SATIRES.

BOOK V.

SATIRE I.

Sit pæna merenti.

PARDON, ye glowing eares; needs will it out,
Though brazen walls compass'd my tongue about
As thick as wealthy Scorbio's quick-set rowes
In the wide common that he did enclose.
Pull out mine eyes, if I shall see no vice,
Or let me see it with detesting eyes.
Renowned Aquine, now I follow thee,
Far as I may for feare of jeopardy;
And to thy hand yield up the ivy-mace
From crabbed Perseus, and more smooth Horace;
Or from that shrew the Roman poetesse,
That taught her gossips learned bitternesse ;
Or Lucile's Muse whom thou didst imitate,
Or Menips old, or Pasquillers of late.
Yet name I not Mutius, or Tigilline,

Though they deserve a keener style than mine;
Nor meane to ransack up the quiet grave;
Nor burn dead bones, as he example gave:
I taxe the living: let the dead ashes rest,
Whose faults are dead, and nailed in their chest.

Who can refrain that's guiltlesse of their crime,
Whiles yet he lives in such a cruel time?

When Titio's grounds, that in his grandsire's dayes
But one pound fine, one penny rent did raise,
A summer snow-ball, or a winter rose,

Is growne to thousands as the world now goes.
So thrift and time sets other things on floate,
That now his sonne soups in a silken coate,
Whose grandsire happily, a poore hungry swaine,
Begg'd some cast abbey in the church's wayne:
And but for that, whatever he may vaunt,
Who knows a monk had been a mendicant?
While freezing Matho, that for one lean fee
Won't term each term the term of Hilary,
May now, instead of those his simple fees,
Get the fee-simples of faire manneries.
What, did he counterfeat his prince's hand,
For some streave lordship of concealed land?
Or on each Michael and Lady-day,

Tooke he deepe forfeits for an hour's delay?
And gain'd no lesse by such injurious brawl,
Then Gamius by his sixth wife's burial?
Or hath he wonne some wider interest,
By hoary charters from his grandsire's chest,
Which late some bribed scribe for slender wage,
Writ in the characters of another age,

That Plowdon selfe might stammer to rehearse,
Whose date o'erlooks three centuries of years.
Who ever yet the tracks of weale so try’d,
But there hath been one beaten way beside?
He, when he lets a lease for life, or yeares,
(As never he doth until the date expires;
For when the full state in his fist doth lie,
He may take vantage of the vacancy,)

His fine affords so many treble pounds
As he agreeth yeares to lease his grounds:
His rent in fair respondence must arise
To double trebles of his one yeare's price.
Of one baye's breadth, God wot! a silly coate,
Whose thatched spars are furr'd with sluttish soote
A whole inch thick, shining like black-moor's brows,
Through smoke that down the headlesse barrel
At his bed's feet feeden his stalled teeme; [blows.
His swine beneath, his pullen o'er the beame.
A starved tenement, such as I guesse

Stands straggling in the wastes of Holdernesse ;
Or such as shiver on a peake hill side,

When March's lungs beate on their turf-clad hide;
Such as nice Lipsius would grudge to see
Above his lodging in wild Westphalye;
Or as the Saxon king his court might make,
When his sides playned of the neat-heard's cake.
Yet must he haunt his greedy landlord's hall
With often presents at each festivall :

With crammed capons every new-yeare's morne,
Or with green cheeses when his sheep are shorne:
Or many maunds full of his mellow fruite,
To make some way to win his weighty suite.
Whom cannot gifts at last cause to relent,
Or to win favour, or flee punishment?
When griple patrons turn their sturdie steele
To waxe, when they the golden flame do feele:
When grand Macenas casts a glavering eye
On the cold present of a poesy :

And lest he might more frankly take than give,
Gropes for a French crowne in his empty sleeve.
Thence Clodius hopes to set his shoulders free
From the light burden of his napery.

The smiling landlord shows a shun-shine fase,
Feigning that he will grant him further grace,
And leers like Æsop's foxe upon a crane
Whose neck he craves for his chirurgian:
So lingers off the lease until the last,
What recks he then of pains or promise past?
Was ever feather, or fond woman's mind
More light than words? the blasts of idle wind!
What's fib or fire, to take the gentle slip
And in th' exchequer rot for surety-ship?
Or thence thy starved brother live and die,
Within the cold Coal-harbour sanctuary?
Will one from Scots-bank bid but one groate more,
My old tenant may be turned out of doore,
Though much he spent in th' rotten roof's repaire,
In hope to have it left unto his heir:

Though many a load of marle and manure layd,
Reviv'd his barren leas, that erst lay dead.

Were he as Furius, he would defy

Such pilfering slips of petty landlordry :

And might dislodge whole colonies of poore,
And lay their roofe quite level with their floore,
Whiles yet he gives as to a yielding fence,
Their bag and baggage to his citizens,

And ships them to the new-nam'd virgin-lond,
Or wilder Wales, where never wight yet wonn'd.
Would it not vex thee where thy sires did keep,
To see the dunged folds of dag-tayl'd sheep?
And ruin'd house where holy things were said,
Whose free-stone walls the thatched roofe upbraid,
Whose shrill saint's-bell hangs on his lovery,
While the rest are damned to the plumbery?
Yet pure devotion lets the steeple stand,
And idle battlements on either hand:

Lest that, perhaps, were all those relicks gone,
Furius his sacrilege could not be knowne.

SATIRE II.

Heic quærite Trojam.

HOUSE-keeping's dead, Saturio, wot'st thou where?
Forsooth they say far hence in Breck-neck shire.
And ever since, they say that feel and taste,
That men may break their neck soon as their fast.
Certes, if pity dy'd at Chaucer's date,

He liv'd a widower long behind his mate :
Save that I see some rotten bed-rid sire,
Which to out-strip the nonage of his heire,

Is crammed with golden broths, and drugs of price,
And each day dying lives, and living dies;
Till once surviv'd his wardship's laten eve,
His eyes are clos'd, with choice to die or live.
Plenty and he dy'd both in that same yeare,
When the sad sky did shed so many a teare.
And now, who list not of his labour faile,
Mark with Saturio my friendly tale.
Along thy way thou canst not but descry
Fair glittering halls to tempt the hopeful eye,
Thy right eye 'gins to leap for vaine delight,
And surbeat toes to tickle at the sight;

As greedy T- when in the sounding mould
He finds a shining potshard tip'd with gold;
For never syren tempts the pleased eares,
As these the eye of fainting passengers.
All is not so that seemes, for surely then
Matrona should not be a courtezan;