NATURE'S bright eyesight, and the Night's fair soul,2

3That with thy triple forehead dost control Earth, seas, and hell; and art in dignity The greatest and swiftest planet in the sky.

CYNTHIAM.

fate,

Only to show that since it was composed
Of universal matter, it enclosed
No power to procreate another heaven,
So since that adamantine power is given
To thy chaste hands, to cut off all desire
Of fleshly sports, and quench to Cupid's
fire:

Let it approve: no change shall take thee hence,

Nor thy throne bear another inference; For if the envious forehead of the earth Lour on thy age, and claim thee as her birth,

Tapers nor torches, nor the forests burning, Soul-winging

music, nor tear-stilling

mourning (Used of old Romans and rude Macedons In thy most sad and black discessions),

love:

When men as many as the lamps above, Arm'd Earth in steel, and made her like the skies,

That two Auroras did in one day rise.
Thus with the terror of the trumpets' call,
The battles join'd as if the world did fall:
Continued long in life-disdaining fight,
Jove's thundering eagles feather'd like the
night,

Hovering above them with indifferent wings,

Till Blood's stern daughter, cruel1o Tyche, flings

The chief of one side, to the blushing ground,

And then his men (whom griefs and fears confound)

Turn'd all their cheerful hopes to grim despair,

Some casting off their souls into the air, Some taken prisoners, some extremely maim'd,

And all (as men accursed) on fate exclaim'd. So, gracious Cynthia, in that sable day, When interposed earth takes thee away (Our sacred chief and sovereign general), . As crimson a retreat, and steep a fall, We fear to suffer from this peace and height,

Whose thankless sweet now cloys us with receipt.

The Romans set sweet music to her charms,

To raise thy stoopings, with her airy arms: Used loud resoundings with auspicious brass:

Held torches up to heaven, and flaming glass,

Made a whole forest but a burning eye, T'admire thy mournful partings with the sky.

The Macedonians were so stricken dead, With skill-less horror of thy changes dread;

They wanted hearts, to lift-up sounds, or fires,

Or eyes to heaven; but used their funeral tyres, Trembled, and wept; assured some mischief's fury

Would follow that afflicting augury.

Nor shall our wisdoms be more arrogant (O sacred Cynthia), but believe thy want Hath cause to make us now as much afraid :

Nor shall Democrates, who first is said,
To read in nature's brows thy changes'

cause,

Persuade our sorrows to a vain applause.

Time's motion, being like the reeling sun's,

Or as the sea reciprocally runs,

Hath brought us now to their opinions;
As in our garments, ancient fashions
Are newly worn; and as sweet poesy
Will not be clad in her supremacy
With those strange garments (Rome's
hexameters),

As she is English; but in right prefers
Our native robes (put on with skilful hands
English heroics) to those antic garlands,
Accounting it no meed, but mockery,
When her steep brows already prop the sky,
To put on start-ups, and yet let it fall.
No otherwise (O queen celestial)
Can we believe Ephesia's state will be
But spoil with foreign grace, and change
with thee

12The pureness of thy never-tainted life,
Scorning the subject title of a wife,
Thy body not composed in thy birth,
Of such condensed matter as the earth.
Thy shunning faithless men's society,
Betaking thee to hounds, and archery
To deserts, and inaccessible hills,
Abhorring pleasure in Earth's common ills,
Commit most willing rapes on all our
hearts:

And make us tremble, lest thy sovereign parts

(The whole preservers of our happiness) Should yield to change, eclipse, or heavi

ness.

And as thy changes happen by the site, Near, or far distance, of thy father's* light,

Who (set in absolute remotion) reaves Thy face of light, and thee all darken'd leaves :

So for thy absence to the shade of death Our souls fly mourning, winged with our breath.

Then set thy crystal and imperial throne, Gainst Europe's Sun directly opposite, Girt in thy chaste and never-loosing zone, And give him darkness that doth threat thy light.

O how accursed are they thy favour scorn !14

Diseases pine their flocks, tares spoil their

corn:

Old men are blind of issue, and young wives

Bring forth abortive fruit, that never. thrives.

