صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

Were cut, and both fell as their spirit flew Upwards; and still hunt honour at the view. And now, of all the six, sole D'Ambois stood Untouch'd, save only with the others' blood. Henry. All slain outright but he?

Nuntius. All slain outright but he,

Who kneeling in the warm life of his friends, (All freckled with the blood his rapier rain'd) He kiss'd their pale lips, and bade both farewell.

False Greatness.

As cedars beaten with continual storms,
So great men flourish; and do imitate
Unskilful statuaries, who suppose,

In forming a colossus, if they make him
Straddle enough, strut, and look big, and gape,
Their work is goodly: so men merely great
In their affected gravity of voice,

Sourness of countenance, manners' cruelty,
Authority, wealth, and all the spawn of fortune,
Think they bear all the kingdom's worth before
them;

Yet differ not from those colossic statues,

Which, with heroic forms without o'erspread,
Within are naught but mortar, flint, and lead.

Virtue.-Policy.

as great seamen using all their wealth
And skills in Neptune's deep invisible paths,
In tall ships richly built and ribb'd with brass,
To put a girdle round about the world,
When they have done it, coming near the haven,
Are fain to give a warning piece, and call
A poor staid fisherman, that never pass'd
His country's sight, to waft and guide them in :
So when we wander furthest through the waves
Of glassy glory and the gulfs of state,

Topp'd with all titles, spreading all our reaches,
As if each private arm would sphere the earth,
We must to Virtue for her guide resort,
Or we shall shipwreck in our safest port.

[ocr errors]

Nick of Time.

There is a deep nick in time's restless wheel
For each man's good, when which nick comes, it

strikes :

As rhetoric, yet works not persuasion,

But only is a mean to make it work,

So no man riseth by his real merit,

But when it cries clink in his Raiser's spirit.

Difference of the English and French Courts.

HENRY. GUISE. MONTSURRY.

Guise. I like not their1 court fashion, it is too crestfallen

In all observance, making demigods

Of their great nobles; and of their old queen 2

An ever young and most immortal goddess.

Mont. No question she's the rarest queen in Europe. Guise. But what 's that to her immortality?

Henry. Assure you, cousin Guise, so great a courtier,
So full of majesty and royal parts,

No queen in Christendom may vaunt herself.
Her court approves it; that 's a court indeed,

Not mix'd with clowneries used in common houses,

But, as courts should be, th' abstracts of their kingdoms,

In all the beauty, state, and worth they hold ;
So is her's, amply, and by her inform❜d.
The world is not contracted in a man,
With more proportion and expression,

1 The English.

2 Queen Elizabeth.

Than in her court, her kingdom. Our French

court

Is a mere mirror of confusion to it:

The king and subject, lord and every slave,
Dance a continual hay; our rooms of state
Kept like our stables; no place more observ d
Than a rude market-place; and though our

custom

Keep this assur'd confusion from our eyes, 'Tis ne'er the less essentially unsightly.

FURTHER EXTRACTS FROM
THE SAME.

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, Enchantments, 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 Centre: 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 friend1 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.

1 D'Ambois, with whom she has an appointment.

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 perplex'd 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 through his powers.-
Terror of Darkness: O thou King of flames,
That with thy music-footed horse dost strike
The clear light out of crystal, 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 : 1
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.2

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 :

1 He wants to know the fate of Tamyra, whose intrigue with him has been discovered by her husband,

2 This calling upon Light and Darkness for information, but, above all, the description of the spirit-"Threw his changed countenance headlong into clouds "-is tremendous, to the curdling of the blood. I know nothing in poetry like it.

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 1 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 that rude.

BUSSY D'AMBOIS HIS REVENGE,
A TRAGEDY:

BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 1613.

Plays and Players.

Guise. I would have these things

Brought upon stages, to let mighty misers See all their grave and serious miseries play'd, As once they were in Athens, and old Rome. Clermont. Nay, we must now have nothing brought

on stages

But puppetry, and pied ridiculous antics :

Men thither come to laugh, and feed fool-fat, Check at all goodness there, as being profan'd: When wheresoever Goodness comes, she makes The place still sacred, though with other feet Never so much 'tis scandal'd and polluted. Let me learn any thing that fits a man, In any stables shown, as well as stages.— Baligny. Why? is not all the world esteem'd a stage? Clermont. Yes, and right worthily; and stages too Have a respect due to them, if but only

1 The thunderbolt.

« السابقةمتابعة »