Chapter 19

The plant, thus abled, to itself did force A place where no place was by Nature's course, As air from water, water fleets away From thicker bodies; by this root thronged so His spungy confines gave him place to grow: Just as in our streets, when the people stay To see the prince, and so fill up the way That weasels scarce could pass; when he comes near They throng and cleave up, and a passage clear, As if for that time their round bodies flatten'd were.

XV.

His right arm he thrust out towards the east, Westward his left; the ends did themselves digest Into ten lesser strings, these fingers were: And, as a slumberer, stretching on his bed, This way he this, and that way scattered His other leg, which feet with toes upbear; Grew on his middle part, the first day, hair. To shew that in love's business he should still A dealer be, and be used, well or ill: His apples kindle, his leaves force of conception kill.

XVI.

A mouth, but dumb, he hath; blind eyes, deaf ears, And to his shoulders dangle subtle hairs; A young Colossus there he stands upright; And, as that ground by him were conquered, A lazy garland wears he on his head Enchased with little fruits so red and bright, That for them ye would call your love's lips white; So of a lone unhaunted place possess'd, Did this Soul's second inn, built by the guest, This living buried man, this quiet mandrake, rest.

XVII.

No lustful woman came this plant to grieve, But 'twas because there was none yet but Eve, And she (with other purpose) killed it quite: Her sin had now brought in infirmities, And so her cradled child the moist-red eyes Had never shut, nor slept, since it saw light: Poppy she knew, she knew the mandrake's might, And tore up both, and so cooled her child's blood. Unvirtuous weeds might long unvexed have stood, But he's short-lived that with his death can do most good.

XVIII.

To an unfettered Soul's quick nimble haste Are falling stars and heart's thoughts but slow-paced, Thinner than burnt air flies this Soul, and she, Whom four new-coming and four parting suns Had found, and left the mandrake's tenant, runs, Thoughtless of change, when her firm destiny Confined and enjailed her that seemed so free Into a small blue shell, the which a poor Warm bird o'erspread, and sat still evermore, Till her enclosed child kicked, and picked itself a door.

XIX.

Out crept a sparrow, this Soul's moving inn, On whose raw arms stiff feathers now begin, As children's teeth through gums, to break with pain: His flesh is jelly yet, and his bones threads; All a new downy mantle overspreads: A mouth he opes, which would as much contain As his late house, and the first hour speaks plain, And chirps aloud for meat: meat fit for men His father steals for him, and so feeds then One that within a month will beat him from his hen.

XX.

In this world's youth wise Nature did make haste, Things ripened sooner, and did longer last: Already this hot cock in bush and tree, In field and tent, o'erflutters his next hen: He asks her not who did so taste, nor when; Nor if his sister or his niece she be, Nor doth she pule for his inconstancy If in her sight he change; nor doth refuse The next that calls; both liberty do use. Where store is of both kinds, both kinds may freely choose.

XXI.

Men, till they took laws, which made freedom less, Their daughters and their sisters did ingress; Till now unlawful, therefore ill, 'twas not; So jolly, that it can move this Soul. Is The body so free of his kindnesses, That self-preserving it hath now forgot, And slack'neth not the Soul's and body's knot, Which temp'rance straitens? Freely on his she-friends He blood and spirit, pith and marrow, spends; Ill steward of himself, himself in three years ends.

XXII.

Else might he long have lived; man did not know Of gummy blood which doth in holly grow, How to make bird-lime, nor how to deceive, With feigned calls, his nets, or enwrapping snare, The free inhabitants of the pliant air. Man to beget, and woman to conceive, Asked not of roots, nor of cock-sparrows, leave; Yet chooseth he, though none of these he fears, Pleasantly three; then straitened twenty years To live, and to increase his race himself outwears.

XXIII.

This coal with over-blowing quenched and dead, The Soul from her too active organs fled To a brook. A female fish's sandy roe With the male's jelly newly leavened was; For they had intertouched as they did pass, And one of those small bodies, fitted so, This Soul informed, and able it to row Itself with finny oars, which she did fit, Her scales seemed yet of parchment, and as yet Perchance a fish, but by no name you could call it.

