章节正文
Tell me, O Sun, since first your beams did play
To night, and did awake the sleeping day;
Since first your steeds of light their race did start,
Did you ere blush as now? Oh thou, that art
The common father to the base pissmire,
As well as great Alcides, did the fire
From thine owne altar which the gods adore,
Kindle the souls of gnats and wasps before?
Who would delight in his chast eyes to see
Dormise to strike at lights of poesie?
Faction and envy now are<90.16> downright rage.
Once a five-knotted whip there was, the stage:
The beadle and the executioner,
To whip small errors, and the great ones tear;
Now, as er'e Nimrod the first king, he writes:
That's strongest, th' ablest deepest bites.
The muses weeping fly their hill, to see
Their noblest sons of peace in mutinie.
Could there nought else this civil war compleat,
But poets raging with poetic heat,
Tearing themselves and th' endlesse wreath, as though
Immortal they, their wrath should be so, too?
And doubly fir'd Apollo burns to see
In silent Helicon a naumachie.
Parnassus hears these at his first alarms;
Never till now Minerva was in arms.
O more then conqu'ror of the world, great Rome!
Thy heros did with gentleness or'e come
Thy foes themselves, but one another first,
Whilst envy stript alone was left, and burst.
The learn'd Decemviri, 'tis true, did strive,
But to add flames to keep their fame alive;
Whilst the eternal lawrel hung ith' air:
Nor of these ten sons was there found one heir.
Like to the golden tripod, it did pass
From this to this, till 't came to him, whose 'twas.
Caesar to Gallus trundled it, and he
To Maro: Maro, Naso, unto thee?
Naso to his Tibullus flung the wreath,
He to Catullus thus did bequeath.
This gloriouscircle, to another round,
At last the temples of their god it bound.
I might believe at least, that each might have
A quiet fame contented in his grave,
Envy the living, not the dead, doth bite:
For after death all men receave their right.<90.17>
If it be sacriledge for to profane
Their holy ashes, what is't then their flame?
He does that wrong unweeting<90.18> or in ire,
As if one should put out the vestal fire.
Let earths four quarters speak, and thou, Sun, bear
Now witnesse for thy fellow-traveller.
I was ally'd, dear Uncle,<90.19> unto thee
In blood, but thou, alas, not unto me;
Your vertues, pow'rs, and mine differ'd at best,
As they whose springs you saw, the east and west.<90.20>
Let me awhile be twisted in thy shine,
And pay my due devotions at thy shrine.
Might learned Waynman<90.21> rise, who went with thee
In thy heav'ns work beside divinity,
I should sit still; or mighty Falkland<90.22> stand
To justifie with breath his pow'rful hand;
The glory, that doth circle your pale urn,
Might hallow'd still and undefiled burn:
But I forbear. Flames, that are wildly thrown
At sacred heads, curle back upon their own;
Sleep, heavenly Sands, whilst what they do or write,
Is to give God himself and you your right.
There is not in my mind one sullen<90.23> fate
Of old, but is concentred in our state:
Vandall ore-runners, Goths in literature:
Ploughmen that would Parnassus new-manure;
Ringers of verse that all-in-chime,
And toll the changes upon every rime.
A mercer now by th' yard does measure ore
An ode, which was but by the foot before;
Deals you an ell of epigram, and swears
It is the strongest and the finest wears.
No wonder, if a drawer verses rack,
If 'tis not his, 't may be the spir't of sack;
Whilst the fair bar-maid stroaks the muses teat,
For milk to make the posset up compleat.
Arise, thou rev'rend shade, great Johnson, rise!
Break through thy marble natural disguise!
Behold a mist of insects, whose meer breath
Will melt thy hallow'd leaden house of death.
What was Crispinus,<90.24> that you should defie
The age for him?<90.25> He durst not look so high
As your immortal rod, he still did stand
Honour'd, and held his forehead to thy brand.
These scorpions, with which we have to do,
Are fiends, not only small but deadly too.
Well mightst thou rive thy quill up to the back,
And scrue thy lyre's grave chords, untill they crack.
For though once hell resented musick, these
Divels will not, but are in worse disease.
How would thy masc'line spirit, father Ben,
Sweat to behold basely deposed men,
Justled from the prerog'tive of their bed,
Whilst wives are per'wig'd with their husbands head?
Each snatches the male quill from his faint hand,
And must both nobler write and understand,
He to her fury the soft plume doth bow:
O pen, nere truely justly slit till now!
Now as her self a poem she doth dresse.
And curls a line, as she would do a tresse;
Powders a sonnet as she does her hair,
Then prostitutes them both to publick aire.
