the blood of English shall manure the ground,
and future ages groan for this foul act;
peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels,
and in this seat of peace, tumultuous wars
shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound;
disorder, horror, fear and mutiny,
shall here inhabit, and this land be call'd
the field of Golgotha and dead men's skulls.
O, if you rear this house against this house,
it will the woefullest division prove,
that ever fell upon this curséd earth;
prevent, resist it, let it not be so,
lest child, child's children, cry against you woe!
TIBERIUS' REPLY TO THE SENATE
E here protest it, and are covetous posterity should know it, we are mortal; and can but deeds of men: 'twere glory enough, could we be truly a prince. And, they shall add abounding grace unto our memory,
that shall report us worthy our fore-fathers,
careful of your affairs, constant in dangers,
and not afraid of any private frown
for public good. These things shall be to us
temples and statues, reared in your minds,
the fairest and most during imagery:
for those of stone or brass, if they become
odious in judgment of posterity,
are more contemned as dying sepulchres,
then ta'en for living monuments.
make here our suit alike to gods and men;
the one, until the period of our race,
to inspire us with a free and quiet mind,
discerning both divine and human laws;
the other, to vouchsafe us after death,
an honourable mention, and fair praise,
to accompany our actions and our name:
the rest of greatness princes may command,
and, therefore, may neglect; only, a long,
a lasting, high, and happy memory
they should, without being satisfied, pursue:
contempt of fame begets contempt of virtue.
THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY COUNSELS PEACE
Y duty to you both, on equal love,
great Kings of France and England! That I have laboured
with all my wits, my pains, and strong endeavours, to bring your most imperial majesties
unto this bar and royal interview,
your mightiness on both parts best can witness.
Since, then, my office hath so far prevailed,
that face to face and royal eye to eye,
you have congreeted, let it not disgrace me,
if I demand, before this royal view,
what rub or what impediment there is,
why that the naked, poor, and mangled Peace,
dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births,
should not, in this best garden of the world,
our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?
Alas, she hath from France too long been chased!
and all her husbandry doth lie on heaps,
corrupting in its own fertility.
Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,
unprunéd dies; her hedges even-pleached,
like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,
put forth disordered twigs: her fallow leas,
the darnel, hemlock and rank fumitory,
doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts,
that should deracinate such savagery:
the even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth
the freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover,
wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,
conceives by idleness, and nothing teems,
but hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs,
losing both beauty and utility.
And as our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges,
defective in their natures, grow to wildness,
even so our houses and ourselves and children
have lost, or do not learn for want of time,
the sciences that should become our country;
but grow like savages,—as soldiers will,
that nothing do but meditate on blood,-
to swearing, and stern looks, diffus'd attire,
and every thing that seems unnatural.
Which to reduce into our former favour,
you are assembled: and my speech entreats
that I may know the let, why gentle Peace
should not expel these inconveniencies,
and bless us with her former qualities.
1078 HONOUR MUST BE ACTIVE TO PRESERVE ITS
ULYSSES TO ACHILLES
IME hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
a great-sized monster of ingratitudes:
those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd
as fast as they are made, forgot as soon
as done: perséverance, dear my lord,
keeps honour bright: to have done, is to hang
quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
in monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
for honour travels in a strait so narrow,
where one but goes abreast: keep, then, the path;
for emulation hath a thousand sons,
that one by one pursue: if you give way,
or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by,
and leave you hindmost;
or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
o'er-run and trampled on: then what they do in present,
though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours.
The present eye praises the present object:
then marvel not, thou great and complete man,
that all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax ;
since things in motion sooner catch the eye,
than what not stirs. The cry went once on thee,
and still it might; and yet it may again,
if thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive,
and case thy reputation in thy tent;
whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late,
made emulous missions 'mongst the gods themselves, and drave great Mars to faction.
THE MASTER SPIRIT
IVE me a spirit that on life's rough sea
stils lusty wind,
even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack,
and his rapt ship run on her side so low,
that she drinks water, and her keel ploughs air.
There is no danger to a man that knows
what life and death is: there's not any law
exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful
that he should stoop to any other law;
he goes before them and commands them all,
that to himself is a law rational.
ER father lov'd me; oft invited me;
still question'd me the story of my life,
from year to year,—the battles, sieges, fortunes,
that I have pass'd.
I ran it through, even from my boyish days,
to the very moment that he bade me tell it:
wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances,
of moving accidents by flood and field;
of hair-breadth scapes i' the imminent deadly breach;
of being taken by the insolent foe,
and sold to slavery; of my redemption thence,
and portance in my travel's history;
wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,
rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven,
it was my hint to speak,-such was the process; and of the Cannibals that each other eat,
the Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear,
would Desdemona seriously incline:
but still the house-affairs would draw her thence;
which ever as she could with haste despatch,
she'd come again, and with a greedy ear
devour up my discourse:-which I observing
took once a pliant hour; and found good means
to draw from her a prayer of earnest heart
that I would all my pilgrimage dilate,
whereof by parcels she had something heard,
but not intentively: I did consent;
and often did beguile her of her tears,
when I did speak of some distressful stroke
that my youth suffer'd. My story being done,
she gave me for my pains a world of sighs;
she swore, in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange: 'twas pitiful, 'twas wond'rous pitiful:
she wish'd she had not heard it; yet she wish'd
that heaven had made her such a man: she thank'd
and bade me, if I had a friend that lov'd her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story,
and that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:
she lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd;
and I lov'd her that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I have us'd.
HE shuns her sisters' gay companionship;
before the crowing of the morning cock,
and in the dreaded hour, when men are wont
confidingly to seek their fellow-men,
she, like the solitary bird, creeps forth,
and in the fearful spirit-realm of night,
to yon crossway repairs, and there alone
holds secret commune with the mountain wind.
Wherefore this place precisely doth she choose?
Why hither always does she drive her flock?
For hours together I have seen her sit
in dreaming musing 'neath the Druid tree,
which every happy creature shuns with awe :
for 'tis not holy there; an evil spirit
hath since the fearful pagan days of old
beneath its branches fixed his dread abode.
A. SWANWICK from Schiller
|