53. AN ODE FOR BEN JONSON
Ah Ben!
Say how or when
Shall we, thy guests,
Meet at those lyric feasts,
Made at the Sun,
The Dog, the Triple Tun;
Where we such clusters had,
As made us nobly wild, not mad?
And yet each verse of thine
Out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine.
My Ben!
Or come again,
Or send to us
Thy wit's great overplus;
But teach us yet
Wisely to husband it,
Lest we that talent spend;
And having once brought to an end
That precious stock,—the store
Of such a wit the world should have no more.
54. TO LIVE MERRILY, AND TO TRUST TO GOOD VERSES
Now is the time for mirth;
Nor cheek or tongue be dumb;
For with [the] flowery earth
The golden pomp is come.
The golden pomp is come;
For now each tree does wear,
Made of her pap and gum,
Rich beads of amber here.
Now reigns the Rose, and now
Th' Arabian dew besmears
My uncontrolled brow,
And my retorted hairs.
Homer, this health to thee!
In sack of such a kind,
That it would make thee see,
Though thou wert ne'er so blind
Next, Virgil I'll call forth,
To pledge this second health
In wine, whose each cup's worth
An Indian commonwealth.
A goblet next I'll drink
To Ovid; and suppose
Made he the pledge, he'd think
The world had all one nose.
Then this immensive cup
Of aromatic wine,
Catullus! I quaff up
To that terse muse of thine.
Wild I am now with heat:
O Bacchus! cool thy rays;
Or frantic I shall eat
Thy Thyrse, and bite the Bays!
Round, round, the roof does run;
And being ravish'd thus,
Come, I will drink a tun
To my Propertius.
Now, to Tibullus next,
This flood I drink to thee;
—But stay, I see a text,
That this presents to me.
Behold! Tibullus lies
Here burnt, whose small return
Of ashes scarce suffice
To fill a little urn.
Trust to good verses then;
They only will aspire,
When pyramids, as men,
Are lost i' th' funeral fire.
And when all bodies meet
In Lethe to be drown'd;
Then only numbers sweet
With endless life are crown'd.
55. THE APPARITION OF HIS, MISTRESS, CALLING HIM TO ELYSIUM
DESUNT NONNULLA—
Come then, and like two doves with silvery wings,
Let our souls fly to th' shades, wherever springs
Sit smiling in the meads; where balm and oil,
Roses and cassia, crown the untill'd soil;
Where no disease reigns, or infection comes
To blast the air, but amber-gris and gums.
This, that, and ev'ry thicket doth transpire
More sweet than storax from the hallow'd fire;
Where ev'ry tree a wealthy issue bears
Of fragrant apples, blushing plums, or pears;
And all the shrubs, with sparkling spangles, shew
Like morning sun-shine, tinselling the dew.
Here in green meadows sits eternal May,
Purfling the margents, while perpetual day
So double-gilds the air, as that no night
Can ever rust th' enamel of the light:
Here naked younglings, handsome striplings, run
Their goals for virgins' kisses; which when done,
Then unto dancing forth the learned round
Commix'd they meet, with endless roses crown'd.
And here we'll sit on primrose-banks, and see
Love's chorus led by Cupid; and we'll he
Two loving followers too unto the grove,
Where poets sing the stories of our love.
There thou shalt hear divine Musaeus sing
Of Hero and Leander; then I'll bring
Thee to the stand, where honour'd Homer reads
His Odyssees and his high Iliads;
About whose throne the crowd of poets throng
To hear the incantation of his tongue:
To Linus, then to Pindar; and that done,
I'll bring thee, Herrick, to Anacreon,
Quaffing his full-crown'd bowls of burning wine,
And in his raptures speaking lines of thine,
Like to his subject; and as his frantic
Looks shew him truly Bacchanalian like,
Besmear'd with grapes,—welcome he shall thee thither,
Where both may rage, both drink and dance together.
Then stately Virgil, witty Ovid, by
Whom fair Corinna sits, and doth comply
With ivory wrists his laureat head, and steeps
His eye in dew of kisses while he sleeps.
Then soft Catullus, sharp-fang'd Martial,
And towering Lucan, Horace, Juvenal,
And snaky Persius; these, and those whom rage,
Dropt for the jars of heaven, fill'd, t' engage
All times unto their frenzies; thou shalt there
Behold them in a spacious theatre:
Among which glories, crown'd with sacred bays
And flatt'ring ivy, two recite their plays,
Beaumont and Fletcher, swans, to whom all ears
Listen, while they, like sirens in their spheres,
Sing their Evadne; and still more for thee
There yet remains to know than thou canst see
By glimm'ring of a fancy; Do but come,
And there I'll shew thee that capacious room
In which thy father, Jonson, now is placed
As in a globe of radiant fire, and graced
To be in that orb crown'd, that doth include
Those prophets of the former magnitude,
And he one chief. But hark! I hear the cock,
The bell-man of the night, proclaim the clock
Of late struck One; and now I see the prime
Of day break from the pregnant east:—'tis time
I vanish:—more I had to say,
But night determines here; Away!