Nor is 't enough, that they their faces blind
With a false dye; but they must paint their mind,
In meeter scold, and in scann'd order brawl,
Yet there's one Sapho<90.26> left may save them all.
But now let me recal my passion.
Oh! (from a noble father, nobler son)
You, that alone are the Clarissimi,
And the whole gen'rous state of Venice be,
It shall not be recorded Sanazar
Shall boast inthron'd alone this new made star;
You, whose correcting sweetnesse hath forbad
Shame to the good, and glory to the bad;
Whose honour hath ev'n into vertue tam'd
These swarms, that now so angerly I nam'd.
Forgive what thus distemper'd I indite:
For it is hard a SATYRE not to write.
Yet, as a virgin that heats all her blood
At the first motion of bad<90.27> understood,
Then, at meer thought of fair chastity,
Straight cools again the tempests of her sea:
So when to you I my devotions raise,
All wrath and storms do end in calm and praise.
<90.1> Louis XI. of France was the prince here intended. See
MERY TALES AND QUICKE ANSWERS, No. 23 (ed. Hazlitt). I fear
that if Lovelace had derived his knowledge of this incident
rom the little work mentioned, he would have been still more
sarcastic; for Louis, in the TALES AND QUICKE ANSWERS, is made
to give, not 500 crowns for a turnip, but 1000 crowns for a radish.
<90.2> Perhaps Lovelace is rather too severe on Sannazaro. That
writer is said to have occupied twenty years in the composition
of his poem on the Birth of the Saviour, for which he probably
did not receive a sixth part of the sum paid to him for his
hexastic on Venice; and so he deserved this little windfal, which
came out of the pocket of a Government rich enough to pay it ten
times over. See Corniano's VITA DI JACOPO SANNAZARO, prefixed to
the edition of his ARCADIA, published at Milan in 1806. Amongst
the translations printed at the end of LUCASTA, and which it seems
very likely were among the earliest poetical essays of Lovelace,
is this very epigram of Sannazaro. As in the case of THE ANT,
I have little doubt that the satire was suggested by the
translation.
<90.3> The battle of Lepanto, in which Don John of Austria and
the Venetians defeated the Turks, 1571.
<90.4> The Turkish crescent.
<90.5> Close, or shut up.
<90.6> i.e. write as a means of subsistence.
<90.7> Unrefined.
<90.8> Flay, excoriate.
<90.9> Original reads ALL MARKS.
<90.10> A hard toasted crust.
<90.11> A fee or gratuity given to a poet on a mournful occasion,
and made more liberal by the circumstances of affliction in which
the donors are placed.
<90.12> Generally, a mere coxcomb or dandy; but here the poet
implies a man about town who is rich enough to indulge
in fashionable luxuries.
<90.13> The ribbon by which the star of an order of knighthood
was attached to the breast of the fortunate recipient. It
sometimes also stood for the armlet worn by gentlemen in our
poet's day, as a mark of some lady's esteem. See Shirley's
POEMS (Works, vi. 440).
<90.14> A crude anagram.
<90.15> An imperfect acrostic. Few readers require to be told
that anagrams and acrostics were formerly one of the most
fashionablespecies of composition. Lovelace here pictures
a poetaster "stewing" his brains with a poem of this description,
which of course demanded a certain amount of tedious and minute
attention to the arrangement of the name of the individual
to whom the anagram or acrostic was to be addressed, and this
was especially the case, where the writer contemplated
a DOUBLE acrostic.
<90.16> Original reads IS.
<90.17> Ovid. EL. 15.
<90.18> Unwitting.
<90.19> The Lovelaces were connected, not only with the Hammonds
Auchers, &c., but on the mother's side with the family of Sandys.
See Berry's KENT GENEALOGIES, which, however, are not by any means
invariably reliable. The subjoined is partly from Berry:--
Edwin Sandys, === Cecilia, da. of Thomas
Archbishop of ! Wilford, of Cranbrook,
York, ob. 1588. ! Co. Kent, Esq. ob. 1610.
!
--------------------------------------------
! ! !
[Sir]===(4thly)Catherine, George, trans- Anne===Sir William
Edwin ! da. of Sir R. lator of the Barnes, of
Sandys ! Bulkeley, of Psalms, &c., Woolwich,
! Anglesey. ob. 1643-4, the poet's
! Lovelace's maternal
! GREAT-uncle. grandfather.
!
