THE PHILOSOPHER'S SATYRS, WRITTEN BY M. ROBERT ANTON, of Magdalen College in Cambridge.  
Gaude, quod spectant oculi te mill loquentem:  
Quicquid sub terra est, in apricum proferet aetas.  
LONDON, Printed by T. C. and B. A. for Roger jackson, and are to be sold at his shop in Fleetstreet, over against the great Conduit. 1616.   

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE, WILLIAM, LORD HERBERT EARL OF Pembroke, Baron of Cardiff, Marmion, and Saint Quintin, one of his majesties most honourable privy Counsel, and Knight of the most noble order of the Garter. Robert Anton wisheth a happy life militant and triumphant.  
I Remember (Right Honourable, the whining complaint of the Poet concerning virtue: Credo pudicitiam Saturno: rege moratam delapsum in coelis: 'Tis the iron age, and virtue must have Estredge like concoction, or else die in an Hospital for want of a Patron. 'tis well she is stellified in heaven: for earth is her local place of torment: I have been a sad spectator of her injuries, and deplore her miserable exile; yet her eclipse by the interposition of vice is not a total defect of her heavenly light, but partial and limited, yet how prodigious it is, the tragical changes of this age can truly prophesy. Some Surgeon might have begged a dead body from the fangs of execution, whose Anatomy might have taught the age the constitution of vice, impostumated with murder and hot rained affections. My prayer is more charitable, then Cynical to wish any plants of such an unfortunate tree, I have seen vice adored with her superstitious Imagery, and I wish all true Protestants to virtue rather to die Martyrs, then revolt from her profession, in whose faith your honour is held a most religious professor, the sects of vice are more than in Amsterdam, to whose errors I oppose my book, as an eager disputant. The motions of this planitarie satire are regular and presented in a mask of a sevenfold uniformity. Appear Philosopher in thy undaunted humour of gravity, & spit defiance in the face of scurrile satirrisme: lend heavenly whipcord, and borrow correction from the Sun: fetch blood from the whole body of Nature, and the six planets lay on load on the stigmatick shoulders of vice. This book was conceived in dog-days, and must bite, the sign is in Scorpio, and the planets in their most critical mansion. Be as the world thinks you, virtuous, and read this book with a more than laurel resolution. The thunder hath no power over a consecrated and virtuous mind, it smites only strong timbered villainies. King's have accepted roots from a Philosopher: the gift is small: yet it calls you Lord, and me master. A satire is music worthy of Pithagor as his opinion, especially, when the planets dance a heavenly lavolta, they are nimble spirited and active, and only hope for the passive part of your noble patronage.  
Your Honours obliged Robert Anton.   

TO THE courteous AND judicious Reader.  
WHo ere thou art, that art intellectual, be thou my Organist, and let thy soul, which with Philosophers is but a harmony, keep time with this Musical mask of the Spheres. I have laboured here to present Art and Nature without their ugly periwigs of obscene and shallow Poetry, and have distinguished the confusion of time from a grave and methodical dialect. How poor and naked doth that labour appear, that hath no other clothes, but the sustian of Apes, and base imitation: how like a Bedlam looks a Poet by nature, that never writes but in full Moons of surfeits, and Bacchanalian quotations of young gentlemen's ruins and dice consuming Lordships: how poor a Graduate is learning, when it keeps acts in tenebris, & murders the Press with felonious Pamphlets stolen from the imperfections of their dearest friends, nay, purloined from their own scabbed dispositions, and ulcerous inclinations: I must confess myself to be a sorrowful patient in my own defects, yet a physical proficient in their remedies. I take no pleasure in the incision of other men. Only I read an Anatomy lector of their vices. Comment upon me with judgement, not censure, and thou shalt find thy soul brimful of emulation, but void of envy: for others that are not borne with a generous infusion, I hold with Galen, that the temperament of their souls, follows the temperament of their gross and sottish bodies; and therefore basely uncapable.  
Thine as thy judgement is. R. A.   

IN SATYRAS DIGNISSIMAS et vere Phylosophicas amici sui verissimi Roberti Anton.  

INcipe, sis primus sophiae, qui mystica iura  
In Satyras vertens crimina vera canit,  
Phylosophus verus sis: nominis ellumon inde  
Sit: tibi s●m philos, tu mihi (chare) sophos.    

To his 〈◊〉 friend. R. A.  

DEesert and praise are Twins. The first being quick,  
The second still is so; or if it die,  
Then is the first too sound, or else too sick,  
And so may die in grace, or envies eye.  
But this with wonder in my stomach sticks,  
That Satyrs wrapped but in base Balladrie  
Are praised beyond the moon (of lunatics)  
As being sun-begot; so cannot die.  
Needs must I hug the Muse, and praise the pen  
Of him, that makes his Satyrs dance a brawl  
Unto the music of the spheres, even then  
When as the planets footed it withal:  
Thou sharply singest, but he the burden bears,  
That would have song more sharp but for his ears.   
I. D▪   

TO THE AUTHOR.  

