Poetry

serpentine;
And seeming weary with his reeling thus,
He means to sleep, being now fallen nearer us.
So of the stars which boast that they do run
In circle still, none ends where he begun.
All their proportion’s lame, it sinks, it swells;
For of meridians and parallels
Man hath weaved out a net, and this net thrown
Upon the heavens, and now they are his own.
Loth to go up the hill, or labour thus
To go to heaven, we make heaven come to us.
We spur, we rein the stars, and in their race
They’re diversely content to obey our pace.
But keeps the earth her round proportion still?
Doth not a Teneriffe or higher hill
Rise so high like a rock, that one might think
The floating moon would shipwreck there and sink?
Seas are so deep that whales, being struck today,
Perchance tomorrow scarce at middle way
Of their wish’d journey’s end, the bottom, die.
And men, to sound depths, so much line untie
As one might justly think that there would rise
At end thereof one of th’ antipodes.
If under all a vault infernal be
—Which sure is spacious, except that we
Invent another torment, that there must
Millions into a straight hot room be thrust⁠—
Then solidness and roundness have no place.
Are these but warts and pockholes in the face
Of th’ earth? Think so; but yet confess, in this
The world’s proportion disfigured is;
That those two legs whereon it doth rely,
Reward and punishment, are bent awry.
And, O, it can no more be questioned,
That beauty’s best proportion is dead,
Since even grief itself, which now alone
Is left us, is without proportion.
She, by whose lines proportion should be
Examined, measure of all symmetry,
Whom had that ancient seen, who thought souls made
Of harmony, he would at next have said
That harmony was she, and thence infer
That souls were but resultances from her,
And did from her into our bodies go,
As to our eyes the forms from objects flow;
She, who if those great doctors truly said
That th’ ark to man’s proportion was made,
Had been a type for that, as that might be
A type of her in this, that contrary
Both elements and passions lived at peace
In her, who caused all civil war to cease.
She, after whom what form soe’er we see
Is discord and rude incongruity;
She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this,
Thou know’st how ugly a monster this world is;
And learn’st thus much by our Anatomy,
That here is nothing to enamour thee;
And that not only faults in inward parts,
Corruptions in our brains, or in our hearts,
Poisoning the fountains whence our actions spring,
Endanger us; but that if everything
Be not done fitly and in proportion,
To satisfy wise and good lookers-on
—Since most men be such as most think they be⁠—
They’re loathsome too, by this deformity.
For good, and well, must in our actions meet;
Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.
But beauty’s other second element,
Colour and lustre, now is as near spent.
And had the world his just proportion,
Were it a ring still, yet the stone is gone.
As a compassionate turquoise, which doth tell,
By looking pale, the wearer is not well;
As gold falls sick being stung with mercury,
All the world’s parts of such complexion be
When nature was most busy, the first week,
Swaddling the newborn earth, God seem’d to like
That she should sport herself sometimes, and play,
To mingle and vary colours every day;
And then, as though she could not make enow,
Himself his various rainbow did allow.
Sight is the noblest sense of any one;
Yet sight hath only colour to feed on,
And colour is decay’d; summer’s robe grows
Dusky, and like an oft dyed garment shows.
Our blushing red, which used in cheeks to spread,
Is inward sunk, and only our souls are red.
Perchance the world might have recovered,
If she whom we lament had not been dead.
But she, in whom all white, and red, and blue
(Beauty’s ingredients) voluntary grew,
As in an unvex’d paradise; from whom
Did all things’ verdure, and their lustre come;
Whose composition was miraculous,
Being all colour, all diaphanous,
For air and fire but thick gross bodies were,
And liveliest stones but drowsy and pale to her;
She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this,
Thou know’st how wan a ghost this our world is;
And learn’st thus much by our Anatomy,
That it should more affright than pleasure thee;
And that, since all fair colour then did sink,
’Tis now but wicked vanity, to think
To colour vicious deeds with good pretence,
Or with bought colours to illude men’s sense.
Nor in ought more this world’s decay appears,
Than that her influence the heaven forbears,
Or that the elements do not feel this.
The father or the mother barren is;
The clouds conceive not rain, or do not pour,
In the due birth-time, down the balmy shower;
Th’ air doth not motherly sit on the earth,
To hatch her seasons, and give all things birth.
Spring-times were common cradles, but are tombs,
And false conceptions fill the general wombs.
Th’ air shows such meteors, as none can see,
Not only what they mean, but what they be;
Earth such new worms, as would have troubled much
Th’ Egyptian Mages to have made more such.
What artist now dares boast that he can bring
Heaven hither, or constellate anything,
So as the influence of those stars may be
Imprison’d in an herb, or charm, or tree,
And do by touch, all which those stars could do?
The art is lost, and correspondence too,
For heaven gives little, and the earth takes less,
And man least knows their trade and purposes.
If this commerce ’twixt heaven and earth were not
Embarr’d, and all this traffic quite forgot,
She, for whose loss we have lamented thus,
Would work more fully, and powerfully on us.
Since herbs and roots by dying lose not all,
But they, yea ashes too, are medicinal;
Death could not quench her virtue so, but that
It would be⁠—if not follow’d⁠—wonder’d at;
And all the world would be one dying swan,
To sing her funeral praise, and vanish then.
But as some serpents’ poison hurteth not,
Except it be from the live serpent shot,
So doth her virtue need her here, to fit
That unto us, she working more than it.
But she, in whom to such maturity
Virtue was grown, past growth, that it must die;
She, from whose influence all impression came,
But by receivers’ impotencies lame;
Who, though she could not transubstantiate
All states to gold, yet gilded every state,
So that some princes have some temperance;
Some