Andromeda Liberata, or the Nuptials of Perseus and Andromeda by George Chapman. Nihil a veritate nec virtute remotius quam vulgaris opinio, Petrarch.  London, printed for Laurence L’Isle and are to be sold at his shop in St Paul’s Churchyard, at the sign of the Tiger’s head. 1614.

To the right worthily honoured, Robert Earl of Somerset, etc., and his most noble lady, the Lady Frances. 

As nothing under heaven is more remov’d 

From truth and virtue than opinions prov’d

By vulgar voices: So is nought more true

Nor soundly virtuous than things held by few:

5 Whom Knowledge (entered by the sacred line,

And governed evermore by grace divine)

Keeps in the narrow path to spacious heaven,

And therefore, should no knowing spirit be driven

From fact, nor purpose; for the spleens prophane

10 Of humours errant, and plebeian;

But, fame-like, gather force as he goes forth,

The crown of all acts ends in only worth.

Nor will I fear to postrate  this poor rage

Of forespoke poesy to your patronage,

15 Thrice-worthy earl, and your unequalled grace,

Most noble countess, for the one-ear’d race

Of set-eyed vulgars that will no way see

But that their stiff necks drive them headlongy, 

Stung with the gadfly of misgoverned zeal:

20 Nor hear but one tale, and that ever ill.

These I contemn, as no rubs  fit for me

To check at, in my way t’integrity.

Nor will ye be incensed that such a toy

Should put on the presumption to enjoy

25 Your graver ear, my lord, and your fair eye

(Illustrious lady) since poor poesy

Hath been a jewel in the richest ear

Of all the nuptial states, that ever were.

For as the body’s pulse (in physic) is

30 A little thing, yet therein th’arteries

Bewray their motion, and disclose to art

The strength, or weakness, of the vital part; 

Perpetually moving, like a watch

Put in our bodies: so this three-men’s catch, 

35 This little soul’s pulse, poesy, panting still

Like to a dancing pease  upon a quill,

Made with a child’s breath, up and down to fly

Is no more manly thought, and yet thereby

Even in the corpse  of all the world we can

40 Discover all the good and bad of man,

Anatomise his nakedness, and be

To his chief ornament, a majesty:

Erect him past his human period

And heighten his transition into God.

45 Thus sun-like did the learned and most divine

Of all the golden world make poesy shine;

That now, but like a glow-worm, gleams by night,

Like teachers, scarce found, by their proper light.

But this (my lord) and all poor virtues else

50 Expos’d, alas, like perdu  sentinels

To warn the world of what must needs be nigh

For pride, and avarice, glaz’d by sanctity,

Must be distinguished, and decided by

Your clear, ingenuous, and most quiet eye

55 Exempt from passionate and dusky fumes

That blind our reason, and in which consumes

The soul, half-choked, with stomach-casting mists

Bred in the purest, turned mere humourists.

And where with dovelike sweet humility

60 They all things should authorise or deny,

The vulgar heat and pride of spleen and blood

Blaze their opinions, which cannot be good.

For as the body’s shadow never can

Show the distinct, and expact  form of man;

65 So nor the body’s passionate affects

Can ever teach well what the soul respects.

For how can mortal things, immortal shew?

Or that which false is, represent the true? 

The peaceful mixture then that meets in you

70 (Most temperate earl) that nought to rule doth owe:

In which, as in a thorough-kindled fire,

Light and heat marry judgement and desire.

Reason is still in quiet, and extends

All things t’advantage of your honoured ends,

75 May well authorise all your acts of note,

Since all acts vicious are of passion got:

Through dead calms, of our perturbations ever

Truth’s voice (to souls’ ears set) we hear or never

The merely animate man doth nothing see

80 That tends to heaven: it must be only he

That is mere foul; her separable powers

The sceptre giving here, that then discourse

Of motions that in sense do never fall,

Yet know them too, and can distinguish all

85 With such a freedom, that our earthly parts

Sink all to earth: And then th’ingenuous arts

Do their true office, then true policy

Winds like a serpent, through all empery.

Her folds on both sides bounded, like a flood

90 With high shores listed, making great and good

Whom she instructeth, to which, you (my lord)

May lay all claims that temper can afford;

Nought gathering ere ’tis ripe: and so must taste

Kindly and sweetly, and the longer last,

95 All fruits, in youth, ripe in you; and must so

Imply a faculty to ever grow.