WEll may we praise those books, that bring us store.  
Of profit with their pleasure: here to fore  
Th' art of Astronomy was such tough meat,  
It almost broke our teeth, ere we could eat.  
●●t thou with acquaint and curious dressing haste  
Made it melt now like hon●● ●n the 〈◊〉.  
And sith heaven's so far 〈◊〉 one easily may  
Go thither (for 'tis uphill all the way)  
Thou, to save us the pain, of traveling, thus  
(judicious writer) bringst the heavens to us;  
Mak'st the stars serve as letters, by which we  
May read the secrets of Astronomy.   

Yet winnest thou not (grave tutor) more respect  
When thou didst teach, then when thou dost correct.  
The golden age is past, iron the worst  
Is only left, and that's half eat with rust:  
Rough files and corsive waters, only may  
(For oil does no good) fetch this rust away,  
Well therefore hast thou chose, with Satyric rhymes,  
To whip and fetch blood from these Bedlam times,  
So wise Physicians, when they see bad blood,  
Open a vein, that they may make it good,   
P. B. Medii Temp.   

THE PHILOSOPHERS SEVEN Satyrs, alluding to the seven Planets. And first of his Section of heaven.  

THere was a time before all time begun,  
When the proud gennets of the radiant Sun  
Were scarce delivered from the womb of night,  
And backed by circular motion, when all light,  
Sojourned with darkness, and this glorious ball  
Had neither form nor soul Angelical,  
To move those orbs above as some propound 
P●thagoras, his opinion.   
With ravishing music, or such heavenly sound,  
As that great distance of those rolling spheres,  
Bars from the organs of all human ears,  
When neither Sea, nor bind cooped in a ring,  
Kept their conservative place, nor any thing  
Had an essential form, or element,  
Circle or Centre had true complement  
Of Art or nature: but when heaven and earth  
Had from confusions bowels knawne the birth  
Of this fair Child named Cosmos, the movers eye  
Distinguished this fair object of the sky  
From his disordered mass with all this globe,  
And suited it in far more formal rob  
Of quantity and figure. Then began  
All lights to light the Maker's darling (MAN:) 
The end of man..   
For which endeared creation and respect  
This Microcosm of man was made erect  
With upright speculation, lineally  
To view this rich embroidered canopy  
Of those Celestial bodies; and begin  
〈◊〉 cry, Heaven is my Country, Earth my Inn: 
Anaxagoras. Principle.   
But leaving him to Heaven, of Earth we sing,  
As being of the world, the perfects thing  
In the Creation's wonder, and the end  
Of our aspiring hopes, which we ascend,  
〈◊〉 to our local bliss, and natural place,  
To end even there, where never ended grace.   

Of Heaven.  

