Go, renegado, cast up thy account,
And see to what amount
Thy foolish gains by quitting me:
The sale of knowledge, fame, and liberty,
The fruits of thy unlearn’d apostasy.
Thou thought’st, if once the public storm were past,
All thy remaining life should sun-shine be;
Behold, the public storm is spent at last,
The sovereign is tost at sea no more,
And thou, with all the noble company,
Art got at last to shore.
But whilst thy fellow voyagers, I see,
All march’d up to possess the promis’d land,
Thou still alone (alas!) dost gaping stand
Upon the naked beach, upon the barren sand.
IV.
As a fair morning of the blessed spring,
After a tedious stormy night;
Such was the glorious entry of our king:
Enriching moisture dropp’d on every thing;
Plenty he sow’d below, and cast about him light.
But then (alas!) to thee alone,
One of old Gideon’s miracles was shown;
For every tree, and every herb around,
With pearly dew was crown’d,
And upon all the quicken’d ground
The fruitful seed of heaven did brooding lye,
And nothing but the Muse’s fleece was dry.
It did all other threats surpass
When God to his own people said,
(The men, whom thro’ long wanderings he had led)
That he would give them ev’n a heaven of brass;
They look’d up to that heaven in vain,
That bounteous heaven, which God did not restrain,
Upon the most unjust to shine and rain.
V.
The Rachael, for which twice seven years and more
Thou didst with faith and labour serve,
And didst (if faith and labour can) deserve,
Though she contracted was to thee,
Giv’n to another who had store
Of fairer, and of richer wives before,
And not a Leah left, thy recompence to be.
Go on, twice seven years more thy fortune try,
Twice seven years more, God in his bounty may
Give thee, to fling away
Into the court’s deceitful lottery.
But think how likely ’tis that thou,
With the dull work of thy unwieldy plough,
Should’st in a hard and barren season thrive,
Should even able be to live;
Thou, to whose share so little bread did fall,
In the miraculous year, when MANNA rain’d on all.
VI.
Thus spake the Muse, and spake it with a smile,
That seem’d at once to pity and revile,
And to her thus, raising his thoughtful head,
The melancholy Cowley said:
Ah, wanton foe, dost thou upbraid
The ills which thou thyself hast made?
When, in the cradle, innocent I lay,
Thou, wicked spirit, stolest me away,
And my abused soul didst bear
Into thy new-found words I know not where,
Thy golden Indies in the air;
And ever since I strive in vain
My ravish’d freedom to regain:
Still I rebel, still thou dost reign,
Lo, still in verse against thee I complain.
There is a sort of stubborn weeds,
Which if the earth but once, it ever breeds;
No wholesome herb can near them thrive,
No useful plant can keep alive;
The foolish sports I did on thee bestow,
Make all my art and labour fruitless now;
Where once such Fairies dance no grass doth ever grow.
VII.
When my new mind had no infusion known,
Thou gav’st so deep a tincture of thine own,
That ever since I vainly try
To wash away the inherent dye:
Long work perhaps may spoil thy colours quite,
But never will reduce the native white;
To all the ports of honour and of gain,
I often steer my course in vain,
Thy gale comes cross, and drives me back again.
Thou slack’nest all my nerves of industry,
By making them so oft to be
The tinkling strings of thy loose minstrelsie.
Whoever this world’s happiness would see,
Must as entirely cast off thee,
As they who only heaven desire,
Do from the world retire.
This was my error, this my gross mistake,
Myself a demy-votary to make.
Thus with Sapphira, and her husband’s fate,
(A fault which I like them am taught too late)
For all that I gave up, I nothing gain,
And perish for the part which I retain.