Watching the birds unto the same to win;
Sees in a boat a fisher near at hand,
Tugging his net full laden to the land,
Keep off the fowl, whereat the other’s blood
Chaf’d; from the place where secretly he stood
Makes signs, and closely beck’neth him away,
Shaketh his hand, as threat’ning if be stay,
In the same stained with such natural grace,
That rage was lively pictured in his face:
Whilst that the other eagerly that wrought,
Having his sense still settled on his draught
More than before, beats, plunges, hales the cord,
Nor hut one look, the other can afford.
Baskins she wore, which of the sea did bear
The pale green colour, which like waved were
To that vast Neptune, of two colours mixt,
Yet none could toll the difference was betwixt,
With rocks of crystal lively that were set,
Covering whose feet with many a curious fret,
Where groves of coral, which not feeling weather,
Their limber branches were so lapp’d together,
As one enamour’d had of other been,
Jealous the air t’ have intercourse between:
‘Mongst which clear amber jellied seem’d to be,
Through whose transparence you might easily see
The beds of pearl whereon the gum did sleep,
Cockles, broad scallops, and their kind that keep
The precious seed which of the waters come,
Some yet but thriving, when as other some,
More than the rest that strangely seem to swell,
With the dear fruit that grew within the shell;
Others again wide open there did yawn,
And on the gravel spew’d their orient spawn:
That he became amazed at her sight,
Even as a man is troubled at the light,
Newly awaked, and the white and red,
With his eyes twinkling, gathered and fled:
Like as a mirror to the Sun oppos’d,
Within the margin equally enclos’d,
That being moved, as the band directs,
It at one instant taketh and reflects:
For the affection by the violent heat,
Forming it, passion taketh up the seat
In the full heart, whereby the joy or fear,
That it receives either by th’ eye or ear,
Still as the object altereth the mood,
Either attracts, or forceth from the blood i
That from the chief part violently sent,
In either kind thereby is vehement.
“Whilst the sad shepherd in this woful plight
Perplex’d, the goddess with a longing sight
Him now beheld; for worshipped by men,
The heavenly powers so likewise love agen
To show themselves, and make their glories known!
And one day marking when he was alone,
Unto him coming, mildly him bespake:
Quoth she,’ Know, shepherd, only for thy sake,
I first chose Latmus, as the only place
Of my abode, and have refus’d to grace
My Menalus, well known in every coast,
To be the mount that once I loved most:
And sine? alone of wretched mortals, thou
Hast labour’d first my wand’ring course to know;
To times succeeding thou alone shalt be,
By whom my motion shall be taught,’ quoth she,
‘For those first simple that my face did mark,
In the full brightness suddenly made dark.
Ere knowledge did the cause thereof disclose,
To be enchanted long did me suppose: — .
With sounding brass and all the while did ply,
The incantation thereby to untie.
“‘But to our purpose, when our mother went,
The bright Latona, (and her womb distent)
With the great burden that by Jove she bare,
Me and my brother, the great thunderer’s care:
Whom floating Delos wand*ring in the main.
From jealous Juno hardly could contain:
Then much distress’d, and ip a hard estate,
Coeus, fair daughter by our stepdame’s hate,
Betwixt a laurel and an olive-tree,
Into the world did bring the Sun and me.
When I was born (as I have heard her say)
Nature alone did rest her on that day:
In Jove’s high house the gods assembled dll,
To whom he held a sumptuous festival;
The well wherein my mother bath’d me first,
Hath that high virtue, that he shall not thirst,
Thereof that drinks, and hath the pain appeas’d
Of th’ inward griev’d, amt outwardly diseas’d:
And being young, the gods that haunt the deep,
Stealing to kiss me softly laid to sleep;
And having felt the sweetness of my breath,
Missing me, mourn’d, and languished to death.
I am the rectress of this globe below,
And with my course the sea doth ebb and flow,
When from aloft thy beams I oblique cast,
Straightways it ebbs, and floweth then as fast;
Down want again my motion when I make,
Twice doth it swell, twice every day doth slake;
Sooner or later shifting of the tide
As far or near my wand’ring course doth guide.
“‘That kindly moisture that doth life maintain,
In every creature proves how I do reign
In fluxive humour, which is ever found,
As l do wane or wax up to my round;
Those fruitful trees of victory and peace#
The palm and olive, still with my increase
Shoot forth new branches: and to tell my power,
As my great brother, so have I a flower
To me peculiar, that doth ope rind close,
When as I rise, and when I me repose.