THis glorious globe of heavens resplendent ball,  
Trapped richly with his lights pontifical.  
Fountain of motion, by which every star 
Motus raptus, Or contrary motion.   
Is whirled from East to West orbicular  
In four and twenty hours, as Shepherds say,  
Trotting the circuit of the natural day,  
Is of no frame nor form geometrical,  
But round of body, and as Spherical,  
As the Egyptian Sages did compare  
The winding Snake unto the circled year:  
For of all figures this doth best appear, 
Pliny lib. 1.   
Every way showing a just hemis fere,  
Bending upon itself: most capable  
To comprehend this frame so strong and able  
To bolster up this load, and ponderous frame,  
As it hath neither joints, but still the same:  
Keeping his active body apply sound  
As it is jointlesse, pointless, endless, round:  
Now whether this pure quintessence of nature  
Be everliving, or a dying creature:  
Or whether that divine intelligence,  
That gives to heaven his turning excellence  
Give essence, or assistance, as without,  
The soul that moves it, it were still from doubt  
Of what we call it now, as ships that scour  
The Ocean's curled billows, by the power  
And cunning of the Pilot: e'en to that clime  
Where that great idol gold, Saint of the time,  
To whom the Indian Pilgrims sacrifice  
Such three years Hecatombs of widows cries,  
Speaking in golden Oracles of dross,  
The Brusses murmur and the Mariner's loss,  
And yet at last return with crazed slides,  
With grass-green ribs furred with tempestuous tides  
With two or three alive, the Pilots hand  
Guiding the sickly vessel to the land,  
By which we see his form and name he saves,  
Although the Pilots motion ploughs the waves  
With card and compass: so in natural sense 
ut nauta navi it a intelligentia coeli. Zab. lib. de motu coeli. Scalig. excer. 68 Sect. 1.   
Heaven takes no form from his intelligence,  
Which only, like a Pilot sweetly steers  
The harmony of nature in the spheres:  
With power assistant, and their motions carry  
With certain laws, and statutes voluntary,  
That as when every element doth strive  
To move unto his place conservative:  
As being so imperfect and so base,  
That they must pine and die without a place  
And local conservation, yet is heaven a creature  
Of such a perfect quintessence of nature, 
Heavenneeds no place of conservation. Sol & homo generat hominem.   
That it esteems not place for conservation,  
But to another end of generation,  
Moves with his powerful influence: whence began  
Our Schools to ring the sun and man get man:  
But leaving these to tread the thorny maze  
Of Schoole-cramed Sophistry: again we raise  
Our haughty Muse to fly with solid wings,  
And search with stars and subcelestial things:  
For since we see, that by the loadstones might  
The iron age is drawn; where with delight,  
The reader's eye doth fancy, and men's wits  
Like Bagpipes sound, no sound but pleasant fits:  
We are resolved to pluck such fruits from schools,  
And once to please Physicians, knaves and fools:  
For to all these I know our book shall come:  
Pack Doctor to thy urine, and be dumb  
The sottish Empiric, only fools have land,  
And so have countrey-knights: these, these command  
The Muse's sons with an idolatrous knee  
To pray to Angels, or a noble fee  
Of some poor Pamphlet. Hence bastards to your sire:  
Whilst we revive our quick Promothean fire:  
The number of these turning spheres of heaven, 
Ptolemy's opinion.   
Some say but nine, others affirm eleven:  
Which all Divines more full of holy fire  
named sacred Hirarchies: where the blessed quire  
Of heavenly Angels and true Martyrs rides  
That with triumphant wreaths shall judge the tribes.  
The order of the Orbs celestial  
Are numbered thus: the first imperial  
So called of the greeks, as being a place 
Empuros. Arist. Aquinas his opinion.   
Most full of holy light and Angel's grace,  
Whose blessed souls from passion do survive  
Their substance only being definitive:  
Not circumscriptive as our bodies be,  
With the airs cincture or concavity,  
Their bodies free from any local span,  
Of gross dimensions, or precincts of man;  
And therefore in one body spirits dwell  
All in one place, more than large Art can tell:  
For round about the just man's life and merits,  
Million of Angels, and bright flaming spirits,  
Shall at one time, and in one place unite,  
Their most regardant powers infinite,  
And unextended in our bodies move,  
With subtle motion from their place above,  
Either to save with a protector's will,  
heavens glorious darling, or by their power distill,  
With whips of vengeance by their power divine,  
In Legions name possessing men and swine. 
Math. Ch. 5.   
This Heaven the seat of those most happy souls,  
Whose summum bonum all true bliss enrolls,  
Was that third heaven, whose glorious excellence  
Most sweetly ravished Paul's admiring sense.  
That steeped in Loethe of so blest a trice, 
In this heaven Paul was rapt.   
He prays to be dissolved to Paradise:  
And gorged with holy raptures full of grace,  
He sings th' Abyss bliss riches of that place.  
The second, is the primum mobile,  
So called by Sages in Philosophy,  
Because, as from so clear and crystal spring  
Proceeds the birth, death, motion of each thing,  
Being the first, that in his just Carrere,  
Derives all motion to each second Sphere,  
And yet himself in golden mean doth ride  
Equal in motion, like the sacred guide  
Of some prime reverent Prelate, whose great Sea  
Is moved with heavenly Regularite,  
Divine in motion, and Divine in place:  
Free of his learned influence, rich in grace:  
Oh pardon me dull age, if I proclaim  
His venerable life, more than his name  
Suparlatively gracious, bark heretics to see.  
Such Metropolitan uniformity,  
Whilst your great fisherman in Tiber's flood  
Shall move in purple streams of royal blood,  
And with disordered orders turn the keys  
To lock young fools in Limbo: and with ease  
Martyr a fond Apostate, who reconciled  
By a grave goate-like father lives exiled,  
In some Sulphureous troup of Jesuits:  
Whose powder-treason-Collidges invites  
A Tyburn resolution: whether sent or come  
Dies Traitors here, and halter Saints at Rome:  
But with a certain order, moves our heaven,  
Not swift nor slow, but paralleled and even:  
From whence we truly know, and can define  
Her motion heavenly, and write it in the line  
Of Orthodoxal faith: which moving stands  
On Peter's rock, and not on Peter's Sands.  
The third in order of these things Divine,  
Is that bright heaven transparent, Crystalline,  
Having no twinkling star, or glistering pride,  
But like some watery body clarified,  
From whence some say, that when the world was made,  
And that great Elohim the globes bases laid,  
Dispersing darkness, and the tenebrous night  
To forms of beauty, and celestial light, 
Genes. 1.   
That then his mighty Spirit heaven did move  
To separate those waters from above  
From these below: and to this element,  
To place his likeness in the firmament:  
For since we see, that seas with earth compare,  
And heaven with earth in things that likely are.  
The earth brings forth the dog, the foamy main,  
