Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

THE

GLASSE OF TIME

IN THE FIRST AGE.

THE ARGUMENT.

The author first, doth Gods assistance crave,
Throughout the worke that he his help may have;
The sacred Sabbaoth, Satans envious gall,
The woman fram'd, and mans most dismal fall;
The tree of Life protected from the Brute,
The tree of Knowledge with her fatal fruit:
For feare the world should be finally ended,
Gods dearest Daughters down. in hast descended,
The flaming sword the tree of Life which guarded,
The Cherubims upon the Wall that warded.
The land of Eden is described at large,

Heavens judgment just to all mens future charge.

1.

SINCE true examples in Gods holy Booke,
Are found of those that in it love to looke,
Of men whose Image, portraiture and soule,
Have beene transform'd to monstrous shapes and
soule

According as their lives have pleasing beene,
To him whose sight their secret thoughts hath

seene,

And as his goodnesse sacred is that some,
Should be examples for these times to come:
His Church to comfort, Pagans to appall,
To teach to us what did to them befall;
Within the stories of the new and old,
Of many more than can by me be told.

2.

And since that Ovid in a pleasing verse,
Doth pretty tales and metaphors rehearse,

Of men to birds, and then again to beasts,
To make you parly at your welcome feasts:
Whose fabled fictions warbled in that age,
The infancy and sacred pupilage

Of the religion which we here maintaine,
Under our Soveraignes thrice most happy reigne;
May seem from Moses and the rest divine,
In 's metaphors to trace them line by line;
In some I meane, and not in all his worke,
For pleasant folly coucht, therein may lurke,
Yet the allusion, and the meaning sure,
May reference have unto the scripture pure,
And though it shines as Titans westerne rayes,
By some 'tis held but wanton in our dayes.

3.

But most of all the ripenesse of these times,
The heavenly works up to the clouds that climes;
The envious eye which overlookes our deeds,
When each mans taste on sundry dishes feedes:
The snarling cur at everything that bites:
The slandering Mome which no good work endites:
The monster curst with his vile forked tongue,
That from Hells vault up to the earth first
sprung,

With Hydra-heads, and Janus double face,
To fawn before, then wound to our disgrace:
Hath made my muse unwilling heere to sing,
As loath herself upon the stage to bring
To each mans view, and her owne painefull toyle,
But that the sight may many vices spoyle.

4.

When Sin we see unmasked brought to light,
And damn'd offences naked to our sight:
Like Jezabel that did the clouds aspire,
In rusling silkes and glorious brave attire,
Under a holy outward forme and rite,

Gods chosen flock are fleec't and murthered quite,
But once unmask't, the minions of her court
Hurle her i'th durt, push out her braines in sport:
And as a foul mishapen painted monster,
Conceit of her as all the world doth conster :
Then is she seene disrobed, disrank't of all,
The map of folly in her sudden fall,

Her cup with poison, damned Envy fills,

Her cursed eyes have seen those seven built hills, Where all the Saints, Apostles, Martyrs stood, With crimson colors all imbru'd in blood.

5.

O glorious God inspiror of my Muse,
Grant that thy word my soul may daily use,
And that what learning painfully is got,
Still from the truth may never swerve a jot
That in her spring, beginning and in her bud,
May sing thy glory to the churches good,
And in foul folly none asleepe I rock
Nor give offence to any of thy flock:
But that my speech as general to all,
May like a Sermon in the Pulpit fall:
And not to wade in curious questions deepe,
But feede thy flock and edify thy sheepe,
That none at all may have a just excuse,
By such examples as I shall produce,

And all that see their faults, their lives may mend,

That to thy glory I this worke may end.

6.

Then shall the world with admiration see,
Her fall unmask't to all eternitie;
The famous actions heretofore lay dead
Shall then be rouzed out from oblivions bed.
And all the noblest kingdoms ever known,
Will be reviv'd, within my verse be shown,
Their manners, customs, nature and their state,
Their end, beginning, fortune and their fate,
From Adam first throughout in every age,
Shall heere be mustered on this publick stage,
In Rural robes to give to Earth content,
How heretofore the ages past were spent.

7.

O that my muse might once but rest in peace,
Then would she sing divinely, never cease,
But worke out Truth within her holy Rimes,
Gliding along descending to our times,
And dear Urania Soveraigne of my verse,
Should heere the glory of this world rehearse,

Unfolding still to Gods immortall glory,
The heavenly sweetness of a sacred story.

8.

What may we think of all the judgments just,
Of great Jehovah buried in the dust;
Beside all those in Holy Scriptures pend,
Which human wit as yet could never mend,
Nor all the Rabbies in their learned fame;
Could ever tell how to correct the same:
Shall we go on, and still be bold to thinke,
He'll punish them, and on us always winke;
For some of them the earth itself did gape,
How can we know that we are sure to 'scape,
The angel which against the Lord did swell,
He quite cashier'd, and cast him down to Hell:
Where being bound eternally in chains,
They feel the torments of ten thousand pains,
Far more than can expressed be in ink,
And all the world, and sinfull man can think.

9.

Adam what made thee, wilfully at first,
To leave thy offspring, to this day accurst;
So wicked foul, and overgrown with sinne;
And in thy person all of it beginne?

That hadst thou stood in innocence fram'd, Death, Sin, and Hell, the world and all thou hadst tamed.

Then hadst thou been a Monarch from thy birth;
Gods only darling both in Heaven and Earth: .
The world and all at thy command to bend,
And all Heavens creatures on thee t'attend.
The sweetest life that ever man could live;
What couldst thou ask but God to thee did give?
Protected kept thee like a faithful warden,
As thy companion in that pleasant garden
No canker'd malice once thy heart did move .
Free will thou hadst endude from him above.
What couldst thou wish, all worlds content and
more?

The best Divine that ere the Earth yet bore,
Gods only sonne, the Prince of Peace except,
For thy sad fall how oft mine eyes have wept.

« AnteriorContinuar »