But then how bless'd are they thy favour graces,

Peace in their hearts, and youth reigns in their faces :

Health strengths their bodies, to subdue the seas,

And dare the Sun, like Theban Hercules, To calm the furies, and to quench the fire:

As at thy altars, in thy Persic empire,
15 Thy holy women walk'd with naked
soles

Harmless, and confident, on burning coals:
The virtue-temper'd mind, ever preserves,
Oils, and expulsatory balm that serves
To quench lust's fire in all things it
anoints,

And steels our feet to march on needles' points:

And 'mongst her arms hath armour to repel

The cannon and the fiery darts of hell: She is the great enchantress that commands

Spirits of every region, seas, and lands, Round heaven itself, and all his sevenfold heights,

Are bound to serve the strength of her conceits.

A perfect type of thy Almighty state, That hold'st the thread, and rulest the sword of fate.

Then you that exercise the virgin court

O clarissimi filia Solis Luna aurei circuli lumen, &c.

Making her drunken with 16Gorgonean dews,

And therewith all your ecstasies infuse,

That she may reach the topless starry brows Of steep Olympus, crown'd with freshest boughs

Of Daphnean laurel, and the praises sing
Of mighty Cynthia: truly figuring
(As she is Hecate) her sovereign kind,
And in her force, the forces of the mind:
An argument to ravish and refine

An earthly soul, and make it mere divine. Sing then withal, her palace brightness bright,

The dazzle-sun perfections of her light; Circling her face with glories, sing the walks,

Where in her heavenly magic mood she stalks.

Her arbours, thickets, and her wondrous game,

(A huntress, being never match'd in fame), Presume not then ye flesh-confounded souls,

That cannot bear the full Castalian bowls, Which sever mounting spirits from the

senses,

To look in this deep fount for thy pretences:

The juice more clear than day, yet shadows night,

Where humour challengeth no drop of right:

But judgment shall display, to purest eyes With ease, the bowels of these mysteries.

See then this planet of our lives descended

To rich 17Ortygia, gloriously attended,
Not with her fifty ocean nymphs; nor yet
Her twenty foresters : but doth beget
By powerful charms, delightsome servitors
Of flowers and shadows, mists and me-
teors :

Her rare Elysian palace she did build With studied wishes, which sweet hope did gild

With sunny foil, that lasted but a day : For night must needs importune her away. The shapes of every wholesome flower and

tree

She gave those types of her felicity.

And Form herself she mightily conjured Their priceless values might not be obscured,

With disposition baser than divine,
But make that blissful court others to shine
With all accomplishment of architect,
That not the eye of Phoebus could detect.
Form then, 'twixt two superior pillars
framed

This tender building, Pax Imperii named,

Which cast a shadow like a Pyramis,
Whose basis in the plain or back part is
Of that quaint work: the top so high ex-
tended,

That it the region of the moon transcended:
Without, within it, every corner fill'd
By beauteous form, as her great mistress
will'd.

18Here as she sits, the thunder-loving Jove
In honours past all others shows his love,
Proclaiming her in complete Empery,
Of whatsoever the Olympic sky
With tender circumvecture doth embrace,
The chiefest planet that doth heaven en-
chase.

Dear goddess, prompt, benign, and bounteous,

That hears all prayers, from the least of us Large riches gives, since she is largely given,

And all that spring from seed of earth and heaven

She doth command: and rules the fates of all,

Old Hesiod sings her thus celestial. And now to take the pleasures of the day, Because her night-star soon will call away, She frames of matter intimate before (To wit, a white and dazzling meteor), A goodly nymph, whose beauty, beauty stains

Heavens with her jewels; gives all the reins

Of wished pleasance; frames her golden wings,

But them she binds up close with purple strings,

Because she now will have her run alone,
And bid the base to all affection.
And Euthimya is her sacred name,
Since she the cares and toils of earth must
tame :

Then straight the flowers, the shadows and the mists

(Fit matter for most pliant humourists), She hunters makes and of that substance hounds

:

Good gifts are often given to men past good,

And Noblesse stoops sometimes beneath his blood.

The hounds that she created, vast, and fleet

Were grim Melampus, with th' Ethiop's feet,

White Leucon; all-eating Pamphagus, Sharp-sighted Dorceus, wild Oribasus, Storm-breathing Lelaps, and the savage Theron,

Wing'd-footed Pterelas, and hind-like Ladon,

Greedy Harpyia, and the painted Stycté, Fierce Trigis, and the thicket-searcher Agre,

The black Melaneus, and the bristled Lachne,

Lean-lustful Cyprius, and big-chested Aloe.