And Heaven itself equivocates the same,  
When with his singing and canicular beams  
He bakes the earth, and dries the Crystal streams:  
And therefore with Harmonious consent,  
Heaven hath proportion to this Element.  
And thus we read in nature's Characters  
Like lives with like to shun intestine wars. 
Parescumparibus.   
The fourth heaven is that glorious spangled globe  
Embossed with stars, and like a gorgeous rob,  
Purled over with nature's Ape, and Zany-art  
Trails down his starry train, and doth impart  
Day to black night, and with his grove of stars,  
(Like candles) shine to wind wracked Mariners,  
Some fixed, some wandering in their tinselled Orb:  
Whose number fixed, Philosopher's record,  
To be one thousand two and twenty clear,  
Well known unto the Sea-cuft Mariner.  
By these the jocund Boateson at first sight,  
Soused with the Ruffian seas, and scratch with might,  
Whistle a main, and from the hatches skip,  
The nimble squires of the dancing ship,  
And fearless kick the billows with disdain,  
Tearing the curled bowels of the main.  
These give propension to each man's defects,  
And by their fatal influence and aspects  
Besides that universal providence,  
On whose great nod depends each consequence  
Of second causes: from their critic powers  
At Caesar's birth acts Caesar's tragic hours.  
But if their kind conjunctions smiling meet  
Our first nativity, and with a sweet  
And jovial dalliance in a golden shower.  
Kindly embrace our first conceptions hour,  
Then shall Augustus, though but mean by birth,  
Sway seven hilled Rome, and tax the verge of earth.  
Footboys shall perch with Kings, & Tanners ride  
On great Sejanus courser side by side  
With some most Lordly Consul: Rearemices fly  
By daylight with the Eagles majesty,  
And will not reason mount Agathocles  
(The Potter's son) to the Pyramids  
Of honour and high state: what virtue mars,  
And hates in fools shall prosper by their stars:  
Yet fear not thou, whose crabbed fate suspends  
Thy fortune progress, and whose learned ends  
Aims at eternity, though whipped with need  
And dogged censure; and whose wounds do bleed  
With times incision stern authority  
Dissecting Arts like an Anatomy,  
Reading their physic lectures to the ears  
Of our contempts to greatness, great in fears  
And pale suspects, who jealous of deserts,  
Do Sepulchre alive both Arms and Arts  
For thou in spite of their malevolent rage,  
Time's simony, and fury of the Age,  
Eclipses, and all Planetary hate,  
Like a Byssextile-yeere shalt leap thy fate:  
Wise men like sluices in the plague of wars,  
Were made to rule, those only rule the stars, 
Sapiens dominabitur Astris.   
Nor can base Gypses tell them of their fate:  
Impostors, with their figures calculate  
Of black futurity: Astrology divine  
The ascendent fortune of their heavenly sign:  
For wise men are not borne as Midwives be,  
To wait on lucky hours, or for the fee,  
Of Biscuit influence, their virtue bars  
The superstition of such gossiping stars.  
But more than man, his reason rules the skies,  
His manhood shares a godhead, that is wise:  
In this fair starry Mirror of the sky,  
Damaskt with beauty and variety  
Of thousand constellations, whose clear flames,  
Are known in maps by their celestial names:  
For there the fair Oryon and the Bear,  
Mayor and Minor grace this hemisphere,  
Swift Pegasus and Perseus (radiant light)  
Burnish the tanned face of the blackemores night:  
Bright Cassiopeia and Ioues Eagles shines,  
Besides the constellations of the signs,  
Which every fool in Physic can make good,  
Their use in purges, pills, and letting blood.  
And every Almanac druggest poorly read,  
Can tell what witless sign reigns in his head.  
But leaving these beyond their yearly date  
To smoke an Indian sulphur, we create  
Again our hallowed Altars, and in fires  
Of moral vows our sacred Muse aspires.  
Tell me thou grave and mighty Stagerite  
Oraculous Schocleman, whose deluding light  
The loathsome Epicure and horrid sect  
Of damned Atheism follow with direct  
And eager sent: what genius could devise, 
A●st. lib. 1. de coelo. The world is eternal.   
To spread so large, such monstrous heresies,  
That even besides grave Orpheus, and the rest,  
Proclus and Pliny, and the learned breast  
Of sharp Averroes, Christian Atheists cry,  
The world's eternal, and shall never die,  
When by the state of stars we may descry,  
The world's firm ruin and mortality.  
And Plato's creature having life and breath  
As they decline, shall languish unto death.  
And as a crazed body full of hours,  
Renders his silver head, and vital powers,  
(His radical moisture spent, and every part,  
Gasping for motion, from the panting heart)  
To nature's dissolution: so shall pass  
Both heaven and earth unto their pristine Mars,  
Although some say, that this great Continent,  
And all this glorious guilt-hatcht firmament  
Shall change his form, and accidental frame,  
Although the part substantial be the same,  
Alleging for their weak Philosophy,  
This sacred place of sweet divinity.  
Yet by the fall of stars our reasons prove  
A total wrack of earth and heaven above.  
For first we see the Sun, whose bright Carrier  
Trots through the ring of time, and dates the year  
In his diurnal progress: now declines,  
More near the earth, then in the former times,  
When learned Ptolemy observed the stars,  
Their houses, signs, and different characters.  
Cheering old Ops, now doting with long days,  
With cordial flames, and charitable rays,  
That else in this consumption would expire,  
Wanting so bright a Nurse, whose cheering fire  
Restores her health with his preservative cure,  
Adding new life to her old temperature:  
Besides infection of each element,  
Corruption of the purest temperament:  
Physicians now turn Satyrs, and complain,  
That nature is a stepdame in the frame  
Of this last Age: when croaking Ravens sing, 
Theophrastus   
Their lives large Charter merrier than a king.  
The stately Stag a hundred years shall graze,  
But man to worms meat turns in fewer days:  
Pigmies for Giants, that with Babel power  
Were wont to scale the high olympiad Tower,  
And wrestle with the Gods: now dwarves are borne,  
ne'er made to fight, but made to nature's scorn:  
The Arcadian Kings two hundred years did live,  
But now the thrifty heavens do scarcely give 
Pliny.   
Half of that pension to the noblest man,  
His grave but six foot long, his life a span:  
Which shows the world corrupted from his best,  
Declines his settling progress to the west;  
For since all things from their sincere creation  
Covet absurdities in generation:  
And every thing steals to his privative end.  
Stars fall from their degrees, Planets descend  
To comfort the poor Centre's feebled veins  
Drooping unto his Chaos, with long pains  
And aged barrenness: man that noble creature,  
Scanted of time, and stinted by weak nature,  
That in foretimes saw jubiles of years,  
As by Endymion's history appears:  
Nay, which is more, even silly women then,  
Lived longer time, than our grave grey beard men:  
Aged Terentia learned Tully's wife,  
Above an hundred years spun out her life,     


