The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings: Poems and Other Writings (Penguin Classics)
Page 22
And there a summer-house, that knows no shade.
Here Amphitrite sails through myrtle bow’rs;
There gladiators fight, or die, in flow’rs;
Un-watered see the drooping sea horse mourn,
And swallows roost in Nilus’ dusty urn.
My Lord advances with majestic mien,
Smit with the mighty pleasure, to be seen:
But soft – by regular approach – not yet –
130 First through the length of yon hot terrace sweat,
And when up ten steep slopes you’ve dragged your thighs,
Just at his study door he’ll bless your eyes.
His study! with what authors is it stored?
In books, not authors, curious is my Lord;
To all their dated backs he turns you round:
These Aldus printed, those Du Sueil has bound.
Lo some are vellum, and the rest as good
For all his Lordship knows, but they are wood.
For Locke or Milton ’tis in vain to look,
140 These shelves admit not any modern book.
And now the chapel’s silver bell you hear,
That summons you to all the pride of pray’r:
Light quirks of music, broken and unev’n,
Make the soul dance upon a jig to Heav’n.
On painted ceilings you devoutly stare,
Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre,
On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie,
And bring all Paradise before your eye.
To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite,
150 Who never mentions Hell to ears polite.
But hark! the chiming clocks to dinner call;
A hundred footsteps scrape the marble hall;
The rich buffet well-coloured Serpents grace,
And gaping tritons spew to wash your face.
Is this a dinner? this a genial room?
No, ’tis a temple, and a hecatomb,
A solemn sacrifice, performed in state,
You drink by measure, and to minutes eat.
So quick retires each flying course, you’d swear
160 Sancho’s dread doctor and his wand were there.
Between each act the trembling salvers ring,
From soup to sweet-wine, and ‘God bless the King.’
In plenty starving, tantalized in state,
And complaisantly helped to all I hate,
Treated, caressed, and tired, I take my leave,
Sick of his civil pride from morn to eve;
I curse such lavish cost, and little skill,
And swear no day was ever passed so ill.
Yet hence the poor are clothed, the hungry fed;
170 Health to himself, and to his infants bread
The lab’rer bears: what his hard heart denies,
His charitable vanity supplies.
Another age shall see the golden ear
Imbrown the slope, and nod on the parterre,
Deep harvests bury all his pride has planned,
And laughing Ceres reassume the land.
Who then shall grace, or who improve the soil?
Who plants like BATHURST, or who builds like BOYLE.
’Tis use alone that sanctifies expense,
180 And splendour borrows all her rays from sense.
His father’s acres who enjoys in peace,
Or makes his neighbours glad, if he increase;
Whose cheerful tenants bless their yearly toil,
Yet to their Lord owe more than to the soil;
Whose ample lawns are not ashamed to feed
The milky heifer and deserving steed;
Whose rising forests, not for pride or show,
But future buildings, future navies grow:
Let his plantations stretch from down to down,
190 First shade a country, and then raise a town.
You too proceed! make falling arts your care,
Erect new wonders, and the old repair;
Jones and Palladio to themselves restore,
And be whate’er Vitruvius was before:
Till kings call forth th’ ideas of your mind
(Proud to accomplish what such hands designed):
Bid harbours open, public ways extend,
Bid temples, worthier of the god, ascend,
Bid the broad arch the dang’rous flood contain,
200 The mole projected break the roaring main;
Back to his bounds their subject sea command,
And roll obedient rivers through the land.
These honours, peace to happy Britain brings;
These are imperial works, and worthy kings.
The Fourth Satire of Dr John Donne Versified
Quid vetat, ut nosmet Lucili scripta legentes
Quaerere, num illius, num rerum dura negarit
Versiculos natura magis factos, et euntes
Mollius?
Well, if it be my time to quit the stage,
Adieu to all the follies of the age!
I die in charity with fool and knave,
Secure of peace at least beyond the grave.
I’ve had my purgatory here betimes,
And paid for all my satires, all my rhymes.
The poet’s hell, its tortures, fiends, and flames,
To this were trifles, toys, and empty names.
With foolish pride my heart was never fired,
10 Nor the vain itch t’ admire, or be admired:
I hoped for no commission from his Grace;
I bought no benefice, I begged no place;
Had no new verses, nor new suit to show,
Yet went to court! – the Dev’l would have it so.
But as the fool, that in reforming days
Would go to mass in jest (as story says),
Could not but think, to pay his fine was odd,
Since ’twas no formed design of serving God:
So was I punished, as if full as proud
20 As prone to ill, as negligent of good,
As deep in debt, without a thought to pay,
As vain, as idle, and as false, as they
Who live at court, for going once that way!
