On the Portrait of His Imperial Majesty. Ferdinand the Third.
When Joachim Sandrart van Stokou, out of Vienna, in Austria, honored me with his Majesty's portrait, adorned with festoons and other ornaments.
Deus nobis haec otia fecit.
The Sun of Austria uplifts his glorious rays
From shadow-glooms of art to bless each wondering eye.
Behold him on his throne, high towering in the sky!
Nor doth he scorn to beam on all his glance surveys.
Good Ferdinand the Third, born for the sovran crown.
A Father of the Peace, a new Augustus, shows
His Son the heights whereon the heavenly palace glows;
And teaches how with arms of Peace to win renown.
How blest the mighty realm, how blest their destinies,
O'er which his gracious eyes keep sleepless vigils kind.
And where he holds the Scales for holy Justice blind!
An Eagle brought him sword and sceptre from the skies.
A crown adorns the head which empires grand engage:
This Head adorns the Crown, and makes a golden age.
A Word to All Fellow-Academicians and Patrons of the Drama.
To reïnkindle your zeal for art, and at the same time to edify and to quicken your spirit, the holy tragic scene, which represents the Heavens, is here presented to your view.
The great Archangels. Lucifer and Michael, each strengthened by his followers, come on the stage, and play their parts.
The stage and the actors are, in sooth, of such nature, and so glorious, that they demand a grander style and higher buskins than I know how to put on. No one who understands the speech of the infallible oracles of the Holy Spirit will judge that we present here the story of Salmoneus, who, in Elis, mounted upon his chariot, while defying Jupiter, and imitating his thunder and lightning by riding over a brazen bridge, holding a burning torch, was slain by a thunderbolt.
Nor do we renew here the grey fable of the war of the Titans, in which disguise Poesy sought to make its auditors forget their reckless presumption and godless sacrilege, and to acquire a knowledge of nature instead; namely, that the air and the winds, locked within the hollow belly and the sulphurous bowels of the earth, seeking, at times, an outlet, accompanied by the violence of bursting rocks, and by smoke and steam and flames and earthquakes and dreadful mutterings, are vomited, and, rising heavenwards, again descend, strewing and heaping the surface of land and sea with stones and ashes.