I. HIS EXCUSE FOR LOVING.
IET it not your wonder move,
Less your laughter, that I love.
Though I now write fifty years,
I have had, and have my peers;
Poets, though divine, are men:
Some have loved as old again.
And it is not always face,
Clothes, or fortune gives the
Or the feature, or the youth;
But the language, and the truth,
With the ardour and the passion,
Gives the lover weight and fashion.
If you then will read the story,
First, prepare you to be sorry,
That you never knew till now,
Either whom to love, or how:
But be glad, as soon with me,
When you know that this is she,
Of whose beauty it was sung,
She shall make the old man young.
Keep the middle age at stay,
And let nothing high decay,
Till she be the reason, why,
All the world for love may die.
* It would appear from the opening verses that these graceful lyrics, which will not suffer in comparison with the most perfect love poems of antiquity, were composed when Jonson had attained the age of fifty -about 1623; but as the concluding stanzas of Her Triumph (see post, p. 382) are to be found in the Devil's an Ass, produced about seven years before, the date of these pieces must not be inferred from the introduction, which seems to have been written last. They were, probably, produced at different periods, and finally arranged in their present order with a view to publication.
I beheld her, on a day,
When her look out-flourished May;
And her dressing did out-brave
All the pride the fields then have;
Far I was from being stupid,
For I ran and called on Cupid;
'Love, if thou wilt ever see
Mark of glory, come with me;
Where's thy quiver? bend thy bow:
Here's a shaft,-thou art too slow!'
And withal, I did untie
Every cloud about his eye:
But he had not gained his sight
Sooner than he lost his might,
Or his courage; for away
Straight he ran, and durst not stay,
Letting bow and arrow fall,
Nor for any threat, or call,
Could be brought once back to look.
I, fool-hardy, there up took
Both the arrow he had quit,
And the bow, with thought to hit
This my object; but she threw
Such a lightning, as I drew,
At my face, that took my sight,
And my motion from me quite;
So that there I stood a stone,
Mocked of all, and called of one,
(Which with grief and wrath I heard,)
Cupid's statue with a beard;
Or else one that played his ape,
In a Hercules his shape.
III. WHAT HE SUFFERED.
After many scorns like these,
Which the prouder beauties please,
She content was to restore
Eyes and limbs; to hurt me more,
And would, on conditions, be
Reconciled to Love and me:
First, that I must kneeling yield
Both the bow and shaft I held
Unto her; which Love might take
At her hand, with oaths, to make
Me the scope of his next draft,
Aimèd with that self-same shaft.
He no sooner heard the law,
But the arrow home did draw,
And, to gain her by his art,
Left it sticking in my heart:
Which when she beheld to bleed,
She repented of the deed,
And would fain have changed the fate,
But the pity comes too late.
Loser-like, now, all my wreak
Is, that I have leave to speak,
And in either prose, or song,
To revenge me with my tongue;
Which how dexterously I do,
Hear, and make example too.
See the chariot at hand here of Love,
Wherein my lady rideth!
Each that draws is a swan or a dove,
And well the car Love guideth.
As she goes, all hearts do duty
Unto her beauty;
And, enamoured, do wish, so they might
But enjoy such a sight,
That they still were to run by her side,
Through swords, through seas, whither she would
Do but look on her eyes, they do light
All that Love's world compriseth!
Do but look on her hair, it is bright
As Love's star when it riseth!
Do but mark, her forehead's smoother
Than words that soothe her! And from her arched brows, such a grace Sheds itself through the face,
As alone there triumphs to the life
All the gain, all the good, of the elements' strife.
Have you seen but a bright lily grow,
Before rude hands have touched it?
Have you marked but the fall o' the snow
Before the soil hath smutched it?
Have you felt the wool of beaver?
Or swan's down ever?
Or have smelt o' the bud o' the brier?
Or the nard in the fire?
Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
O so white! O so soft! O so sweet is she!
V. HIS DISCOURSE WITH CUPID.
Noblest Charis, you that are
Both my fortune and my star!
And do govern more my blood,
Than the various moon the flood!
Hear, what late discourse of you,
Love and I have had; and true.
'Mongst my muses finding me,
Where he chanced your name to see
Set, and to this softer strain;
'Sure,' said he, if I have brain,
This, here sung, can be no other
By description, but my mother!
So hath Homer praised her hair;
So Anacreon drawn the air
Of her face, and made to rise
Just about her sparkling eyes,
Both her brows, bent like my bow;
By her looks I do her know,
Which you call my shafts. And see!
Such my mother's blushes be,
As the bath your verse discloses
In her cheeks, of milk and roses;
Such as oft I wanton in:
And, above her even chin,
Have you placed the bank of kisses,
Where, you say, men gather blisses,
Ripened with a breath more sweet
Than when flowers and west-winds meet.
Nay, her white and polished neck,
With the lace that doth it deck,
my mother's! Hearts of slain
Lovers made into a chain!
And between each rising breast,
Lies the valley, called my nest,
Where I sit and proyne* my wings
After flight; and put new stings
To my shafts! Her very name,
With my mother's is the same.'
I confess all, I replied,
And the glass hangs by her side,
And the girdle 'bout her waist,
All is Venus, save unchaste.
But, alas, thou seest the least
Of her good, who is the best
Of her sex; but couldst thou, Love,
Call to mind the forms that strove
For the apple, and those three
Make in one, the same were she.
For this beauty yet doth hide
Something more than thou hast spied.
Usually spelt proigne, or proine-to prune. A hawk was said to proine, when she fetched oil with her beak over her tail.' Mr. Halliwell gives the following illustration :
For joye they proigne hem evyry mornynge.-MS. Ashmole, 59. f. 20.
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