And as the morning that is calm and grey,

Decked all with curled clouds that the sun doth lay

With varied colours; all aloft exhalled

100 As they t’adorn even heaven itself were call’d,

And could not fall in slenderest dews till night,

But keep day’s beauty firm and exquisite;

More for delight fit, and doth more adorn

Even th’Even with graces, than the youthful morn:

105 So you (sweet earl) stay youth in aged bounds

Even absolute now, in all life’s gravest grounds,

Like air, fill every corner of your place,

Your grace, your virtue heightening: virtue, grace

And keeping all clouds high, air calm, and clear

110 And in yourself all that their height should rear

Your life and light will prove a still full moon,

And all your night-time nobler than your noon,

The sun is in his rising, height, and set

Still (in himself) alike, at all parts great,

115 His light, heat, greatness, colours that are shown

To us, as his charge, merely is our own.

So let your charge, my lord, in others be,

But in yourself hold sun-like constancy.

For as men skilled in Nature’s study, say,

120 The world was not the world,  nor did convey

To coupling bodies Nature’s common form,

But (all confus’d, like waves struck with a storm)

Some small were, and (in no set being, staid)

All comprehension, and connexion fled;

125 The greater, and the more compact disturb’d

With ceaseless war, and by no order curb’d,

Till Earth receiving her set magnitude

Was fixed herself, and all her birth endow’d

With stay  and law, so this small world of ours

130 Is but a chaos of corporeal powers:

Nor yields his mixt parts, forms that may become

A human nature, but at random roam

Past brutish fashions, and so never can

Be called the civil body of a man;

135 But in it, and against itself still fights,

In competence of cares, joys, appetites:

The more great in command, made servile more,

Glutted, not satisfied: in plenty, poor,

Till up the soul mounts, and the sceptre sways

140 Th’admired fabric of her world surveys,

And as it hath a magnitude confined,

To all the powers therein, she sees combined

In fit acts for one end, which is t’obey

Reason, her regent; Nature giving way,

145 Peace, concord, order, stay proclaim’d, and law,

And none commanding, if not all in awe,

Passion, and anger made to underlie,

And here concludes, man’s moral monarchy

In which your lordship’s mild soul sits so high

150 Yet cares so little to be seen, or heard,

That in the good thereof, her scope is spher’d.

The Theban ruler, paralleling right,

Who thirst of glory turned to appetite

Of inward goodness was of speech so spare,

155 To hear, and learn, so covetous, and yare,

That (of his years) none things so many knew,

Nor in his speeches, ventured on so few: 

Forth then (my lord) and these things ever thirst

Till scandal pine, and bane-fed envy burst.

160 And you, most noble lady as in blood

In mind be noblest, make our factious brood

Whose forked tongues would fain your honour sting,

Convert their venomed points into their spring,

Whose own hearts guilty, of faults feigned in yours

165 Would fain be posting off: but arm your powers

With such a siege of virtues, that no vice

Of all your foes, advantage may entice

To sally forth, and charge you with offence,

But starve within, for very conscience

170 Of that integrity they see expressed

In your clear life: of which, th’example’s rest,

May be so blameless; that all past must be

(Being fount to th’other) most undoubtedly

Confessed untouch’d, and Curiosity

175 The beam pick rather from her own squint eye,

Than ramp still at the mote’s shade feigned in yours, 

Nought doth so shame this chemic search of ours

As when we pry long for assur’d huge prize,

Our glasses broke, all up in vapour flies.

180 And as the royal beast, whose image you

Bear in your arms,  and air’s great eagle too;

Still as they go, are said to keep in close

Their seres  and talons, lest their points should lose

Their useful sharpness, when they serve no use:

185 So this our sharp-eyed search that we abuse

In others’ breasts, we should keep in, t’explore

Our own foul bosoms, and quit them before

We ransack others: but (great lady) leave

These rules to them they touch; do you receive

190 Those free joys in your honour, and your love

That you can say are yours; and ever move

Where your command, as soon is served as known:

Joys placed without you never are your own.

Your Honours’ ever most humbly and faithfully vowed, George Chapman.

To the prejudicate  and peremptory reader.

I am still in your hands; but was first in his, that (being our great sustainer of sincerity, and innocence)  will, I hope, defend me from falling. I think you know not him I intend more than you know me, nor can you know me, since your knowledge is imagined so much above mine that it must needs oversee. He that lies on the ground can fall no lower. By such as backbite the highest, the lowest must look to be devour’d. Forth with your curious scrutiny, and find my rush as knotty as you lust, and your own crab-tree as smooth. ’Twill be most ridiculous; and pleasing, to sit in a corner, and spend your teeth to the stumps, in mumbling an old sparrow,  till your lips bleed, and your eyes water: when all the faults you can find are first in yourselves, ’tis no Herculean labour to crack what you breed. Alas, who knows not your uttermost dimensions? Or loves not the best things you would seem to love, indeed, and better? Truth was never the fount of faction, in whose sphere since your purest thoughts move, their motion must of force be oblique and angular. But whatsoever your disease be, I know it incurable, because your urine will never show it. At adventure, at no hand be let blood for it, but rather sooth your rank bloods and rub one another.

