The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
Thy saint is dead, or dead is thy devotion.
For who doth hold his love in estimation,
To witness that he thinks his thoughts delicious,
Thinks to make each thing badge of his sweet passion.
{279}
DORUS
But what doth make thee Dicus, so suspicious
Of my due faith, which needs must be immutable?
Who others’ virtues doubt, themselves are vicious:
Not so; although my metal were most mutable,
Her beams have wrought therein most fair impression,
To such a force some change were nothing suitable.
DICUS
The heart well set doth never shun confession;
If noble be thy bands, make them notorious;
Silence doth seem the mask of base oppression.
Who glories in his love, doth make love glorious:
But who doth fear, or bideth mute wilfully,
Shows, guilty heart doth deem his state opprobrious,
Thou then, that fram’st both words and voice most skilfully,
Yield to our ears a sweet and sound relation,
If love took thee by force, or caught thee guilefully.
DORUS
If sunny beams shame heavenly habitation,
If three-leav’d grass seem to the sheep unsavory;
Then base and sour is love’s most high vocation.
Or if sheep’s cries can help the sun’s own bravery,
Then may I hope, my pipe may have ability,
To help her praise, who decks me in her slavery.
No, no; no words ennoble self-nobility,
As for your doubts, her voice was it deceived me,
Her eye the force beyond all possibility.
DICUS
Thy words well voic’d, well grac’d, had almost heaved me,
Quite from myself, to love love’s contemplation;
Till of those thoughts thy sudden end bereaved me,
Go on therefore, and tell us by what fashion,
In thy own proof he gets so strange possession
And how possessed he strengthens his invasion.
DORUS
Sight is his root, in thought is his progression,
His childhood wonder, prenticeship attention,
His youth delight, his age the soul’s oppression,
Doubt is his sleep, he waketh in invention,
Fancy his food, his clothing is of carefulness;
Beauty his book, his play lover’s dissention:
His eyes are curious search, but veil’d with warefulness:
His wings desire, oft clipped with desperation.
Largess his hands could never skill of sparefulness:
{280}
But how he doth by might, or by persuasion
To conquer, and his conquest how to ratify,
Experience doubts, and schools hold disputation.
DICUS
But so thy sheep may thy good wishes satisfy,
With large increase, and wool of fine perfection,
So she thy love, her eyes thy eyes may gratify,
As thou wilt give our souls a dear refection,
By telling how she was, how now she framed is
To help, or hurt in thee her own infection.
DORUS
Blest be the name wherewith my mistress named is:
Whose wounds are salves, whose yokes please more than pleasure doth:
Her stains are beams: virtue the fault she blamed is,
The heart, eye, ear, here only find his treasure doth.
All numbering arts her endless graces number not:
Time, place, life, wit, scarcely her rare gifts measure doth,
Is she in rage? so is the sun in summer hot,
Yet harvest brings: doth she (alas!) absent herself?
The sun is hid; his kindly shadows cumber not
But when to give some grace she doth content herself.
O then it shines, then are the heavens distributed,
And Venus seems to make up her, she spent herself.
Thus then, I say, my mischiefs have contributed
A greater good by her divine reflection,
My harms to me, my bliss to her attributed.
Thus she is framed: her eyes are my direction,
Her love my life, her anger my destruction:
Lastly, what so she is, that’s my protection.
DICUS
Thy safety sure is wrapped in destruction,
For that construction thine own words do bear.
A man to fear a woman’s moody eye,
Makes reason lie a slave to servile sense,
A weak defence where weakness is thy force:
So is remorse in folly dearly bought.
DORUS
If I had thought to hear blasphemous words,
My breast to swords, my soul to hell have sold
I rather would, than thus mine ear defile
With words so vile, which viler breath doth breed.
O herds take heed; for I a wolf have found,
Who hunting round the strongest for to kill,
{281}
His breast doth fill with earth of others’ woe:
And loaden so pulls down, pull’d down destroys.
O shepherd boys, eschew those tongues of venom,
Which do envenom both the soul and senses;
Our best defences are to fly those adders.
O tongues like ladders made to climb dishonour,
Who judge that honour which hath scope to slander!
DICUS
Dorus you wander far in great reproaches,
So love encroaches on your charmed reason,
But it is season for to end our singing,
Such anger bringing: as for me, my fancy
In sick-man’s frenzy rather takes compassion,
Than rage for rage: rather my wish I send to thee,
Thou soon may have some help, or change of passion:
She oft her looks, the stars her favour bend to thee,
Fortune store, nature health, love grant persuasion.
A quiet mind none but thyself can lend to thee,
Thus I commend to thee all our former love.
DORUS
Well do I prove, error lies oft in zeal,
Yet it is zeal, though error of true heart.
Nought could impart such hates to friendly mind,
But for to find thy words did her disgrace,
Whose only face the little heaven is:
Which who doth miss, his eyes are but delusions,
Bar’d from their chiefest object of delightfulness,
Thrown on this earth, the chaos of confusions;
As for thy wish, to my enraged spitefulness,
The lovely blow, which rare reward, my prayer is:
Thou may’st love her, that I may see thy sightfulness.
The quiet mind (whereof myself impairer is,
As thou dost think) should most of all disquiet me.
Without her love, than any mind who fairer is:
Her only cure from surfeit woes can diet me.