XXIV.

When goodly, like a ship in her full trim, A swan so white, that you may unto him Compare all whiteness, but himself to none, Glided along, and as he glided watched, And with his arched neck this poor fish catched: It moved with state, as if to look upon Low things it scorned; and yet before that one Could think he sought it, he had swallowed clear This and much such, and unblamed, devoured there All but who too swift, too great, or well-armed, were.

XXV.

Now swam a prison in a prison put, And now this Soul in double walls was shut, Till melted with the swan's digestive fire She left her house, the fish, and vapoured forth: Fate not affording bodies of more worth For her as yet, bids her again retire To another fish, to any new desire Made a new prey; for he that can to none Resistance make, nor complaint, is sure gone; Weakness invites, but silence feasts oppression.

XXVI.

Pace with the native stream this fish doth keep, And journeys with her towards the glassy deep, But oft retarded; once with a hidden net, Though with great windows, (for when need first taught These tricks to catch food, then they were not wrought As now, with curious greediness, to let None 'scape, but few and fit for use to get,) As in this trap a ravenous pike was ta'en, Who, though himself distress'd, would fain have slain This wretch; so hardly are ill habits left again.

XXVII.

Here by her smallness she two deaths o'erpast, Once innocence 'scaped, and left the oppressor fast; The net through swam, she keeps the liquid path, And whether she leap up sometimes to breathe And suck in air, or find it underneath, Or working parts like mills or limbecs hath, To make the water thin, and air like faith, Cares not, but safe the place she's come unto, Where fresh with salt waves meet, and what to do She knows not, but between both makes a board or two.

XXVIII.

So far from hiding her guests water is, That she shews them in bigger quantities Than they are. Thus her, doubtful of her way, For game, and not for hunger, a sea-pie Spied through his traitorous spectacle from high The silly fish, where it disputing lay, And to end her doubts and her, bears her away; Exalted, she's but to the exalter's good, (As are by great ones men which lowly stood;) It's raised to be the raiser's instrument and food.

XXIX.

Is any kind subject to rape like fish? Ill unto man they neither do nor wish; Fishers they kill not, nor with noise awake; They do not hunt, nor strive to make a prey Of beasts, nor their young sons to bear away; Fowls they pursue not, nor do undertake To spoil the nests industrious birds do make; Yet them all these unkind kinds feed upon; To kill them is an occupation, And laws make fasts and lents for their destruction.

XXX.

A sudden stiff land-wind in that self hour To sea-ward forced this bird that did devour The fish; he cares not, for with ease he flies, Fat gluttony's best orator: at last, So long he hath flown, and hath flown so fast, That, leagues o'erpast at sea, now tired he lies, And with his prey, that till then languished, dies: The souls, no longer foes, two ways did err. The fish I follow, and keep no calender Of the other: he lives yet in some great officer.

XXXI.

Into an embryo fish our Soul is thrown, And in due time thrown out again, and grown To such vastness, as if unmanacled From Greece Morea were, and that, by some Earthquake unrooted, loose Morea swam; Or seas from Afric's body had severed And torn the Hopeful promontory's head: This fish would seem these, and, when all hopes fail, A great ship overset, or without sail, Hulling, might (when this was a whelp) be like this whale.

XXXII.

At every stroke his brazen fins do take More circles in the broken sea they make Than cannons' voices when the air they tear: His ribs are pillars, and his high-arched roof Of bark, that blunts best steel, is thunder-proof: Swim in him swallowed dolphins without fear, And feel no sides, as if his vast womb were Some inland sea; and ever, as he went, He spouted rivers up, as if he meant To join our seas with seas above the firmament.

XXXIII.

He hunts not fish, but, as an officer Stays in his court, at his own net, and there All suitors of all sorts themselves enthral; So on his back lies this whale wantoning, And in his gulf-like throat sucks every thing, That passeth near. Fish chaseth fish, and all, Flier and follower, in this whirlpool fall: Oh! might not states of more equality Consist? and is it of necessity That thousand guiltless smalls to make one great must die?