No less than these that green and living be,
The precious gems do sympathize with me:
As most that stone that doth the name derive
From me, with me that lesseneth or doth thrive,
Dark’neth and shineth, as I do, her queen,
And as in these, in beasts my power is seen.
As he whose grim face all the lesser fears,
The cruel panther, on his shoulder bears
A spot that daily changeth as I do.
And as that creature me affecteth too,
It whose deep craft scarce any creature can,
Seeming with reason to divide with man,
The nimble babion mourning all the time,
Nor eats betwixt my waning and my prime.
The spotted cat, whose sharp and subtil sight
Pierceth the vapour of the blackest night,
My want and fulness in her eye doth find.
So great am I and powerful in that kind.
As those great burghers of the forest wild,
The hart, the goat, and he that slew the child
Of wanton Mirrah, in their strength do know
The due observance nature doth me owe.
And if thou think me heavenly not to he,
That in my face thou often seem’st to see
A paleness, where those other in the sky
Appear so purely glorious in thine eye:
Those freckles thou supposest me disgrace,
Are those pure parts that in my lovely face,
By their so much tenuity do slight,
My brother’s beams assisting me with light,
And keep that clearness as doth me behove.
Of that pure Heaven me set wherein to move.
My least spot seen unto the Earth so near,
Wherefore that compass that doth oft appeal
About my body, is the dampy mist,
From Earth arising, striving to resist
The rays my full orb plenteously projects
On the gross cloud, whose thickness It reflects,
And mine own light about myself doth fling
In equal parts, in fashion of a ring;
For near’st to mortals though my state l keep,
Yet not the colour of the troubled deep,
Those spots supposed, nor the fogs that rink
From the dull Earth, me any whit agrize;
Whose perfect beauty no way can endure,
But what like me is excellently pure;
For moist and cold although I do respire,
Yet in myself had I not genuine fire,
When tire gross Earth divided bath the Space
Betwixt the full orb and my brother’s face.
Though I confess much lessen’d be my light,
I should be taken utterly from right:
And for I so irregularly go,
Therein wise Nature most of aft doth show
Her searchless judgment: for did I in all
Keep on in that way, which star-gazers call
The line ecliptic, as my glorious brother
Doth in his course, one opposite to other;
Twice every month, th’ eclipses of our light
Poor mortals should prodigiously affright;
Yet by proportion certainly I move,
In rule of number, and the most I love
That which you call full, that most perfect seven
Of three and four made, which for odd and even
Are male and female, which by mixture frame,
It most mysterious, that as mine I claim;
Quarter’d thereby, first of which seven my prime,
The second seven accomplished the time
Unto my fulness, in the third I range
Less’ning again, the fourth then to my change:
The which four sevens the eight and twenty make.
Through the bright Circle of the zodiac
In which I pass, whose quarters do appear
As the four seasons of my brother’s year.
First in my birth am moisten’d as his spring;
Hot as the summer, he illumining
My orb, the second; my third quarter dry,
As is his autumn; when from him I fly,
Depriv’d his bright beams, and as waxing old,
Lastly, my wane is as his winter cold.’
“Whereat she paus’d; who all the while she spake,
The hustling winds their murmur often brake;
And being silent seemed yet to stay,
To listen if she had ought else to say.
When now the while much troubled was his thought,
Ala! her fair speech so craftily had caught
Him, that the spirits soon shaking off the Ibid
Of the gross flesh, and hating her abode;
Being thoroughly heated in these amorous fires,
Wholly transported with the dear desires
Of her embraces: for the living soul,
Being individual, uniform and whole,
By her unwearied faculties doth find
That which the flesh of duller earth by kind
Not apprehends, and by her function makes
Good her own state; Endymion now forsakes
All the delights that shepherds do prefer,
And sets his mind so generally on her,
That all neglected to the groves and springs,
He follows Phoebe, that him safely brings
(As their great queen) unto the nymphish bowers,
Wherein clear rivers beautified with flowers,
The silver Naides bathe them in the brack,
Sometime with her the sea-horse be doth back,
Amongst the blue Nereides; and when
Weary of waters, goddess-like agen,
She the high mountains actively assays,
And there amongst the light Oriades,
That ride the swift roes, Phoebe doth resort;
Sometime amongst those that with them comport,
The Hamadriades doth the woods frequent;
And there she stays not, but incontinent,
Calls down the dragons that her chariot draw,
And with Endymion pleased that she saw,
Mounteth thereon, in twinkling of an eye,
Stripping the winds, beholding from the sky
The Garth in roundness of a perfect ball,
Which as a point but of this mighty all,
Wise Nature fix’d, that permanent doth stay,
Whereas the spheres by a diurnal sway
Of the first Mover carried are about
And how the several elements throughout,
Strongly infolded, and the vast air spread
In sundry regions, ip the which are bred
Those strange impressions often that appear
To fearful mortals, and the causes there,
And light’ned by her piercing beams, he sees
The powerful planets, how in their degrees,
In their due seasons they do fall and rise:
And how the signs in their triplicities
Be sympathising in their trine consents,
With whose inferior forming elements,
From which our bodies the complexions take,
Natures and number: strongly and do make
Our dispositions like them, and on Earth
The power the Heavens have over mortal birth,
That their effects which men call fortune, are
As is that good or inauspicious star,
Which at the frail nativity doth reign.