She holds the balance of my contentation:
Her cleared eyes, nought else in storms can quiet me.
Nay rather than my ease discontentation
Should breed to her, let me for aye dejected be
From any joy, which might her grief occasion.
With so sweet plagues my happy arms infected be:
Pain wills me die, yet of death I mortify:
For though life irks, in life my loves protected be,
Thus for each change my changeless heart I fortify.
When they had ended, to the good pleasing of the assistants,
especially of Zelmane, who never forgot to give due commendations
{282} to her friend Dorus, Basilius called for Lamon to end his
discourse of Strephon and Claius, wherewith the other day he marked
Zelmane to have been exceedingly delighted. But him sickness had
stayed from that assembly; which gave occasion to Histor and Damon,
two young shepherds, taking upon them the two friendly rivals’ names,
to present Basilius with some other of their complaints eclogue-wise,
and first with this double Sestine.
STREPHON and CLAIUS
STREPHON
Ye goat-herd gods, that love the grassy mountains,
Ye nymphs that haunt the springs in pleasant valleys,
Ye satyrs joy’d with free and quiet forests,
Vouchsafe your silent ears to plaining music,
Which to my woes give still an early morning,
And draws the dolour on till weary evening.
CLAIUS
O Mercury, foregoer to the evening,
O heavenly huntress of the savage mountains,
O lovely star, entitled of the morning,
While that my voice doth fill those woeful valleys,
Vouchsafe your silent ears to plaining music,
Which oft hath echo tir’d in secret forests.
STREPHON
I that was once free burgess of the forests,
Where shade from sun, and sports I sought at evening,
I that was once esteem’d for pleasant music,
Am banish’d now among the monstrous mountains
Of huge despair, and foul affliction’s valleys
Am grown a screech-owl to myself each morning.
CLAIUS
I that was once delighted every morning,
Hunting the wild inhabiters of forests:
I that was once the music of those valleys
So darken’d am, that all my day is evening,
Heart-broken so, that mole hills seem high mountains,
And fill the vales with cries instead of music.
STREPHON
Long since, alas! my deadly swannish music
Hath made itself a crier of the morning:
And hath with wailing strength climb’d highest mountains.
{283}
Long since my thoughts more desert be than forests:
Long since I see my joys come to their evening,
And state thrown down to over-trodden valleys.
CLAIUS
Long since the happy dwellers of those valleys
Have pray’d me leave my strange exclaiming music,
Which troubles their day’s work, and joys of evening:
Long since I hate the night, more hate the morning:
Long since my thoughts chase me like beasts in forests,
And make me wish myself laid under mountains.
STREPHON
Meseems I see the high and stately mountains,
Transform themselves to low dejected valleys
Meseems I hear in these ill-changed forests,
The Nightingales do learn of Owls their music:
Meseems I feel the comfort of the morning,
Turn’d to the mortal serene of an evening.
CLAIUS
Meseems I see a filthy cloudy evening,
As soon as sun begins to climb the mountains:
Meseems I feel a noisome scent, the morning
When I do smell the flowers of those valleys:
Meseems I hear, when I do hear sweet music,
The dreadful cries of murder’d men in forests.
STREPHON
I wish to fire the trees of all those forests,
I give the sun a last farewell each evening,
I curse the fiddling finders out of music:
With envy I do hate the lofty mountains:
And with despite despise the humble valleys:
I do detest night, evening, day and morning.
CLAIUS
Curse to myself my prayer is, the morning;
My fire is more than can be made with forests;
My state more base, than are the basest valleys:
I wish no evenings more to see, each evening;
Shamed I hate myself in sight of mountains,
And stop my ears lest I grow mad with music.
STREPHON
For she whose parts maintain’d a perfect music,
Whose beauty shin’d more than the blushing morning,
Who much did pass in state the stately mountains,
{284}
In straightness pass’d the cedars of the forests,
Hath cast me wretch into eternal evening,
By taking her two suns from those dark valleys.
CLAIUS
For she, to whom compar’d, the alps are valleys,
She, whose least word brings from the spheres their music,
At whose approach the sun rose in the evening,
Who where she went bare in her forehead morning,
Is gone, is gone, from those our spoiled forests,
Turning to deserts our best pastur’d mountains.
STREPHON
Those mountains witness shall, so shall those valleys,
Those forests eke, made wretched by our music.
CLAIUS
Our morning hymn is this, and song at evening.
But as though all this had been but the taking of a taste of their
wailings, Strephon again began this Dizain which was answered unto him
in that kind of verse which is called the crown.
STREPHON and CLAIUS
STREPHON
I joy in grief, and do detest all joys;
Despise delight, am tir’d with thought of ease:
I turn my head to all forms of annoys,
And with the change of them my fancy please,
I study that which may me most displease,
And in despite of that displeasure’s might,
Embrace that most, that most my soul destroys;
Blinded with beams, fell darkness is my sight:
Dwell in my ruins, feed with sucking smart,
I think from me, not from my woes to part.
CLAIUS
I think from me not from my woes to part,
And loath the time call’d life, nay think that life
Nature to me for torment did impart;
Think, my hard haps have blunted death’s sharp knife,
Not sparing me, in whom his works be rife:
And thinking this, think nature, life and death