronger.

Long shall it live in vice, though short in length,
And fetch immortal steps from mortal stops;
Strong shall it be in sin, though weak in strength,
Like mounting eagles on high mountains’ tops;
My honour shall be placèd in deceit,
And counterfeit new shews of little weight.

My pen doth almost blush at this reply, 10
And fain would call him wicked to his face;
But then his breath would answer with a lie,
And stain my ink with an untruth’s disgrace:
Thy master bids thee write, the pen says no;
But when thy master bids, it must be so.

Call his heart ashes,—O, too mild a name!
Call his hope vile, more viler than the earth;
Call his life weaker than a clayey frame;
Call his bespotted heart an ashy hearth:
Ashes, earth, clay, conjoin’d to heart, hope, life,
Are features’ love, in being nature’s strife.

Thou might’st have chose more stinging words than 11
these,
For this he knows he is, and more than less;
In saying what he is, thou dost appease
The foaming anger which his thoughts suppress:
Who knows not, if the best be made of clay,
The worst must needs be clad in foul array?

Thou, in performing of thy master’s will,
Dost teach him to obey his lord’s commands;
But he repugnant is, and cannot skill
Of true adoring, with heart-heav’d-up hand:
He hath a soul, a life, a breath, a name,
Yet he is ignorant from whence they came.

My soul, saith he, is but a map of shows, 12
No substance, but a shadow for to please;
My life doth pass even as a pastime goes,
A momentary time to live at ease;
My breath a vapour, and my name of earth,
Each one decaying of the other’s birth.

Our conversation best, for there is gains,
And gain is best in conversation’s prime;
A mart of lucre in our conscience reigns,
Our thoughts as busy agents for the time:
So we get gain, ensnaring simple men,
It is no matter how, nor where, nor when.

We care not how, for all misdeeds are ours; 13
We care not where, if before God or man;
We care not when, but when our crafts have powers
In measuring deceit with mischief’s fan;
For wherefore have we life, form, and ordaining,
But that we should deceive, and still be gaining?

I, made of earth, have made all earthen shops,
And what I sell is all of earthy sale;
My pots have earthen feet and earthen tops,
In like resemblance of my body’s veil;
But knowing to offend the heavens more,
I made frail images of earthy store.

O bold accuser of his own misdeeds! 14
O heavy clod, more than the earth can bear!
Was never creature cloth’d in savage weeds,
Which would not blush when they this mischief hear:
Thou told’st a tale which might have been untold,
Making the hearers blush, the readers old.

Let them blush still that hear, be old that read,[483]
Then boldness shall not reign, nor youth in vice;
Thrice miserable they which rashly speed
With expedition to this bold device;
More foolish than are fools, whose misery
Cannot be chang’d with new felicity.

Are not they fools which live without a sense? 15
Have not they misery which never joy?
Which take[484] an idol for a god’s defence,
And with their self-will’d thoughts themselves
destroy?
What folly is more greater than is here?
Or what more misery can well appear?

Call you them gods which have no seeing eyes,
No noses for to smell, no ears to hear,
No life but that which in death’s shadow lies,
Which have no hands to feel, no feet to bear?
If gods can neither hear, live, feel, nor see,
A fool may make such gods of every tree.

And what was he that made them but a fool, 16
Conceiving folly in a foolish brain,
Taught and instructed in a wooden school,
Which made his head run of a wooden vein?
’Twas man which made them, he his making had;
Man, full of wood, was wood,[485] and so ran mad.

He borrowèd his life, and would restore
His borrow’d essence to another death;
He fain would be a maker, though before
Was made himself, and God did lend him breath:
No man can make a god like to a man;
He says he scorns that work, he further can.

He is deceiv’d, and in his great deceit 17
He doth deceive the folly-guided hearts;
Sin lies in ambush, he for sin doth wait,
Here is deceit deceiv’d in either parts;
His sin deceiveth him, and he his sin,
So craft with craft is mew’d in either gin.

The craftsman mortal is, craft mortal is,
Each function nursing up the other’s want;
His hands are mortal, deadly what is his,
Only his sins bud[486] in destruction’s plant:
Yet better he than what he doth devise,
For he himself doth live, that ever dies.

Say, call you this a god? where is his head? 18
Yet headless is he not, yet hath he none;
Where is his godhead? fled; his power? dead;
His reign? decayèd; and his essence? gone:
Now tell me, is this god the god of good?
Or else Silvanus monarch of the wood?

There have I pierc’d his bark, for he is so,
A wooden god, feign’d as Silvanus was;
But leaving him, to others let us go,
To senseless beasts, their new-adoring glass;
Beasts which did live in life, yet died in reason;
Beasts which did seasons eat, yet knew no season.

