Within a point at most: yet for all this
(Which is most strange) Natta thinks no man is
More honest than himself. Thus men may want
Conscience, whilst being brought up ignorant,
They use themselves to vice. And besides those
Illiberal arts forenam'd, no vicar knows,
Nor other captain less than he, his schools
Are ordinaries, where civil men seem fools,
Or are for being there; his best books, plays,
Where, meeting godly scenes, perhaps he prays.
His first set prayer was for his father's ill,
And sick, that he might die: that had, until
The lands were gone he troubled God no more;
And then ask'd him but his right, that the whore
Whom he had kept, might now keep him: she spent,
They left each other on even terms; she went
To Bridewell, he unto the wars, where want
Hat nade him valiant, and a lieutenant
He is become: where, as they pass apace,
He steps aside, and for his captain's place
He prays again: tells God, he will confess
His sius, swear, drink, dice, and whore thenceforth
On this condition, that if his captain die
And he succeed, but his prayer did not; they
Both cashier'd came home, and he is braver now
Than his captain: all men wonder, few know how,
Can he rob? No;-Cheat? No;-or doth he spend
His own? No. Fidus, he is thy dear friend,
That keeps him up. I would thou wert thine own,
Or thou had'st as good a friend as thou art one.
No present want nor future hope made me
Desire (as once I did) thy friend to be:
But he had cruelly possess'd thee then,
And as our neighbours the Low-Country men,
Being (whilst they were loyal, with tyranny
Oppress'd) broke loose, have since refus'd to be
Subject to good kings, I found even so

[less,

Wert thou well rid of him, thou 't have no moe.
Could'st thou but choose as well as love, to none
Thou should'st be second: turtle and demon
Should give the place in songs, and lovers sick
Should make thee only Love's hieroglyphic:
Thy impress should be the loving elm and vine,
Where now an ancient oak with ivy twine,
Destroy'd thy symbol is. O dire mischance!
And, O vile verse! And yet our Abraham France
Writes thus, and jests not. Good Fidus for this
Must pardon me: satires bite when they kiss.
But as for Natta, we have since fall'n out:
Here on his knees he pray'd, else we had fought.
And because God would not he should be winner,
Nor yet would have the death of such a sinner,
At his seeking, our quarrel is deferr'd,
I'll leave him at his prayers, and as I heard,
His last; and, Fidus, you and I do know
I was his friend, and durst have been his foe,
And would be either yet; but he dares be
Neither yet. Sleep blots him out and takes in thee.
"The mind, you know, is like a table-book,
The old unwip'd new writing never took."
Hear how the husher's checks, cupboard and fire
I pass'd: (by which degrees young men aspire
In court) and how that idle and she-state
(When as my judgment clear'd) my soul did hate,
How I found there (if that my trifling pen
Durst take so hard a task) kings were but men,
And by their place more noted, if they err;
How they and their lords unworthy men prefer;
And, as unthrifts, had rather give away

Great sums to flatterers, than small debts pay;
VOL. V.

So they their greatness hide, and greatness show,
By giving them that which to worth they owe:
What treason is, and what did Essex kill?
Not true treason, but treason handled ill:
And which of them stood for their country's good?
Or what might be the cause of so much blood?
He said she stunk, and men might not have said
That she was old before that she was dead.
His case was hard to do or suffer; loath
To do, he made it harder, and did both :
Too much preparing lost them all their lives,
Like some in plagues kill'd with preservatives.
Friends, like land-soldiers in a storm at sea,
Not knowing what to do, for him did pray.
They told it all the world; where was their wit?
Cuffs putting on a sword, might have told it.
And princes must fear favourites more than foes,
For still beyond revenge ambition goes.
How since her death, with sumpter horse that Scot
Hath rid, who, at his coming up, had not
A sumpter-dog. But till that I can write
Things worth thy tenth reading, dear Nick, good
night.

SATIRE VII.

MEN write, that love and reason disagree,
But I ne'er saw 't express'd as 't is in thee.
Well, I may lead thee, God must make thee see;
But thine eyes blind too, there's no hope for thee.
Thou say'st, she 's wise and witty, fair and free;
All these are reasons why she should scorn thee.
Thou dost protest thy love, and would'st it show
By matching her, as she would match her foe:
And would'st persuade her to a worse offence
Than that, whereof thou didst accuse her wench.
Reason there's none for thee; but thou may'st vex
Her with example. Say, for fear her sex
Shun her, she needs must change; I do not see
How reason e'er can bring that must to thee.
Thou art a match a justice to rejoice,
Fit to be his, and not his daughter's choice.
Dry'd with his threats, she 'd scarcely stay with thee,
And would'st th' have this to choose, thee being free?
Go then and punish some soon gotten stuff;
For her dead husband this hath mourn'd enough,
In hating thee. Thou may'st one like this meet;
For spite take her, prove kind, make thy breath
sweet:

Let her see she 'th cause, and to bring to thee
Honest children, let her dishonest be.