You yet, ingenuous and judicious reader, that (as you are yourself) retain in a sound body as sound a soul: if your gentle tractability have unawares let the common surfeit surprise you abstain, take physic here, and recover. Since you read to learn, teach: since you desire to be reform’d, reform freely. Such strokes shall be so far from breaking my head; they shall be rich balms to it, comfort, and strengthen the brain it bears, and make it healthfully neeze  out whatsoever annoys it. Vale.

The Argument. 

Andromeda, daughter of Cepheus, King of Ethiopia, and Cassiope (a virgin exempted from comparison in all the virtues and beauties, both of mind and body) for the envy of Juno to her mother, being compar’d with her for beauty and wisdom (or, as others write, maligned by the Nereids, for the eminent graces of herself) moved so much the deities’ displeasures that they procur’d Neptune to send into the region of Cepheus a whale so monstrously vast and dreadful that all the fields he spoiled and wasted; all the noblest edifices tumbling to ruin; the strongest cities of the kingdom, not forcible enough to withstand his invasions. Of which so unsufferable a plague Cepheus consulting with an oracle, and asking both the cause and remedy, after accustomed sacrifices, the oracle gave answer, that the calamity would never cease, till his only daughter Andromeda was exposed to the monster. Cepheus returned, and with iron chains bound his daughter to a rock before a city of the kingdom called Ioppe. At which city, the same time, Perseus arrived with the head of Medusa etc.,  who, pitying so matchless a virgin’s exposure to so miserable an event, dissolv’d her chains and took her from the rock. Both sitting together to expect the monster, and he ravenously hasting to devour her, Perseus, turned part of him into stone, and through the rest made way with his sword to his utter slaughter. When (holding it wreath enough for so renowned a victory) he took Andromeda to wife, and had by her one daughter called Perse, another Erythrea, of whom the sea in those parts is called Mare Erythraeum, since she both lived and died there: and one son called after himself; another, Electryon; a third, Sthenelus: and after lived princely and happily with his wife and his own mother to his death. Then feigned for their virtues to be made constellations in heaven.

Andromeda Liberata

Away ungodly vulgars, far away,

Fly ye prophane, that dare not view the day,

Nor speak to men but shadows, nor would hear

Of any news, but what seditious were,

Hateful and harmful ever to the best,

Whispering their scandals, glorifying the rest,

Impious, and yet ’gainst all ills but your own,

The hottest sweaters  of religion,

5 Whose poisons all things to your spleens pervert,

And all streams measure by the fount your heart,

That are in nought but misrule regular,

To whose eyes all seem ill, but those that are,

That hate ye know not why, nor with more cause,

Give whom ye most love your prophane applause,

That when kings and their peers, whose piercing eyes

Broke through their broken sleeps and policies,

Men’s inmost cabinets disclose and hearts;

Whose hands Jove’s balance (weighing all deserts)

10 Have let down to them; which grave Conscience,

Charg’d with the blood and soul of innocence

Holds with her white hand, when her either scole, 

Apt to be sway’d with every grain of soul,

Herself sways up or down, to heaven or hell,

Approve an action, you must yet conceal

A deeper insight, and retain a taint

To cast upon the pure soul of a saint.

Away, in our mild sphere doth nothing move,

But all-creating, all-preserving Love,

15 At whose flames, virtues, lighted even to stars,

All vicious envies, and seditious jars,

Bane-spitting murmurs and detracting spells,

Banish with curses to the blackest hells:

Defence of beauty and of innocence,

And taking off the chains of insolence,

From their prophan’d and godlike lineaments,

Actions heroic, and divine descents,

All the sweet graces, even from death reviv’d,

And sacred fruits from barren rocks deriv’d,

20 Th’immortal subjects of our nuptials are:

Thee then, just scourge of factious popular;

Fautor  of peace, and all the powers that move

In sacred circle of religious love;

Fountain of royal learning, and the rich

Treasure of counsels, and mellifluous speech:

Let me invoke, that one drop of thy spring

May spirit my aged Muse,  and make her sing,

As if th’inspir’d breast of eternal youth

Had lent her accents, and all-moving truth.

25 The kingdom that the gods so much did love,

And often feasted all the powers above,

At whose prime beauties the enamour’d Sun,

His morning beams lights, and doth overrun

The world with Ardour (Ethiopia) 

Bore in her throne divine Andromeda,

To Cepheus and Cassiope his queen,

Whose boundless beauties made o’erflow the spleen

Of every Nereid, for surpassing them,

The Sun to her resign’d his diadem:

30 And all the deities, admiring stood,

Affirming nothing mov’d, like flesh and blood:

Thunder would court her with words sweetly phras’d,

And lightning stuck ’twixt heav’n and earth amaz’d.