Can mortal bodies and immortal souls 19
Keep one knit union of a living love?
Can sea with land, can fish agree with fowls?
Tigers with lambs, a serpent with a dove?
O no, they cannot! then say, why do we
Adore a beast which is our enemy?

What greater foe than folly unto wit?
What more deformity than ugly face?
This disagrees, for folly is unfit,
The other contrary to beauty’s place:
Then how can senseless heads, deformèd shows,
Agree with you, when they are both your foes?

CHAP. XVI.

O, call that word again! they are your friends, 1
Your life’s associates and your love’s content;
That which begins in them, your folly ends;
Then how can vice with vice be discontent?
Behold, deformity sits on your heads,
Not horns, but scorns, not visage, but whole beds.

Behold a heap of sins your bodies pale,
A mountain-overwhelming villany;
Then tell me, are you clad in beauty’s veil,
Or in destruction’s pale-dead livery?
Their life demonstrates, now alive, now dead,
Tormented with the beasts which they have fed.

You like to pelicans have fed your death, 2
With follies vain let blood from folly’s vein,
And almost starv’d yourselves, stopt up your breath,
Had not God’s mercy help’d and eas’d your pain:
Behold, a new-found meat the Lord did send,
Which taught you to be new and to amend.

A strange-digested nutriment, even quails, 3
Which taught them to be strange unto misdeeds:
When you implore his aid, he never fails
To fill their hunger whom repentance feeds:
You see, when life was half at death’s arrest,
He new-created life at hunger’s feast.

Say, is your god like this, whom you ador’d, 4
Or is this god like to your handy-frame?
If so, his power could not then afford
Such influence, which floweth from his name:
He is not painted, made of wood and stone,
But he substantial is, and rules alone.

He can oppress and help, help and oppress,
The sinful incolants[487] of his made earth;
He can redress and pain, pain and redress,
The mountain-miseries of mortal birth:
Now, tyrants, you are next, this but a show,
And merry index of your after-woe.

Your hot-cold misery is now at hand; 5
Hot, because fury’s heat and mercy’s cold;
Cold, because limping, knit in frosty band,
And cold and hot in being shamefac’d-bold:
They cruel were, take cruelty their part,
For misery is but too mean a smart.

But when the tiger’s jaws, the serpent’s stings, 6
Did summon them unto this life’s decay,
A pardon for their faults thy mercy brings,
Cooling thy wrath with pity’s sunny day:
O tyrants, tear your sin-bemirèd weeds,
Behold your pardon seal’d by mercy’s deeds!

That sting which painèd could not ease the pain, 7
Those jaws that wounded could not cure the wounds;
To turn to stings for help, it were but vain,
To jaws for mercy, which want[488] mercy’s bounds:
The stings, O Saviour, were pull’d out by thee!
Their jaws claspt up in midst of cruelty.

O sovereign salve, stop to a bloody stream! 8
O heavenly care and cure for dust and earth!
Celestial watch to wake terrestrial dream,
Dreaming in punishment, mourning in mirth;
Now know[489] our enemies that it is thee
Which helps and cures our grief and misery.

Our punishment doth end, theirs new begins; 9
Our day appears, their night is not o’erblown;
We pardon have, they punishment for sins;
Now we are rais’d, now they are overthrown;
We with huge beasts opprest, they with a fly;
We live in God, and they against God die.

A fly, poor fly, to follow such a flight!
Yet art thou fed, as thou wast fed before,
With dust and earth feeding thy wonted bite,
With self-like food from mortal earthly store:
A mischief-stinging food, and sting with sting,
Do ready passage to destruction bring.

Man, being grass, is hopp’d and graz’d upon, 10
With sucking grasshoppers of weeping dew;
Man, being earth, is worm’s vermilion,
Which eats the dust, and yet of bloody hue:
In being grass he is her grazing food,
In being dust he doth the worms some good.

These smallest actors were of greatest pain,
Of folly’s overthrow, of mischief’s fall;
But yet the furious dragons could not gain
The life of those whom verities exhale:
These folly overcame, they foolish were;
These mercy cur’d, and cures these godly are.

When poison’d jaws and venenated stings 11
Were both as opposite against content—
Because content with that which fortune brings—
They easèd were when thou thy mercies sent;
The jaws of dragons had not hunger’s fill,
Nor stings of serpents a desire to kill.

Appall’d they were and struck with timorous fears,
For where is fear but where destruction reigns?
Aghast they were, with wet-eye-standing tears,
Outward commencers of their inward pains;
They soon were hurt, but sooner heal’d and cur’d,
Lest black oblivion had their minds inur’d.

