RADERUS..

WHY this man gelded Martial, I amuse; Except himself alone his tricks would use,

For though her eyes be small, her mouth is great;
Though their's be ivory, yet her teeth be jet;
Though they be dim, yet she is light enough,
And though her harsh hair 's foul, her skin is rough;

MERCURIUS GALLO-BELGICUS.

LIKE Esop's fellow-slaves, O Mercury,
Which could do all things, thy faith is; and I
Like Esop's self, which nothing; I confess,
I should have had more faith, if thou had'st less;
Thy credit lost thy credit: 't is sin to do,
In this case, as thou would'st be done unto,
To believe all: change thy name; thou art like
Mercury in stealing, but liest like a Greek.
Compassion in the world again is bred :
Ralphius is sick, the broker keeps his bed.

ELEGIES.

ELEGY I.

JEALOUSY.

Give her thine, and she hath a maidenhead.
These things are beauty's elements; where these
Meet in one, that one must, as perfect, please.
If red and white, and each good quality
Be in thy wench, ne'er ask where it doth lie.
In buying things perfum'd, we ask if there
Be musk and amber in it, but not where.
Though all her parts be not in th' usual place,
Sh' hath yet the anagrams of a good face.
If we might put the letters but one way,
In that lean dearth of words, what could we say?
When by the gamut some musicians make
A perfect song; others will undertake,
By the same gamut chang'd, to equal it.
Things simply good can never be unfit;
She's fair as any, if all be like her;
And if none be, then she is singular.
All love is wonder; if we justly do

Account her wonderful, why not lovely too?
Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies;
Choose this face, chang'd by no deformities.
Women are all like angels; the fair be

Like those which fell to worse: but such as she,
Like to good angels, nothing can impair:

And yet complain'st of his great jealousy:

If swoln with poison he lay in 's last bed, His body with a serecloth covered,

Drawing his breath, as thick and short as can
The nimblest crocheting musician,
Ready with loathsome vomiting to spew
His soul out of one Hell into a new,
Made deaf with his poor kindred's howling cries,
Begging with few feign'd tears great legacies,
Thou would'st not weep, but jolly and frolic be,
As a slave which to morrow should be free;
Yet weep'st thou, when thou seest him hungerly
Swallow his own death, heart's-bane jealousy.
O give him many thanks, he 's courteous,
That in suspecting kindly warneth us;
We must not, as we us'd, flout openly
In scoffing riddles his deformity:
Nor, at his board together being sat,
With words, nor touch, scarce looks adulterate.
Nor, when he swoln and pamper'd with high fare
Sits down and snorts, cag'd in his basket chair,
Must we usurp his own bed any more,
Nor kiss and play in his house, as before.
Now do I see my danger; for it is
His realm, his castle, and his diocese.

But if (as envious men, which would revile

Their prince, or coin his gold, themselves exile

Into another country, and do it there)

We play in another's house, what should we fear? There will we scorn his household policies,

His silly plots and pensionary spies;

As the inhabitants of Thames' right side

For one night's revel silk and gold we choose,
But in long journies cloth and leather use.
Beauty is barren oft; best husbands say,
There is best land, where there is foulest way.
Oh, what a sovereign plaster will she be,
If thy past sins have taught thee jealousy!
Here needs no spies nor eunuchs, her commit
Safe to thy foes, yea, to a marmosit.
Like Belgia's cities, when the country drowns,
That dirty foulness guards and arms the towns;
So doth her face guard her; and so for thee,
Who, forc'd by business, absent oft must be ;
She, whose face, like clouds, turns the day to night,
Who, mightier than the sea, makes Moors seem
white;

Whom, though seven years she in the stews had laid,
A nunnery durst receive, and think a maid;
And though in childbirth's labour she did lie,
Midwives would swear 't were but a tympany;
Whom, if she accuse herself, I credit less
Than witches, which impossibles confess.
One like none, and lik'd of none, fittest were;
For things in fashion every man will wear.

ELEGY III.

CHANGE.

ALTHOUGH thy hand and faith, and good works too,

ELEGY II.

THE ANAGRAM.

