Poetry

back again to implicit faith I fall,
And rest on that the Catholic voice doth teach⁠—

That you are good; and not one heretic
Denies it; if he did, yet you are so;
For rocks, which high to sense deep-rooted stick,
Waves wash, not undermine, nor overthrow.

In everything there naturally grows
A balsamum to keep it fresh and new,
If ’twere not injured by extrinsic blows;
Your birth and beauty are this balm in you.

But you, of learning, and religion,
And virtue, and such ingredients, have made
A mithridate, whose operation
Keeps off, or cures, what can be done or said.

Yet this is not your physic, but your food,
A diet fit for you; for you are here
The first good angel, since the world’s frame stood,
That ever did in woman’s shape appear.

Since you are then God’s masterpiece, and so
His factor for our loves, do as you do;
Make your return home gracious, and bestow
This life on that; so make one life of two.
For, so God help me, I would not miss you there,
For all the good which you can do me here.

To the Countess of Bedford

Madam⁠—
You have refined me, and to worthiest things⁠—
Virtue, art, beauty, fortune. Now I see
Rareness or use, not nature, value brings;
And such, as they are circumstanced, they be.
Two ills can ne’er perplex us, sin to excuse;
But of two good things we may leave and choose.

Therefore at court⁠—which is not virtue’s clime,
Where a transcendent height (as lowness me)
Makes her not be, or not show⁠—all my rhyme
Your virtues challenge, which there rarest be;
For, as dark texts need notes, there some must be
To usher Virtue, and say, “This is she.”

So in the country’s beauty. To this place
You are the season, Madam, you the day;
’Tis but a grave of spices, till your face
Exhale them, and a thick close bud display;
Widow’d and reclused else, her sweets she enshrines
As China, when the sun at Brazil dines.

Out from your chariot morning breaks at night,
And falsifies both computations; so,
Since a new world doth rise here from your light,
We, your new creatures, by new reckonings go.
This shows that you from nature lothly stray,
That suffer not an artificial day.

In this you’ve made the court th’ antipodes,
And will’d your delegate, the vulgar sun,
To do profane autumnal offices,
Whilst here to you we sacrificers run;
And whether priests or organs, you we obey;
We sound your influence, and your dictates say.

Yet to that deity which dwells in you,
Your virtuous soul, I now not sacrifice;
These are petitions and not hymns; they sue
But that I may survey the edifice;
In all religions as much care hath been
Of temples’ frames and beauty, as rites within

As all which go to Rome do not thereby
Esteem religions, and hold fast the best,
But serve discourse and curiosity,
With that which doth religion but invest;
And shun th’ entangling labyrinths of schools,
And make it wit, to think the wiser fools;

So in this pilgrimage I would behold
You as you’re Virtue’s temple, not as she;
What walls of tender crystal her enfold,
What eyes, hands, bosom, her pure altars be;
And after this survey, oppose to all
Babblers of chapels, you, th’ Escurial.

Yet not as consecrate, but merely as fair;
On these I cast a lay and country eye.
Of past and future stories, which are rare,
I find you all record and prophecy.
Purge but the book of Fate, that it admit
No sad nor guilty legends⁠—you are it.

If good and lovely were not one, of both
You were the transcript and original,
The elements, the parent, and the growth;
And every piece of you is both their all;
So entire are all your deeds, and you, that you
Must do the same things still; you cannot two.

But these⁠—as nice thin school divinity
Serves heresy to further or repress⁠—
Taste of poetic rage, or flattery;
And need not, where all hearts one truth profess.
Oft from new proofs, and new phrase, new doubts grow,
As strange attire aliens the men we know.

Leaving then busy praise and all appeal
To higher courts, sense’s decree is true.
The mine, the magazine, the commonweal,
The story of beauty, in Twickenham is, and you.
Who hath seen one, would both; as, who had been
In Paradise, would seek the cherubin.

To Sir Edward Herbert, Now Lord Herbert Cherbury, Being at the Siege of Juliers

Man is a lump, where all beasts kneaded be;
Wisdom makes him an ark, where all agree.
The fool, in whom these beasts do live at jar,
Is sport to others, and a theatre.
Nor ’scapes he so, but is himself their prey;
All which was man in him, is eat away;
And now his beasts on one another feed,
Yet couple in anger, and new monsters breed.
How happy’s he, which hath due place assign’d
To his beasts, and disafforested his mind;
Impaled himself to keep them out, not in;
Can sow, and dares trust, corn where they have been;
Can use his horse, goat, wolf, and every beast,
And is not ass himself to all the rest.
Else, man not only is the herd of swine,
But he’s those devils too, which did incline
Them to a headlong rage, and made them worse;
For man can add weight to heaven’s heaviest curse.
As souls (they say) by our first touch take in
The poisonous tincture of original sin,
So, to the punishments which God doth fling,
Our apprehension contributes the sting.
To us, as to His chickens, He doth cast
Hemlock, and we, as men, His hemlock taste.
We do infuse to what He meant for meat
Corrosiveness, or intense cold or heat;
For God no such specific poison hath
As kills, we know not how; His fiercest wrath
Hath no antipathy, but may be good
At least for physic, if not for our food.
Thus man, that might be His pleasure, is His rod,
And is His devil, that might be his God.
Since then our business is to rectify
Nature, to what she was, we’re led awry
By them, who man to us in little show,
Greater than due; no form we