This matchless virgin had a mother too,

That did for beauty, and for wisdom go

Before the foremost ladies of her time:

To whom of super-excellence the crime

Was likewise laid by Juno, and from hence

Pin’d Envy sucked, the poison of offence.

35 No truth of excellence was ever seen,

But bore the venom of the vulgars’ spleen.

And now the much enrag’d Nereides

Obtain’d of him that moves the marble seas

(To wreak the virtue they call’d insolence)

A whale so monstrous, and so past defence,

That all the royal region he laid waste,

And all the noblest edifices raz’d:

Nor from his plague were strongest cities free,

His bodies vast heap rag’d so heavily,

40 With noblest names and bloods is still embrewed

The monstrous beast, the ravenous multitude.

This plague thus preying upon all the land,

With so incomprehensible a hand:

The pious virgin of the father sought,

By oracles to know what cause had brought

Such baneful outrage over all his state,

And what might reconcile the deities’ hate.

His orisons and sacrifices passed,

The oracle gave answer, that the waste

45 His country suffered never would conclude,

Till his Andromeda he did extrude

To rapine of the monster; he (good man)

Resolv’d to satiate the Leviathan:

With her, before his country, though he lov’d

Her past himself, and bore a spirit mov’d

To rescue innocence in any one

That was to him, or his, but kindly known,

To grace, or profit; do them any good

That lay in swift stream of his noblest blood,

50 Constant to all, yet to his dearest seed

(For right’s sake) flitting, thinking true indeed,

The general uproar, that ’twas sin in her,

That made men so exclaim, and gods confer

Their approbation, saying the kingdom’s bale

Must end by her exposure to the whale:

With whom the whale-like vulgar did agree,

And their foul spleens thought her impiety;

Her most wise mother yet the stern intent,

Vow’d with her best endeavour to prevent

55 And told her what her father did address.

She (fearful) fled into the wilderness,

And to th’instinct of savage beasts would yield,

Before a father that would cease to shield

A daughter, so divine and innocent.

Her feet were wing’d, and all the search out went,

That after her was ordered, but she flew,

And burst the winds that did incensed pursue,

And with enamoured sighs her parts assail,

Played with her hair, and held her by the veil:

60 From whom she brake, and did to woods repair:

Still where she went, her beauties dyed the air,

And with her warm blood, made proud Flora blush:

But seeking shelter in each shady bush,

Beauty like fire, compressed, more strength receives

And she was still seen shining through the leaves.

Hunted from thence, the Sun even burned to see,

So more than sun-like a divinity,

Blinded her eyes, and all invasion seeks

To dance upon the mixture of her cheeks,

65 Which showed to all, that followed after far,

As underneath the roundure  of a star

The evening sky is purpled with his beam:

Her looks fired all things with her love’s extremes.

Her neck a chain of orient pearl did deck,

The pearls were fair, but fairer was her neck;

Her breasts (laid out) showed all enflamed sights

Love lie a-sunning ’twixt two chrysolites;

Her naked wrists showed, as if through the sky,

A hand were thrust, to sign the deity

70 Her hands, the confines, and digestions were

Of Beauty’s world; Love fixed his pillars there.

Her eyes that others caught, now made her caught,

Who to her father, for the whale was brought,

Bound to a barren rock, and death expected;

But heaven hath still such innocence protected:

Beauty needs fear no monsters, for the Sea

(Mother of monsters) sent Alcyone, 

To warrant her not only ’gainst the waves,

But all the deaths hid in her watery graves.

75 The loving birds flight made about her still,

(Still good presaging), showed heav’n’s saving will:

Which cheering her, did comfort all the shore

That mourn’d in shade of her sad eyes before:

Her looks to pearl turn’d pebble,  and her looks

To burnished gold transform’d the burning rocks.

And now came roaring to the tied the tide:

All the Nereides decked in all their pride

Mounted on dolphins rode to see their wreak,

The waves foam’d with their envies; that did speak

80 In mutest fishes, with their leaps aloft

For brutish joy of the revenge they sought.

The people greedy of disastrous sights

And news (the food of idle appetites)

From the king’s chamber, straight knew his intent,

And almost his resolv’d thoughts did prevent

In dry waves beating thick about the shore

And then came on the prodigy, that bore

In one mass mixed their image;  that still spread

A thousand bodies under one sole head

85 Of one mind still to ill all ill men are

Strange sights and mischiefs fit the popular.

Upon the monster red Rhamnusia  rode,

The savage leapt beneath his bloody load

Mad of his prey, giv’n over now by all:

When any high have any means to fall,

Their greatest lovers prove false props to prove it

And for the mischief only, praise and love it.