If she be a widow, I'll warrant her
She'll thee before her first husband prefer ;
And will wish thou had'st had her maidenhead;
(She'll love thee so) for then thou had'st been dead.
But thou such strong love and weak reasons hast,
Thou must thrive there, or ever live disgrac❜d.
Yet pause awhile, and thou may'st live to see
A time to come, wherein she may beg thee.
If thou 'It not pause nor change, she 'll beg thee

now,

Do what she can, love for nothing allow.
Besides, here were too much gain and merchandise;
And when thou art rewarded, desert dies.
Now thou hast odds of him she loves, he may doubt
Her constancy, but none can put thee ont.
Again, be thy love true, she 'll prove divine,
And in the end the good on 't will be thine:

M

For though thou must ne'er think of other love,
And so wilt advance her as high above
Virtue, as cause above effect can be;

"T is virtue to be chaste, which she 'll make thee.

LETTERS

TO SEVERAL PERSONAGES.

TO MR. CHRISTOPHER BROOK, FROM THE ISLAND VOYAGE WITH THE EARL OF ESSEX.

THE STORM.

THOU, which art I, ('t is nothing to be so)
Thou, which art still thyself, by this shalt know
Part of our passage; and a hand, or eye,
By Hilliard drawn, is worth a history

By a worse painter made; and (without pride)
When by thy judgment they are dignify'd,
My lines are such. 'T is the pre-eminence
Of friendship only t' impute excellence.
England, to whom we owe what we be, and have,
Sad that her sons did seek a foreign grave,
(For Fate's or Fortune's drifts none can gainsay,
Honour and misery have one face, one way)
From out her pregnant entrails sigh'd a wind,
Which at th' air's middle marble room did find
Such strong resistance, that itself it threw
Downward again; and so when it did view
How in the port our fleet dear time did leese,
Withering like prisoners, which lie but for fees,
Mildly it kiss'd our sails, and fresh and sweet,
As to a stomach starv'd, whose insides meet,
Meat comes, it came; and swole our sails, when we
So joy'd, as Sarah her swelling joy'd to see:
But 't was but so kind, as our countrymen, [then.
Which bring friends one day's way, and leave them
Then like two mighty kings, which dwelling far
Asunder, meet against a third to war,
The south and west winds join'd, and, as they blew,
Waves like a rolling trench before them threw.
Sooner than you read this line, did the gale,
Like shot not fear'd till felt, our sails assail;
And what at first was call'd a gust, the same
Hath now a storm's, anon a tempest's name.
Jonas, I pity thee, and curse those men,
Who, when the storm rag'd most, did wake thee
Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfil [then:
All offices of death, except to kill.
But when I wak'd, I saw that I saw not.

I and the Sun, which should teach thee, had forgot
East, west, day, night; and I could only say,
Had the world lasted, that it had been day.
Thousands our noises were, yet we 'mongst all
Could none by his right name, but thunder call:
Lightning was all our light, and it rain'd more
Than if the Sun had drunk the sea before.
Some coffin'd in their cabins lie, equally
Griev'd that they are not dead, and yet must die:
And as sin-burden'd souls from graves will creep
At the last day, some forth their cabbins peep:
And trembling ask what news, and do hear so
As jealous husbands, what they would not know.
Some, sitting on the hatches, would seem there
With hideous gazing to fear away fear.
There note they the ship's sicknesses, the mast
Shak'd with an ague, and the hold and waste

With a salt dropsy clogg'd, and our tacklings
Snapping, like to too high-stretch'd treble strings.
And from our tatter'd sails rags drop down so,
As from one hang'd in chains a year ago.
Yea even our ordnance, plac'd for our defence,
Strives to break loose, and 'scape away from thence.
Pumping hath tir'd our men, and what 's the gain?
Seas into seas thrown we suck in again:
Hearing hath deaf'd our sailors, and if they
Knew how to hear, there's none knows what to say.
Compar'd to these storms, death is but a qualm,
Hell somewhat lightsome, the Bermuda's calm.
Darkness, Light's eldest brother, his birth-right
Claims o'er the world, and to Heav'n hath chased
light.

