Emblem of happiness, not bought, nor sold,
Accept this modest ring of virgin gold.
Love in the small, but perfect, circle, trace,
And duty, in its soft, though strict embrace.
Plain, precious, pure, as best becomes the wife;
Yet firm to bear the frequent rubs of life.
Connubial love disdains a fragile toy,
Which rust can tarnish, or a touch destroy;
Nor much admires what courts the gen’ral gaze,
The dazzling diamond’s meretricious blaze,
That hides, with glare, the anguish of a heart
By nature hard, tho’ polish’d bright by art.
More to thy taste the ornament that shows
Domestic bliss, and, without glaring, glows.
Whose gentle pressure serves to keep the mind
To all correct, to one discreetly kind.
Of simple elegance th’ unconscious charm,
The holy amulet to keep from harm;
To guard at once and consecrate the shrine,
Take this dear pledge--It makes and keeps thee mine.[244]
[242] Academy of Armory, b. iii. c. 2. p. 20.
[243] Hone on Ancient Mysteries, p. 222.
[244] Collection of Poems, Dublin, 1801, 8vo.
* * * * *
~Garrick Plays.~
No. XXIV.
[From “Chabot, Admiral of France,” a Tragedy, by G. Chapman and J.
Shirley, 1639.]
_No Advice to Self Advice._
------- another’s knowledge,
Applied to my instruction, cannot equal
My own soul’s knowledge how to inform acts.
The sun’s rich radiance shot thro’ waves most fair,
Is but a shadow to his beams i’ th’ air;
His beams that in the air we so admire,
Is but a darkness to his flame in fire;
In fire his fervour but in vapour flies,
To what his own pure bosom rarifies:
And the Almighty Wisdom having given
Each man within himself an apter light
To guide his acts than any light without him,
(Creating nothing, not in all things equal),
It seems a fault in any that depend
On others’ knowledge, and exile their own.
_Virtue under Calumny._
---- as in cloudy days we see the Sun
Glide over turrets, temples, richest fields,
(All those left dark and slighted in his way);
And on the wretched plight of some poor shed
Pours all the glories of his golden head:
So heavenly Virtue on this envied Lord
Points all his graces.
* * * * *
[From “Cæsar and Pompey,” a Tragedy, by G. Chapman, 1631.]
_Cato’s Speech at Utica to a Senator, who had exprest fears on his
account._
Away, Statilius; how long shall thy love
Exceed thy knowledge of me, and the Gods,
Whose rights thou wrong’st for my right? have not I
Their powers to guard me in a cause of theirs,
Their justice and integrity to guard me
In what I stand for? he that fears the Gods,
For guard of any goodness, all things fears;
Earth, seas, and air; heav’n; darkness; broad daylight;
Rumour, and silence, and his very shade:
And what an aspen soul has such a creature!
How dangerous to his soul is such a fear!--
In whose cold fits, is all Heavn’s justice shaken
To his faint thoughts; and all the goodness there,
Due to all good men by the Gods’ own vows;
Nay, by the firmness of their endless being;
All which shall fail as soon as any one
Good to a good man in them: for his goodness
Proceeds from them, and is a beam of theirs.
O never more, Statilius, may this fear
Faint thy bold bosom, for thyself or friend,
More than the Gods are fearful to defend.
_His thoughts of Death._
Poor Slaves, how terrible this Death is to them!--
If men would sleep, they would be wrath with all
That interrupt them; physic take, to take
The golden rest it brings; both pay and pray
For good and soundest naps: all friends consenting
In those invocations; praying all
“Good rest the Gods vouchsafe you.” But when Death,
Sleep’s natural brother, comes; that’s nothing worse,
But better (being more rich--and keeps the store--
Sleep ever fickle, wayward still, and poor);
O how men grudge, and shake, and fear, and fly
His stern approaches! all their comforts, taken
In faith, and knowledge of the bliss and beauties
That watch their wakings in an endless life,
Drown’d in the pains and horrors of their sense
Sustain’d but for an hour.
_His Discourse with Athenodorus on an After Life._
_Cato._ As Nature works in all things to an end,
So, in the appropriate honour of that end,
All things precedent have their natural frame;
And therefore is there a proportion
Betwixt the ends of those things and their primes:
For else there could not be in their creation
Always, or for the most part, that firm form
In their still like existence, that we see
In each full creature. What proportion then
Hath an immortal with a mortal substance?