XXXIV.

Now drinks he up seas, and he eats up flocks; He jostles islands, and he shakes firm rocks: Now in a roomful house this Soul doth float, And, like a prince, she sends her faculties To all her limbs, distant as provinces. The sun hath twenty times both Crab and Goat Parched, since first launched forth this living boat: 'Tis greatest now, and to destruction Nearest; there's no pause at perfection; Greatness a period hath, but hath no station.

XXXV.

Two little fishes, whom he never harmed, Nor fed on their kind, two, not th'roughly armed With hope that they could kill him, nor could do Good to themselves by his death, (they did not eat His flesh, nor suck those oils which thence outstreat,) Conspired against him; and it might undo The plot of all that the plotters were two, But that they fishes were, and could not speak. How shall a tyrant wise strong projects break, If wretches can on them the common anger wreak?

XXXVI.

The flail-finned thresher and steel-beaked sword-fish Only attempt to do what all do wish: The thresher backs him, and to beat begins; The sluggard whale leads to oppression, And t' hide himself from shame and danger, down Begins to sink: the sword-fish upwards spins, And gores him with his beak; his staff-like fins So well the one, his sword the other, plies, That, now a scoff and prey, this tyrant dies, And (his own dole) feeds with himself all companies.

XXXVII.

Who will revenge his death? or who will call Those to account that thought and wrought his fall? The heirs of slain kings we see are often so Transported with the joy of what they get, That they revenge and obsequies forget; Nor will against such men the people go, Because he's now dead to whom they should show Love in that act. Some kings, by vice, being grown So needy of subjects' love, that of their own They think they lose if love be to the dead prince shown.

XXXVIII.

This soul, now free from prison and passion, Hath yet a little indignation That so small hammers should so soon down beat So great a castle; and having for her house Got the strait cloister of a wretched mouse, (As basest men, that have not what to eat, Nor enjoy ought, do far more hate the great Than they who good reposed estates possess,) This Soul, late taught that great things might by less Be slain, to gallant mischief doth herself address.

XXXIX.

Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant, (The only harmless great thing,) the giant Of beasts, who thought none had to make him wise, But to be just and thankful, both to offend, (Yet Nature hath given him no knees to bend,) Himself he up-props, on himself relies, And, foe to none, suspects no enemies, Still sleeping stood; vexed not his fantasy Black dreams; like an unbent bow carelessly His sinewy proboscis did remissly lie.

XL.

In which, as in a gallery, this mouse Walked, and surveyed the rooms of this vast house, And to the brain, the Soul's bed-chamber, went, And gnawed the life-cords there: like a whole town Clean undermined, the slain beast tumbled down: With him the murderer dies, whom envy sent To kill, not 'scape, (for only he that meant To die did ever kill a man of better room,) And thus he made his foe his prey and tomb: Who cares not to turn back may any whither come.

XLI.

Next housed this Soul a wolf's yet unborn whelp, Till the best midwife, Nature, gave it help To issue: it could kill as soon as go. Abel, as white and mild as his sheep were, (Who, in that trade, of church and kingdoms there Was the first type,) was still infested so With this wolf, that it bred his loss and woe; And yet his bitch, his sentinel, attends The flock so near, so well warns and defends, That the wolf, hopeless else, to corrupt her intends.

XLII.

He took a course, which since successfully Great men have often taken, to espy The counsels, or to break the plots, of foes; To Abel's tent he stealeth in the dark, On whose skirts the bitch slept: ere she could bark, Attached her with strait gripes, yet he called those Embracements of love: to love's work he goes, Where deeds move more than words; nor doth she show, Nor much resist, no needs he straiten so His prey, for were she loose she would not bark nor go.

XLIII.

He hath engaged her; his she wholly bides; Who not her own, none other's secrets hides. If to the flock he come, and Abel there, She feigns hoarse barkings, but she biteth not! Her faith is quite, but not her love forgot. At last a trap, of which some everywhere Abel had placed, ends all his loss and fear By the wolf's death; and now just time it was That a quick Soul should give life to that mass Of blood in Abel's bitch, and thither this did pass.