The lion, wounded with a fatal blow, 12
Is as impatient as a king in rage;
Seeing himself in his own bloody show
Doth rent the harbour of his body’s cage;
Scorning the base-hous’d earth, mounts to the sky,
To see if heaven can yield him remedy.

O sinful man! let him example be,
A pattern to thine eye, glass to thy face,
That God’s divinest word is cure to thee,
Not earth, but heaven, not man, but heavenly grace;
Nor herb nor plaster could help teeth or sting,
But ’twas thy word which healeth every thing.

We fools lay salves upon our body’s skin, 13
But never draw corruption from our mind;
We lay a plaster for to keep in sin,
We draw forth filth, but leave the cause behind;
With herbs and plasters we do guard misdeeds,
And pare away the tops, but leave the seeds.

Away with salves, and take our Saviour’s word!
In this word Saviour lies immortal ease;
What can thy cures, plasters, and herbs afford,
When God hath power to please and to displease?
God hath the power of life, death, help, and pain,
He leadeth down and bringeth up again.

Trust to thy downfal, not unto thy raise, 14
So shalt thou live in death, not die in life;
Thou dost presume, if give thyself the praise,
For virtue’s time is scarce, but mischief’s rife:[490]
Thou may’st offend, man’s nature is so vain;
Thou, now in joy, beware of after-pain.

First cometh fury, after fury thirst, 15
After thirst blood, and after blood a death;
Thou may’st in fury kill whom thou lov’d’st first,
And so in quaffing blood stop thine own breath;
And murder done can never be undone,
Nor can that soul once live whose life is gone.

What is the body but an earthen case 16
That subject is to death, because earth dies?
But when the living soul doth want God’s grace,
It dies in joy, and lives in miseries:
This soul is led by God, as others were,
But not brought up again, as others are.

This stirs no provocation to amend,
For earth hath many partners in one fall,
Although the Lord doth many tokens send,
As warnings for to hear when he doth call:
The earth was burnt and drown’d with fire and rain,
And one could never quench the other’s pain.

Although both foes, God made them then both
friends, 17
And only foes to them which were their foes;
That hate begun in earth what in them ends,
Sin’s enemies they which made friends of those;
Both bent both forces unto single earth,
From whose descent they had their double birth.

’Tis strange that water should not quench a fire,
For they were heating-cold and cooling-hot;
’Tis strange that wails could not allay desire,
Wails water-kind, and fire desire’s knot;
In such a cause, though enemies before,
They would join friendship, to destroy the more.

The often-weeping eyes of dry lament 18
Do[491] pour forth burning water of despair,
Which warms the caves from whence the tears are sent,
And, like hot fumes, do foul their nature’s fair:[492]
This, contrary to icy water’s vale,
Doth scorch the cheeks and makes them red and pale.

Here fire and water are conjoin’d in one,
Within a red-white glass of hot and cold;
Their fire like this, double and yet alone,
Raging and tame, and tame and yet was bold;
Tame when the beasts did kill, and felt no fire
Raging upon the causers of their ire.

Two things may well put on two several natures, 19
Because they differ in each nature’s kind,
They differing colours have and differing features;
If so, how comes it that they have one mind?
God made them friends, let this the answer be;
They get no other argument of me.

What is impossible to God’s command?
Nay, what is possible to man’s vain care?
’Tis much, he thinks, that fire should burn a land,
When mischief is the brand which fires bear;
He thinks it more, that water should bear fire:
Then know it was God’s will; now leave t’ inquire.

Yet might’st thou ask, because importunate, 20
How God preserv’d the good; why? because good;
Ill fortune made not them infortunate,
They angels were, and fed with angels’ food:
Yet may’st thou say—for truth is always had—
That rain falls on the good as well as bad:

And say it doth; far be the letter P
From R, because of a more reverent style;
It cannot do without suppression be;
These are two bars against destruction’s wile;
Pain without changing P cannot be rain,
Rain without changing R cannot be pain:

But sun and rain are portions to the ground, 21
And ground is dust, and what is dust but nought?
And what is nought is naught, with alpha’s sound;
Yet every earth the sun and rain hath bought;
The sun doth shine on weeds as well as flowers,
The rain on both distills her weeping showers.

Yet far be death from breath, annoy from joy,
Destruction from all happiness’ allines![493]
God will not suffer famine to destroy
The hungry appetite of virtue’s signs:
These were in midst of fire, yet not harm’d,
In midst of water, yet but cool’d and warm’d.

