Flyer 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 launch’d 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 harm’d,
Nor fed on their kind, two not throughly arm’d
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 out-streat—
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-finn’d thresher, and steel-beak’d swordfish
Only attempt to do what all do wish.
The thresher backs him, and to beat begins;
The sluggard whale yields to oppression,
And to hide himself from shame and danger, down
Begins to sink; the swordfish upward 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 aught, 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, loth 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; vex’d 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
Walk’d, and survey’d the rooms of this vast house,
And to the brain, the soul’s bedchamber, went,
And gnaw’d 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,
Attach’d her with straight grips; yet he call’d those
Embracements of love; to love’s work he goes,
Where deeds move more than words; nor doth she show
Nor much resist, nor needs he straiten so
His prey, for, were she loose, she would nor bark nor go.
XLIII
He hath engaged her; his, she wholly bides;
Who not her own, none others’ 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 riddling 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 cozen’d with his trade;
Then hopeless that his faults were hid, betray’d
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 quicken’d 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
