men Be journeying on in this inclement air. There's old Sir Henry Vane, the Earl Wrap thy old cloak about thy back ; of Pembroke, Nor leave the broad and plain and Lord Essex, and Lord Keeper Coventry, beaten road, And others who make base their English Although no flowers smile on the trodden breed dust, By vile participation of their honours For the violet paths of pleasure. This with papists, atheists, tyrants, and Charles the First apostates. Rose like the equinoctial sun, When lawyers mask 'tis time for honest By vapours, through whose threatening ominous veil To strip the vizor from their purposes. Darting his altered influence he has A seasonable time for maskers this! gained When Englishmen and Protestants should This height of noon— from which he sit must decline dust on their dishonoured Amid the darkness of conflicting storms, heads, To dank extinction and to latest | To avert the wrath of him whose scourge night is felt There goes the apostate Strafford; he For the great sins which have drawn whose titles down from Heaven whispered aphorisms and foreign overthrow. From Machiavel and Bacon : and, if The remnant of the martyred saints in Judas Rochefort Had been as brazen and as bold as Have been abandoned by their faithless he_ allies First Citizen. That is the Archbishop. To that idolatrous and adulterous torturer Second Citizen. Rather say the Lewis of France,—the Palatinate is Pope: lost-London will be soon his Rome: he walks Enter LEIGHTON (who has been branded As if he trod upon the heads of men : in the face) and BASTWICK. He looks elate, drunken with blood and Canst thou be --art thou- ? gold ; Leighton. I was Leighton : what Beside him the Babylonian I am thou seest. And yet turn thine eyes, And with thy memory look on thy friend's Invisibly, and with her as with his mind, shadow, Which is unchanged, and where is Mitred adulterer! he is joined in sin, written deep Which turns Heaven's milk of mercy to The sentence of my judge. revenge. Third Citizen. Are these the Third Citizen (lifting up his eyes). marks with which Good Lord ! rain it down upon him!.. Laud thinks to improve the image of Amid her ladies walks the papist his Maker Curses As if her nice feet scorned our English earth. The impious tyrant ! The Canaanitish Jezebel! I would be Second Citizen, It is said besides A dog if I might tear her with my That lewd and papist drunkards may teeth! profane moves woman upon him, May well And see, The Sabbath with their .. Rouse up the astonished air. And has permitted that most heathenish First Citizen. I will not think but custom that our country's wounds Of dancing round a pole dressed up with May yet be healed. The king is just wreaths and gracious, On May-day. Though wicked counsels now pervert A man who thus twice crucifies his God his will: Second Citizen. As adders cast The root of all this ill is prelacy. their skins I would cut up the root. And keep their venom, so kings often Third Citizen. And by what change; means ? Councils and counsellors hang on one Second Citizen. Smiting each Bishop another, under the fifth rib. Hiding the loathsome Third Citizen. You seem to know Like the base patchwork of a leper's rags. the vulnerable place The Youth. O, still those dissonant Of these same crocodiles. thoughts !--List how the music Second Citizen. I learnt it in Grows on the enchanted air ! Egyptian bondage, sir. Your worm of the torches Nile Restlessly flashing, and the crowd Betrays not with its flattering tears like divided they ; Like waves before an admiral's prow ! For, when they cannot kill, they whine A Marshalsman, Give place To the Marshal of the Mask ! Nor is it half so greedy of men's bodies A Pursuivant. Room for As they of soul and all; nor does it the King ! wallow The Youth. How glorious! See In slime as they in simony and lies those thronging chariots And close lusts of the flesh. Rolling, like painted clouds before the A Marshalsman. Give place, give wind, place! Behind their solemn steeds : how some You torch-bearers, advance to the great are shaped gate, Like curved shells dyed by the azure And then attend the Marshal of the depths Mask Of Indian seas; some like the new-born Into the Royal presence. moon; A Law Student. What thinkest And some like cars in which the Romans thou climbed Of this quaint show of ours, my agèd (Canopied by Victory's eagle wings outfriend? spread) Even now we see the redness of the The Capitolian-See how gloriously torches The mettled horses in the torchlight stir Inflame the night to the eastward, and Their gallant riders, while they check the clarions their pride, Gasp to us on the wind's wave. It Like shapes of some diviner element comes ! Than English air, and beings nobler And their sounds, floating hither round than the pageant, The envious and admiring multitude. and weep. crows. earn Second Citizen. Ay, there they are If they succeeded not to Winter's flaw; Nobles, and sons of nobles, patentees, Or day unchanged by night ; or joy itMonopolists, and stewards of this poor self Without the touch of sorrow? A Marshalsman. Place, give place! Here is the pomp that strips the houseless orphan, SCENE II.