There is no good they will not then commend,

Nor no religion but they will pretend

90 A mighty title to, when both are us’d,

To warrant innovation, or see bruis’d

The friendless reed that under all feet lies:

The sound parts evermore, they pass like flies,

And dwell upon the sores, ill in themselves;

They clearly sail with over rocks and shelves, 

But good in other’s shipwreck in the deeps:

Much more unjust is he that truly keeps

Laws for more show, his own ends understood

Than he that breaks them for another’s good.

95 And ’tis the height of all malignity,

To tender good so, that ye ill imply:

To tread on pride but with a greater pride,

When where no ill, but in ill thoughts is tried,

To speak well is a charity divine:

The rest retain the poison serpentine

Under their lips, that sacred lives condemn,

And we may worthily apply to them

This tragic execration: perish he

That sifts too far human infirmity.

100 But as your cupping glasses still exhale

The humour that is ever worst of all

In all the flesh, so these spiced conscienced men

The worst of things explore still, and retain.

Or rather, as in certain cities were

Some ports through which all rites piacular, 

All executed men, all filth were brought,

Of all things chaste, or pure, or sacred, nought

Entering or issuing there: so curious men,

Nought manly, elegant, or not unclean,

105 Embrace, or bray out: acts of stain are still

Their Syrens, and their Muses, any ill

Is to their appetites, their supreme good,

And sweeter than their necessary food.

All men almost in all things they apply

The bye  the main make, and the main the bye.

Thus this sweet lady’s sad exposure was

Of all these moods in men, the only glass:

But now the man that next to Jove comptrolled

The triple world,  got with a shower of gold, 

110 Armed with Medusa’s head, and Enyo’s eye, 

The adamantine sword of Mercury,

The helm of Pluto, and Minerva’s mirror,

That from the Gorgus  made his pass with terror,

Came to the rescue of this envied maid:

Drew near, and first, in admiration staid

That for the common ill of all the land,

She the particular obloquy should stand:

And that a beauty no less than divine

Should men and women find so serpentine

115 As but to think her any such event

Much less that eyes and hands should give consent

To such a danger and to such a death.

But though the whole realm laboured underneath

So foul an error, yet since Jove and he

Tendered her beauty, and integrity, 

In spite of all the more he set up spirit

To do her right; the more all wrong’d her merit,

He that both virtue had, and beauty too

Equal with her too both knew what to do:

120 The ruthless still go laughed at to the grave

Those that no good will do, no goodness have:

The mind a spirit is, and called the glass

In which we see God; and corporeal grace

The mirror is, in which we see the mind.

Amongst the fairest women you could find

Than Perseus, none more fair; ’mongst worthiest men,

No one more manly: this the glass is then

To show where our complexion is combined;

A woman’s beauty, and a manly mind  – 

125 Such was the half-divine-born Trojan  terror

Where both sex graces met as in their mirror.

Perseus of Love’s own form those five  parts had

Which some give man that is the loveliest made,

Or rather that is loveliest inclin’d,

And bears (with shape) the beauty of the mind:

Young was he, yet not youthful, since mid-years

The golden mean holds in men’s loves and fears:

Aptly composed, and soft (or delicate),

Flexible (or tender) calm (or temperate);

130 Of these five, three, make most exactly known,

The body’s temperate complexion:

The other two, the order do express,

The measure and whole trim of comeliness.

A temperate corporature (learned Nature saith)

A smooth, a soft, a solid flesh bewrayeth:

Which state of body shows th’affections’ state

In all the humours to be moderate;

For which cause, soft or delicate they call

Our conquering Perseus, and but young withal,

135 Since time or years in men too much revolv’d,

The subtiler parts of humour being resolv’d,

More thick parts rest, of fire and air the want,

Makes earth and water more predominant:

Flexible they called him, since his quick conceit,

And pliant disposition, at the height

Tooke each occasion, and to acts approv’d,

As soon as he was full inform’d, he mov’d;

Not flexible, as of inconstant state,

Nor soft, as if too much effeminate,

 For these to a complexion moderate

140 (Which we before affirm in him) imply

A most unequal contrariety.

Composure fit for Jove’s son Perseus had,

And to his form, his mind fit answer made:

“As to be lov’d, the fairest fittest are;

To love so to, most apt are the most fair,

Light like itself transparent bodies makes,

At one’s act th’other joint impression takes”. 

Perseus, (as if transparent) at first sight,

Was shot quite thorough with her beauties light:

145 Beauty breeds love; love consummates a man.

For love, being true, and Eleutherean, 

No injury nor contumely bears;

That his beloved either feels or fears,

All good-wills’ interchange it doth conclude

And man’s whole sum holds, which is gratitude.