These and such other now the forest ranged,

And Euthimya to a panther changed, Holds them sweet chase; their mouths they freely spend,

As if the earth in sunder they would rend. Which change of music liked the goddess

So,

That she before her foremost nymph would go,

And not a huntsman there was eagerer

seen

In that sport's love (yet all were wondrous keen)

Than was their swift and windy-footed queen.

But now this spotted game did thicket take,

Where not a hound could hunger'd passage make:

Such proof the covert was, all arm'd in thorn,

With which in their attempts the dogs were torn,

And fell to howling in their happiness: As when a flock of school-boys, whom their mistress

Held closely to their books, gets leave to sport,

And then like toil-freed deer, in headlong sort,

With shouts, and shrieks, they hurry from the school.

Some strew the woods, some swim the silver pool:

All as they list to several pastimes fall, To feed their famish'd wantonness withal.

When straight, within the woods some wolf or bear,

The heedless limbs of one doth piecemeal tear,

Affrighteth other, sends some bleeding back,

And some in greedy whirl-pits suffer wrack.

So did the bristled covert check with wounds

The licorous haste of these game-greedy hounds.

In this vast thicket (whose description's

task

The pens of furies, and of fiends would ask:

So more than human-thoughted horrible)
The souls of such as lived implausible,
In happy empire of this goddess' glories,
And scorn'd to crown her fanes with sacri-
fice,

Did ceaseless walk; exspiring fearful groans,

Curses and threats for their confusions.

Her darts, and arrows, some of them had slain,

Others her dogs eat, painting her disdain, After she had transform'd them into beasts:

Others her monsters carried to their nests, Rent them in pieces, and their spirits sent To this blind shade, to wail their banish

ment.

The huntsmen hearing (since they could not hear)

Their hounds at fault; in eager chase drew near,

Mounted on lions, unicorns, and boars, And saw their hounds lie licking of their

sores,

Some yearning at the shroud, as if they chid Her stinging tongues, that did their chase forbid :

By which they knew the game was that way gone.

Then each man forced the beast he rode upon,

T' assault the thicket; whose repulsive thorns

So gall'd the lions, boars, and unicorns, Dragons, and wolves; that half their courages

Were spent in roars, and sounds of heavi

ness:

Yet being the princeliest, and hardiest beasts,

That gave chief fame to those Ortygian forests,

But now the world consists on contraries. So sense brought terror, where the mind's presight

Had saved that fear, and done but pity right,

But servile fear, now forged a wood of darts

Within their eyes, and cast them through their hearts:

Then turn'd they bridle, then half slain with fear,

Each did the other backwards overbear, As when th' Italian Duke, a troop of horse

Sent out in haste against some English force,

From stately-sighted sconce-torn Nimiguen,

Under whose walls the 19wall most Cynthian,

Stretcheth her silver limbs loaded with wealth,

Hearing our horse were marching down by stealth.

(Who looking for them) war's quick artisan, Fame-thriving Vere, that in those countries

wan

More fame than guerdon; ambuscadoes laid

Of certain foot, and made full well appaid
The hopeful enemy, in sending those
The long-expected subjects of their blows
To move their charge; which straight they
give amain,

When we retiring to our strength again,
The foe pursues, assured of our lives,
And us within our ambuscado drives;
Who straight with thunder of the drums
and shot,

Tempest their wraths on them that wist it

not.

Then (turning headlong) some escaped us

So,

Some left to ransom, so to overthrow,
In such confusion did this troop retire,
And thought them cursed in that game's
desire:

Out flew the hounds, that there could nothing find,

Of the sly panther, that did beard the wind,
Running into it full, to clog the chase,
And tire her followers with too much solace.
And but the superficies of the shade,
Did only sprinkle with the scent she made,
As when the sunbeams on high billows fall,
And make their shadows dance upon a wall,
That is the subject of his fair reflectings.
Or else; as when a man in summer evenings,
Something before sunset, when shadows be
Rack'd with his stooping, to the highest
degree,

His shadow climes the trees, and scales a hill,*

While he goes on the beaten passage still : So slightly touch'd the panther with her scent,

This irksome covert, and away she went,
Down to a fruitful island sited by,
Full of all wealth, delight, and empery,
Ever with child of curious architect,
Yet still deliver'd; paved with dames select,
On whom rich feet in foulest boots might
tread,

And never foul them: for kind Cupid spread
Such perfect colours on their pleasing faces,
That their reflects clad foulest weeds with
graces.

* Simile ad eandem explicat.