THE COMPUTATION...THE PARADOX...SONG.

RADERUS.

WHY this man gelded Martial, I amuse;
Except himself alone his tricks would use,
As Cath'rine, for the court's sake, put down stews.

MERCURIUS GALLO-BELGICUS.

LIKE Esop's fellow-slaves, O Mercury,
Which could do all things, thy faith is; and I
Like Esop's self, which nothing; I confess,
I should have had more faith, if thou had'st less;
Thy credit lost thy credit: 't is sin to do,
In this case, as thou would'st be done unto,
To believe all change thy name; thou art like
Mercury in stealing, but liest like a Greek.
Compassion in the world again is bred:
Ralphius is sick, the broker keeps his bed.

ELEGIES.

ELEGY I.

JEALOUSY.

FOND woman, which would'st have thy husband die, Like to good angels, nothing can impair:

And yet complain'st of his great jealousy :
If swoln with poison he lay in 's last bed,
His body with a serecloth covered,
Drawing his breath, as thick and short as can
The nimblest crocheting musician,
Ready with loathsome vomiting to spew
His soul out of one Hell into a new,

Made deaf with his poor kindred's bowling cries,
Begging with few feign'd tears great legacies,
Thou would'st not weep, but jolly and frolic be,
As a slave which to morrow should be free;
Yet weep'st thou, when thou seest him hungerly
Swallow his own death, heart's-bane jealousy.
O give him many thanks, he 's courteous,
That in suspecting kindly warneth us;
We must not, as we us'd, flout openly
In scoffing riddles his deformity:

Nor, at his board together being sat,
With words, nor touch, scarce looks adulterate.
Nor, when he swoln and pamper'd with high fare
Sits down and snorts, cag'd in his basket chair,
Must we usurp his own bed any more,
Nor kiss and play in his house, as before.
Now do I see my danger; for it is
His realm, his castle, and his diocese.
But if (as envious men, which would revile
Their prince, or coin his gold, themselves exile
Into another country, and do it there)
We play in another's house, what should we fear?
There will we scorn his household policies,

For though her eyes be small, her mouth is great;
Though their's be ivory, yet her teeth be jet;
Though they be dim, yet she is light enough,
And though her harsh hair 's foul, her skin is rough;
What though her cheeks be yellow, her hair's red,
Give her thine, and she hath a maidenhead.
These things are beauty's elements; where these
Meet in one, that one must, as perfect, please.
If red and white, and each good quality
Be in thy wench, ne'er ask where it doth lie.
In buying things perfum'd, we ask if there
Be musk and amber in it, but not where.
Though all her parts be not in th' usual place,
Sh' hath yet the anagrams of a good face.
If we might put the letters but one way,
In that lean dearth of words, what could we say?
When by the gamut some musicians make
A perfect song; others will undertake,
By the same gamut chang'd, to equal it.
Things simply good cau never be unfit;
She 's fair as any, if all be like her;
And if none be, then she is singular.
All love is wonder; if we justly do
Account her wonderful, why not lovely too?
Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies;
Choose this face, chang'd by no deformities.
Women are all like angels; the fair be
Like those which fell to worse: but such as she,

ELEGY II.

THE ANAGRAM.

MARRY, and love thy Flavia, for she

Hath all things, whereby others beauteous be;

"T is less grief to be foul, than t' have been fair.
For one night's revel silk and gold we choose,
But in long journies cloth and leather use.
Beauty is barren oft; best husbands say,
There is best land, where there is foulest way.
Oh, what a sovereign plaster will she be,
If thy past sins have taught thee jealousy!
Here needs no spies nor eunuchs, her commit
Safe to thy foes, yea, to a marmosit.
Like Belgia's cities, when the country drowns,
That dirty foulness guards and arms the towns;
So doth her face guard her; and so for thee,
Who, forc'd by business, absent oft must be ;
She, whose face, like clouds, turns the day to night,
Who, mightier than the sea, makes Moors seem
white;

Whom, though seven years she in the stews had laid,
A nunnery durst receive, and think a maid;
And though in childbirth's labour she did lie,
Midwives would swear 't were but a tympany;
Whom, if she accuse herself, I credit less
Than witches, which impossibles confess.
One like none, and lik'd of none, fittest were;
For things in fashion every man will wear.

ELEGY III.

CHANGE.

His silly plots and pensionary spies;
As the inhabitants of Thames' right side

ALTHOUGH thy hand and faith, and good works too,
Have seal'd thy love, which nothing should undo,

Do London's mayor; or Germans the pope's pride. Yea though thou fall back, that apostasy

Confirms thy love; yet much, much I fear thee.
Women are like the arts, forc'd unto none,
Open to all searchers, unpriz'd if unknown.
If I have caught a bird, and let him fly,
Another fowler, using those means as I,

May catch the same bird'; and as these things be,
Women are made for men, not him, nor me.

