SATIRES AND HUMOROUS POEMS.
BEN JONSON. 1573-1637.
WOMAN.
FOLLOW a shadow, it still flies you;
Seem to fly it, it will pursue;
So, court a mistress, she denies you;
Let her alone, she will court you.
Say, are not women truly then
Styled but the shadows of us men?
At morn and even shades are longest,
At noon they are or short or none;
So men at weakest, they are strongest,
But grant us perfect, they're not known.
Say, are not women truly then
Styled but the shadows of us men?
SHALL I, WASTING IN DESPAIR.
SHALL I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman's fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care 'Cause another's rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flow'ry meads in May,
If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?
Should my heart be grieved or pined
'Cause I see a woman kind?
Or a well disposed nature
Joined with a lovely feature?
Be she meeker, kinder than
Turtle-dove or pelican,
If she be not so to me,
What care I how kind she be?
Shall a woman's virtues move
Me to perish for her love?
Or her well-deservings, known,
Make me quite forget my own?
Be she with that goodness blest
Which may gain her name of best,
If she be not so to me,
What care I how good she be?
'Cause her fortune seems too high,
Shall I play the fool and die?
Those that bear a noble mind,
Where they want of riches find,
Think what with them they would do,
That without them dare to woo;
And unless that mind I see,
What care I how great she be?
Great, or good, or kind, or fair,
I will ne'er the more despair:
If she love me, this believe,
I will die e'er she shall grieve:
If she slight me when I woo,
I can scorn and let her go;
For if she be not for me,
What care I for whom she be?
CHARLES THE SECOND'S BED-ROOM DOOR.
HERE lies our sovereign Lord the King,
Whose word no man relies on,
Who never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one.
"TIS not restraint or liberty
That makes men prisoners or free,
But perturbations that possess
The mind or equanimities.
The whole world was not half so wide
To Alexander, when he cried
Because he had but one to subdue;
As was a paltry narrow tub to
Diogenes; who is not said
(For aught that ever I could read)
To whine, put finger i' the eye, and sob
Because he'd ne'er another tub.
The ancients make two several kinds
Of prowess in heroic minds,-
The active and the passive val'ant,
Both which are pari libra gallant ;
For both to give blows and to carry
In fights are equi-necessary;
But in defeats the passive stout
Are always found to stand it out
Most desp'rately, and to outdo
The active 'gainst a conquering foe.
He that is valiant and dares fight,
Though drubbed, can lose no honour by 't.
Honour's a lease for lives to come,
And cannot be extended from
The legal tenant; 'tis a chattel
Not to be forfeited in battle.
If he that in the field is slain
Be in the bed of Honour lain,
He that is beaten may be said
To lie in Honour's truckle bed."
ANTIQUITY DOES NOT MAKE TRUTH.
'TIS not antiquity nor author
Can make Truth, Truth, although Time's daughter.
'Twas he that put her in the pit
Before he pulled her out of it;
And as he eats his sons, just so
He feeds upon his daughters too.
Nor does it follow 'cause a herald
Can make a gentleman scarce a year old
To be descended of a race
Of ancient kings in a small space,
That we should all opinions hold
Authentic, that we can make old.
-IF we had not weighty cause
To not appear in making laws,
We could, in spite of all your tricks
And shallow formal politics,
Force you our managements t' obey,
As we to yours (in show) give way.
Hence 'tis that while you vainly strive
T' advance your high prerogative,
You basely, after all your braves,
Submit, and own yourselves our slaves!
And 'cause we do not make it known,
Nor publicly our interests own,
Like sots, suppose we have no shares
In ordering you and your affairs;
When all your empire and command
You have from us at second-hand !
As if a pilot, that appears
To sit still only, while he steers,
And does not make a noise and stir
Like every common mariner,
Knew nothing of the card nor star,
And did not guide the man-of-war!
Nor we, because we don't appear
In councils, do not govern there;
We rule in every public meeting,
And make men do what we judge fitting;
Are magistrates in all great towns,
Where men do nothing but wear gowns.
We make the man-of-war strike sail,
And to our braver conduct veil ;
And when he's chased his enemies,
Submit to us upon his knees.
Is there an officer of state
Untimely raised, or magistrate
That's haughty and imperious?
He's but a journeyman to us,
That, as he gives us cause to do 't,
Can keep him in or turn him out.