No wisdom, noblesse, force of arms, nor laws,

Without love, wins man his complete applause:

Love makes him valiant, past all else desires

For Mars, that is, of all heav’n’s erring fires

Most full of fortitude (since he inspires

150 Men with most valour) Cytherea tames:

For when in heav’ns blunt angels shine his flames,

Or he, his second or eighth house ascends

Of rul’d nativities; and then portends

Ill to the then-born: Venus in aspect

Sextile,  or Trine doth (being conjoin’d) correct

His most malignity: and when his star

The birth of any governs fit for war

The issue making much to wrath inclin’d

And to the venturous greatness of the mind,

155 If Venus near him shine, she doth not let

His magnanimity, but in order set

The vice of anger, making Mars more mild

And gets the mastery of him in the child.

Mars never masters her; but if she guide

She love inclines: and Mars set by her side

Her fires more ardent render, with his heat.

So that if he at any birth be set

In th’ house of Venus, Libra, or the Bull,

The then-born burns, and love’s flames feels at full.

160 Besides, Mars still doth after Venus move

Venus not after Mars: because, of Love

Boldness is hand-maid, Love not so of her:

For not because men, bold affections bear

Love’s golden nets doth their affects enfold;

But since men love, they therefore are more bold

And made to dare even death for their belov’d,

And finally, Love’s fortitude is prov’d

Past all, most clearly; for this cause alone

All things submit to Love, but Love to none.

165 Celestials, animals, all corporeal things,

wisemen, and strong, slave-rich, and free-born kings

Are Love’s contributories; no gifts can buy,

No threats can Love constrain or terrify:

For Love is free, and his impulsions still

Spring from his own free and ingenious will.

Not God himself would willing Love enforce

But did at first decree, his liberal course:

Such is his liberty, that all affects

All arts and acts the mind besides directs

170 To some wish’t recompense, but Love aspires

To no possessions, but his own desires:

As if his wish in his own sphere did move,

And no reward were worthy Love, but Love.

Thus Perseus stood affected, in a time

When all love but of riches was a crime

A fancy, and a folly. And this fact

To add to love’s deservings, did detract:

For ’twas a monster and a monstrous thing

Whence he should combat out his nuptial ring,

175 The monster vulgar thought, and conquered gave

The combatant already, the foul grave

Of their fore-speakings, gaping for him stood

And cast out fumes as from the Stygian flood

’Gainst his great enterprise, which was so fit

For Jove’s chief minion, that plebeian wit

Could not conceive it – acts that are too high

For Fame’s cracked voice, resound all infamy.

O poor of understanding! If there were

Of all your acts one only that did bear

180 Man’s worthy image, even of all your best

Which truth could not discover to be dressed

In your own ends, which Truth’s self not compels,

But covers in your bottoms, sinks, and hells

Whose opening would abhor the sun to see

(So ye stood sure of safe delivery

Being great with gain or propagating lust).

A man might fear your hubbubs, and some trust

Give that most false Epiphonem , that gives

Your voice the praise of gods: but view your lives

185 With eyes impartial, and ye may abhor

To censure high acts, when your own taste more

Of damned danger: Perseus scorn’d to fear

The ill of good acts, though hell-mouth gaped there:

Came to Andromeda; sat by, and cheered.

But she that loved, through all the death she feared,

At first sight like her lover for his sake

Resolv’d to die, ere he should undertake

A combat with a monster so past man

To tame or vanquish, though of Jove he wan

190 A power past all men else, for man should still

Advance his powers to rescue good from ill,

Where means of rescue serv’d: and never where

Ventures of rescue, so impossible were

That would increase the danger, two for one

Expose to ruin. Therefore she alone

Would stand the monster’s fury and the shame

Of those harsh bands: for if he overcame,

The monstrous world would take the monster’s part

So much the more: and say some sorcerous art,

195 Not his pure valour, nor his innocence,

Prevail’d in her deliverance; her offence

Would still the same be counted, for whose ill

The land was threatened by the oracle,

The poisoned murmurs of the multitude.

“Rise more, the more, desert or power obtrude:

Against their most”, said he, “come I the more:

Virtue, in constant sufferance we adore”.

Nor could death fright him, for he dies that loves:

And so all bitterness from death removes.

200 He dies that loves, because his every thought,

(Himself forgot) in his belov’d is wrought.

If of himself his thoughts are not employ’d

Nor in himself they are by him enioy’d,

And since not in himself, his mind hath act

(The mind’s act chiefly being of thought compact).

Who works not in himself, himself not is:

For, these two are in man joint properties,

To work, and be; for being can be never

But operation is combined ever.