And therefore the mortality, to which
A man is subject, rather is a sleep
Than bestial death; since sleep and death are called
The twins of nature. For, if absolute death,
And bestial, seize the body of a man,
Then there is no proportion in his parts,
(His soul being free from death) which otherwise
Retain divine proportion. For, as sleep
No disproportion holds with human souls,
But aptly quickens the proportion
Twixt them and bodies, making bodies fitter
To give up forms to souls, which is their end:
So death, twin-born of sleep, resolving all
Man’s body’s heavy parts, in lighter nature
Makes a re-union with the sprightly soul;
When in a second life their Beings given!
Hold their proportions firm in highest heaven.
_Athenodorus._ Hold you, our bodies shall revive resuming
Our souls again to heaven?
_Cato._ Past doubt; though others
Think heav’n a world too high for our low reaches.
Not knowing the sacred sense of Him that sings.
“Jove can let down a golden chain from heaven.
Which, tied to earth, shall fetch up earth and seas”--
And what’s that golden chain but our pure souls
That, govern’d with his grace and drawn by him,
Can hoist the earthy body up to him?--
The sea, the air, and all the elements,
Comprest in it; not while ’tis thus concrete,
But ’fined by death, and then giv’n heav’nly heat.
We shall, past death,
Retain those forms of knowledge, learn’d in life:
Since if what here we learn we there shall lose,
Our immortality were not life, but time:
And that our souls in reason are immortal,
Their natural and proper objects prove;
Which Immortality and Knowledge are:
For to that object ever is referr’d
The nature of the soul, in which the acts
Of her high faculties are still employ’d;
And that true object must her powers obtain,
To which they are in nature’s aim directed;
Since ’twere absurd to have her set an object
Which possibly she never can aspire.
_His last words._
---- now I am safe;
Come, Cæsar, quickly now, or lose your vassal.
Now wing thee, dear Soul, and receive her heaven.
The earth, the air, and seas I know, and all
The joys and horrors of their peace and wars;
And now will see the Gods’ state and the stars.
_Greatness in Adversity._
Vulcan from heav’n fell, yet on ’s feet did light,
And stood no less a God than at his height.
* * * * *
[From “Bussy D’Ambois,” a Tragedy, by G. Chapman, 1613.]
_Invocation for Secrecy at a Love-meeting._
_Tamyra._ Now all the peaceful Regents of the Night,
Silently-gliding Exhalations,
Languishing Winds, and murmuring Falls of Waters,
Sadness of Heart, and Ominous Secureness,
Enchantment’s dead Sleeps; all the Friends of Rest,
That ever wrought upon the life of man;
Extend your utmost strengths, and this charm’d hour
Fix like the center; make the violent wheels
Of Time and Fortune stand; and great Existence.
The Maker’s Treasury, now not seem to be
To all but my approaching friend[245] and me.
_At the Meeting._
Here’s nought but whispering with us: like a calm
Before a tempest, when the silent air
Lays her soft ear close to the earth, to hearken
For that, she fears is coming to afflict her.
_Invocation for a Spirit of Intelligence._
_D’Ambois._ I long to know
How my dear Mistress fares, and be inform’d
What hand she now holds on the troubled blood
Of her incensed Lord. Methought the Spirit
When he had utter’d his perplext presage,
Threw his chang’d countenance headlong into clouds;
His forehead bent, as he would hide his face:
He knock’d his chin against his darken’d breast,
And struck a churlish silence thro’ his powers.--
Terror of Darkness: O thou King of Flames,
That with thy music-footed horse dost strike
The clear light out, of chrystal, on dark earth;
And hurl’st instructive fire about the world:
Wake, wake the drowsy and enchanted night,
That sleeps with dead eyes in this heavy riddle.[246]
Or thou, Great Prince of Shades, where never sun
Sticks his far-darted beams; whose eyes are made
To see in darkness, and see ever best
Where sense is blindest: open now the heart
Of thy abashed oracle, that, for fear
Of some ill it includes, would fain lie hid;
And rise Thou with it in thy greater light.[247]
_The Friar dissuades the Husband of Tamyra from revenge._
Your wife’s offence serves not, were it the worst
You can imagine, without greater proofs,
To sever your eternal bonds and hearts;
Much less to touch her with a bloody hand:
Nor is it manly, much less husbandly,
To expiate any frailty in your wife
With churlish strokes or beastly odds of strength.--
The stony birth of clouds[248] will touch no laurel,
Nor any sleeper. Your wife is your laurel,
And sweetest sleeper; do not touch her then:
Be not more rude than the wild seed of vapour
To her that is more gentle than it rude.