Love’s Panegyric.
————— ’tis Nature’s second Sun,
Causing a spring of Virtues where he shines;
And as without the Sun, the world’s Great Eye,
All colours, beauties, both of art and nature,
Are given in vain to man; so without Love
All beauties bred in women are in vain,
All virtues born in men lie buried;
For Love informs them as the Sun doth colours
And as the Sun, reflecting his warm beams
Against the earth, begets all fruits and flowers
So Love, fair shining in the inward man,
Brings forth in him the honourable fruits
Of valour, wit, virtue, and haughty thoughts.
Brave resolution, and divine discourse.
Love with Jealousy.
——— such Love is like a smoky fire
In a cold morning. Though the fire be chearful,
Yet is the smoke so foul and cumbersome,
’Twere better lose the fire than find the smoke.
Bailiffs routed.
I walking in the place where men’s Law Suits
Are heard and pleaded, not so much as dreaming
Of any such encounter; steps me forth
Their valiant Foreman with the word “I ’rest you.”
I made no more ado but laid these paws
Close on his shoulders, tumbling him to earth;
And there sat he on his posteriors
Like a baboon: and turning me about,
I strait espied the whole troop issuing on me.
I step me back, and drawing my old friend here.
Made to the midst of ’em, and all unable
To endure the shock, all rudely fell in rout.
And down the stairs they ran in such a fury,
As meeting with a troop of Lawyers there,
Mann’d by their Clients (some with ten, some with twenty,
Some five, some three; he that had least had one),
Upon the stairs, they bore them down afore them.
But such a rattling then there was amongst them.
Of ravish’d Declarations, Replications,
Rejoinders, and Petitions, all their books
And writings torn, and trod on, and some lost,
That the poor Lawyers coming to the Bar
Could say nought to the matter, but instead
Were fain to rail, and talk beside their books,
Without all order.
[From the “Late Lancashire Witches,” a Comedy, by Thomas Heywood.]
A Household Bewitched.
My Uncle has of late become the sole
Discourse of all the country; for of a man respected
As master of a govern’d family,
The House (as if the ridge were fix’d below,
And groundsils lifted up to make the roof)
All now’s turn’d topsy-turvy,
In such a retrograde and preposterous way
As seldom hath been heard of, I think never.
The Good Man
In all obedience kneels unto his Son;
He with an austere brow commands his Father.
The Wife presumes not in the Daughter’s sight
Without a prepared curtsy; the Girl she
Expects it as a duty; chides her Mother,
Who quakes and trembles at each word she speaks.
And what’s as strange, the Maid—she domineers
O’er her young Mistress, who is awed by her.
The Son, to whom the Father creeps and bends,
Stands in as much fear of the groom his Man!
All in such rare disorder, that in some
As it breeds pity, and in others wonder,
So in the most part laughter. It is thought,
This comes by Witchcraft.