All things are one; and that one none can be,
Since all forms uniform deformity

Doth cover; so that we, except God say
Another fiat, shall have no more day,

So violent, yet long these furies be,

That though thine absence starve me, I wish not thee.

THE CALM.

OUR storm is past, and that storm's tyrannous rage
A stupid calm, but nothing it doth swage.
The fable is inverted, and far more

A block afflicts now, than a stork before.
Storms chafe, and soon wear out themselves or us;
In calms, Heaven laughs to see us languish thus.
As steady as I could wish my thoughts were,
Smooth as thy mistress' glass, or what shines there,
The sea is now, and as the isles which we
Seek, when we can move, our ships rooted be.
As water did in storms, now pitch runs out;
As lead, when a fir'd church becomes one spout;
And all our beauty and our trim decays,
Like courts removing, or like ending plays.
The fighting place now seamens' rage supply;
And all the tackling is a frippery.

No use of lanthorns; and in one place lay
Feathers and dust, to day and yesterday.
Earth's hollownesses, which the world's lungs are,
Have no more wind than th' upper vault of air.
We can nor lost friends nor sought foes recover,
But, meteor-like, save that we move not, hover.
Only the calenture together draws
Dear friends, which meet dead in great fish's maws;
And on the hatches, as on altars, lies
Each one, his own priest, and own sacrifice.
Who live, that miracle do multiply,
Where walkers in hot ovens do not die.
If in despite of these we swim, that hath
No more refreshing than a brimstone bath;
But from the sea into the ship we turn,
Like parboyl'd wretches, on the coals to burn.
Like Bajazet encag'd, the shepherd's scoff;
Or like slack-sinew'd Sampson, his hair off,
Languish our ships. Now as a myriad
Of ants durst th' emperor's lov'd snake invade:
The crawling galleys, sea-gulls, finny chips,
Might brave our pinnaces, our bed-rid ships:
Whether a rotten state and hope of gain,
Or to disuse me from the queasy pain
Of being belov'd and loving, or the thirst
Of honour, or fair death, out-push'd me first;
I lose my end: for here as well as I
A desperate may live, and coward die.

Stag, dog, and all, which from or towards flies,-
Is paid with life or prey, or doing dies:
Fate grudges us all, and doth subtily lay
A scourge, 'gainst which we all forgot to pray.
He that at sea prays for more wind, as well
Under the poles may beg cold, heat in Hell.
What are we then? How little more, alas!
Is man now, than, before he was, he was?
Nothing; for us, we are for nothing fit;
Chance or ourselves still disproportion it;
We have no power, no will, no sense : I lie,
I should not then thus feel this misery.

TO SIR HENRY WOOTTON.

SIR, more than kisses, letters mingle souls,
For thus friends absent speak. This ease controls
The tediousness of my life: but for these,
I could invent nothing at all to please;
But I should wither in one day, and pass
To a lock of hay, that am a bottle of grass.
Life is a voyage, and in our life's ways,
Countries, courts, towns, are rocks or remoras;
They break or stop all ships, yet our state's such
That (though than pitch they stain worse) we must

touch.

If in the furnace of the even line,

Or under th' adverse icy pole thou pine,
Thou know'st, two temperate regions girded in
Dwell there: but, oh! what refuge can'st thou win
Parch'd in the court, and in the country frozen?
Shall cities built of both extremes be chosen?
Can dung or garlic be a perfume? Or can
A scorpion or torpedo cure a man?
Cities are worst of all three: of all three ?
(O knotty riddle!) each is worst equally.
Cities are sepulchres; they who dwell there
Are carcases, as if none such there were.
And courts are theatres, where some men play
Princes, some slaves, and all end in one day.
The country is a desert, where the good
Gain'd inhabits not; born, 's not understood.
There men become beasts, and prone to all evils;
In cities, blocks; and in a lewd court, devils.
As in the first chaos confusedly

Each element's qualities were in th' other three:
So pride, lust, covetize, being several
To these three places, yet all are in all,
And mingled thus, their issue is incestuous:
Falsehood is denizon'd; virtue is barbarous.
Let no man say there, virtue's flinty wall
Shall lock vice in me; I'll do none, but know all.
Men are spunges, which, to pour out, receive:
Who know false play, rather than lose, deceive.
For in best understandings, sin began;
Angels sinn'd first, then devils, and then man.
Only perchance beasts sin not; wretched we
Are beasts in all, but white integrity.