XLIV.

Some have their wives, their sisters some begot, But in the lives of emperors you shall not Read of a lust the which may equal this: This wolf begot himself, and finished What he began alive when he was dead. Son to himself, and father too, he is A riding lust, for which schoolmen would miss A proper name. The whelp of both these lay In Abel's tent, and with soft Moaba, His sister, being young, it used to sport and play.

XLV.

He soon for her too harsh and churlish grew, And Abel (the dam dead) would use this new For the field; being of two kinds thus made, He, as his dam, from sheep drove wolves away, And, as his sire, he made them his own prey. Five years he lived, and cozened with his trade, Then, hopeless that his faults were hid, betrayed Himself by flight, and by all followed, From dogs a wolf, from wolves a dog, he fled, And, like a spy, to both sides false, he perished.

XLVI.

It quickened next a toyful ape, and so Gamesome it was, that it might freely go From tent to tent, and with the children play: His organs now so like theirs he doth find, That why he cannot laugh and speak his mind He wonders. Much with all, most he doth stay With Adam's fifth daughter, Siphatecia; Doth gaze on her, and where she passeth pass, Gathers her fruits, and tumbles on the grass; And, wisest of that kind, the first true lover was.

XLVII.

He was the first that more desired to have One than another; first that e'er did crave Love by mute signs, and had no power to speak; First that could make love-faces, or could do The vaulter's somersalts, or used to woo With hoiting gambols, his own bones to break, To make his mistress merry, or to wreak Her anger on himself. Sins against kind They easily do that can let feed their mind With outward beauty; beauty they in boys and beasts do find.

XLVIII.

By this misled too low things men have proved, And too high; beasts and angels have been loved: This ape, though else th'rough vain, in this was wise; He reached at things too high, but open way There was, and he knew not she would say Nay. His toys prevail not; likelier means he tries; He gazeth on her face with tear-shot eyes, And uplifts subtlely, with his russet paw, Her kid-skin apron without fear or awe Of Nature; Nature hath no jail, though she hath law.

XLIX.

First she was silly, and knew not what he meant: That virtue, by his touches chafed and spent, Succeeds an itchy warmth, that melts her quite; She knew not first, nor cares not what he doth; And willing half and more, more than half wrath, She neither pulls nor pushes, but outright Now cries, and now repents; when Thelemite, Her brother, entered, and a great stone threw After the ape, who thus prevented flew. This house, thus battered down, the Soul possessed anew.

L.

And whether by this change she lose or win, She comes out next where the ape would have gone in. Adam and Eve had mingled bloods, and now, Like chemic's equal fires, her temperate womb Had stewed and formed it; and part did become A spungy liver, that did richly allow, Like a free conduit on a high hill's brow, Life-keeping moisture unto every part; Part hardened itself to a thicker heart, Whose busy furnaces life's spirits do impart.

LI.

Another part became the well of sense, The tender, well-armed feeling brain, from whence Those sinew strings which do our bodies tie Are ravelled out; and fast there by one end Did this Soul limbs, these limbs a Soul attend; And now they joined, keeping some quality Of every past shape; she knew treachery, Rapine, deceit, and lust, and ills enough To be a woman: Themech she is now, Sister and wife to Cain, Cain that first did plough.

LII.

Whoe'er thou beest that read'st this sullen writ, Which just so much courts thee as thou dost it, Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me Why ploughing, building, ruling, and the rest, Or most of those arts whence our lives are blest, By cursed Cain's race invented be, And blest Seth vexed us with astronomy. There's nothing simply good nor ill alone; Of every quality Comparison The only measure is, and judge Opinion.