MARRY, and love thy Flavia, for she

Hath all things, whereby others beauteous be;

Yea though thou fall back, that apostasy
Confirms thy love; yet much, much I fear thee.
Women are like the arts, forc'd unto none,
Open to all searchers, unpriz'd if unknown.
If I have caught a bird, and let him fly,
Another fowler, using those means as I,
May catch the same bird; and as these things be,
Women are made for men, not him, nor me.

But, oh! too common ill, I brought with me
That, which betray'd me to mine enemy:
A loud perfume, which at my entrance cry'd
E'en at thy father's nose, so were we spy'd.
When, like a tyrant king, that in his bed
Smelt gunpowder, the pale wretch shivered;
Had it been some bad smell, he would have thought
That his own feet or breath the smell had wrought.
But as we in our isle imprisoned,

Foxes, goats, and all beasts,change when they please,
Shall women, more hot, wily, wild, than these,
Be bound to one man, and bid Nature then
Idly make them apter t' endure than men?
They're our clogs, not their own; if a man be
Chain'd to a galley, yet the galley 's free. [there,
Who hath a plough-land, casts all his seed-corn
And yet allows his ground more corn should bear;
Though Danuby into the sea must flow,
The sea receives the Rhine, Volga, and Po,
By Nature, which gave it this liberty.
Thou lov'st, but oh! can'st thou love it and me?
Likeness glues love; and if that thou so do,
To make us like and love, must I change too?
More than thy hate, I hate 't; rather let me
Allow her change, than change as oft as she;
And so not teach, but force my opinion,
To love not any one, nor every one.
To live in one land is captivity,
To run all countries a wild roguery;
Waters stink soon, if in one place they 'bide,
And in the vast sea are more putrify'd:
But when they kiss one bank, and leaving this
Never look back, but the next bank do kiss,
Then are they purest; change is the nursery
Of music, joy, life, and eternity.

ELEGY IV.

THE PERFUME.

ONCE, and but once, found in thy company,
All thy supposed 'scapes are laid on me ;
And as a thief at bar is question'd there

By all the men that have been robb'd that year,'
So am I (by this traitorous means surpris'd)
By the hydroptic father catechis'd.
Though he had wont to search with glazed eyes,
As though he came to kill a cockatrice;
Though he hath oft sworn, that he would remove
Thy beauty's beauty, and food of our love,
Hope of his goods, if I with thee were seen;
Yet close and secret, as our souls, we 've been.
Though thy immortal mother, which doth lie
Still buried in her bed, yet will not die,
Takes this advantage to sleep out day-light,
And watch thy entries and returns all night;
And, when she takes thy hand, and would seem kind,
Doth search what rings and armlets she can find;
And kissing notes the colour of thy face,
And fearing lest thou 'rt swoln, doth thee embrace;
And, to try if thou long, doth name strange meats,
And notes thy paleness, blushes, sighs, and sweats,
And politicly will to thee confess

The sins of her own youth's rank lustiness;
Yet love these sorc'ries did remove, and move
Thee to gull thine own mother for my love.
Thy little brethren, which like fairy sprites
Oft skipp'd into our chamber those sweet nights,
And kiss'd and dandled on thy father's knee,
Were brib'd next day; to tell what they did see:
The grim eight foot high iron-bound serving-man,
That oft names God in oaths, and only then,
He that, to bar the first gate, doth as wide
As the great Rhodian Colossus stride,
Which, if in Hell no other pains there were,
Makes me fear Hell, because he must be there :
Though by thy father he were hir'd to this,
Could never witness any touch or kiss.

Where cattle only, and divers dogs are bred,
The precious unicorns strange monsters call,
So thought he sweet strange, that had none at all.
I taught my silks their whistling to forbear,
E'en my oppress'd shoes dumb and speechless were:
Only, thou bitter sweet, whom I had laid
Next me, me traitorously hast betray'd,
And unsuspected hast invisibly

At once fled unto him, and stay'd with me.
Base excrement of earth, which dost confound
Sense from distinguishing the sick from sound;
By thee the silly amorous sucks bis death,
By drawing in a leprous harlot's breath;
By thee the greatest stain to man's estate
Falls on us, to be call'd effeminate;
Though you be much lov'd in the prince's hall,
There things, that seem, exceed substantial.
Gods, when ye fum'd on altars, were pleas'd well,
Because you're burnt, not that they lik'd your smell.
You 're loathsome all, being ta'en simply alone,
Shall we love ill things join'd, and hate each one?
If you were good, your good doth soon decay;
And you are rare, that takes the good away.
All my perfumes I give most willingly

T" embalm thy father's corse. What! will he die?