I think if men, which in these places live,
Durst look in themselves, and themselves retrieve,
They would like strangers greet themselves, seeing
Utopian youth grown old Italian.
[then

Be then thine own home, and in thyself dwell;
Inn any where; continuance maketh Hell.
And seeing the snail, which every where doth roam,
Carrying his own house still, still is at home:
Follow (for he's easy pac'd) this snail,
Be thine own palace, or the world 's thy jail.

And in the world's sea do not like cork sleep
Upon the water's face, nor in the deep
Sink like a lead without a line: but as
Fishes glide, leaving no print where they pass,
Nor making sound: so closely thy course go,
Let men dispute whether thou breathe or no:
Only in this be no Galenist. To make
Court's hot ambitions wholesome, do not take
A dram of country's dullness; do not add
Correctives, but as chymics purge the bad.
But, sir, I advise not you, I rather do
Say o'er those lessons which I learn'd of you :
Whom, free from Germany's schisms, and lightness
Of France, and fair Italy's faithlessness,
Having from these suck'd all they had of worth,
And brought home that faith which you carry'd

forth,

I throughly love: but if myself I 've won
To know my rules, I have, and you have Donne.

TO SIR HENRY GOODYERE.

WHO makes the last a pattern for next year,
Turns no new leaf, but still the same things reads;
Seen things he sees again, heard things doth hear,
And makes his life but like a pair of beads.

A palace, when 't is that which it should be,
Leaves growing, and stands such, or else decays;
But he which dwells there, is not so; for he

Strives to urge upward, and his fortune raise.

So had your body her morning, hath her noon, And shall not better, her next change is night: But her fair larger guest, t' whom Sun and Moon Are sparks, and short liv'd, claims another right,

The noble soul by age grows lustier,

Her appetite and her digestion mend;
We must not starve, nor hope to pamper her
With woman's milk and pap unto the end.

Provide you manlier diet; you have seen
All libraries, which are schools, camps, and courts}
But ask your garners, if you have not been
In harvest too indulgent to your sports.

Would you redeem it? Then yourself transplant

A while from hence. Perchance outlandish ground Bears no more wit than ours; but yet more scant Are those diversions there which here abound.

To be a stranger hath that benefit,

We can beginnings, but not habits choke. Go. Whither? Hence. You get, if you forget; New faults, till they prescribe to us, are smoke,

Our soul, whose country's Heav'n, and God her father,

Into this world, corruption's sink, is sent; Yet so much in her travail she doth gather, That she returns home wiser than she went.

TO SIR HENRY WOOTTON.

HERE 's no more news than virtue; I may as well Tell you Calais, or Saint Michael's Mount, as tell That vice doth here habitually dwell.

Yet as, to get stomachs, we walk up and down,
And toil to sweeten rest; so, may God frown,
If but to loath both, I haunt court and town.

For here no one is from th' extremity
Of vice by any other reason free,

But that the next to him still 's worse than he.

In this world's warfare they, whom rugged Fate,
(God's commissary) doth so throughly hate,
As in th' court's squadron to marshal their state;

If they stand arm'd with silly honesty,
With wishing, prayers, and neat integrity,
Like Indians 'gainst Spanish hosts they be.

Suspicious boldness to this place belongs,
And t' have as many ears as all have tongues;
Tender to know, tough to acknowledge wrongs.

Believe me, sir, in my youth's giddiest days,
When to be like the court was a player's praise,
Plays were not so like courts, as courts like plays.

Then let us at these mimic antics jest,
Whose deepest projects and egregious guests
Are but dull morals at a game at chess.

But 't is an incongruity to smile,

Therefore I end; and bid farewell awhile

At court, though from court were the better style.

TO THE COUNTESS OF BEDFORD.

MADAM,

REASON is our souls' left hand, faith her right,
By these we reach divinity, that 's you:
Their loves, who have the blessing of your light,
Grew from their reason; mine from fair faith
grew.

But as although a squint left-handedness

B' ungracious, yet we cannot want that hand : So would I (not t' increase, but to express My faith) as I believe, so understand.

Therefore I study you first in your saints,

Those friends, whom your election glorifies;
Then in your deeds, accesses, and restraints,
And what you read, and what yourself devise.

But soon, the reasons why you 're lov'd by all,
Grow infinite, and so pass reason's reach,
Then back again t' implicit faith I fall,

And rest on what 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 do seem, deep-rooted stick,
Waves wash, not undermine, nor overthrow.