Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets Part 40

x.x.xI.

Into an embryo 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 swam; 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 s.h.i.+p overset, or without sail, Hulling, might (when this was a whelp) be like this whale.

x.x.xII.

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-arched roof Of bark, that blunts best steel, is thunder-proof: Swim in him swallowed 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.

x.x.xIII.

He hunts not fish, but, as an officer Stays in his court, at his own net, and there All suitors of all sorts themselves enthral; So on his back lies this whale wantoning, And in his gulf-like throat sucks every thing, That pa.s.seth near. Fish chaseth fish, and all, Flier 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?

x.x.xIV.

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 launched 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.

x.x.xV.

Two little fishes, whom he never harmed, Nor fed on their kind, two, not th'roughly armed 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 outstreat,) 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?

x.x.xVI.

The flail-finned thresher and steel-beaked sword-fish Only attempt to do what all do wish: The thresher backs him, and to beat begins; The sluggard whale leads to oppression, And t' hide himself from shame and danger, down Begins to sink: the sword-fish upwards 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.

x.x.xVII.

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.

x.x.xVIII.

This soul, now free from prison and pa.s.sion, 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 ought, 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.

x.x.xIX.

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, both 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; vexed 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 Walked, and surveyed the rooms of this vast house, And to the brain, the Soul's bed-chamber, went, And gnawed 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 b.i.t.c.h, 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 b.i.t.c.h slept: ere she could bark, Attached her with strait gripes, yet he called those Embracements of love: to love's work he goes, Where deeds move more than words; nor doth she show, Nor much resist, no needs he straiten so His prey, for were she loose she would not bark nor go.

XLIII.

He hath engaged her; his she wholly bides; Who not her own, none other's secrets hides.

If to the flock he come, and Abel there, She feigns hoa.r.s.e 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 ma.s.s Of blood in Abel's b.i.t.c.h, and thither this did pa.s.s.

XLIV.

Some have their wives, their sisters some begot, But in the lives of emperors you shall not Read of a l.u.s.t 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 riding l.u.s.t, 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 cozened with his trade, Then, hopeless that his faults were hid, betrayed 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 quickened 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 why he cannot laugh and speak his mind He wonders. Much with all, most he doth stay With Adam's fifth daughter, Siphatecia; Doth gaze on her, and where she pa.s.seth pa.s.s, Gathers her fruits, and tumbles on the gra.s.s; And, wisest of that kind, the first true lover was.

XLVII.

He was the first that more desired to have One than another; first that e'er did crave Love by mute signs, and had no power to speak; First that could make love-faces, or could do The vaulter's somersalts, or used to woo With hoiting gambols, his own bones to break, To make his mistress merry, or to wreak Her anger on himself. Sins against kind They easily do that can let feed their mind With outward beauty; beauty they in boys and beasts do find.

XLVIII.

By this misled too low things men have proved, And too high; beasts and angels have been loved: This ape, though else th'rough vain, in this was wise; He reached at things too high, but open way There was, and he knew not she would say Nay.

His toys prevail not; likelier means he tries; He gazeth on her face with tear-shot eyes, And uplifts subtlely, with his russet paw, Her kid-skin ap.r.o.n without fear or awe Of Nature; Nature hath no jail, though she hath law.

XLIX.

First she was silly, and knew not what he meant: That virtue, by his touches chafed and spent, Succeeds an itchy warmth, that melts her quite; She knew not first, nor cares not what he doth; And willing half and more, more than half wrath, She neither pulls nor pushes, but outright Now cries, and now repents; when Thelemite, Her brother, entered, and a great stone threw After the ape, who thus prevented flew.

This house, thus battered down, the Soul possessed anew.

L.

And whether by this change she lose or win, She comes out next where the ape would have gone in.

Adam and Eve had mingled bloods, and now, Like chemic's equal fires, her temperate womb Had stewed and formed it; and part did become A spungy liver, that did richly allow, Like a free conduit on a high hill's brow, Life-keeping moisture unto every part; Part hardened itself to a thicker heart, Whose busy furnaces life's spirits do impart.

LI.

Another part became the well of sense, The tender, well-armed feeling brain, from whence Those sinew strings which do our bodies tie Are ravelled out; and fast there by one end Did this Soul limbs, these limbs a Soul attend; And now they joined, keeping some quality Of every past shape; she knew treachery, Rapine, deceit, and l.u.s.t, and ills enough To be a woman: Themech she is now, Sister and wife to Cain, Cain that first did plough.

LII.

Whoe'er thou beest that read'st this sullen writ, Which just so much courts thee as thou dost it, Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me Why ploughing, building, ruling, and the rest, Or most of those arts whence our lives are blest, By cursed Cain's race invented be, And blest Seth vexed us with astronomy.

There's nothing simply good nor ill alone; Of every quality Comparison The only measure is, and judge Opinion.