Foxes, goats, and all beasts, change when they please, | But, oh! too common ill, I brought with me
Shall women, more hot, wily, wild, than these, That, which betray'd me to mine enemy:
Be bound to one man, and bid Nature then
A loud perfume, which at my entrance cry'd
Idly make them apter t' endure than men? E'en at thy father's nose, so were we spy'd.
They're our clogs, not their own; if a man be
Chain'd to a galley, yet the galley 's free. [there, Smelt gunpowder, the pale wretch shivered;
When, like a tyrant king, that in his bed
Who hath a plough-land, casts all his seed-corn Had it been some bad smell, he would have thought
And yet allows his ground more corn should bear; That his own feet or breath the smell had wrought.
Though Danuby into the sea must flow,
But as we in our isle imprisoned,
The sea receives the Rhine, Volga, and Po,
Where cattle only, and divers dogs are bred,
By Nature, which gave it this liberty.
The precious unicorns strange monsters call,
Thou lov'st, but oh! can'st thou love it and me? So thought he sweet strange, that had none at all.
Likeness glues love; and if that thou so do,
To make us like and love, must I change too?
I taught my silks their whistling to forbear,
E'en my oppress'd shoes dumb and speechless were:
More than thy hate, I hate 't; rather let me Only, thou bitter sweet, whom I had laid
Allow her change, than change as oft as she; Next me, me traitorously hast betray'd,
And so not teach, but force my opinion,
And unsuspected hast invisibly
To love not any one, nor every one.
To live in one land is captivity,

To run all countries a wild roguery; '
Waters stink soon, if in one place they 'bide,
And in the vast sea are more putrify'd:
But when they kiss one bank, and leaving this
Never look back, but the next bank do kiss,..
Then are they purest; change is the nursery
Of music, joy, life, and eternity.

At once fled unto him, and stay'd with me.
Base excrement of earth, which dost confound
Sense from distinguishing the sick from sound;
By thee the silly amorous sucks his death,
By drawing in a leprous harlot's breath;
By thee the greatest stain to man's estate
Falls on us, to be call'd effeminate;
Though you be much lov'd in the prince's hall,
There things, that seem, exceed substantial.
Gods, when ye fum'd on altars, were pleas'd well,
Because you're burnt, not that they lik'd your smell.
You 're loathsome all, being ta'en simply alone,
Shall we love ill things join'd, and hate each one?
If you were good, your good doth soon decay;
And you are rare, that takes the good away.
All my perfumes I give most willingly

T embalm thy father's corse. What! will he die?

ELEGY IV.

THE PERFUME.

ONCE, and but once, found in thy company,
All thy supposed 'scapes are laid on me ;
And as a thief at bar is question'd there
By all the men that have been robb'd that year,
So an: I (by this traitorous means surpris'd)
By the hydroptic father catechis'd.

Though he had wont to search with glazed eyes,
As though he came to kill a cockatrice;
Though he hath oft sworn, that he would remove
Thy beauty's beauty, and food of our love,
Hope of his goods, if I with thee were seen;
Yet close and secret, as our souls, we 've been.
Though thy immortal mother, which doth lie
Still buried in her bed, yet will not die,
Takes this advantage to sleep out day-light,
And watch thy entries and returns all night;
And, when she takes thy hand, and would seem kind,
Doth search what rings and armlets she can find ;
And kissing notes the colour of thy face,
And fearing lest thou 'rt swoln, doth thee embrace;
And, to try if thou long, doth name strange meats,
And notes thy paleness, blushes, sighs, and sweats,
And politicly will to thee confess
The sins of her own youth's rank lustiness;
Yet love these sorc'ries did remove, and move
Thee to gull thine own mother for my love.
Thy little brethren, which like fairy sprites

Oft skipp'd into our chamber those sweet nights,
And kiss'd and dandled on thy father's knee,
Were brib'd next day; to tell what they did see:
The grim eight foot high iron-bound serving-man,
That oft names God in oaths, and only then,
He that, to bar the first gate, doth as wide
As the great Rhodian Colossus stride,
Which, if in Hell no other pains there were,
Makes me fear Hell, because he must be there:
Though by thy father he were hir'd to this,
Could never witness any touch or kiss.

ELEGY V.

HIS PICTURE.

HERE take my picture; though I bid farewell:
Thine in my heart, where my soul dwells, shall dwell,-
'Tis like me now, but, I dead, 't will be more,
When we are shadows both, than 't was before.
When weather-beaten I come back; my hand
Perhaps with rude oars torn, or sun-beams tann'd;
My face and breast of hair-cloth, and my head
With care's harsh sudden hoariness o'erspread;
My body a sack of bones, broken within,
And powder's blue stains scatter'd on my skin :
If rival fools tax thee t' have lov'd a man
So foul and coarse, as, oh! I may seem then,
This shall say what I was: and thou shalt say,
"Do his hurts reach me? doth my worth decay?
Or do they reach his judging mind, that he
Should now love less, what he did love to see?
That which in him was fair and delicate,
Was but the milk, which in love's childish state
Did nurse it: who now is grown strong enough
To feed on that, which to weak tastes seems tough."

ELEGY VI.

OH! let me not serve so, as those men serve,
Whom honour's smokes at once flatter and starve =
Poorly enrich'd with great men's words or looks:
Nor so write my name in thy loving books;