Scarce was I entered, when behold! there came
A thing which Adam had been posed to name;
Noah had refused it lodging in his ark,
Where all the race of reptiles might embark:
A verier monster than on Afric’s shore
The sun e’er got, or slimy Nilus bore,
30 Or Sloane, or Woodward’s wondrous shelves contain;
Nay, all that lying travellers can feign.
The watch would hardly let him pass at noon,
At night, would swear him dropped out of the moon:
One whom the mob, when next we find or make
A popish plot, shall for a Jesuit take;
And the wise Justice, starting from his chair,
Cry, by your priesthood, tell me what you are?
Such was the wight: th’ apparel on his back
Though coarse, was rev’rend, and though bare, was black.
40 The suit, if by the fashion one might guess,
Was velvet in the youth of good Queen Bess,
But mere tuff-taffety what now remained:
So Time, that changes all things, had ordained!
Our sons shall see it leisurely decay,
First turn plain rash, then vanish quite away.
This thing has travelled, speaks each language too,
And knows what’s fit for ev’ry state to do;
Of whose best phrase and courtly accent joined
He forms one tongue exotic and refined.
50 Talkers, I’ve learned to bear; Motteux I knew,
Henley himself I’ve heard, nay Budgell too;
The doctor’s wormwood style, the hash of tongues
A pedant makes, the storm of Gonson’s lungs,
The whole artill’ry of the terms of
war,
And (all those plagues in one) the bawling bar:
These I could bear; but not a rogue so civil
Whose tongue will compliment you to the Devil.
A tongue that can cheat widows, cancel scores,
Make Scots speak treason, cozen subtlest whores,
60 With royal favourites in flatt’ry vie,
And Oldmixon and Burnet both out-lie.
He spies me out. I whisper, ‘Gracious God!
What sin of mine could merit such a rod?
That all the shot of dullness now must be
From this thy blunderbuss discharged on me!’
‘Permit,’ he cries, ‘no stranger to your fame,
To crave your sentiment, if —— ’s your name.
What speech esteem you most?’ ‘The King’s,’ said I.
‘But the best words?’ – ‘O, sir, the dictionary.’
70 ‘You miss my aim; I mean the most acute
And perfect speaker?’ – ‘Onslow, past dispute.’
‘But sir, of writers?’ – ‘Swift for closer style,
And Hoadley for a period of a mile.’
‘Why, yes, ’tis granted, these indeed may pass
Good common linguists, and so Panurge was;
Nay, troth, th’ Apostles (though perhaps too rough)
Had once a pretty gift of tongues enough.
Yet these were all poor gentlemen! I dare
Affirm, ’twas travel made them what they were.’
80 Thus others’ talents having nicely shown,
He came by sure transition to his own;
Till I cried out, ‘You prove yourself so able,
Pity! you was not druggerman at Babel:
For had they found a linguist half so good,
I make no question but the tow’r had stood.’
‘Obliging sir! for courts you sure were made;
Why then for ever buried in the shade?
Spirits like you, believe me, should be seen;
The King would smile on you – at least the Queen?’
90 ‘Ah, gentle sir! you courtiers so cajole us –
But Tully has it, Nunquam minus solus:
But as for courts, forgive me if I say
No lessons now are taught the Spartan way.
Though in his pictures lust be full displayed,
Few are the converts Aretine has made;
And though the court show vice exceeding clear,
None should, by my advice, learn virtue there.’
At this entranced, he lifts his hands and eyes,
Squeaks like a high-stretched lutestring, and replies:
100 ‘Oh ’tis the sweetest of all earthly things
To gaze on princes, and to talk of kings!’
‘Then happy man who shows the tombs!’ said I,
‘He dwells amidst the royal family;
He, ev’ry day, from king to king can walk,
Of all our Harries, all our Edwards talk,
And get, by speaking truth of monarchs dead,
What few can of the living, ease and bread.’
‘Lord! sir, a mere mechanic! strangely low,
And coarse of phrase – your English all are so.
110 How elegant your Frenchman?’ – ‘Mine, d’ye mean?
I have but one, I hope the fellow’s clean.’
‘Oh! sir, politely so! nay, let me die,
Your only wearing is your paduasoy.’
‘Not sir, my only – I have better still,
And this, you see, is but my dishabille’ –
Wild to get loose, his patience I provoke,
Mistake, confound, object, at all he spoke;
But as coarse iron, sharpened, mangles more,
And itch most hurts, when angered to a sore,
120 So when you plague a fool, ’tis still the curse,
You only make the matter worse and worse.
He passed it o’er; affects an easy smile
At all my peevishness, and turns his style.
He asks, ‘What news?’ I tell him of new plays,
New eunuchs, harlequins, and operas.
He hears; and as a still, with simples in it,
Between each drop it gives, stays half a minute,
Loath to enrich me with too quick replies,
By little, and by little, drops his lies.