ELEGY V.

HIS PICTURE.

HERE take my picture; though I bid farewell: Thine in my heart, where my soul dwells, shall dwell, 'Tis like me now, but, I dead, 't will be more, When we are shadows both, than 't was before. When weather-beaten I come back; my hand Perhaps with rude oars torn, or sun-beams tann'd; My face and breast of hair-cloth, and my head With care's harsh sudden hoariness o'erspread; My body a sack of bones, broken within, And powder's blue stains scatter'd on my skin: If rival fools tax thee t' have lov'd a man So foul and coarse, as, oh! I may seem then, This shall say what I was: and thou shalt say, "Do his hurts reach me? doth my worth decay? Or do they reach his judging mind, that be Should now love less, what he did love to see? That which in him was fair and delicate, Was but the milk, which in love's childish state Did nurse it: who now is grown strong enough To feed on that, which to weak tastes seems tough.”

ELEGY VI.

On! let me not serve so, as those men serve, Whom honour's smokes at once flatter and starve: Poorly enrich'd with great men's words' or looks: Nor so write my name in thy loving books;

ELEGY IX.

THE AUTUMNAL.

No spring, nor summer's beauty, hath such grace,
As I have seen in one autumnal face.
Young beauties force our loves, and that's a rape;
This doth but counsel, yet you cannot 'scape.
If 't were a shame to love, here 't were no shame :
Affections here take reverence's name.
Were her first years the golden age; that 's true.
But now she's gold oft try'd, and ever new.
That was her torrid and inflaming time;

This is her habitable tropic clime.
Fair eyes; who asks more heat than comes from
He in a fever wishes pestilence.
[hence,

Call not these wrinkles graves: if graves they were, They were Love's graves; or else he is no where. Yet lies not Love dead here, but here doth sit

Vow'd to this trench, like an anachorit. And here, till her's, which must be his death, come, He doth not dig a grave, but build a tomb. Here dwells he; though he sojourn ev'ry where In progress, yet his standing house is here. Here, where still evening is, not noon nor night, Where no voluptuousness, yet all delight. In all her words, unto all hearers fit,

You may at revels, you at councils sit.
This is Love's timber, youth his underwood;

There he, as wine in June, enrages blood,
Which then comes seasonablest, when our taste
And appetite to other things is past.
Xerxes' strange Lydian love, the platane tree,

Was lov'd for age, none being so old as she,
Or else because, being young, nature did bless
Her youth with age's glory-barrenness.
If we love things long sought; age is a thing,
Which we are fifty years in compassing:
If transitory things, which soon decay,

Age must be loveliest at the latest day.
But name not winter-faces, whose skin's slack;
Lank, as an unthrift's purse, but a soul's sack:
Whose eyes seek light within; for all here's shade;
Whose mouths are holes, rather worn out than
made;

Whose every tooth to a several place is gone
To vex the soul at resurrection;
Name not these living death-heads unto me,
For these not ancient but antique be:

I hate extremes: yet I had rather stay

With tombs than cradles, to wear out the day. Since such Love's natural station is, may still My love descend, and journey down the hill; Not panting after growing beauties; so

I shall ebb on with them, who homeward go.

ELEGY X.

THE DREAM.

IMAGE of her, whom I love more than she,
Whose fair impression in my faithful heart
Makes me her medal, and makes her love me,
As kings do coins, to which their stamps impart
The value: go, and take my heart from hence,
Which now is grown too great and good for me.
Honours oppress weak spirits, and our sense

Strong objects dull; the more, the less we see.