Richard Sandys Esq.===Hester, da. of Edwin Aucher, second
son of Anthony Aucher, Esq., of
To night, and did awake the sleeping day;
Since first your steeds of light their race did start,
Did you ere blush as now? Oh thou, that art
The common father to the base pissmire,
As well as great Alcides, did the fire
From thine owne altar which the gods adore,
Kindle the souls of gnats and wasps before?
Who would delight in his chast eyes to see
Dormise to strike at lights of poesie?
Faction and envy now are<90.16> downright rage.
Once a five-knotted whip there was, the stage:
The beadle and the executioner,
To whip small errors, and the great ones tear;
Now, as er'e Nimrod the first king, he writes:
That's strongest, th' ablest deepest bites.
The muses weeping fly their hill, to see
Their noblest sons of peace in mutinie.
Could there nought else this civil war compleat,
But poets raging with poetic heat,
Tearing themselves and th' endlesse wreath, as though
Immortal they, their wrath should be so, too?
And doubly fir'd Apollo burns to see
In silent Helicon a naumachie.
Parnassus hears these at his first alarms;
Never till now Minerva was in arms.
O more then conqu'ror of the world, great Rome!
Thy heros did with gentleness or'e come
Thy foes themselves, but one another first,
Whilst envy stript alone was left, and burst.
The learn'd Decemviri, 'tis true, did strive,
But to add flames to keep their fame alive;
Whilst the eternal lawrel hung ith' air:
Nor of these ten sons was there found one heir.
Like to the golden tripod, it did pass
From this to this, till 't came to him, whose 'twas.
Caesar to Gallus trundled it, and he
To Maro: Maro, Naso, unto thee?
Naso to his Tibullus flung the wreath,
He to Catullus thus did bequeath.
This gloriouscircle, to another round,
At last the temples of their god it bound.
I might believe at least, that each might have
A quiet fame contented in his grave,
Envy the living, not the dead, doth bite:
For after death all men receave their right.<90.17>
If it be sacriledge for to profane
Their holy ashes, what is't then their flame?
He does that wrong unweeting<90.18> or in ire,
As if one should put out the vestal fire.
Let earths four quarters speak, and thou, Sun, bear
Now witnesse for thy fellow-traveller.
I was ally'd, dear Uncle,<90.19> unto thee
In blood, but thou, alas, not unto me;
Your vertues, pow'rs, and mine differ'd at best,
As they whose springs you saw, the east and west.<90.20>
Let me awhile be twisted in thy shine,
And pay my due devotions at thy shrine.
Might learned Waynman<90.21> rise, who went with thee
In thy heav'ns work beside divinity,
I should sit still; or mighty Falkland<90.22> stand
To justifie with breath his pow'rful hand;
The glory, that doth circle your pale urn,
Might hallow'd still and undefiled burn:
But I forbear. Flames, that are wildly thrown
At sacred heads, curle back upon their own;
Sleep, heavenly Sands, whilst what they do or write,
Is to give God himself and you your right.
There is not in my mind one sullen<90.23> fate
Of old, but is concentred in our state:
Vandall ore-runners, Goths in literature:
Ploughmen that would Parnassus new-manure;
Ringers of verse that all-in-chime,
And toll the changes upon every rime.
A mercer now by th' yard does measure ore
An ode, which was but by the foot before;
Deals you an ell of epigram, and swears
It is the strongest and the finest wears.
No wonder, if a drawer verses rack,
If 'tis not his, 't may be the spir't of sack;
Whilst the fair bar-maid stroaks the muses teat,
For milk to make the posset up compleat.
Arise, thou rev'rend shade, great Johnson, rise!
Break through thy marble natural disguise!
Behold a mist of insects, whose meer breath
Will melt thy hallow'd leaden house of death.
What was Crispinus,<90.24> that you should defie
The age for him?<90.25> He durst not look so high
As your immortal rod, he still did stand
Honour'd, and held his forehead to thy brand.
These scorpions, with which we have to do,
Are fiends, not only small but deadly too.
Well mightst thou rive thy quill up to the back,
And scrue thy lyre's grave chords, untill they crack.
For though once hell resented musick, these
Divels will not, but are in worse disease.
How would thy masc'line spirit, father Ben,
Sweat to behold basely deposed men,
Justled from the prerog'tive of their bed,
Whilst wives are per'wig'd with their husbands head?
Each snatches the male quill from his faint hand,
And must both nobler write and understand,
He to her fury the soft plume doth bow:
O pen, nere truely justly slit till now!
Now as her self a poem she doth dresse.
And curls a line, as she would do a tresse;
Powders a sonnet as she does her hair,
Then prostitutes them both to publick aire.
Nor is 't enough, that they their faces blind
With a false dye; but they must paint their mind,
In meeter scold, and in scann'd order brawl,
Yet there's one Sapho<90.26> left may save them all.
