To all the ills thou wert, we canot hope to be;
Oh, pitty us condemned! Oh, cease to wooe,
And
softly,
softlybreath, least you
infect us too.
<81.1> This word is used here merely to
denote a GALLANT,
a FELLOW. From being in its
primitive sense a most honourable
appellation, it became, during and after the civil war between
Charles and the Parliament, a term of equivocal import.
<81.2> Here
equivalent to RANTER, and used for the sake of the
metre.
THE TOAD AND SPYDER.
A DUELL.
Upon a day, when the Dog-star
Unto the world proclaim'd a war,
And poyson bark'd from black throat,
And from his jaws
infection shot,
Under a
deadly hen-bane shade
With slime
infernal mists are made,
Met the two dreaded enemies,
Having their weapons in their eyes.
First from his den rolls forth that load
Of spite and hate, the speckl'd toad,
And from his chaps a foam doth spawn,
Such as the loathed three heads yawn;
Defies his foe with a fell spit,
To wade through death to meet with it;
Then in his self the lymbeck turns,
And his elixir'd poyson urns.
Arachne, once the fear oth' maid<82.1>
Coelestial, thus unto her pray'd:
Heaven's blew-ey'd daughter, thine own mother!
The Python-killing Sun's thy brother.
Oh! thou, from gods that didst descend,
With a poor
virgin to contend,
Shall seed of earth and hell ere be
A rival in thy victorie?
Pallas assents: for now long time
And pity had clean rins'd her crime;
When straight she doth with active fire
Her many legged foe inspire.
Have you not seen a charact<82.2> lie
A great
cathedral in the sea,
Under whose Babylonian walls
A small thin frigot almshouse stalls?
So in his slime the toad doth float
And th' spyder by, but seems his boat.
And now the naumachie<82.3> begins;
Close to the surface her self spins:
Arachne, when her foe lets flye
A broad-side of his
breath too high,
That's over-shot, the
wisely-stout,
Advised maid doth tack about;
And now her pitchy barque doth sweat,
Chaf'd in her own black fury wet;
Lasie and cold before, she brings
New fires to her
contracted stings,
And with discolour'd spumes doth blast
The herbs that to their center hast.
Now to the neighb'ring henbane top
Arachne hath her self wound up,
And
thence, from its dilated leaves,
By her own cordage
downwards weaves,
And doth her town of foe attack,<82.4>
And storms the rampiers<82.5> of his back;
Which taken in her colours spread,
March to th'
citadel of's head.
Now as in witty torturing Spain,
The brain is vext to vex the brain,
Where hereticks bare heads are arm'd
In a close helm, and in it charm'd
An overgrown and meagre rat,
That peece-meal nibbles himself fat;
So on the toads blew-checquer'd scull
The
spider gluttons her self full.
And vomiting her Stygian seeds,
Her poyson on his poyson feeds.
Thus the invenom'd toad, now grown
Big with more poyson than his own,
Doth gather all his pow'rs, and shakes
His stormer in's disgorged lakes;
And wounded now, apace crawls on
To his next plantane surgeon,<82.6>
With whose rich balm no sooner drest,
But purged is his sick swoln breast;
And as a
glorious combatant,
That only rests
awhile to pant,
Then with
repeated strength and scars,
That smarting fire him new to wars,
Deals blows that thick themselves prevent,
As they would gain the time he spent.
So the disdaining angry toad,
That calls but a thin
useless load,
His fatal feared self comes back
With unknown venome fill'd to crack.
Th' amased
spider, now untwin'd,
Hath crept up, and her self new lin'd
With fresh salt foams and mists, that blast
The ambient air as they past.
And now me thinks a Sphynx's wing
I pluck, and do not write, but sting;
With their black blood my pale inks blent,<82.7>
Gall's but a faint ingredient.
The pol'tick toad doth now withdraw,
Warn'd, higher in CAMPANIA.<82.8>
There
wisely doth, intrenched deep,
His body in a body keep,
And leaves a wide and open pass
T' invite the foe up to his jaws,
Which there within a foggy blind
With
fourscore fire-arms were lin'd.
The gen'rous active
spider doubts
More ambuscadoes than redoubts;
So within shot she doth pickear,<82.9>
Now gall's the flank, and now the rear;
As that<82.10> the toad in's own dispite
Must change the manner of his fight,
Who, like a
glorious general,
With one home-charge lets fly at all.
Chaf'd with a fourfold ven'mous foam
Of scorn,
revenge, his foes and 's own,
He seats him in his loathed chair,
New-made him by each mornings air,
With glowing eyes he doth survey
Th' undaunted hoast he calls his prey;
Then his dark spume he gred'ly laps,
And shows the foe his grave, his chaps.
Whilst the quick wary Amazon
Of 'vantage takes occasion,
And with her troop of leggs carreers
In a full speed with all her speers.
Down (as some mountain on a mouse)
On her small cot he flings his house;
Without the poyson of the elf,
The toad had like t' have burst himself:
For sage Arachne with good heed
Had stopt herself upon full speed,
And, 's body now disorder'd, on
She falls to execution.
The
passive toad now only can
Contemn and suffer. Here began
The wronged maids
ingenious rage,
Which his heart venome must asswage.
One eye she hath spet out, strange smother,
When one flame doth put out another,
And one eye
wittily spar'd, that he
Might but behold his miserie.
She on each spot a wound doth print,
And each speck hath a sting within't;
Till he but one new
blister is,
And swells his own periphrasis.
Then fainting, sick, and yellow-pale,
She baths him with her sulph'rous stale;
Thus slacked is her Stygian fire,
And she vouchsafes now to retire.
Anon the toad begins to pant,
Bethinks him of th'
almighty plant,
And lest he peece-meal should be sped,
Wisely doth finish himself dead.
Whilst the gay girl, as was her fate,
Doth
wanton and luxuriate,
And crowns her conqu'ring head all or
With fatal leaves of hellebore.
Not guessing at the pretious aid
Was lent her by the
heavenly maid.
The neer expiring toad now rowls
Himself in lazy
bloody scrowls,
To th' sov'raign salve of all his ills,
That only life and health distills.
But loe! a
terror above all,
That ever yet did him befall!
Pallas, still mindful of her foe,
(Whilst they did with each fires glow)
Had to the place the
spiders lar
Dispath'd before the ev'nings star.
He
learned was in Natures laws,
Of all her
foliage knew the cause,
And 'mongst the rest in his choice want
Unplanted had this plantane plant.
The all-confounded toad doth see
His life fled with his remedie,
And in a
glorious despair
First burst himself, and next the air;
Then with a
dismal horred yell
Beats down his
loathsomebreath to hell.
But what inestimable bliss
This to the sated
virgin is,
Who, as before of her fiend foe,
Now full is of her
goddess too!
She from her
fertile womb hath spun
Her stateliest pavillion,
Whilst all her
silken flags display,
And her
triumphant banners play;
Where Pallas she ith' midst doth praise,
And counterfeits her brothers rayes,
Nor will she her dear lar forget,
Victorious by his benefit,
Whose roof inchanted she doth free
From haunting gnat and
goblin bee,
Who, trapp'd in her prepared toyle,
To their
destruction keep a coyle.
Then she unlocks the toad's dire head,
Within whose cell is treasured