True as Apollo ever spoke,
Or oracle from heart of oak:94
And if you’ll give my flame but vent,
Now in close hugger-mugger pent,
And shine upon me but benignly,
With that one and that other pigsney,
The sun and day shall sooner part,
Than love of you shake off my heart;
The sun, that shall no more dispense
His own, but your bright influence.
I’ll carve your name on barks of trees,
With true-love’s-knots and flourishes,
That shall infuse eternal spring,
And everlasting flourishing;
Drink ev’ry letter on’t in stum,
And make it brisk champagne become:
Where’er you tread, your foot shall set
The primrose and the violet:
All spices, perfumes, and sweet powders,
Shall borrow from your breath their odours:
Nature her charter shall renew,
And take all lives of things from you;
The world depend upon your eye,
And when you frown upon it, die:
Only our loves shall still survive,
New worlds and natures to outlive:
And, like to heralds’ moons, remain
All crescents, without change or wane.
Hold, hold, quoth she; no more of this,
Sir Knight; you take your aim amiss:
For you will find it a hard chapter
To catch me with poetic rapture,
In which your mastery of art
Doth shew itself, and not your heart:
Nor will you raise in mine combustion
By dint of high heroic fustian.
She that with poetry is won,
Is but a desk to write upon;
And what men say of her, they mean
No more than on the thing they lean.
Some with Arabian spices strive
T’ embalm her cruelly alive;
Or season her, as French cooks use
Their haut-gouts, bouillies, or ragouts:
Use her so barbarously ill,
To grind her lips upon a mill,
Until the facet doublet doth
Fit their rhimes rather than her mouth:
Her mouth compar’d to an oyster’s, with
A row of pearl in’t—’stead of teeth.
Others make posies of her cheeks,
Where red and whitest colours mix;
In which the lily, and the rose,
For Indian lake and ceruse goes.
The sun and moon by her bright eyes
Eclips’d and darken’d in the skies,
Are but black patches, that she wears,
Cut into suns, and moons, and stars:
By which astrologers, as well
As those in heav’n above, can tell
What strange events they do foreshow
Unto her under-world below.
Her voice, the music of the spheres,
So loud, it deafens mortals ears,
As wise philosophers have thought;
And that’s the cause we hear it not.
This has been done by some, who those
Th’ ador’d in rhyme would kick in prose;
And in those ribbons would have hung,
On which melodiously they sung;
That have the hard fate to write best
Of those still that deserve it least;
It matters not how false or forc’d:
So the best things be said o’ th’ worst:
It goes for nothing when ’tis said;
Only the arrow’s drawn to th’ head,
Whether it be a swan or goose
They level at: so shepherds use
To set the same mark on the hip
Both of their sound and rotten sheep:
For wits, that carry low or wide,
Must be aim’d higher, or beside
The mark, which else they ne’er come nigh,
But when they take their aim awry.
But I do wonder you should choose
This way t’ attack me with your Muse,
As one cut out to pass your tricks on,
With fulhams of poetic fiction:
I rather hop’d I should no more
Hear from you o’ th’ gallanting score:
For hard dry-bastings us’d to prove
The readiest remedies of love;
Next a dry-diet; but if those fail,
Yet this uneasy loop-hol’d jail,
In which y’ are hamper’d by the fetlock,
Cannot but put y’ in mind of wedlock:
Wedlock, that’s worse than any hole here,
If that may serve you for a cooler,
T’ allay your mettle, all agog
Upon a wife, the heavier clog:
Or rather thank your gentler fate,
That for a bruis’d or broken pate
Has freed you from those knobs that grow
Much harder on the marry’d brow;
But if no dread can cool your courage,
From vent’ring on that dragon, marriage,
Yet give me quarter, and advance
To nobler aims your puissance:
Level at beauty and at wit;
The fairest mark is easiest hit.
Quoth Hudibras, I’m beforehand
In that already, with your command;
For where does beauty and high wit
But in your constellation meet?
Quoth she, What does a match imply,
But likeness and equality?
I know you cannot think me fit
To be th’ yoke-fellow of your wit;
Nor take one of so mean deserts,
To be the partner of your parts;
A grace, which, if I could believe,
I’ve not the conscience to receive.
That conscience, quoth Hudibras,
Is misinform’d: I’ll state the case:
A man may be a legal donor,
Of any thing whereof he’s owner,
And may confer it where he lists,
I’ th’ judgment of all casuists;
Then wit, and parts, and valour, may
Be ali’nated, and made away,
By those that are proprietors,
As I may give or sell my horse.
Quoth she, I grant the case is true,
And proper ’twixt your horse and you;
But whether I may take as well
As you may give away or sell?
Buyers, you know, are bid beware;
And worse than thieves receivers are.
How shall I answer hue and cry,
For a roan gelding, twelve hands high,
All spurr’d and switch’d, a lock on ’s hoof,
A sorrel mane? Can I bring proof
Where, when, by whom, and what y’ were sold for,
And in the open market toll’d for?
Or should I take you for a stray,
You must be kept a year and day
(Ere I can own you) here i’ the pound,
Where, if y’ are sought, you may be found:
And in the meantime I must pay
For all your provender and hay.
Quoth he, It stands me much upon
T’ enervate this objection,
And prove myself, by topic clear,
No gelding, as you would infer.
Loss of virility’s averr’d
To be the cause of loss of beard,
That does (like embryo in the womb)
Abortive on the chin become.
This first a woman did invent,
In envy of man’s ornament;
Semiramis of Babylon,95
Who first of all cut men o’ th’ stone,
To mar their beards, and lay foundation
Of sow-geldering operation.
Look on this beard, and tell me whether
Eunuchs wear such, or geldings either?
Next it appears I am no horse;
That I can argue and discourse
Have but two legs, and ne’er a tail.
Quoth she, That nothing will avail;
For some philosophers of late here,96
Write men have four legs by nature,
And that ’tis custom makes them go
Erron’ously upon but two;
As ’twas in Germany made good
B’ a boy that lost himself in a wood,
And growing down t’ a man, was wont
With wolves upon all four to hunt.
As for your