MICHAEL DRAYTON,

The author of 'Polyolbion,' was born in the parish of Atherston, in Warwickshire, about the year 1563. He was the son of a butcher, but displayed such precocity that several persons of quality, such as Sir Walter Aston and the Countess of Bedford, patronised him. In his childhood he was eager to know what strange kind of beings poets were; and on coming to Oxford, (if, indeed, he did study there,) is said to have importuned his tutor to make him, if possible, a poet. He was supported chiefly, through his life, by the Lady Bedford. He paid court, without success, to King James. In 1593 (having long ere this become that 'strange thing a poet') he published a collection of his Pastorals, and afterwards his 'Barons' Wars' and 'England's Heroical Epistles,' which are both rhymed histories. In 1612-13 he published the first part of 'Polyolbion,' and in 1622 completed the work. In 1626 we hear of him being styled Poet Laureate, but the title then implied neither royal appointment, nor fee, nor, we presume, duty. In 1627 he published 'The Battle of Agincourt,' 'The Court of Faerie,' and other poems; and, three years later, a book called 'The Muses' Elysium.' He had at last found an asylum in the family of the Earl of Dorset; whose noble lady, Lady Anne Clifford, subsequently Countess of Pembroke, and who had been, we saw, Daniel's pupil, after Drayton's death in 1631, erected him a monument, with a gold-lettered inscription, in Westminster Abbey.

The main pillar of Drayton's fame is 'Polyolbion,' which forms a poetical description of England, in thirty songs or books, to which the learned Camden appended notes. The learning and knowledge of this poem are exten- sive, and many of the descriptions are true and spirited, but the space of ground traversed is too large, and the form of versification is too heavy, for so long a flight. Campbell justly remarks,--'On a general survey, the mass of his poetry has no strength or sustaining spirit equal to its bulk. There is a perpetual play of fancy on its surface; but the impulses of passion, and the guidance of judgment, give it no strong movements or consistent course.'

Drayton eminently suits a 'Selection' such as ours, since his parts are better than his whole.

DESCRIPTION OF MORNING.

When Phoebus lifts his head out of the winter's wave, No sooner doth the earth her flowery bosom brave, At such time as the year brings on the pleasant spring, But hunts-up to the morn the feather'd sylvans sing: And in the lower grove, as on the rising knoll, Upon the highest spray of every mounting pole, Those choristers are perch'd with many a speckled breast. Then from her burnish'd gate the goodly glitt'ring east Gilds every lofty top, which late the humorous night Bespangled had with pearl, to please the morning's sight: On which the mirthful choirs, with their clear open throats, Unto the joyful morn so strain their warbling notes, That hills and valleys ring, and even the echoing air Seems all composed of sounds, about them everywhere. The throstle, with shrill sharps; as purposely he sung T'awake the lustless sun, or chiding, that so long He was in coming forth, that should the thickets thrill; The woosel near at hand, that hath a golden bill; As nature him had mark'd of purpose, t'let us see That from all other birds his tunes should different be: For, with their vocal sounds, they sing to pleasant May; Upon his dulcet pipe the merle doth only play. When in the lower brake, the nightingale hard by, In such lamenting strains the joyful hours doth ply, As though the other birds she to her tunes would draw, And, but that nature (by her all-constraining law) Each bird to her own kind this season doth invite, They else, alone to hear that charmer of the night, (The more to use their ears,) their voices sure would spare, That moduleth her tunes so admirably rare, As man to set in parts at first had learn'd of her.

To Philomel the next, the linnet we prefer; And by that warbling bird, the wood-lark place we then, The red-sparrow, the nope, the redbreast, and the wren. The yellow-pate; which though she hurt the blooming tree, Yet scarce hath any bird a finer pipe than she. And of these chanting fowls, the goldfinch not behind, That hath so many sorts descending from her kind. The tydy for her notes as delicate as they, The laughing hecco, then the counterfeiting jay, The softer with the shrill (some hid among the leaves, Some in the taller trees, some in the lower greaves) Thus sing away the morn, until the mounting sun Through thick exhaled fogs his golden head hath run, And through the twisted tops of our close covert creeps To kiss the gentle shade, this while that sweetly sleeps. And near to these our thicks, the wild and frightful herds, Not hearing other noise but this of chattering birds, Feed fairly on the lawns; both sorts of season'd deer: Here walk the stately red, the freckled fallow there: The bucks and lusty stags amongst the rascals strew'd, As sometime gallant spirits amongst the multitude.