When you are gone, and reason gone with you,

Then Fantasy is queen, and soul, and all;
She can present joys meaner than you do;
Convenient, and more proportional.
So if I dream I bave you, I have you:

For all our joys are but fantastical.
And so I 'scape the pain, for pain is true;
And sleep, which locks up sense, doth lock out all.
After such a fruition I shall wake,

And, but the waking, nothing shall repent;
And shall to love more thankful sonnets make,
Than if more honour, tears, and pains were spent.
But, dearest heart, and, dearer image, stay,

Alas! true joys at best are dreams enough;
Though you stay here, you pass too fast away:
For even at first life's taper is a snuff.
Fill'd with her love, may I be rather grown
Mad with much heart, than idiot with none,

ELEGY XL

DEATH.

LANGUAGE, thou art too narrow, and too weak
To ease us now, great sorrows cannot speak.
If we could sigh out accents, and weep words,
Grief wears and lessens, that tear's breath affords.
Sad hearts, the less they seem, the more they are,
(So guiltiest men stand mutest at the bar)
Not that they know not, feel not their estate,
But extreme sense hath made them desperate;
Sorrow, to whom we owe all that we be,
Tyrant in th' fifth and greatest monarchy,
Was 't that she did possess all hearts before,
Thou hast kill'd her, to make thy empire more?
Knew'st thou some would, that knew her not, lament,
As in a deluge perish th' innocent?

Was 't not enough to have that palace won,
But thou must raze it too, that was undone ?
Hadst thou stay'd there, and look'd out at her eyes,
All had ador'd thee, that now from thee flies;
For they let out more light than they took in,
They told not when, but did the day begin;
She was too saphirine and clear for thee;
Clay, flint, and jet now thy fit dwellings be:
Alas! she was too pure, but not too weak;
Who e'er saw crystal ordnance but would break ?
And if we be thy conquest, by her fall
Th' hast lost thy end, in her we perish all:
Or if we live, we live but to rebel,

That know her better now, who knew her well.
If we should vapour out, and pine and die,
Since she first went, that were not misery:
She chang'd our world with her's: now she is gone,
Mirth and prosperity's oppression:
For of all moral virtues she was all,
That ethics speak of virtues cardinal.
Her soul was paradise: the cherubin
Set to keep it was Grace, that kept out Sin:
She had no more than let in Death, for we
All reap consumption from one fruitful tree:
God took her hence, lest some of us should love
Her, like that plant, him and his laws above:
And when we tears, he mercy shed in this,
To raise our minds to Heav'n, where now she is
Whom if her virtues would have let her stay,
We'd had a saint, have now a holiday.

Her heart was that strange bush, where sacred fire,
Religion, did not consume, but inspire

Such piety, so chaste use of God's day,
That what we turn to feast, she turn'd to pray,
And did prefigure here in devout taste
The rest of her high sabbath, which shall last.
Angels did hand her up, who next God dwell,
(For she was of that order whence most fell)
Her body's left with us, lest some had said,
She could not die, except they saw her dead;
For from less virtue and less beauteousness
The Gentiles fram'd them gods and goddesses;
The ravenous Earth, that now woos her to be
Earth too, will be a Lemnia; and the tree,
That wraps that crystal in a wooden tomb,
Shall be took up spruce, fill'd with diamond:
And we her sad glad friends all bear a part
Of grief, for all would break a stoic's heart.

ELEGY XII.

UPON THE

LOSS OF HIS MISTRESS'S CHAIN, FOR WHICH HE MADE SATISFACTION.

NOT, that in colour it was like thy hair,
Armlets of that thou may'st still let me wear:
Nor, that thy hand it oft embrac'd and kiss'd,
For so it had that good, which oft I miss'd :
Nor for that silly old morality,