The politics of state, that from their hive,  
Distill sweet maxims, how great Kingdoms thrive,  
Their stingless King, that reigns in sweet increase,  
Swarming in Nectared provinces of peace:  
Which when his honie-grace, in progress flies,  
A busy guard, with Argus' jealous eyes,  
Attends their daily- King: in which we see,  
King's supreme heads, what subjects ought to be:  
If then this silly emblem, in disguise,  
And more sententious clouds can moralise,  
Such high occurrences, and intricate,  
To tutor Solon in affairs of State:  
What fearful palsy should my pen confine,  
Since the sun's like a King: Kings, sun-like shine?  
For, mark; the more this kingly planet goes  
To his meridian Zenith, the more he throws  
His warmth upon us; and the more erect,  
In his bright Noone-carreer, he doth reflect  
His beams in double lines, the more doth spring  
And prosper Mines, Plants, each vegetive thing:  
Likewise to Kings, such virtue we apply,  
Whose Royal progress of true Regency,  
In his meridian lustre, is desired  
Still to run higher, and to rule admired,  
Not feared, but loved; a happy prop of state;  
Love ties allegiance; fear, (but to God) is hate: 
Cic. Odimus quos timemus   
Yet godly fear and love to Kings we own;  
Who fears not them, for justice can love none:  
e'en Apes at full-moon dance; then why not more,  
Subjects at fuller glory, Kings adore:  
He whose foxed sense, of innovations dreams,  
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 light; but die in dark extremes:  
No longer shall our peaceful shadows run,  
When in an equal circle, rides our Sun:  
Which, while there is a Sun to measure time,  
May our Sun shine, within this British Clime:  
And with his Royal race, run through the Signs  
Of Envy and black treason, of the times:  
As at his birth, Dame nature hath expressed,  
Bearing the Sign of Leo in his Crest:  
For by old saws in prophecies foretold  
The coming of this Northern Lion bold:  
The Sign of Scorpio, and the Vipers-brood,  
Gowries black treason ever shall make good:  
And that, which last, this fatal sign doth tell,  
Was that Sulphureous practice, hatched in hell,  
Which since our Sun hath past; swim Peter's keys  
In Tiber's flood of your damned treacheries.  
Since in the voice of God, the people cry, 
Uox populi vox Dei.   
Live still our radiant Sun of Majesty:  
And measure out the Autumn, Winter, Spring,  
In Libra's Sign: 'tis justice crowns a King:  
Give light and motion, unto each degree,  
Only retain thy influence uprightly.  
But those, like Artelesse masters, do commence  
Masters of Art, though not Arts excellence:  
Yet, like the Sun, Kings may their beams disperse,  
With general freeness to the universe:  
And shine on common weeds, and fragrant flowers,  
Poor ruin'd houses: and more lofty Towers:  
Give life to insect creatures, and create,  
Of things corrupted, things to generate: 
Corruptio unius, generatio alterius.   
There's not a Fly, a Wasp, a Scarabee,  
But shares the Sun, with Caesar's majesty:  
Since then, the Sunbeams are diffused to all,  
And to the barbarous Moor, and Christian fall  
In direct equal lines: what fool, precise,  
Can question his free beauty how to rise:  
If Oracles on Socrates bestow  
A golden Trivet: who dare answer no.  
Princes are Oracles, from whom no cause,  
Can be demanded, only wills are laws:  
Suns unconfined, to shine where they shall please,  
To hide- scorched Indians: or the Antipodes:  
Yet were they Gods, and infinite to sense,  
Untied to circles; or circumference  
Of mortal limitation: being divine,  
Yet there are some things, that e'en them confine  
From absolute freedom: as not to have a will,  
To covet contradictions, or do ill;  
Both which, so stint the universal grace  
To perfect actions: that it leaves no place  
To unproportioned freedom: which in Kings,  
Infinite in power, finite conditions brings:  
Besides, the Sun, doth grace this Hemisphere  
With Oriental beauty, bright and clear:  
So, when our British Sun, rose from his East,  
His Kingly beams, with triple honours blest,  
Burnished our muffled darkness, with such rays,  
As gave a spriteful length, to our black days:  
The troubled air, engrossed with Icie-feares,  
Daun'st at the music, of the jocund Spheres:  
That then, if ere Pythagoras did not lie,  
In Diapasons, kept true harmony:  
Full constellations, in his issue shine,  
Whose sweet reflection, even to wealthy Rhine:  
So dazzles admirations feeble sense,  
As if the Sun paid use for influence  
From this bright treasure: and so, bankrupt, run,  
That years, and days, exchanged for such a Sun:  
Whose beams, so furnished foreign climes with light,  
That there our morning-star, chaste ugly night 
The beauteous Princess Elizabeth.   
To his first black confusion: and the morn  
Laughed with a roasie-cheeke: when first was borne  
Light, from our light: still may our new hopes shine,  
Like fixed stars orbd in the Palatine:  
Here could my Muse turn Courtier, and direct,  
Her motion, to their motion and aspect:  
And with a glozing quill insinuate,  
Into the breast of greatness, and of state:  
And (janus-like) with complemental grace,  
Gaze on these sunbeams, with a double face.  
But that my duty, bids me show my heart;  
Ladies, not subjects faces, study Art:  
Which in this zealous Moral, I have done,  
By jacobs-staff, to look on Jacob's Son:  
But from the King of light I now decline,  
To sing of lights, that by his lights do shine:  
Lest in this ticklish point of State I tread  
To much: such fears save many a noble head.    

