For me, (if there be such a thing as I)
Fortune (if there be such a thing as she)
Spies that I bear so well her tyranny,
That she thinks nothing else so fit for me;
But though she part us, to hear my oft prayers
For your increase, God is as near me here;
And to send you what I shall beg, his stairs
In length and ease are alike everywhere.
To the Countess of Bedford.
HONOUR is so sublime perfection,
And so refined; that when God was alone
And creatureless at first, himself had none;
But as of the elements, these which we tread,
Produce all things with which we're joyed or fed,
And those are barren both above our head:
So from low persons doth all honour flow;
Kings, whom they would have honoured, to us show,
And but direct our honour, not bestow.
For when from herbs the pure part must be won
From gross, by stilling, this is better done
By despised dung, than by the fire or sun.
Care not then, madam, how low your praises lie;
In labourers ballads more of piety
God finds, than in Te Deum's melody.
And ordnance raised on towers so many mile
Send not their voice, nor last so long a while
As fires from the earth's low vaults in Sicil Isle.
Should I say I lived darker than were true,
Your radiation can all clouds subdue,
But one; it is best light to contemplate you.
You, for whose body God made better clay,
Or took soul's stuff such as shall late decay,
Or such as needs small change at the last day.
This, as an amber drop enwraps a bee,
Covering discovers your quick soul; that we
May in your through-shine front our hearts' thoughts see.
You teach (though we learn not) a thing unknown
To our late times, the use of specular stone,
Through which all things within, without are shown.
Of such were temples; so and such you are;
Being and seeming is your equal care,
And virtue's whole sum is but know and dare.
But as our souls of growth and souls of sense
Have birthright of our reason's soul, yet hence
They fly not from that, nor seek precedence.
Natures first lesson, so, discretion,
Must not grudge zeal a place, nor yet keep none,
Not banish itself, nor religion.
Discretion is a wise man's soul, and so
Religion is a Christian's, and you know
How these are one; her yea, is not her no.
Nor may we hope to solder still and knit
These two, and dare to break them; nor must wit
Be colleague to religion, but be it.
In those poor types of God (round circles) so
Religious types, the pieceless centres flow,
And are in all the lines which always go.
If either ever wrought in you alone
Or principally, then religion
Wrought your ends, and your way's discretion.
Go thither still, go the same way you went,
Who so would change, do covet or repent;
Neither can reach you, great and innocent.
To the Countess of Bedford.
Begun in France, but never perfected.
THOUGH I be dead, and buried, yet I have
(Living in you,) court enough in my grave,
As oft as there I think myself to be,
So many resurrections waken me.
That thankfulness your favours have begot
In me, embalms me; that I do not rot;
This season, as 'tis Easter, as 'tis spring,
Must both to growth and to confession bring
My thoughts disposed unto your influence, so,
These verses bud, so these confessions grow;
First I confess I have to others lent
Your stock, and over prodigally spent
Your treasure, for since I had never known
Virtue or beauty, but as they are grown
In you, I should not think or say they shine,
(So as I have) in any other mine;
Next I confess this my confession,
For 'tis some fault thus much to touch upon
Your praise to you, where half rights seem too much,
And make your mind's sincere complexion blush.
Next I confess my impenitence, for I
Can scarce repent my first fault, since thereby
Remote low spirits, which shall ne'er read you,
May in less lessons find enough to do,
By studying copies, not originals.
A Letter to the Lady Carey, and Mrs. Essex Riche, from Amiens.
HERE where by all, all saints invoked are,
"Twere too much schism to be singular,
And 'gainst a practice general to war.
Yet turning to saints, should my humility
To other saint than you directed be,
That were to make my schism, heresy.
Nor would I be a convertite so cold,
As not to tell it; if this be too bold,
Pardons are in this market cheaply sold.
Where, because faith is in too low degree,
I thought it some apostleship in me
To speak things which by faith alone I see.
That is, of you, who is a firmament
Of virtues, where no one is grown, or spent,
They are your materials, not your ornament.
Others whom we call virtuous, are not so
In their whole substance; but their virtues grow
But in their humours, and at seasons show.
For when through tasteless flat humility
In dough-baked men some harmlessness we see,
'Tis but his phlegm that's virtuous, and not he.
So is the blood sometimes; who ever ran
To danger unimportuned, he was than
No better than a sanguine virtuous man.
So cloisteral men, who, in pretence of fear
All contributions to this life forbear,
Have virtue in melancholy, and only there.
Spiritual choleric critics, which in all
Religions find faults, and forgive no fall,
Have, through their zeal, virtue but in their gall.
We are thus but parcel-guilt; to gold we are grown
When virtue is our soul's complexion;
Who knows his virtue's name or place, hath none.
Virtue is but anguish, when 'tis several,
By occasion waked, and circumstantial.
True virtue is soul, always in all deeds all.
This virtue thinking to give dignity
To your soul, found there no infirmity,
For
your soul was as good virtue, as she.
She therefore wrought upon that part of you
Which is scarce less than soul, as she could do,
And so hath made your beauty, virtue too.
Hence comes it, that your beauty wounds not hearts
As others, with profane and sensual darts,
But as an influence, virtuous thoughts imparts.
But if such friend, by the honour of your sight
Grow capable of this so great a light,
As to partake your virtues, and their might.
What must I think that influence must do,
Where it finds sympathy and matter too,
Virtue, and beauty of the same stuff, as you?
Which is, your noble worthy sister, she
Of whom, if what in this my ecstasy
And revelation of both I see
you
I should write here, as in short galleries
The master at the end large glasses ties,
So to present the room twice to our eyes,
So I should give this letter length, and say
That which I said of you, there is no way
From either, but by the other not to stray.
May therefore this be enough to testify
My true devotion, free from flattery;
He that believes himself, doth never lie.
To the Countess of Salisbury, August 1614.
FAIR, great, and good, since seeing you, we see
What heaven can do, and what any earth can be:
Since now your beauty shines, now when the sun
Grown stale, is to so low a value run,
That his dishevelled beams and scattered fires
Serve but for ladies' periwigs and tires
In lovers' sonnets: you come to repair
God's book of creatures, teaching what is fair.
Since now, when all is withered, shrunk, and dried,
All virtues ebbed out to a dead low tide,
All the world's frame being crumbled into sand,
Where every man thinks by himself to stand,
Integrity, friendship, and confidence,
(Cements of greatness) being vapoured hence,
And narrow man being filled with little shares,
Court, city, church, are all shops of small wares,
All having blown to sparks their noble fire,
And drawn their sound gold-ingot into wire;
|