But now let me recal my passion.
Oh! (from a noble father, nobler son)
You, that alone are the Clarissimi,
And the whole gen'rous state of Venice be,
It shall not be recorded Sanazar
Shall boast inthron'd alone this new made star;
You, whose correcting sweetnesse hath forbad
Shame to the good, and glory to the bad;
Whose honour hath ev'n into vertue tam'd
These swarms, that now so angerly I nam'd.
Forgive what thus distemper'd I indite:
For it is hard a SATYRE not to write.
Yet, as a virgin that heats all her blood
At the first motion of bad<90.27> understood,
Then, at meer thought of fair chastity,
Straight cools again the tempests of her sea:
So when to you I my devotions raise,
All wrath and storms do end in calm and praise.
<90.1> Louis XI. of France was the prince here intended. See
MERY TALES AND QUICKE ANSWERS, No. 23 (ed. Hazlitt). I fear
that if Lovelace had derived his knowledge of this incident
rom the little work mentioned, he would have been still more
sarcastic; for Louis, in the TALES AND QUICKE ANSWERS, is made
to give, not 500 crowns for a turnip, but 1000 crowns for a radish.
<90.2> Perhaps Lovelace is rather too severe on Sannazaro. That
writer is said to have occupied twenty years in the composition
of his poem on the Birth of the Saviour, for which he probably
did not receive a sixth part of the sum paid to him for his
hexastic on Venice; and so he deserved this little windfal, which
came out of the pocket of a Government rich enough to pay it ten
times over. See Corniano's VITA DI JACOPO SANNAZARO, prefixed to
the edition of his ARCADIA, published at Milan in 1806. Amongst
the translations printed at the end of LUCASTA, and which it seems
very likely were among the earliest poetical essays of Lovelace,
is this very epigram of Sannazaro. As in the case of THE ANT,
I have little doubt that the satire was suggested by the
translation.
<90.3> The battle of Lepanto, in which Don John of Austria and
the Venetians defeated the Turks, 1571.
<90.4> The Turkish crescent.
<90.5> Close, or shut up.
<90.6> i.e. write as a means of subsistence.
<90.7> Unrefined.
<90.8> Flay, excoriate.
<90.9> Original reads ALL MARKS.
<90.10> A hard toasted crust.
<90.11> A fee or gratuity given to a poet on a mournful occasion,
and made more liberal by the circumstances of affliction in which
the donors are placed.
<90.12> Generally, a mere coxcomb or dandy; but here the poet
implies a man about town who is rich enough to indulge
in fashionable luxuries.
<90.13> The ribbon by which the star of an order of knighthood
was attached to the breast of the fortunate recipient. It
sometimes also stood for the armlet worn by gentlemen in our
poet's day, as a mark of some lady's esteem. See Shirley's
POEMS (Works, vi. 440).
<90.14> A crude anagram.
<90.15> An imperfect acrostic. Few readers require to be told
that anagrams and acrostics were formerly one of the most
fashionablespecies of composition. Lovelace here pictures
a poetaster "stewing" his brains with a poem of this description,
which of course demanded a certain amount of tedious and minute
attention to the arrangement of the name of the individual
to whom the anagram or acrostic was to be addressed, and this
was especially the case, where the writer contemplated
a DOUBLE acrostic.
<90.16> Original reads IS.
<90.17> Ovid. EL. 15.
<90.18> Unwitting.
<90.19> The Lovelaces were connected, not only with the Hammonds
Auchers, &c., but on the mother's side with the family of Sandys.
See Berry's KENT GENEALOGIES, which, however, are not by any means
invariably reliable. The subjoined is partly from Berry:--
Edwin Sandys, === Cecilia, da. of Thomas
Archbishop of ! Wilford, of Cranbrook,
York, ob. 1588. ! Co. Kent, Esq. ob. 1610.
!
--------------------------------------------
! ! !
[Sir]===(4thly)Catherine, George, trans- Anne===Sir William
Edwin ! da. of Sir R. lator of the Barnes, of
Sandys ! Bulkeley, of Psalms, &c., Woolwich,
! Anglesey. ob. 1643-4, the poet's
! Lovelace's maternal
! GREAT-uncle. grandfather.
!