205 Nor operation being doth exceed,

Nor works man where he is not: still his deed

His being, consorting, no true lover’s mind

He in himself can therefore ever find

Since in himself it works not, if he gives

Being from himself, not in himself he lives:

And he that lives not, dead is. Truth then said

That whosoever is in love is dead.

If death the monster brought then, he had laid

A second life up, in the loved maid:

210 And had she died, his third life Fame decreed,

Since death is conquer’d in each living deed.

Then came the monster on, who being shown

His charmed shield, his half he turn’d to stone

And through the other with his sword made way:

Till, like a ruin’d city, dead he lay

Before his love. The Nereids with a shriek

And Syrens (fearful to sustain the like)

And even the ruthless and the senseless tide

Before his hour ran roaring terrifi’d

215 Back to their strength: wonders and monsters both,

With constant magnanimity, like froth

Suddenly vanish, smother’d with their press;

No wonder lasts but virtue: which no less

We may esteem, since ’tis as seldom found

Firm and sincere, and when no vulgar ground

Or flourish on it, fits the vulgar eye

Who views it not but as a prodigy?

Plebeian admiration needs must sign

All true-born acts, or like false fires they shine:

220 If Perseus for such warrant had contain’d

His high exploit, what honour had he gain’d?

Who would have set his hand to his design

But in his scorn? Scorn censures things divine:

True Worth (like Truth) sits in a groundless pit

And none but true eyes see the depth of it.

Perseus had Enyo’s eye, and saw within

That grace, which out-looks, held a desperate sin:

He, for itself, with his own end went on,

And with his lovely rescu’d paragon

225 Long’d of his conquest, for the latest shock:

Dissolv’d her chains, and took her from the rock

Now wooing for his life that fled to her

As hers in him lay: Love did both confer

To one in both: himself in her he found

She with herself, in only him was crowned:

“While thee I love”, said he, “you loving me

In you I find my self: thought on by thee,

And I (lost in myself by thee neglected)

In thee recover’d am, by thee affected:

230 The same in me you work, miraculous strange

’Twixt two true lovers is this interchange,

For after I have lost my self, if I

Redeem my self by thee, by thee supply

I of my self have, if by thee I save

My self so lost, thee more than me I have.

And nearer to thee, than my self I am

Since to my self no otherwise I came

Than by thee being the mean. In mutual love

One only death and two revivals move:

235 For he that loves, when he himself neglects

Dies in himself once, in her he affects

Straight he renews, when she with equal fire

Embraceth him, as he did her desire:

Again he lives too, when he surely seeth

Himself in her made him. O blessed death

Which two lives follow! O commerce most strange

Where, who himself doth for another change,

Nor hath himself, nor ceaseth still to have!

O gain, beyond which no desire can crave,

240 When two are so made one, that either is

For one made two, and doubled as in this:

Who one life had, one intervenient death

Makes him distinctly draw a twofold breath:

In mutual love the wreak most just is found,

When each so kill that each cure others’ wound;

But churlish homicides  must death sustain,

For who belov’d, not yielding love again

And so the life doth from his love divide

Denies himself to be a homicide?

245 For he no less a homicide is held,

That man to be born lets:  than he that killed

A man that is born, he is bolder far

That present life reaves: but he crueller

That to the to-be born envies the light

And puts their eyes out, ere they have their sight.

All good things ever we desire to have,

And not to have alone, but still to save:

All mortal good defective is, and frail;

Unless in place of things, on point to fail,

250 We daily new beget. That things innate

May last, the languishing we re-create

In generation, re-creation is,

And from the prosecution of this

Man his instinct of generation takes.

Since generation, in continuance, makes

Mortals, similitudes of powers divine,

Divine worth doth in generation shine”.

Thus Perseus said, and not because he sav’d

Her life alone, he her in marriage crav’d:

255 But with her life, the life of likely race

Was chief end of his action, in whose grace

Her royal father brought him to his court

With all the then assembled glad resort

Of kings and princes: where were solemniz’d

Th’admired nuptials, which great Heav’n so priz’d

That Jove again stooped in a golden shower

T’enrich the nuptial, as the natal hour

Of happy Perseus. White-armed Juno too

Depos’d her greatness, and what she could do

260 To grace the bride and bridegroom was vouchsaft.

All subject-deities stooped too: and the shaft

Golden and mutual,  with which love compressed

Both th’envied lovers offered too, and kissed.

All answerably feasted to their states,

In all the stars beams stooped the reverend Fates:

And the rere-banquet  that foreran the bed

With his presage shut up, and seconded:

And said they sung verse, that posterity

In no age should reprove for perfidy.

Parcarum Epithalamion. 