-A CHAMBER IN WHITE. Here is the pride that breaks the desolate HALL. Enter the KING, QUEEN, heart. LAUD, LORD STRAFFORD, LORD COTThese are the lilies glorious as Solomon, TINGTON, and other Lords ; ARCHY ; Who toil not, neither do they spin, also St. John, with some Gentlemen unless It be the webs they catch poor rogues of the Inns of Court. I Here is the surfeit which to them who heartily accept This token of your service : your gay The niggard wages of the earth, scarce mask leaves Was performed gallantly. And it shows The tithe that will support them till well they crawl When subjects twine such flowers of Back to her cold hard bosom. Here observance is health With the sharp thorns that deck the Followed by grim disease, glory by English crown. shame, A gentle heart enjoys what it confers, Waste by lame famine, wealth by squalid Even as it suffers that which it inflicts, want, Though Justice guides the stroke. And England's sin by England's punish- Accept my hearty thanks. ment. Queen. And, gentlemen, And, as the effect pu ues the cause Call our poor Queen your debtor. foregone, Your quaint pageant Lo, giving substance to my words, Rose on me like the figures of past years, behold Treading their still path back to infancy, At once the sign and the thing signified— More beautiful and mild as they draw A troop of cripples, beggars, and lean outcasts, The quiet cradle. I could have almost Horsed upon stumbling jades, carted wept with dung, To think I was in Paris, where these Dragged for a day from cellars and low shows cabins Are well devised_such as I was ere yet And rotten hiding-holes, to point the My young heart shared a portion of the moral burthen, Of this presentment, and bring up the The careful weight, of this great mon archy. Of painted pomp with misery ! There, gentlemen, between the soveThe Youth. 'Tis but reign's pleasure The anti-mask, and serves as discords do And that which it regards, no clamour In sweetest music, Who would love lifts May flowers Its proud interposition. nearer rear are In Paris ribald censurers dare not move Archy. Ay, and some now Their poisonous tongues against these smiling whose tears will make the sinless sports ; brine ; for the Fool seesAnd his smile Strafford. Insolent ! You shall have Warms those who bask in it, as ours your coat turned and be whipped out of would do the palace for this. Il . . . Take my heart's thanks : add Archy. When all the fools are them, gentlemen, whipped, and all the Protestant writers, To those good words which, were he while the knaves are whipping the fools King of France, ever since a thief was set to catch a My royal lord would turn to golden thief. If all turncoats were whipped deeds. out of palaces, poor Archy would be St. John. Madam, the love of disgraced in good company. Let the Englishmen can make knaves whip the fools, and all the fools The lightest favour of their lawful king laugh at it. [Let the) wise and goodly Outweigh a despot’s. — We humbly take slit each other's noses and ears (having our leaves, no need of any sense of discernment in Enriched by smiles which France can their craft); and the knaves, to marshal never buy. them, join in a procession to Bedlam, [Exeunt St. John and the Gentle to entreat the madmen to omit their men of the Inns of Court. sublime Platonic contemplations, and King. My Lord Archbishop, manage the state of England. Let all Mark you what spirit sits in St. John's the honest men who lie pinched up at eyes ? the prisons or the pillories, in custody Methinks it is too saucy for this presence. of the pursuivants of the High-Commis Archy. Yes, pray your Grace look : sion Court, marshal them. for, like an unsophisticated [eye] sees Enter Secretary LYTTELTON, with everything upside down, you who are papers. wise will discern the shadow of an K’ing (looking over the papers). These idiot in lawn sleeves and a rochet setting stiff Scots springes to catch woodcocks in hay. His Grace of Canterbury must take order making time. Poor Archy, whose owl. To force under the Church's yoke. eyes are tempered to the error of his You, Wentworth, age, and because he is a fool, and by Shall be myself in Ireland, and shall add special ordinance of God forbidden ever Your wisdom, gentleness, and energy, to see himself as he is, sees now in that To what in me were wanting.-My deep eye a blindfold devil sitting on the Lord Weston, ball, and weighing words out between Look that those merchants draw not king and subjects. One scale is full of without loss promises, and the other full of protesta- Their bullion from the Tower; and, tions: and then another devil creeps on the payment behind the first out of the dark windings Of shipmoney, take fullest compensation [of a) pregnant lawyer's brain, and takes For violation of our royal forests, the bandage from the other's eyes, and Whose limits, from neglect, have been throws a sword into the left-hand scale, o'ergrown for all the world like my Lord Essex's With cottages and cornfields. The there. uttermost Strafford. A rod in pickle for the Farthing exact from those who claim Fool's back! exemption ness From knighthood: that which once was Ten minutes in the rain : be it your a reward penance Shall thus be made a punishment, that To bring news how the world goes there. subjects [Exit Archy. May know how majesty can wear at will Poor Archy! The rugged mood. - My Lord of Coven. He weaves about himself a world of try, mirth Master did, My lord, Pray overlook these papers. Archy's Of Parliament a cheap or easy method words Of dealing with their rightsul sovereign: Had wings, but these have talons. And doubt not this, my Lord of Coven- Queen. And the lion try, That wears them must be tamed. My We will find time and place for fit dearest lord, rebuke. I see the new-born courage in your eye Armed to strike dead the spirit of the time, beast. To order that this insolent fellow be Do thou persist : for, faint but in resolve, Chastised: he mocks the sacred char. And it were better thou hadst still reacter, mained Scoffs at the state, and - The slave of thine own slaves, who tear king: What, my Archy? And Opportunity, that empty wolf, thy actions And be that tempered as the Ebro's Primate of England. With your Grace's steel; leave, And banish weak-eyed Mercy to the He lives in his own world; and, like a weak, parrot Whence she will greet thee with a gift And not betray thee with a traitor's kiss, Who think that she is Fear. This do, Which know no aim beyond the archer's lest we wit, Should fall as from a glorious pinnacle Strike sometimes what eludes philo. In a bright dream, and wake as from a sophy. — dream (TO ARCHY). Go, sirrah, and repent of Out of our worshipped state. your offence King Beloved friend, like curs of peace, |