 

REVERENDISSIMO IN CHRISTO Patri Domino Archiepiscopo, totius Angliae Primo & Metropolitano, faustam & inexhaustam precatur, musarum par pusillus, Robertus Anton, Salutem in Domino.  
Of Saturn. ♄  
REuerentiae tuae, sanae, conscientiae, fidei, et ceteris virtutis tuae dotibus devotissimus; minutissimus ego huius mundi atomus, gratiae tuae solare iubar jubeo saluere. Inter tantam huius venenosae aetatis caligantem miseriam, ecce quam diaphanum et perspicuum apparet tuae virtutis lumen, inter tant as et prodigiosas honoris eclipses, et defectus, sphaera tui solis nullam patitur vim, aut conscientiae, aut famae: sed apud antipodes, et homines ecclesiae oppositos, maximam consequitur laudem; et aeternum memoriae obeliscum. O gloriosum monumentum, quod nec aes Cyprium, sed virtutis extruxit artificium: sed ô tempora (clamant aulici) de veneno! Causidici deiure corrupto! Clerici de beneficio! Quis jupiter haec suspiria demulcet; sunt haec mortalium communia (absit) ut sint prodigia in hac catholica lacrymarum Abysso, sympathia quadam patior ego Academicus, quis satyromastix mordicus, non erit impatiens? ●um monstra haec cum tanto strepitu tam horrendum emittunt foetum; et terra, cum coelo patitur violentiam: heu quanta patimur! cum musarum alumni fulmine hoc attoniti obstupescimus: modulamur lepidè, vivimus misere: non ubera porrigit mater Academia: vae nobis apud ecclesiasticos darivacuum; apud philosophos nequaquam clamitant vulgi, non esse motum generationis, sed corruptionis: haec communis glossa populi; hinc lachrimae nostrae; hinc singultus, et gemitus virtutis penè sepultae: quae adeo squalida, et pannosa apparet: ut nulla fides fronti: Asylum tuum inter haec efflagito: tu qui Atheis strenue effulges obstaculum, mihi adsis et opusculo, propugnaculum, quod scripsi, tua venerabili, et paterna indulgentia, nullam patietur apostasiam, aut authorem suum abnegabit: lurida aetas suaviorem non meretur fabulam, aut cantilenam; quam vitiosam illius corruptelam acctoso plectro profligare; cetera sileo: supplex pro tua in terris vita, in coelis corona, militans ego non triumphans musophilos finem impono.  
Gratiae tuae et summae pietati devotissimus Robertus Anton.   

