But when it tries clink in his Raiser's spirit.
Difference of the English and French Courts.
HENRY. GUISE. MONTSURRY.
Gurse. I like not their Court* fashion, it is too crest-fall'n
In all observance, making demigods
Of their great Nobles, and of their old Queen†
An ever young and most immortal Goddess.
Mont. No question she's the rarest Queen in Europe.
Guise. But what's that to her immortality?
Henry. Assure you, cousin Guise; so great a Courtier, So full of majesty and royal parts,
No Queen in Christendom may vaunt herself.
Her Court approves it. That's a Court indeed;
Not mix'd with clowneries us'd in common Houses:
But, as Courts should be, th' abstracts of their kingdoms,
In all the beauty, state, and worth they hold.
So is hers amply, and by her inform❜d,
The world is not contracted in a Man,
With more proportion and expression,
Than in her Court her Kingdom.
Is a mere mirror of confusion to it.
The King and Subject, Lord and every Slave,
Dance a continual hay. Our rooms of state
Kept like our stables: no place more observ'd
Than a rude market-place; and though our custom
Keep his assur'd confusion from our eyes,
"Tis ne'er the less essentially unsightly.
BYRON'S CONSPIRACY. BY GEO. CHAPMAN.
Of matchless valor, and was ever happy
In all encounters, which were still made good
With an unwearied sense of any
Having continued fourteen days together
Upon his horse; his blood is not voluptuous,
Nor much inclined to women; his desires
Are higher than his state; and his deserts
Not much short of the most he can desire,
If they be weigh'd with what France feels by them
He is past measure glorious: and that humor
Is fit to feed his spirit, whom it possesseth
With faith in any error; chiefly where
Men blow it up with praise of his perfections:
The taste whereof in him so soothes his palate,
And takes up all his appetite, that oft times
He will refuse his meat, and company,
To feast alone with their most strong conceit.
Ambition also cheek by cheek doth march
With that excess of glory, both sustain’d
With an unlimited fancy, that the king,
Nor France itself, without him can subsist.
Men's Glories eclipsed when they turn Traitors.
As when the moon hath comforted the night,
And set the world in silver of her light,
The planets, asterisms, and whole State of Heaven,
In beams of gold descending: all the winds
Bound up in caves, charg'd not to drive abroad
Their cloudy heads: an universal peace
(Proclaim'd in silence) of the quiet earth
Soon as her hot and dry furnes are let loose,
Storms and clouds mixing suddenly put out
The eyes of all those glories; the creation
Turn'd into Chaos; and we then desire,
For all our joy of life, the death of sleep.
So when the glories of our lives (men's loves,
Clear consciences, our fames and loyalties),
That did us worthy comfort, are eclips'd:
Grief and disgrace invade us; and for all
Our night of life besides, our misery craves
Dark earth would ope and hide us in our graves.
Opinion of the Scale of Good or Bad.
there is no truth of any good
To be discern'd on earth; and by conversion,
Nought therefore simply bad; but as the stuff
Prepar'd for Arras pictures, is no picture,
Till it be form'd, and man hath cast the beams
Of his imaginous fancy thorough it,
In forming ancient Kings and Conquerors
As he conceives they look'd and were attir'd,
Though they were nothing so so all things here
Have all their price set down from men's Conceits;
Which make all terms and actions good or bad,
And are but pliant and well-color'd threads
Put into feigned images of Truth.
We must have these lures, when we hawk for friends:
And wind about them like a subtle River,
That, seeming only to run on his course,
Doth search yet, as he runs, and still finds out
The easiest parts of entry on the shore,
Gliding so slyly by, as scarce it touch'd,
Yet still eats something in it.
The Stars not able to foreshow anything.
I am a nobler substance than the stars:
And shall the baser over rule the better?
Or are they better since they are the bigger?
I have a will, and faculties of choice,
To do or not to do; and reason why
'I do or not do this: the stars have none.
They know not why they shine, more than this Taper, Nor how they work, nor what. I'll change my course:
I'll piece-meal pull the frame of all my thoughts:
And where are all your Caput Algols then?
Your planets all being underneath the earth
At my nativity: what can they do?
Malignant in aspects! in bloody houses!
Give me a spirit that on life's rough sea
Loves to have his sails fill'd with a lusty wind,
Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack,
And his rapt ship run on her side so low,
That she drinks water, and her keel ploughs air.
There is no danger to a man, that knows
What life and death is: there's not any law
Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful
That he should stoop to any other law :
He goes before them, and commands them all,
That to himself is a law rational.
Vile Natures in High Places.
That under little Saints, suppose* great bases,
Make less (to sense) the saints: and so, where fortune
Advanceth vile minds to states great and noble,
She much the more exposeth them to shame ;
Not able to make good, and fill their bases
With a conformed structure.
Innocence the Harmony of the Faculties.
-Innocence, the sacred amulet
'Gainst all the poisons of infirmity,
Of all misfortune, injury and death :
That makes a man in tune still in himself;
Free from the hell to be his own accuser;
Ever in quiet, endless joy enjoying,
No strife nor no sedition in his powers;
No motion in his will against his reason;
No thought 'gainst thought; nor (as 'twere in the confines
Of whispering and repenting) both possess
Only a wayward and tumultuous peace;
But, all parts in him friendly and secure,
Fruitful of all best things in all worst seasons,
He can with every wish be in their plenty :
When the infectious guilt of one foul crime
Destroys the free content of all our time.
BYRON'S TRAGEDY. BY GEO. CHAPMAN.
King Henry the Fourth of France blesses the young Dauphin.
My royal blessing, and the King of Heaven,
Make thee an aged and a happy King
Help, nurse, to put my sword into his hand.
Hold, boy, by this; and with it may thy arm
Cut from thy tree of rule all traitrous branches,
That strive to shadow and eclipse thy glories.
Have thy old father's Angel for thy guide,
Redoubled be his spirit in thy breast:
Who, when this State ran like a turbulent sea,
In civil hates and bloody enmity,
Their wraths and envies (like so many winds)
Settled and burst: and like the Halcyon's birth
Be thine, to bring a calm upon the shore:
In which the eyes of war may ever sleep,
As over-watch'd with former massacres,
When guilty mad Noblesse fed on Noblesse,
All the sweet plenty of the realm exhausted;
When the nak'd merchant was pursued for spoil :
When the poor peasants frighted neediest thieves
With their pale leanness, nothing left on them
But meagre carcases, sustained with air,
Wandering like ghosts affrighted from their graves;
When with the often and incessant sounds
The very beasts knew the alarum-bell,
And hearing it ran bellowing to their home;
From which unchristian broils and homicides
Let the religious sword of Justice free
Thee, and thy kingdoms govern'd after me;
O Heaven! Or if the unsettled blood of France,
With ease and wealth, renew her civil furies,
|