And water-wet they were, not water-drown’d, 22
And fire-hot they were, not fire-burn’d;
Their foes were both, whose hopes destruction crown’d,
But yet with such a crown which ne’er return’d;
Here fire and water brought both joy and pain,
To one disprofit, to the other gain.

The sun doth thaw what cold hath freez’d before,
Undoing what congealèd ice had done,
Yet here the hail and snow did freeze the more,
In having heat more piercing than the sun;
A mournful spectacle unto their eyes,
That as they die, so their fruition dies.

Fury once kindled with the coals of rage 23
Doth hover unrecall’d, slaughters untam’d;
This wrath on fire no pity could assuage,
Because they pitiless which should be blam’d;
As one in rage, which cares not who he have,
Forgetting who to kill and who to save.

One deadly foe is fierce against the other, 24
As vice with virtue, virtue against vice;
Vice heartenèd by death, his heartless mother,
Virtue by God, the life of her device:
’Tis hard to hurt or harm a villany,
’Tis easy to do good to verity.

Is grass man’s meat? no, it is cattle’s food, 25
But man doth eat the cattle which eats grass,
And feeds his carcass with their nurs’d-up blood,
Lengthening the lives which in a moment pass:
Grass is good food if it be join’d with grace,
Else sweeter food may take a sourer place.

Is there such life in water and in bread, 26
In fish, in flesh, in herbs, in growing flowers?
We eat them not alive, we eat them dead;
What fruit then hath the word of living powers?
How can we live with that which is still dead?
Thy grace it is by which we all are fed.

This is a living food, a blessèd meat, 27
Made to digest the burden at our hearts,
That leaden-weighted food which we first eat,
To fill the functions of our bodies’ parts,
An indigested heap, without a mean,
Wanting thy grace, O Lord, to make it clean!

That ice which sulphur-vapours could not thaw, 28
That hail which piercing fire could not bore,
The cool-hot sun did melt their frosty jaw,
Which neither heat nor fire could pierce before;
Then let us take the spring-time of the day,
Before the harvest of our joys decay.

A day may be divided, as a year, 29
Into four climes, though of itself but one;
The morn the spring, the noon the summer’s sphere,
The harvest next, evening the winter’s moon:
Then sow new seeds in every new day’s spring,
And reap new fruit in day’s old evening.

Else if too late, they will be blasted seeds,
If planted at the noontide of their growing;
Commencers of unthankful, too late deeds,
Set in the harvest of the reaper’s going:
Melting like winter-ice against the sun,
Flowing like folly’s tide, and never done.

CHAP. XVII.

O, fly the bed of vice, the lodge of sin! 1
Sleep not too long in your destruction’s pleasures;
Amend your wicked lives, and new begin
A more new perfect way to heaven’s treasures:
O, rather wake and weep than sleep and joy!
Waking is truth, sleep is a flattering toy.

O, take the morning of your instant good!
Be not benighted with oblivion’s eye;
Behold the sun, which kisseth Neptune’s flood,
And re-salutes the world with open sky:
Else sleep, and ever sleep; God’s wrath is great,
And will not alter with too late entreat.

Why wake I them which have a sleeping mind? 2
O words, sad sergeants to arrest my thoughts!
If wak’d, they cannot see, their eyes are blind,
Shut up like windolets, which sleep hath bought:
Their face is broad awake, but not their heart;
They dream of rising, but are loath to start.

These were the practisers how to betray
The simple righteous with beguiling words,
And bring them in subjection to obey
Their irreligious laws and sin’s accords:
But night’s black-colour’d veil did cloud their will,
And made their wish rest in performance’ skill.

The darksome clouds are summoners of rain, 3
In being something black and something dark;
But coal-black clouds make[494] it pour down amain,
Darting forth thunderbolts and lightning’s spark:
Sin of itself is black, but black with black
Augments the heavy burthen of the back.

They thought that sins could hide their sinful shames,
In being demi-clouds and semi-nights;
But they had clouds enough to make their games,
Lodg’d in black coverings of oblivious nights:
Then was their vice afraid to lie so dark,
Troubled with visions from Alastor’s[495] park.

The greater poison bears the greater sway, 4
The greatest force hath still the greatest face;
Should night miss course, it would infect the day
With foul-risse[496] vapours from a humorous place:
Vice hath some clouds, but yet the night hath more,
Because the night was fram’d and made before.

That sin which makes afraid was then afraid,
Although enchamber’d in a den’s content;
That would not drive back fear which comes repaid,
Nor yet the echoes which the visions sent;
Both sounds and shows, both words and action,
Made apparition’s satisfaction.