THE PHILOSOPHERS SECOND satire of Saturn. ♄  

THe next above this kingly Planets place,  
Highest of all, is Saturn's sullen face:  
Pale, and of ashy colour, male content;  
A Catelline, to mortal temperament:  
That would blow up the Capitol of man  
With envious influence; melancholy, wan,  
And much resembling, a deep plodding pate,  
Whose sallow jawbones, sink with wasting hate  
At others streams of fortunes; whilst alone  
His shallow current dries with lasting moan:  
And if there hate be in a heavenly breast,  
This Planet with that fury is possessed;  
Suspending our propension, with bad fate,  
Inspiring Tragic plots, of death and hate;  
Torturing our inclinations (like a wrack)  
To dismal projects, ominous, and black  
Prodigious thoughts, and deepe-fetcht treacheries,  
Beating the skull with sullen fantasies.  
And mark what downcast looks we see in Nature,  
This Planet fathers for a fatal creature:  
And each profound plot, drawn from sullen earth,  
From Saturn's spirit, is inspired with birth:  
And yet Philosophers affirmed thus,  
That Saturnists were most ingenious; 
Arist. l. 4. probls. 15.   
Who long retain their great Italian-hate,  
Witty in nothing, but things desperate;  
To glut revenge, with studious memory  
Of shallow wrongs, or some slight injury.  
Which if this be his wit to study ill,  
Take my wit's madman, leave me simple still:  
Under this dogged star, th'infected mood  
Of discontented Graduates, hatch their brood,  
Flying like swallows from the winter's frost  
To warm preferment, in a foreign coast;  
And there vent all their long digested hate  
In scandalous volumes 'gainst the King and State.  
Flying from Tarsus to proud Niniveh,  
Recusants both in faith and loyalty;  
Apostates in religion when they please,  
Bravely to mount the Cross, they cross the Seas.  
These from this humorous Planet suck their birth,  
Leaving deep wounds upon their mother earth:  
What cause hath moved thee, thou deep malcontent,  
To change thy faith with the airs Element?  
If Angli, are called Angeli: Oh, tell, 
Animum cum coelo mutant.   
Why hath their pride, thrown these from heaven to hell?  
Is it, because thou hast sung sweet in all  
The liberal Arts, and now through want dost fall?  
Or dost thou wonder at pluralities,  
Impropriations, or absurdities  
Of a lay Patron, that doth still present  
An ass, before a grand proficient?  
Why, marvel not at these preposterous crimes,  
That very Heathen men in former times  
Have scoffed at, in excess of bitter jest,  
And like true prophets thus these times expressed:  
Give to thy Cook (saith th'one) full twenty pound;  
To thy fool ten: but to a man profound,  
As thy Physician, ten groats shall suffice:  
Thus, thus appears a Scholars miseries.  
For should blind Homer come to sing his song,  
With Lyric sweetness, or the Muse's tongue;  
Had he all languages that first began,  
At the confusion to astonish man;  
Yet with a Coachman, he durst not contend  
For wages, though Apollo stood his friend,  
For thrive they cannot by the sacred Arts.  
A Coachman, Taylor, or the Faulkeners parts,  
Dwell in the breast of greatness: but indeed  
Time must have changes, though all virtue bleed:  
Yet I could wish to turn the sullen tide,  
Of their dull Planet, to a rectified  
And more calm motion; and a while restrain  
The turbulent billows of their sullen vain,  
With temperate moderation; to appease  
In Halcion-smoothenes, all those rougher seas  
Of passion, and sequestered discontent,  
No air so sweet as their own Element:  
As death to fish, torn from their natural place,  
Expires their watery spirits: in like case,  
That man, that from his natural mother flies,  
Buried in stranger's earth, his duty dies;  
Yet time may calm that hot-spured violence  
Of fugitive Saturnists, as in natural sense  
We see in heavy bodies, thrown by force,  
By strong compulsion, thwarting nature's course; 
Zabarell lib. 1. de motu gravium & levium.   
Chase the air, with strong activity,  
Yet towards his end, the moving faculty,  
chaste with precedent motion, faints and dies,  
And in consumption, to his centre hies.  
Which is the cause, why motions violent,  
(Their spirits spent) creep to their Element,  
Which first were made of motion, sith at last  
That virtue dies, by which he first was cast  
As far from his beginning. So time shall change  
Their violent passions, who are borne to range;  
Transported with a furious discontent,  
When all their Romish witchcrafts hath near spent  
Their violent motion, then with deere-bought pain,  
They move unto their sweete-aire once again.  
Yet trust not to the mercy of the years,  
To reconcile, by time, that which appears  
Time's shame, in thy original despair;  
Once fallen, heavens may (but wondrously) repair:  
For though relapses, are not cured with ease,  
He's safe, that meets his first spice of disease:  
Which to prevent, leave of that surgery, 
Uenienti occurrite morbo.   
That makes your soul a bare Anatomy;  
And cuts the flesh, of your more bleeding land,  
With Lion's hearts, not with a Lady's hand.  
In poisons, counterpoisons do contend,  
Rather live here poor, then at Rome offend;  
Use learning as a looking-glass, to see  
What others are in thy infirmity:  
But not as burning-glasses 'gainst the Sun,  
To force a fire to thy ambition:  
But as Archimedes his cunning plies,  
That by reflection, burnt whole Argos eyes  
With artificial glasses: so from each heart,  
His Country's good, tithes the most punctual part  
Of Art and Nature, whose divided ends, 
Non nobis solum nati.   
Shares every man, to Country, Kings, and Friends.  
The seven wise Sages of Philosophy,  
Whom golden pages, keep in memory,  
In spite of Envy, crowned Art with this praise,  