Richard Sandys Esq.===Hester, da. of Edwin Aucher, second
son of Anthony Aucher, Esq., of
- sleeping [´sli:piŋ]
n.&a.睡着(的) (初中英语单词) - wreath [ri:θ] n.花圈；花环；圈状物 (初中英语单词)
- apollo [ə´pɔləu] n.阿波罗 (初中英语单词)
- eternal [i´tə:nəl] a.永远的；永恒的 (初中英语单词)
- glorious [´glɔ:riəs] a.光荣的；辉煌的 (初中英语单词)
- circle [´sə:kəl] n.圆圈 v.环绕；盘旋 (初中英语单词)
- awhile [ə´wail] ad.少顷；片刻 (初中英语单词)
- breath [breθ] n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词)
- sacred [´seikrid] a.神圣的；庄严的 (初中英语单词)
- measure [´meʒə] n.量度；范围 vt.测量 (初中英语单词)
- drawer [drɔ:ə] n.抽屉 (初中英语单词)
- marble [´mɑ:bəl] n.大理石 a.大理石的 (初中英语单词)
- immortal [i´mɔ:təl] a.不死的n.不朽的人物 (初中英语单词)
- forehead [´fɔrid] n.额，前部 (初中英语单词)
- deadly [´dedli] a.致命的 ad.死一般地 (初中英语单词)
- prince [´prins] n.王子；亲王；君主 (初中英语单词)
- severe [si´viə] a.严厉的；苛刻的 (初中英语单词)
- austria [´ɔstriə] n.奥地利 (初中英语单词)
- liberal [´libərəl] a.大方的 n.开明的人 (初中英语单词)
- ribbon [´ribən] n.缎带；带子；色带 (初中英语单词)
- fortunate [´fɔ:tʃənət] a.幸运的，侥幸的 (初中英语单词)
- formerly [´fɔ:məli] ad.从前，以前 (初中英语单词)
- amount [ə´maunt] n.总数；数量 v.合计 (初中英语单词)
- arrangement [ə´reindʒmənt] n.整理；排列；筹备 (初中英语单词)
- writer [´raitə] n.作者；作家 (初中英语单词)
- partly [´pɑ:tli] ad.部分地；不完全地 (初中英语单词)
- contented [kən´tentid] a.满足的；心满意足的 (高中英语单词)
- learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
- mighty [´maiti] a.强有力的 ad.很 (高中英语单词)
- heavenly [´hevənli] a.天的，天空的 (高中英语单词)
- whilst [wailst] conj.当...时候；虽然 (高中英语单词)
- venice [´venis] n.威尼斯 (高中英语单词)
- virgin [´və:dʒin] a.处女(般)的 n.处女 (高中英语单词)
- motion [´məuʃən] n.手势 vt.打手势 (高中英语单词)
- turnip [´tə:nip] n.萝卜，芜菁 (高中英语单词)
- edition [i´diʃən] n.版本；很相似的 (高中英语单词)
- fashionable [´fæʃənəbəl] a.流行的，时髦的 (高中英语单词)
- esteem [i´sti:m] n.尊重 vt.认为；感到 (高中英语单词)
- species [´spi:ʃi:z] n.(生物的)种，类 (高中英语单词)
- composition [,kɔmpə´ziʃən] n.写作；作曲；作品 (高中英语单词)
- reliable [ri´laiəbl] a.可靠的；可信赖的 (高中英语单词)
- nought [nɔ:t] n.=naught (英语四级单词)
- gentleness [´dʒentlnis] n.温和，温柔 (英语四级单词)
- forbear [fɔ:´beə, fə-] v.容忍；克制 n.祖先 (英语四级单词)
- justly [´dʒʌstli] ad.公正地，正当地 (英语四级单词)
- sonnet [´sɔnit] n.十四行诗 (英语四级单词)
- saviour [´seiviə] n.救星；救助者 (英语四级单词)
- satire [´sætaiə] n.讽刺；讽刺作品 (英语四级单词)
- mournful [´mɔ:nful] a.令人沮丧的 (英语四级单词)
- armlet [´ɑ:mlit] n.臂环(章)；小(海)湾 (英语四级单词)
- imperfect [im´pə:fikt] a.不完全的；未完成的 (英语四级单词)
- tedious [´ti:diəs] a.冗长的；乏味的 (英语四级单词)
- downright [´daunrait] a.直率的 ad.彻底 (英语六级单词)
- weeping [´wi:piŋ] a.&n.哭泣(的) (英语六级单词)
- poetic [pəu´etik] a.理想化了的 (英语六级单词)
- doubly [´dʌbli] ad.加倍地，双重地 (英语六级单词)
- poetical [pəu´etikəl] a.理想化了的 (英语六级单词)
- turkish [´tə:kiʃ] a.&n.土耳其人(语)的 (英语六级单词)
- affliction [ə´flikʃən] n.痛苦，苦恼；折磨 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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