We are your guardians, that increase
Or waste your fortunes how we please;
And, as you humour us, can deal
In all your matters ill or well.
JOHN DRYDEN.
1631--1701.
CHARACTER OF AN AMBITIOUS,
RESTLESS STATESMAN.
Of these the false Achitophel* was first-
A name to all succeeding ages curst;
For close designs and crooked counsels fit,
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;
Restless, unfixed in principles and place,
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace;
* Anthony Ashly Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury,
but a type rather than an individual.
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity,
Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high
He sought the storm; but for a calm unfit, Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide; Else why should he, with wealth and honour blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest? Punish a body which he could not please, Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease? And all to leave what by his toil he won To that unfeathered, two-legged thing
In friendship false, implacable in hate,
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state;
To compass this the triple bond he broke,
The pillars of the public safety shook,
And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke.
Then, seized with fear, yet still affecting
fame,
Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name;
So easy still it proves, in factious times,
With public zeal to cancel private crimes.
How safe is treason, and how sacred ill,
Where none can sin against the people's
will;
[known,
Where crowds can wink and no offence be
Since, in another's guilt, they find their
own!
[since, Now, manifest of crimes contrived long He stood at bold defiance with his prince; Held up the buckler of the people's cause Against the Crown, and skulked behind the laws.
CHARACTER OF VILLIERS, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.
SOME of their chiefs were princes of the land;
In the first rank of these did Zimri stand,
A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome.
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by turns, and nothing
long;
But in the course of one revolving moon Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.
VERSES ON THE DEATH OF
DR. SWIFT.
Occasioned by reading the following
maxim in Rochefoucauld.
"Dans l'adversité de nos meilleurs amis nous trouvous toujours quelque choses, qui ne nous deplaist pas."
"In the adversity of our best friends we always find something that doth not displease
AS ROCHEFOUCAULD his maxims drew
From nature, I believe them true:
They argue no corrupted mind
In him; the fault is in mankind.
This maxim, more than all the rest, Is thought too base for human breast:"In all distresses of our friends We first consult our private ends; While nature, kindly bent to ease us, Points out some circumstance to please us." If this, perhaps, your patience move, Let reason and experience prove.
We all behold with envious eyes
Our equal raised above our size.
I love my friend as well as you ;
But why should he obstruct my view?
Then let me have the higher post:
Suppose it but an inch at most.
If in a battle you should find
One, whom you love of all mankind,
Had some heroic action done,–
A champion killed or trophy won;
Rather than thus be overtopt,
Would you not wish his laurels cropt?
Dear honest Ned is in the gout,
Lies racked with pain, and you without;
How patiently you hear him groan!
How glad the case is not your own!
What poet would not grieve to see
His brother write as well as he?
But, rather than they should excel,
Would wish his rivals all in hell?
Her end when emulation misses, She turns to envy, stings, and hisses: The strongest friendship yields to pride, Unless the odds be on our side.
Vain human-kind! fantastic race! Thy various follies who can trace?
I grieve to be outdone by Gay
In my own humorous, biting way.
Arbuthnot is no more my friend,
Who dares to irony pretend,
Which I was born to introduce,
Refined it first, and showed its use.
St. John,* as well as Pulteney,† knows
That I had some repute for prose;
And, till they drove me out of date,
Could maul a minister of state.
If they have mortified my pride,
And made me throw my pen aside,
If with such talents Heav'n hath blest 'em,
Have I not reason to detest 'em?
To all my foes, dear Fortune, send
Thy gifts, but never to my friend;
I tamely can endure the first,
But this with envy makes me burst.
Thus much may serve by way of proem; Proceed we therefore to our poem.
The time is not remote, when I Must by the course of nature die; When, I foresee my special friends Will try to find their private ends; And, though 'tis hardly understood Which way my death can do them good, Yet thus, methinks, I hear them speak:"See, how the Dean begins to break! Poor gentleman! he droops apace! You plainly find it in his face: That old vertigo in his head Will never leave him till he's dead. Besides, his memory decays; He recollects not what he says; He cannot call his friends to mind; Forgets the place where last he dined; Plies you with stories o'er and o'er; He told them fifty times before. How does he fancy we can sit To hear his out-of-fashion wit?
* Lord Viscount Bolinbroke.
+ William Pulteney, Esq.; now Earl of Bath.
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