Strew your hair with powders sweet,
Don clean linen, bathe your feet,

And the foul fiend more to check

A crucifix let bless your neck.

'Tis now full tide 'tween night and day; End your groan and come away.

About 1616.

1623.

GILES FLETCHER

FROM

CHRIST'S VICTORY AND TRIUMPH

JUSTICE AND MERCY

But Justice had no sooner Mercy seen

Smoothing the wrinkles of her Father's brow,
But up she starts and throws herself between;
As when a vapour, from a moory slough,
Meeting with fresh Eoüs, that but now

Opened the world which all in darkness lay,
Doth heav'n's bright face of his rays disarray,
And sads the smiling orient of the springing day.

15

5

She was a virgin of austere regard;

Not as the world esteems her, deaf and blind,

ΙΟ

But as the eagle, that hath oft compared

Her eye with heav'n's, so and more brightly shined

Her lamping sight, for she the same could wind
Into the solid heart; and with her ears

The silence of the thought loud-speaking hears;

15

And in one hand a pair of even scoals she wears.

No riot of affection revel kept

Within her breast, but a still apathy

Possessed all her soul, which softly slept

Securely, without tempest: no sad cry

Awakes her pity; but wronged Poverty,

Sending her eyes to heav'n swimming in tears,
With hideous clamours ever struck her ears,

Whetting the blazing sword that in her hand she bears.

20

The winged lightning is her Mercury,

25

And round about her mighty thunders sound:
Impatient of himself lies pining by

Pale Sickness, with his kerchered head upwound,

And thousand noisome plagues attend her round:
But if her cloudy brow but once grow foul,
The flints do melt, and rocks to water rowle,
And airy mountains shake, and frighted shadows howl.

30

Famine, and bloodless Care, and bloody War,
Want, and the Want of Knowledge how to use
Abundance; Age, and Fear that runs afar
Before his fellow Grief, that aye pursues

35

His wingèd steps-for who would not refuse

Grief's company, a dull and raw-boned spright,

That lanks the cheeks and pales the freshest sight,

Unbosoming the cheerful breast of all delight?

40

Before this cursed throng goes Ignorance,
That needs will lead the way he cannot see;
And after all Death doth his flag advance;

And in the midst Strife still would roaguing be,
Whose ragged flesh and clothes did well agree;
And round about amazèd Horror flies;
And over all Shame veils his guilty eyes;

45

And underneath Hell's hungry throat still yawning lies.

Upon two stony tables, spread before her,
She leaned her bosom, more than stony hard:

50

There slept th' unpartial Judge, and strict restorer
Of wrong or right, with pain or with reward;
There hung the score of all our debts, the card

Where good and bad, and life and death, were painted; Was never heart of mortal so untainted

55

But when that scroll was read with thousand terrors

fainted.

Witness the thunder that Mount Sinai heard
When all the hill with fi'ry clouds did flame,
And wand'ring Israel, with the sight afeard,
Blinded with seeing, durst not touch the same,

60

But like a wood of shaking leaves became.

On this dead Justice she, the Living Law,
Bowing herself with a majestic awe,

All heav'n, to hear her speech, did into silence draw.

She ended, and the heav'nly hierarchies,
Burning in zeal, thickly imbranded were,
Like to an army that allarum cries,
And every one shakes his ydraded spear;
And the Almighty's Self, as He would tear

The Earth and her firm basis quite in sunder,

Flamed all in just revenge and mighty thunder;

Heav'n stole itself from Earth by clouds that moistered

under.

As when the cheerful Sun, elamping wide,
Glads all the world with his uprising ray,
And wooes the widowed Earth afresh to pride,
And paints her bosom with the flow'ry May,
His silent sister steals him quite away,

65

70

75

Wrapt in a sable cloud from mortal eyes;
The hasty stars at noon begin to rise,
And headlong to his early roost the sparrow flies;

80

But soon as he again disshadowed is,

Restoring the blind World his blemished sight,
As though another day were newly ris,

The coozened birds busily take their flight,

85

And wonder at the shortness of the night:

So Mercy once again herself displays,

Out from her sister's cloud, and open lays

Those sunshine looks whose beams would dim a thousand

days.

How may a worm, that crawls along the dust,
Clamber the azure mountains thrown so high,
And fetch from thence thy fair idea just,
That in those sunny courts doth hidden lie,
Clothed with such light as blinds the angels' eye?
How may weak mortal ever hope to file
His unsmooth tongue and his deprostrate style?
O raise thou from his corse thy now entombed exile! ..

90

95

As melting honey, dropping from the comb,

So 'still the words that spring between thy lips;

Thy lips, where smiling Sweetness keeps her home,
And heav'nly Eloquence pure manna sips:

100

He that his pen but in that fountain dips,
How nimbly will the golden phrases fly,
And shed forth streams of choicest rhetory,
Welling celestial torrents out of poesy!

Like as the thirsty land in summer's heat
Calls to the clouds, and gapes at every show'r

105

As though her hungry clifts all heav'n would eat,

Which if high God into her bosom pour,

Though much refreshed, yet more she could devour;
So hang the greedy ears of angels sweet,
And every breath a thousand Cupids meet,

Some flying in, some out, and all about her fleet.

Upon her breast Delight doth softly sleep,

And of Eternal Joy is brought abed

Those snowy mountelets, through which do creep
The milky rivers, that are inly bred

115

In silver cisterns, and themselves do shed

To weary travellers, in heat of day

To quench their fiery thrist, and to allay

With dropping nectar-floods the fury of their way.

120

If any wander, thou dost call him back;
If any be not forward, thou incit'st him;
Thou dost expect, if any should grow slack;
If any seem but willing, thou invit'st him;

Or if he do offend thee, thou acquiť’st him;

Thou find'st the lost, and follow'st him that flies, Healing the sick, and quick'ning him that dies; Thou art the lame man's friendly staff, the blind man's

eyes.

So fair thou art, that all would thee behold;
But none can thee behold, thou art so fair.
Pardon, O pardon, then, thy vassal bold,

That with poor shadows strives thee to compare,

125

130

And match the things which he knows matchless are!
O thou vive mirrour of celestial grace,

How can frail colours portrait out thy face,

135

Or paint in flesh thy beauty in such semblance base?

1610.

SATAN

At length an aged sire far off He saw
Come slowly footing; every step he guessed
One of his feet he from the grave did draw;
Three legs he had-the wooden was the best:
And all the way he went he ever blest
With benedicities and prayers' store,

5

But the bad ground was blessed ne'er the more:

And all his head with snow of age was waxen hoar.

A good old hermit he might seem to be,
That for devotion had the world forsaken
And now was travelling some saint to see,
Since to his beads he had himself betaken,
Where all his former sins he might awaken,

ΙΟ

And them might wash away with dropping brine,
And alms, and fasts, and church's discipline,

15

And, dead, might rest his bones under the holy shrine.

But when he nearer came, he lowted low
With prone obeisance and with curtsy kind,
That at his feet his head he seemed to throw.
What needs him now another saint to find?
Affections are the sails, and faith the wind,

20

That to this Saint a thousand souls convey
Each hour: O happy pilgrims thither stray!

What caren they for beasts or for the weary way?