That as these links were knit, our loves should be;
Mourn I, that I thy sevenfold chain have lost :
Nor for the luck's sake; but the bitter cost.
O! shall twelve righteous angels, which as yet
No leaven of vile solder did admit;
Nor yet by any way have stray'd or gone
From the first state of their creation;
Angels, which Heaven commanded to provide
All things to me, and be my faithful guide;
To gain new friends, t' appease old enemies;
To comfort my soul, when I lie or rise:
Shall these twelve innocents by thy severe
Sentence (dread judge) my sin's great burden bear?
Shall they be damn'd, and in the furnace thrown,
And punish'd for offences not their own?
They save not me, they do not ease my pains,
When in that Hell they're burnt and ty'd in chains:
Were they but crowns of France, I cared not,
For most of them their natural country rot
I think possesseth, they come here to us,
So pale, so lame, so lean, so ruinous;
And howsoe'er French kings most Christian be,
Their crowns are circumcis'd most Jewishly;
Or were they Spanish stamps still travelling,
That are become as catholic as their king,
Those unlick'd bear-whelps, unfil'd pistolets,
That (more than cannon-shot) avails or lets,
Which, negligently left unrounded, look
Like many angled figures in the book
Of some dread conjurer, that would enforce
Nature, as these do justice, from her course.
Which, as the soul quickens head, feet, and heart,
As streams like veins run through th' Earth's ev'ry
Visit all countries, and bave slily made [part,
Gorgeous France ruin'd; ragged and decay'd
Scotland, which knew no state, proud in one day;
And mangled seventeen-headed Belgia:
or were it such gold as that, wherewithall
Almighty chymics from each mineral

Having by subtle fire a soul out-pull'd, ` Are dirtily and desperately gull'd:

I would not spit to quench the fire they 're in,
For they are guilty of much heinous sin.
But shall my harmless angels perish? Shall
I lose my guard, my ease, my food, my all?
Much hope, which they should nourish, will be dead
Much of my able youth, and lusty head
Will vanish, if thou, love, let them alone,
For thou wilt love me less, when they are gone;
And be content, that some lewd squeaking crier,
Well pleas'd with one lean thread-bare groat for hire,
May like a devil roar through every street,
And gall the finder's conscience, if they meet.
Or let me creep to some dread conjurer,
That with fantastic scenes fills full much paper;
Which hath divided Heaven in tenements, [rents
And with whores, thieves, and murderers, stuff'd his
So full, that though he pass them all in sin,
He leaves himself no room to enter in.

But if, when all his art and time is spent,
He say 't will ne'er be found, yet be content;
Receive from him the doom ungrudgingly,
Because he is the mouth of Destiny.

Thou say'st, alas! the gold doth still remain, Though it be chang'd, and put into a chain; So in the first fall'n angels resteth still Wisdom and knowledge, but 't is turn'd to ill: As these should do good works, and should provide Necessities; but now must nurse thy pride: And they are still bad angels; mine are none: For form gives being, and their form is gone: Pity these angels yet: their dignities Pass virtues, powers, and principalities.

But thou art resolute; thy will be done; Yet with such anguish, as her only son The mother in the hungry grave doth lay, Unto the fire these martyrs I betray. Good souls, (for you give life to every thing) Good angels, (for good messages you bring) Destin'd you might have been to such an one, As would have lov'd and worshipp'd you alone: One that would suffer hunger, nakedness, Yea death, ere he would make your number less. But I am guilty of your sad decay: May your few fellows longer with me stay.

But-oh, thou wretched finder, whom I hate
So, that I almost pity thy estate,
Gold being the heaviest metal amongst all,
May my most heavy curse upon thee fall:
Here fetter'd, manacled, and hang'd in chains,
First may'st thou be; then chain'd to hellish pains;
Or be with foreign gold brib'd to betray
Thy country, and fail both of it and thy pay.
May the next thing, thou stoop'st to reach, contain
Poison, whose nimble fume rot thy moist brain:
Or libels, or some interdicted thing,
Which, negligently kept, thy ruin bring.
Lust-bred diseases rot thee; and dwell with thee
Itching desire, and no ability.

May all the evils, that gold ever wrought;
All mischief, that all devils ever thought;
Want after plenty; poor and gouty age;
The plague of travailers, love and marriage,
Afflict thee; and at thy life's last moment
May thy swoln sins themselves to thec present.

But I forgive: repent, thou honest man:
Gold is restorative, restore it then:
But if that from it thou be'st loth to part,
Because 't is cordial, would 't were at thy heart,