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 slackeneth so the soul’s and body’s knot,
Which temperance straightens; 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 birdlime, nor how to deceive
With feign’d calls, his nets, or enwrapping snare,
The free inhabitants of the pliant air.
Man to beget, and woman to conceive,
Ask’d not of roots, nor of cock-sparrows, leave.
Yet chooseth he, though none of these he fears,
Pleasantly three, than straiten’d twenty years,
To live, and to increase his race himself outwears.
XXIII
This coal with overblowing quench’d 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 leaven’d was,
For they had intertouch’d as they did pass;
And one of those small bodies, fitted so,
This soul inform’d, and abled it to row
Itself with finny oars, which she did fit.
Her scales seem’d 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 watch’d,
And with his arched neck this poor fish catch’d.
It moved with state, as if to look upon
Low things it scorn’d, and yet before that one
Could think he sought it, he had swallow’d clear
This, and much such, and unblamed devour’d 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 vapour’d 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, sure is 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’erpass’d;
Once innocence ’scaped, and left the oppressor fast.
The net through-swum, 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 shows them in bigger quantities
Than they are. Thus her, doubtful of her way,
For game and not for hunger, a sea-pie
Spied through this traitorous spectacle, from high,
The silly fish where it disputing lay,
And to end her doubts and her, bears her away.
Exalted she is, but to th’ 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 seaward 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 languish’d, dies.
The souls, no longer foes, two ways did err,
The fish I follow, and keep no calendar
Of th’ other; he lives yet in some great officer.
XXXI
Into an embryon 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 swum;
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 arch’d roof
Of bark, that blunts best steel, is thunder-proof.
Swim in him swallow’d 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 enthrall,
So on his back lies this whale wantoning,
And in his gulf-like throat sucks everything
That passeth