Yet here her love could Phoebe not contain,
And knowledge him so strongly doth inspire,
That in most plenty, more he doth desire;
Raising him up to those excelling sights,
The glorious Heaven, where all the fixed lights,
Whose images suppos’d to be therein,
Are fram’d of stars, whose names did first begin
By those wise ancients, not to stellify
The first world’s herpes only, but imply
To teach their courses, for distinguished
In constellations, a delight flrst bred
In slothful man, into the same to look,
Which they resembled her on Earth below,
And the bright Phoebe subtilIy doth know
The heavenly motions high her orb above,
As well as those that under her do move.
For with long titles do we her invest,
So these great three most powerful of the rest,
Phoebe, Diana, Hecate, do tell.
Her sovereignty in Heaven, in Earth and Hell;
And wise Apollo, that doth likewise send
Her his pure beams with them doth likewise send
His wondrous knowledge, for that god most bright,
King of the planets, fountain of the light:
That seeth all things, will have her to see,
So far as where the sacred angels he.
Those hierarchies that Jove’s great will supply,
Whose orders formed in triplicity,
Holding their place? by the treble trine,
Make up that holy theologic nine:
Thrones, cherubin, and seraphin that rise,
As the first three, when principalities,
With dominations, potestates are plac’d
The second; and the ephionian last,
Which virtues, angels, and archangels be.
“Thus yonder man that in the moon you see,
Rapt up from Latmus, thus she doth prefer,
And goes about continually with her:
Over the world that every month doth look,
And in the same there’s sc
arce that secret nook
That he surveys not, and the places hidden
Whence simple truth and candle-light forbidden
Dare not approach, he peepeth with his light;
Whereas suspicious Policy by night
Consults with Murder, Baseness at their hand,
Armed to act whatever they command,
With guilty conscience and intent so foul,
That oft they start at whooping of an owl,
And slily peering at a little pore,
See one sometimes content to keep the door:
One would not think the bawd that did not know,
Such a brave body could descend so low.
And the base churl, the Sun that dare not trust,
With his old gold, yet smelling it doth rust,
Lays it abroad, but locks himself within
Three doubled locks, or ere he dare begin
To ope his bags, and being sure of all;
Else, yet therewith dare scarcely trust the wall:
And with a candle in a filthy stick,
The grease not fully covering the wick,
Pores o’er his base god, forth a flame that fries,
Almost as dim as his foul bleared eyes:
Yet like to a great murderer, that gave
Some slight reward unto some bloody knave,
To kill, the second secretly doth slay,
Fearing lest he the former should betray:
He the poor candle murd’reth ere burnt not,
Because that he the secresy doth doubt;
And oftentimes the Mooned-man out spies
The eve-dropper, and circumspectly eyes
The thief and lover, ‘specially which two
With night and darkness have the most to do.
And not long since, besides this, did behold
Some of you here, when you should tend your fold,
A nights were wenching: thus be me doth tell,”
With that, they all in such a laughter fell,
That the field rang: when from a village near
The watchful cock crew, and with notes full clear
The early lark soon summoned the day,
When they departed every one their way.
BALLAD OF AGINCOURT
The Battle of Agincourt, 15th-century miniature
THE BALLAD OF AGINCOURT
TO THE CAMBRO-BRITANS AND THEIR HARPE, HIS BALLAD OF AGINCOVRT
Faire stood the Wind for France,
When we our Sayles aduance,
Nor now to proue our chance,
Longer will tarry;
But putting to the Mayne,
At Kaux, the Mouth of Sene,
With all his Martiall Trayne,
Landed King HARRY.
And taking many a Fort,
Furnish’d in Warlike sort, 10
Marcheth tow’rds Agincourt,
In happy howre;