130 Mere household trash! of birthnights, balls, and shows,
More than ten Holinsheds, or Halls, or Stows.
When the Queen frowned, or smiled, he knows; and what
A subtle minister may make of that.
Who sins with whom? who got his pension rug,
Or quickened a reversion by a drug?
Whose place is quartered out, three parts in four,
And whether to a bishop, or a whore?
Who, having lost his credit, pawned his rent,
Is therefore fit to have a government?
140 Who, in the secret, deals in stocks secure,
And cheats th’ unknowing widow, and the poor:
Who makes a trust, or charity, a job,
And gets an act of Parliament to rob?
Why turnpikes rise, and now no cit nor clown
Can gratis see the country, or the town?
Shortly no lad shall chuck, or lady vole,
But some excising courtier will have toll.
He tells what strumpet places sells for life,
What squire his lands, what citizen his wife.
150 And last (which proves him wiser still than all)
What lady’s face is not a whited wall?
As one of Woodward’s patients, sick, and sore,
I puke, I nauseate – yet he thrusts in more;
Trims Europe’s balance, tops the statesman’s part,
And talks Gazettes and Post Boys o’er by heart.
Like a big wife at sight of loathsome meat
Ready to cast, I yawn, I sigh, and sweat.
Then as a licensed spy, whom nothing can
Silence, or hurt, he libels the Great Man;
160 Swears every place entailed for years to come,
In sure succession to the Day of Doom:
He names the price for ev’ry office paid,
And says our wars thrive ill, because delayed:
Nay, hints ’tis by connivance of the court
That Spain robs on, and Dunkirk’s still a port.
Not more amazement seized on Circe’s guests,
To see themselves fall endlong into beasts,
Than mine, to find a subject staid and wise
Already half turned traitor by surprise.
170 I feared th’ infection slide from him to me,
As in the pox, some give it, to get free;
And quick to swallow me, methought I saw
One of our giant statues ope its jaw!
In that nice moment, as another lie
Stood just a-tilt, the Minister came by.
Away he flies. He bows, and bows again,
And close as Umbra, joins the dirty train.
Not Fannius’ self more impudently near,
When half his nose is in his patron’s ear.
180 I quaked at heart; and still afraid to see
All the court filled with stranger things than he,
Ran out as fast as one that pays his bail,
And dreads more actions, hurries from a jail.
Bear me, some god! oh quickly bear me hence
To wholesome solitude, the nurse of sense,
Where contemplation prunes her ruffled wings,
And the free soul looks down to pity kings!
There sober thought pursued th’ amusing theme,
Till fancy coloured it, and formed a dream.
190 A vision hermits can to Hell transport,
And forc’d ev’n me to see the damned at court.
Not Dante, dreaming all th’ infernal state,
Beheld such scenes of envy, sin, and hate.
Suits tyrants, plunderers, but suits not me.
Shall I, the terror of this sinful town,
Care if a liveried lord or smile or frown?
Who cannot flatter, and detest who can,
Tremble before a noble serving-man?
200 O my fair mistress, Truth! shall I quit thee
For huffing, braggart, puffed nobility?
Thou who, since yesterday, hast rolled o’er all
The busy, idle blockheads of the ball,
Hast thou, oh sun! beheld an emptier sort
Than such as swell this bladder of a court?
Now pox on those who show a court in wax!
It ought to bring all courtiers on their backs.
Such painted puppets, such a varnished race
Of hollow gewgaws, only dress and face,
210 Such waxen noses, stately, staring things,
No wonder some folks bow, and think them kings.
See! where the British youth, engaged no more
At Fig’s, at White’s, with felons, or a whore,
Pay their last duty to the court, and come
All fresh and fragrant to the drawing room:
In hues as gay, and odours as divine
As the fair fields they sold to look so fine.
‘That’s velvet for a king!’ the flatt’rer swears;
’Tis true, for ten days hence ’twill be King Lear’s.
220 Our court may justly to our stage give rules,
That helps it both to fools’ coats and to fools.
And why not players strut in courtiers’ clothes?
For these are actors too, as well as those:
Wants reach all states; they beg but better dressed,
And all is splendid poverty at best.
Painted for sight, and essenced for the smell,
Like frigates fraught with spice and cochine’l,
Sail in the ladies: how each pirate eyes
So weak a vessel, and so rich a prize!
230 Top-gallant he, and she in all her trim,
He boarding her, she striking sail to him.
‘Dear countess! you have charms all hearts to hit!’
And ‘Sweet Sir Fopling! you have so much wit!’
Such wits and beauties are not praised for nought,
For both the beauty and the wit are bought.
’Twould burst ev’n Heraclitus with the spleen
To see those antics, Fopling and Courtin: