Lucasta

by Richard Lovelace

AGAINST THE LOVE OF GREAT ONES.

Vnhappy youth, betrayd by Fate
To such a love<49.1> hath sainted hate,
And damned those celestiall bands<49.2>
Are onely knit with equal hands;
The love of great ones is a love,<49.3>
Gods are incapable to prove:
For where there is a joy uneven,
There never, never can be Heav'n:
'Tis such a love as is not sent
To fiends as yet for punishment;
IXION willingly doth feele
The gyre of his eternal wheele,
Nor would he now exchange his paine
For cloudes and goddesses againe.

Wouldst thou with tempests lye? Then bow
To th' rougher furrows of her brow,
Or make a thunder-bolt thy choyce?
Then catch at her more fatal voyce;
Or 'gender with the lightning? trye
The subtler<49.4> flashes of her eye:
Poore SEMELE<49.5> wel knew the same,
Who<49.6> both imbrac't her God and flame;
And not alone in soule did burne,
But in this love did ashes turne.

How il doth majesty injoy
The bow and gaity oth' boy,
As if the purple-roabe should sit,
And sentence give ith' chayr of wit.

Say, ever-dying wretch, to whom
Each answer is a certaine doom,<49.7>
What is it that you would possesse,
The Countes, or the naked Besse?<49.8>
Would you her gowne or title do?
Her box or gem, the<49.9> thing or show?
If you meane HER, the very HER,
Abstracted from her caracter,
Unhappy boy! you may as soone
With fawning wanton with the Moone,
Or with an amorous complaint
Get prostitute your very saint;
Not that we are not mortal, or
Fly VENUS altars, and<49.10> abhor
The selfesame knack, for which you pine;
But we (defend us!) are divine,
[Not] female, but madam born,<49.11> and come
From a right-honourable wombe.
Shal we then mingle with the base,
And bring a silver-tinsell race?
Whilst th' issue noble wil not passe
The gold alloyd<49.12> (almost halfe brasse),
And th' blood in each veine doth appeare,
Part thick Booreinn, part Lady Cleare;
Like to the sordid insects sprung
From Father Sun and Mother Dung:
Yet lose we not the hold we have,
But faster graspe the trembling slave;
Play at baloon with's heart, and winde
The strings like scaines, steale into his minde
Ten thousand false<49.13> and feigned joyes
Far worse then they; whilst, like whipt boys,
After this scourge hee's hush with toys.

This<49.14> heard, Sir, play stil in her eyes,
And be a dying, live<49.15> like flyes
Caught by their angle-legs, and whom
The torch laughs peece-meale to consume.

<49.1> i.e. THAT hath sainted, &c.

<49.2> So the Editor's MS. copy already described; the printed copy has BONDS.

<49.3> So Editor's MS. Printed copy has—
"The Love of Great Ones? 'Tis a Love."

<<49.4>> Subtle—Editor's MS.

<49.5> Semele she—Editor's MS.

<49.6> She—Ibid.

<49.7> Dombe—LUCASTA.

<49.8> BESS is used in the following passage as a phrase for a sort of female TOM-O-BEDLAM—

"We treat mad-Bedlams, TOMS and BESSES,
With ceremonies and caresses!"
Dixon's CANIDIA, 1683, part i. canto 2.

And the word seems also to have been employed to signify the loose women who, in early times, made Covent Garden and its neighbourhood their special haunt. See Cotgrave's WITS INTERPRETER, 1662, p. 236. But here "naked Besse," means only a woman who, in contradistinction to a lady of rank, has no adventitious qualities to recommend her.

<49.9> Original reads HER.

<49.10> Altars, or—LUCASTA.

<49.11> Borne—LUCASTA.

<49.12> Allay'd—LUCASTA.

<49.13> So Editor's MS. LUCASTA has HELLS.

<49.14> From this word down to LIVES is omitted in the MS. copy.

<49.15> Original has LIVES.

TO ALTHEA.
FROM PRISON.
SONG.
SET BY DR. JOHN WILSON.<50.1>

I.
When love with unconfined wings
Hovers within my gates;
And my divine ALTHEA brings
To whisper at the grates;
When I lye tangled in her haire,<50.2>
And fetterd to her eye,<50.3>
The birds,<50.4> that wanton in the aire,
Know no such liberty.

II.
When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying THAMES,
Our carelesse heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty griefe in wine we steepe,
When healths and draughts go free,
Fishes, that tipple in the deepe,
Know no such libertie.

III.
When (like committed linnets<50.5>) I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetnes, mercy, majesty,
And glories of my King.
When I shall voyce aloud, how good
He is, how great should be,
Inlarged winds, that curle the flood,
Know no such liberty.

IV.
Stone walls doe not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Mindes innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedome in my love,
And in my soule am free,
Angels alone that sore above
Enjoy such liberty.

<50.1> The first stanza of this famous song is harmonized in CHEERFULL AYRES OR BALLADS: FIRST COMPOSED FOR ONE SINGLE VOICE, AND SINCE SET FOR THREE VOICES. By John Wilson, Dr. in Music, Professor of the same in the University of Oxford. Oxford, 1660 (Sept. 20, 1659), 4to. p. 10. I have sometimes thought that, when Lovelace composed this production, he had in his recollection some of the sentiments in Wither's SHEPHERDS HUNTING, 1615. See, more particularly, the sonnet (at p. 248 of Mr. Gutch's Bristol edition) commencing:—

"I that er'st while the world's sweet air did draw."

<50.2> Peele, in KING DAVID AND FAIR BETHSABE, 1599, has a similar figure, where David says:—

"Now comes my lover tripping like the roe,
And brings my longings tangled in her hair."

The "lover" is of course Bethsabe.

<50.3> Thus Middleton, in his MORE DISSEMBLERS BESIDES WOMEN, printed in 1657, but written before 1626, says:—

"But for modesty,
I should fall foul in words upon fond man,
That can forget his excellence and honour,
His serious meditations, being the end
Of his creation, to learn well to die;
And live a PRISONER TO A WOMAN'S EYE."

<50.4> Original reads GODS; the present word is substituted in accordance with a MS. copy of the song printed by the late Dr. Bliss, in his edition of Woods ATHENAE. If Dr. Bliss had been aware of the extraordinary corruptions under which the text of LUCASTA laboured, he would have had less hesitation in adopting BIRDS as the true reading. The "Song to Althea," is a favourable specimen of the class of composition to which it belongs; but I fear that it has been over-estimated.

<50.5> Percy very unnecessarily altered LIKE COMMITTED LINNETS to LINNET-LIKE CONFINED (Percy's RELIQUES, ii. 247; Moxon's ed.) Ellis (SPECIMENS OF EARLY ENGLISH POETS, ed. 1801, iii. 252) says that this latter reading is "more intelligible." It is not, however, either what Lovelace wrote, or what (it may be presumed) he intended to write, and nothing, it would seem, can be clearer than the passage as it stands, COMMITTED signifying, in fact, nothing more than CONFINED. It is fortunate for the lovers of early English literature that Bp. Percy had comparatively little to do with it. Emendation of a text is well enough; but the wholesale and arbitrary slaughter of it is quite another matter.

SONNET.
TO GENERALL GORING,<51.1> AFTER THE PACIFICATION AT BERWICKE.
A LA CHABOT.<51.2>

I.
Now the peace is made at the foes rate,<51.3>
Whilst men of armes to kettles their old helmes translate,
And drinke in caskes of honourable plate.
In ev'ry hand [let] a cup be found,
That from all hearts a health may sound
To GORING! to GORING! see 't goe round.

II.
He whose glories shine so brave and high,
That captive they in triumph leade each care and eye,
Claiming uncombated the victorie,
And from the earth to heav'n rebound,
Fixt there eternall as this round:
To GORING! to GORING! see him crown'd.

III.
To his lovely bride, in love with scars,
Whose eyes wound deepe in peace, as doth his sword in wars;
They shortly must depose the Queen of Stars:
Her cheekes the morning blushes give,
And the benighted world repreeve;
To LETTICE! to LETTICE! let her live.

IV.
Give me scorching heat, thy heat, dry Sun,
That to this payre I may drinke off an ocean:
Yet leave my grateful thirst unquensht, undone;
Or a full bowle of heav'nly wine,
In which dissolved stars should shine,
To the couple! to the couple! th' are divine.

<51.1> Particulars of this celebrated man, afterward created Earl of Norwich, may be found in Eachard's HISTORY, Rushworth's COLLECTIONS, Whitelocke's MEMOIRS, Collins' PEERAGE by Brydges, Pepys' DIARY (i. 150, ed. 1858), and Peck's DESIDERATA CURIOSA, (ed. 1779, ii. 479). Whitelocke speaks very highly of his military character. In a poem called THE GALLANTS OF THE TIMES, printed in "Wit Restored," 1658, there is the following passage:—

"A great burgandine for WILL MURRAY'S sake
GEORGE SYMONDS, he vows the first course to take:
When STRADLING a Graecian dog let fly,
Who took the bear by the nose immediately;
To see them so forward Hugh Pollard did smile,
Who had an old curr of Canary oyl,
And held up his head that GEORGE GORING might see,
Who then cryed aloud, TO MEE, BOYS, TO MEE!"

See, also, THE ANSWER:—

"GEORGE, Generall of Guenefrieds,
He is a joviall lad,
Though his heart and fortunes disagree
Oft times to make him sad."

Consult Davenant's Works, 1673, p. 247, and FRAGMENTA AULICA, 1662, pp. 47, 54. Lord Goring died Jan. 6, 1663 (Smyth's OBITUARY, p. 57; Camden Soc.).

<51.2> A LA CHABOT was a French dance tune, christened after the admiral of that name, in the same manner as A LA BOURBON, mentioned elsewhere in LUCASTA, derived its title from another celebrated person. Those who have any acquaintance with the history of early English music need not to be informed that it was formerly the practice of our own composers to seek the patronage of the gentlemen and ladies about the Court for their works, and to identify their names with them. Thus we have "My Lady Carey's Dumpe," &c. &c.

<<51.3>> Expense.