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In power, wit, figure, virtue, fortune, placed
Behind the foremost, and before the last.

'But why all this of avarice? I have none.'
I wish you joy, sir, of a tyrant gone:
But does no other lord it at this hour,
As wild and mad? the avarice of power?
Does neither rage inflame, nor fear appal?
Not the black fear of death, that saddens all? 309
With terrors round, can Reason hold her throne,
Despise the known, or tremble at the unknown?
Survey both worlds, intrepid and entire,
In spite of witches, devils, dreams, and fire?
Pleased to look forward, pleased to look behind,
And count each birthday with a grateful mind?
Has life no sourness, drawn so near its end?
Canst thou endure a foe, forgive a friend!
Has age but melted the rough parts away,
As winter-fruits grow mild ere they decay?
Or will you think, my friend, your business done,
When, of a hundred thorns, you pull out one?
Learn to live well, or fairly make your will;
You've play'd, and loved, and eat, and drunk
your fill:

Walk sober off, before a sprightlier age

319

Comes tittering on, and shoves you from the stage: Leave such to trifle with more grace and ease, Whom folly pleases, and whose follies please.

THE SATIRES OF

DR. JOHN DONNE,

DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S,

VERSIFIED.

Quid vetat et nosmet, Lucilî scripta legentes,
Quærere, num illius, num rerum dura negarit
Versiculos natura magis factos, et euntes

Mollius?

SATIRE II.

HORACE.

YES; thank my stars! as early as I knew
This town, I had the sense to hate it too:
Yet here, as e'en in hell, there must be still
One giant-vice, so excellently ill,

That all beside, one pities, not abhors;
As who knows Sappho, smiles at other whores.
I grant that poetry's a crying sin;

It brought, no doubt, the excise and army in:
Catch'd like the plague, or love, the Lord knows

how;

10

But that the cure is starving, all allow.
Yet like the Papist's, is the poet's state;
Poor and disarm'd, and hardly worth your hate!
Here a lean bard, whose wit could never give
Himself a dinner, makes an actor live:
The thief condemn'd, in law already dead,
So prompts, and saves a rogue who cannot read.
Thus, as the pipes of some carved organ move,
The gilded puppets dance and mount above.
Heaved by the breath, the inspiring bellows blow;
The inspiring bellows lie and pant below.

Y

20

One sings the fair; but songs no longer move; No rat is rhymed to death, nor maid to love : In love's, in nature's spite, the siege they hold; And scorn the flesh, the devil, and all but gold. These write to lords, some mean reward to get, As needy beggars sing at doors for meat; Those write because all write, and so have still Excuse for writing, and for writing ill.

Wretched indeed! but far more wretched yet Is he who makes his meal on others' wit: 30 'Tis changed, no doubt, from what it was before; His rank digestion makes it wit no more: Sense, pass'd through him, no longer is the same; For food digested takes another name.

I pass

o'er all those confessors and martyrs
Who live like S-tt-n,* or who die like Chartres,+
Out-cant old Esdras, or out-drink his heir,
Out-usure Jews, or Irishmen out-swear;
Wicked as pages, who in early years

Act sins, which Prisca's confessor scarce hears. 40
E'en those I pardon, for whose sinful sake
Schoolmen new tenements in hell must make ;
Of whose strange crimes no canonist can tell
In what commandment's large contents they dwell.
One, one man only breeds my just offence;
Whom crimes gave wealth, and wealth gave im-
pudence:

Time, that at last matures a clap to ***,
Whose gentle progress makes a calf an ox,
And brings all natural events to pass,
Hath made him an attorney of an ass.
No young divine new beneficed can be
More pert, more proud, more positive than he.
What farther could I wish the fop to do,
But turn a wit, and scribble verses too;
Pierce the soft labyrinth of a lady's ear

50

With rhymes of this per cent. and that per year?

Sir Robert Sutton, a privy councillor.

+ See Moral Essays, Ep. III., 1. 20, note.

Or court a wife, spread out his wily parts,
Like nets or lime-twigs, for rich widows' hearts
Call himself barrister to every wench,

And woo in language of the Pleas and Bench? 60
Language, which Boreas might to Auster hold,
More rough than forty Germans when they scold.
Cursed be the wretch, so venal and so vain :
Paltry and proud, as drabs in Drury-lane.
'Tis such a bounty as was never known,
If Peter deigns to help you to your own:
What thanks, what praise, if Peter* but supplies!
And what a solemn face, if he denies !

Grave, as when prisoners shake the head, and

swear

80

'Twas only suretyship that brought them there.
His office keeps your parchment fates entire; 71
He starves with cold to save them from the fire;
For you he walks the streets through rain or dust,
For not in chariots Peter puts his trust;
For you he sweats and labours at the laws;
Takes God to witness he affects your cause;
And lies to every lord, in every thing,
Like a king's favourite-or like a king.
These are the talents that adorn them all,
From wicked Waters* e'en to godly Hall. +
Not more of simony beneath black gowns,
Not more of bastardy in heirs to crowns.
In shillings and in pence at first they deal;
And steal so little, few perceive they steal
Till, like the sea, they compass all the land,
From Scots to Wight, from Mount to Dover strand:
And when rank widows purchase luscious nights,
Or when a duke to Jansen punts at White's,
Or city-heir in mortgage melts away;
Satan himself feels far less joy than they.
Piecemeal they win this acre first, then that,
Glean on, and gather up the whole estate :

* See Moral Essays, Ep. III., 1. 20, note.
+ Joseph Hall, Bishop of Norwich.

90

Then, strongly fencing ill-got wealth by law,
Indenture, covenants, articles, they draw,
Large as the fields themselves, and larger far
Than civil codes, with all their glosses, are;
So vast, our new divines, we must confess,
Are fathers of the Church for writing less.
But let them write for you, each rogue impairs
The deeds, and dexterously omits, ses heires: 100
No commentator can more slily pass

O'er a learn'd, unintelligible place;

Or, in quotation, shrewd divines leave out Those words, that would against them clear the doubt.

So Luther thought the Paternoster long,

When doom'd to say his beads and even-song;
But having cast his cowl, and left those laws,
Adds to Christ's prayer the power and glory clause.
The lands are bought; but where are to be found
Those ancient woods that shaded all the ground?
We see no new-built palaces aspire,
No kitchens emulate the vestal fire.

111

Where are those troops of poor, that throng'd of yore

The good old landlord's hospitable door?
Well, I could wish that still in lordly domes
Some beasts were kill'd, though not whole heca-
tombs ;

That both extremes were banish'd from their walls;
Carthusian fasts, and fulsome Bacchanals;
And all mankind might that just mean observe,
In which none e'er could surfeit, none could starve.
These as good works, 'tis true, we all allow, 121
But, oh! these works are not in fashion now:
Like rich old wardrobes, things extremely rare,
Extremely fine, but what no man will wear.

Thus much I've said, I trust, without offence;
Let no court sycophant pervert my sense;
Nor sly informer watch these words, to draw
Within the reach of treason, or the law.

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