These vanities and giddinesses, lo
I shut my chamber door, and come, let's go.
But sooner may a cheap whore, who hath been
Worn out by as many several men in sin,
As are black feathers, or musk-colored hose,
Name her child's right true father 'mongst a
those ;
Sooner may one guess, who shall bear away
The infantry of London hence to India ;
And sooner may a gulling weather-spy,
By drawing forth heaven's scheme, tell certainly
What fashioned hats or ruffs, or suits, next year
Our giddy-headed antic youth will wear;
Than thou, when thou depart'st from me, can
show
Whither, why, when, or with whom thou wouldst
But how shall I be pardoned my offence,
That thus have sinned against my conscience?
Now we are in the street; he first of all,
Improvidently proud, creeps to the wall;
And so imprisoned and hemmed in by me,
Sells for a little state his liberty.
Yet though he cannot skip forth now to greet
Every fine silken painted fool we meet,
He them to him with amorous smiles allures,
And grins, smacks, shrugs, and such an itch
endures,
As 'prentices or school-boys, which do know
Of some gay sport abroad, yet dare not go ;
And as fiddlers stop lowest at highest sound,
So to the most brave stoops he nigh'st the
But to a grave man he doth move no more
Than the wise politic horse would heretofore,
Or thou, O elephant, or ape, wilt do,
When any names the king of Spain to you.
Now leaps he upright, jogs me, and cries, Lo
Yonder well-favored youth?" "Which?"
That dances so divinely." "Oh," said I,
"Stand still, must you dance here for company?"
He drooped; we went, till one (which did excel
The Indians in drinking his tobacco well)
Met us they talked; I whispered, "Let us go;
'T may be you smell him not, truly I do."
He hears not me, but on the other side
A many-colored peacock having spied,
Leaves him and me; I for my lost sheep stray;
He follows, overtakes, goes on the way,
Saying, "Him, whom I last left, all repute
For his device, in handsoming a suit,
To judge of lace, pink, panes, print, cut, and plait,
Of all the court to have the best conceit."
"Our dull comedians want him, let him go;
But oh! God strengthen thee, why stoop'st thou
so?"
Why, he hath travelled long; no, but to me Which understood none, he doth seem to be
Perfect French and Italian." I replied
So is the pox." He answered not, but spied
More men of sort, of parts and qualities;
At last his love he in a window spies,
And, like light dew exhaled, he flings from me
Violently ravished to his lechery.
Many there were, he could command no more;
He quarrelled, fought, bled; and, turned out of
door,
Directly came to me, hanging the head,
And constantly awhile must keep his bed.
SIR, though (I thank God for it) I do hate
Perfectly all this town, yet there's one state
In all ill things so excellently best,
That hate towards them breeds pity towards the
Though poetry indeed be such a sin,
As I think that brings dearth and Spaniards in;
Though, like the pestilence and old fashioned love,
Riddlingly it catch men, and doth remove
Never, till it be starved out, yet their state
Is poor, disarmed, like Papists, not worth hate.
One (like a wretch, which at bar judged as dead,
Yet prompts him, which stands next, and cannot
read,
And saves his life) gives idiot actors means,
(Starving himself) to live by 's labored scenes.
As in some organ puppets dance above,
And bellows pant below which them do move, One would move love by rhymes; but witchcraft's
Bring not now their old fears, nor their old
Rams and slings now are silly battery,
Pistollers are the best artillery.
And they who write to lords, rewards to get,
Are they not like singers at doors for meat?
And they who write, because all write, have still
The excuse for writing, and for writing ill.
But he is worst, who (beggarly) doth chaw
Others' wit's fruits, and in his ravenous maw,
Rankly digested, doth those things outspew,
As his own things; and they're his own, 't is true;
For if one eat my meat, though it be known
The meat was mine, the excrement is his own.
But these do me no harm, nor they which use
To outdo dildoes, and out-usure Jews,
To outdrink the sea, to outswear the litany,
Who with sin's all kinds as familiar be
As confessors, and for whose sinful sake
Schoolmen new tenements in hell must make;
Whose strange sins canonists could hardly tell
In which commandment's large receipt they dwell.
But these punish themselves. The insolence
Of Coscus only breeds my just offence, Грох,
Whom time (which rots all, and makes botches
And plodding on must make a calf an ox,
Hath made a lawyer; which (alas) of late But scarce a poet, jollier of this state Than are new beneficed ministers, he throws Like nets or lime-twigs, wheresoe’er he goes, His title of barrister on every wench, And wooes in language of the pleas and bench. "A motion, Lady:" "Speak, Coscus." "I have
In love e'er since tricesimo of the queen. Continual claims I've made, injunctions got To stay my rival's suit, that he should not Proceed; spare me, in Hilary term I went; You said, if I returned next 'size in Lent, I should be in remitter of your grace; In the interim my letters should take place Of affidavits." Words, words, which would
The tender labyrinth of a maid's soft ear
More, more than ten Slavonians' scoldings, more
Than when winds in our ruined abbeys roar.
When sick with poetry and possest with muse
Thou wast, and mad,—I hoped; but men which
choose
Law practice for mere gain, bold souls repute
Worse than imbrotheled strumpets prostitute.
Now, like an owl-like watchman, he must walk
His hand still at a bill; now he must talk
Idly, like prisoners, which whole months will
That only suretyship hath brought them there,
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