THUS have I writ in smoother cedar tree,
So gentle Satires, penn'd so easily.
Henceforth I write in crabbed oak-tree rynde,
Search they that mean the secret meaning find.
Hold out, ye guilty and ye galled hides,
And meet my far-fetch'd stripes with waiting sides.
TO HIS SECOND COLLECTION OF SATIRES, CALLED
BITING SATIRES.
YE lucklesse rhymes, whom not unkindly spight
Begot long since of truth and holy rage,
Lye here in wombe of silence and still night,
Until the broils of next unquiet age:
That which is others' grave shall be your wombe,
And that which bears you, your eternal tombe,
Cease ere you 'gin, and ere ye live be dead;
And dye and live ere ever ye be borne;
And be not bore ere ye be buried,
Then after live, sith you have dy'd beforne,
When I am dead and rotten in the dust,
Then 'gin to live, and leave when others lust.
For when I dye, shall envy dye with me,
And lie deep smother'd with my marble stone;
Which while I live cannot be done to dye,
Nor, if your life 'gin ere my life be done,
Will hardly yield t' await my mourning hearse,
But for my dead corps change my living verse.
What, shall the ashes of my senselesse urne
Need to regard the raving world above?
Sith afterwards I never can returne,
To feel the force of hatred or of love.
Oh! if my soul could see their posthume spight,
Should it not joy and triumph in the sight?
Whatever eye shalt finde this hateful scrole
After the date of my dear exequies,
Ah, pity thou my plaining orphan's dole,
That faine would see the Sunne before it dies.
It dy'd before, now let it live againe,
Then let it dye, and bide some famous bane.
Satis est potuisse videri.
WHO dares upbraid these open rhymes of mine
With blindfold Aquines, or darke Venusine?
Or rough-hewn Feretismes, writ in th' antique vain
Like an old satire, and new Flaccian?
Which who reads thrice, and rubs his rugged brow,
And deep intendeth every doubtful row,
Scoring the margent with his blazing stars,
And hundreth crooketh interlinears,
(Like to a merchant's debt-roll new defac'd,
When some crack'd manour cross'd his book at last,)
Should all in rage the curse-beat page out rive,
And in each dust-heap bury me alive,
Stamping like Bucephall, whose slack'ned raines
And bloody fetlocks fry with seven men's braines.
More cruel than the cravon satire's ghost,
That bound dead bones unto a burning post;
Or some more straight-lac'd juror of the rest,
Impannel'd of an Holyfax inquest:
Yet well bethought, stoops down and reads anew;
The best lies low, and loathes the shallow view,
Quoth old Eudemon, when his gout-swolne fist
Gropes for his double ducates in his chist:
Then buckle close his carelesse lyds once more,
To pose the pore-blind snake of Epidaore.
That Lyncius may be match'd with Gaulard's sight,
That sees not Paris for the houses' height;
Or wily Cyppus, that can winke and snort
While his wife dallies on Mæcenas' skort:
Yet when he hath my crabbed pamphlet read
As oftentimes as Philip hath been dead,
Bids all the furies haunt each peevish line
That thus have rack'd their friendly reader's eyne;
Worse than the Logogryphes of later times,
Or hundredth riddles shak'd to sleeveless rhymes.
Should I endure these curses and despight
While no man's eare should glow at what I write?
Labeo is whipt, and laughs me in the face:
Why? for I smite and hide the galled place.
Gird but the cynic's helmet on his head,
Cares he for Talus, or his flayle of lead?
Long as the crafty cuttle lieth sure
In the blacke cloud of his thicke vomiture,
Who list complaine of wronged faith or fame,
When he may shift it to another's name?
Calvus can scratch his elbow and can smile,
That thriftlesse Pontice bites his lip the while.
Yet I intended in that selfe device
To checke the churle for his knowne covetise.
Each points his straight fore-finger to his friend,
Like the blind dial on the belfry end.
Who turns it homeward, to say this is I,
As bolder Socrates in the comedy?
But single out, and say once plat and plaine
That coy Matrona is a courtezan;
Or thou, false Cryspus, choak'dst thy wealthy guest
Whiles he lay snoaring at his midnight rest,
And in thy dung-cart didst the carkasse shrine
And deepe intombe it in Port-esqueline.
Proud Trebius lives, for all his princely gait,
On third-hand suits, and scrapings of the plate.
Titius knew not where to shroude his head
Until he did a dying widow wed,
Whiles she lay doating on her death's bed,
And now hath purchas'd lands with one night's
And on the morrow wooes and weds againe.
Now see I fire-flakes sparkle from his eyes,
Like a comet's tayle in th' angry skies;
His pouting cheeks puff up above his brow,
Like a swolne toad touch'd with the spider's blow;
His mouth shrinks side-ward like a scornful playse,
To take his tired ear's ingrateful place.
His ears hang laving like a new lugg'd swine,
To take some counsel of his grieved eyne.
Now laugh I loud, and breake my splene to see
This pleasing pastime of my poesie;
Much better than a Paris-garden beare,
Or prating puppet on a theatre;
Or Mimoe's whistling to his tabouret,
Selling a laughter for a cold meal's meat.
Go to then, ye my sacred Semonees,
And please me more the more ye do displease.
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