265 O you, this kingdom’s glory that shall be

Parents to so renowned a progeny

As Earth shall envy, and Heaven glory in,

Accept of their lives’ threads, which Fates shall spin

Their true-spoke oracle, and live to see

Your sons’ sons enter such a progeny,

As to the last times of the world shall last:

Haste you that guide the web, haste spindles haste.

See Hesperus,  with nuptial wishes crowned,

Take and enjoy; in all ye wish abound,

270 Abound, for who should wish crown with her store

But you that slew what barren made the shore? 

You that in winter make your spring to come

Your summer needs must be Elysium:

A race of mere souls’ springing, that shall cast

Their bodies off in cares, and all joys taste.

Haste then that sacred web, haste spindles haste.

Jove loves not many, therefore let those few

That his gifts grace, affect still to renew:

For none can last the same; that proper is

To only more than Semideities:

275 To last yet by renewing, all that have

More merit than to make their birth their grave,

As in themselves life, life in others save:

First to be great seek, then lov’d, then to last:

Haste you that guide the web, haste spindles haste.

She comes, o bridegroom, show thyself enflam’d

And of what tender tinder Love is flam’d:

Catch with each spark, her beauties hurl about:

Nay with each thought of her be rapt throughout;

Melt let thy liver, pant thy startled heart:

Mount love on earthquakes in thy every part:

280 A thousand hues on thine let her looks cast;

Dissolve thyself to be by her embrac’d,

Haste ye that guide the web, haste spindles haste.

As in each body, there is ebb and flood

Of blood in every vein, of spirits in blood;

Of joys in spirits, of the soul in joys,

And Nature through your lives, this change employs

To make her constant: so each mind retains

Manners and customs, where vicissitude reigns:

Opinions, pleasures, which such change enchains.

And in this interchange all man doth last,

Haste then who guide the web, haste spindles haste.

285 Who body loves best, feeds on daintiest meats,

Who fairest seed seeks, fairest women gets:

Who loves the mind, with loveliest disciplines

Loves to inform her, in which verity shines.

Her beauty yet, we see not, since not her:

But bodies (being her forms) who fair forms bear

We view, and chiefly seek her beauties there.

The fairest then, for fair birth, see embrac’d,

Haste ye that guide the web, haste spindles haste.

Stars ye are now, and overshine the earth:

Stars shall ye be hereafter, and your birth

290 In bodies rule here, as yourselves in heav’n.

What here detraction steals, shall there be given:

The bond that here you freed shall triumph there,

The chain that touch’d her wrists shall be a star

Your beauties few can view, so bright they are:

Like you shall be your birth, with grace disgraced

Haste ye that rule the web, haste spindles haste.

Thus by divine instinct, the fates enrag’d, 

Of Perseus and Andromeda presag’d

Who (when the worthy nuptial state was done

And that act past, which only two makes one,

Flesh of each flesh and bone of either’s bone)

295 Left Cepheus’ court; both freed and honoured.

The loving victor, and blest bridegroom led

Home to the Seraphins  his rescued bride;

Who (after issue highly magnifi’d

Both rapt to heav’n, did constellations reign,

And to an asterism was turn’d the chain

That only touched his grace of flesh and blood,

In all which stands the Fates’ kind omen good.

Apodosis. 

Thus, through the fount of storms (the cruel seas),

Her monsters and malignant deities,

300 Great Perseus made high and triumphant way

To his star-crowned deed, and bright nuptial day.

And thus do you, that Perseus’ place supply

In our Jove’s love, get Persean victory

Of our land-whale, foul Barbarism, and all

His brood of pride, and lives atheistical

That more their palates and their purses prize

Than propagating Persean victories,

Take monsters’ parts, not author manly parts.

For monsters kill the man-informing  arts:

305 And like a loathed prodigy despise

The rapture that the arts doth naturalise,

Creating and immortalising men:

Who scorns in her the Godhead’s virtue then,

The Godhead’s self hath boldness to despise,

And hate not her, but their eternities:

Seek virtue’s love, and vicious flatteries hate,

Here is not true sweet, but in knowing state.

Who honour hurts, neglecting virtue’s love,

Commits but rapes on pleasures; for not Jove

310 His power in thunder hath, or downright flames,

But his chief rule, his love and wisdom frames.

You then, that in love’s strife have overcome

The greatest subject blood of Christendom,

The greatest subject mind take, and in both

Be absolute man: and give that end your oath.

So shall my sad astonished Muse arrive

At her chief object: which is, to revive,

By quickening, honour in the absolute best:

And since none are, but in eternity, blest,

315 He that in paper can register things

That brass and marble shall deny even kings

Should not be trod on by each present flash:

The monster slain then, with your clear seas wash

From spots of earth, heaven’s beauty in the mind

In which, through death, hath all true noblesse shined.

FINIS.