A night in pitchy mantle of distress, 5
Made thick with mists and opposite to light,
As if Cocytus’ mansion did possess
The gloomy vapours of suppressing sight;
A night more ugly than Alastor’s pack,
Mounting all nights upon his night-made back.

The moon did mourn in sable-suited veil;
The stars, her handmaids, were in black attire;
All nightly visions told a hideous tale;
The screech-owls made the earth their dismal quire:
The moon and stars divide their twinkling eyes
To lighten vice, which in oblivion lies.

Only appear’d a fire in doleful blaze, 6
Kindled by furies, rais’d by envious winds,
Dreadful in sight, which put them to amaze,
Having before fury-despairing minds:
What hair in reading would not stand upright?
What pen in writing would not cease to write?

Fire is God’s angel, because bright and clear,
But this an evil angel, because dread;
Evil to them which did already fear,
A second death to them which were once dead:
Annexing horror to dead-strucken life,
Connexing dolor to live nature’s strife.

Deceit was then deceiv’d, treason betray’d, 7
Mischief beguil’d, a night surpassing night,
Vice fought with vice, and fear was then dismay’d,
Horror itself appall’d at such a sight;
Sin’s snare was then ensnar’d, the fisher cought,[497]
Sin’s net was then entrapt, the fowler fought.

Yet all this conflict was but in a dream,
A show of substance and a shade of truth,
Illusions for to mock in flattering theme,
Beguiling mischief with a glass of ruth:
For boasts require a fall, and vaunts a shame,
Which two vice had in thinking but to game.

Sin told her creditors she was a queen, 8
And now become revenge to right their wrong,
With honey-mermaid’s speech alluring seen,
Making new-pleasing words with her old tongue:
If you be sick, quoth she, I’ll make you whole;
She cures the body, but makes sick the soul.

Safe is the body when the soul is wounded,
The soul is joyful in the body’s grief;
One’s joy upon the other’s sorrow grounded,
One’s sorrow placèd in the one’s relief:
Quoth sin, Fear nothing, know that I am here;
When she, alas, herself was sick for fear!

A promise worthy of derision’s place, 9
That fear should help a fear when both are one;
She was as sick in heart, though not in face,
With inward grief, though not with outward moan:
But she clasp’d up the closure of the tongue,
For fear that words should do her body wrong.

Cannot the body weep without the eyes?
Yes, and frame deepest canzons of lament;
Cannot the body fear without it lies
Upon the outward shew of discontent?
Yes, yes, the deeper fear sits in the heart,
And keeps the parliament of inward smart.

So sin did snare in mind, and not in face, 10
The dragon’s jaw, the hissing serpent’s sting;
Some liv’d, some died, some ran a fearful race,
Some did prevent[498] that which ill fortunes bring:
All were officious servitors to fear,
And her pale connizance[499] in heart did wear.

Malice condemn’d herself guilty of hate,
With a malicious mouth of envious spite;
For Nemesis is her own cruel fate,
Turning her wrath upon her own delight:
We need no witness for a guilty thought,
Which to condemn itself, a thousand brought.

For fear deceives itself in being fear, 11
It fears itself in being still afraid;
It fears to weep, and yet it sheds a tear;
It fears itself, and yet it is obey’d:
The usher unto death, a death to doom,
A doom to die in horror’s fearful room:

His own betrayer, yet fears to betray, 12
He fears his life by reason of his name;
He fears lament, because it brings decay,
And blames himself in that he merits blame:
He is tormented, yet denies the pain;
He is the king of fear, yet loath to reign.

His sons were they which slept and dreamt of fear, 13
A waking sleep, and yet a sleepy waking,
Which pass’d that night more longer than a year,
Being grief’s prisoners, and of sorrow’s taking:
Slept in night’s dungeon insupportable,
Lodg’d in night’s horror too endurable.

O sleep, the image of long-lasting woe!
O waking image of long-lasting sleep!
The hollow cave where visions come and go,
Where serpents hiss, where mandrakes groan and creep:
O fearful show, betrayer of a soul,
Dyeing each heart in white, each white in foul!

A guileful hole, a prison of deceit, 14
Yet nor deceit nor guile in being dead;
Snare without snarer, net without a bait,
A common lodge, and yet without a bed;
A hollow-sounding vault, known and unknown,
Yet not for mirth, but too, too well for moan.

’Tis a free prison, a chain’d liberty, 15
A freedom’s cave, a sergeant and a bail;
It keeps close prisoners, yet doth set them free,
Their clogs not iron, but a clog of wail;
It stays them not, and yet they cannot go,
Their chain is discontent, their prison woe.