Their countries wore the Olive, they the Bays:  
Which shows, that Monarchies or Policy  
Divided into this triplicity, 
Aristocrat●a. Democratia. Monarchia.   
Then on a solid base, did firmly stand,  
When Art was pure restorative to their land:  
And pricked no vein, of their own native clime,  
But gave a temperet diet to the time:  
Urging no foreign nations, to enforce  
Their natural tempers, cross to nature's course:  
Then learning flourished, without Sophistry,  
Or mixture of self-pleasing fantasy:  
Reason, did check an high opinioned mind.  
And Scholars, like some wealthy men defined,  
To be but simplex animal: that then,  
Like citizens now, were held the surest men:  
Virtue was then a habit of the mind  
Without equivocation: and confined,  
To his true object of beatitude,  
Divided from the world, or multitude  
Of popular praises: Arts did then despise,  
The secular habits of great vanities:  
Lived richly reverent, in poor simple weeds,  
Without Monastic hoods, did Saintlike deeds:  
Had neither pride, to envy, whom doth rise,  
Nor Patron, to bestow a benefice:  
And did supply poor nature with poor clothes,  
Drank when a thirst, and eat when hunger grows;  
Gave no gratuities, but to present  
A worthless Dunce, (to scholars discontent:)  
And hire a simple Curate, scarcely paid,  
With as much wages, as a laundry-mayde:  
Lived without grumbling, or ambitious hate,  
And slept contented with an humble fate;  
The Arts contemned men of high swelling ranks,  
And scarce to Alexander would give thanks,  
For visiting their tub: so much their hate  
Scorned the proud painted sepulchres of state.  
Learning did then live pure in Paradise;  
But since her fall, to pride and avarice,  
And all diseases that infect, the Arts  
Do rot and putrefy their knowing parts:  
Since these contagions, learning is possessed;  
These make the music of a learned breast,  
jar in harsh discords, and unrellisht strains;  
And do corrupt the most refined brains,  
With Saturn's snarling spirit, gross and dull,  
Inspiring rage into a patient skull;  
For when we see, that in the Muse's chair,  
Midas is judge, and virtue must despair  
Of a right worthy Patron; Faunius preach,  
Where once Apollo did sweet music teach:  
Arachne, with Minerva doth compare;  
Dunces with Doctors, and their betters far:  
This makes the worthy Artist, dull and sad,  
And rare deserts, most melancholy mad:  
Yet thus much know you, whose deep Genius cla●●●  
The honour of a Scholar, not the names:  
When jupiter took all the Arts of price,  
To heaven with virtue: and left only vice  
In stead of justice, and white chastity;  
Unto the earth left bribes and simony:  
Yet in a box, he only hope did spare,  
To wretched man, that never leaves him bare.  
Another sort of these dull sectarists,  
Are our most supercilious Humorists:  
Who Saturnisde with this unkind aspect,  
Goes (as a plodding Lawyer) circumspect,  
As though his brain- pan throed of some great strain,  
Tor i'd from York, to London back again;  
His eyes look like two soiled tablebookes,  
In which are written most observant looks:  
His formal brow, contracted to a frown;  
Looks like the Mayor of some Puritan town,  
Spiced with austeerest schism; that scarce will see  
A Maypole, to be nearer heaven than he:  
As stern as Socrates, or Cato's grace,  
That ne'er was seen, to change their sullen face:  
As crabtree browed as judges at a Size,  
That dart their hanging terrors from their eyes:  
Professed deep politicians, these we call;  
Yet far from state, and depth political:  
Although their travels, well do understand  
Sweet Zion: and the blessed holy-land:  
judea's ruins, and the razed Towers  
Of great jerusalem, by Titus' powers:  
The sacred relics of that tomb, they made,  
Wherein our saviours body joseph laid:  
The worlds seven wonders, whom all times prefer  
To be Mausolus' stately sepulchre.  
Egypt's Pyramids the second is:  
The third the obelisk of Semiramis:  
The fourth, the rich Colossi of the Son,  
At Rhodes: the fifth the walls of Babylon:  
The sixth, Diana's temple (as appears)  
That was in building two and twenty years:  
The seventh and last, was that most curious frame,  
Of jupiter Olympus, known by Fame.  
All which because they can with points relate,  
They boldly challenge eminence in state:  
And walk with mumbling, and a grim neglect,  
As if each stone were bound to give respect,  
With notice of their travels, that have run,  
Their progress through the world from sun, to sun:  
As if the state (like Gray-hounds) thought men fit,  
For footmenship, and not for searching wit:  
A horse of Barbary, that scours the ground,  
Or Drake's fleet Pinnace, that did dance the round,  
About the world, in travel can compare  
With the most proudest traveler, that dare  
Cut the burnt line: or with Trans-alpine state,  
Contend in pilgrimage with Coryat.  
'tis not bare travel that can make men wise,  
But this from man, not from the Climates rise:  
Gold makes not India rich, but India poor,  
Sith their men want, although their mines have store:  
Though Alchemy do bear a glorious gloss,  
Compared with gold, 'tis bullion, and base dross:  
Things superficial, in state ne'er agree,  
Without dimension of profundity:  
Desert, and not opinion of their merit,  
Shall grace a Scene of state: when as the spirit  
Of a true information personates  
In lively actions, both to kings and states▪  
Ability to show how kingdoms thrive,  
And to be practic, not contemplative,  
Like Caesar's Parrot, these can only sound,  
ave to Caesar; but in talk profound,  
And mazes of true politics of State,  
That touse grave heads with windings intricate:  
theyare like the gates of Myndus, built so wide,  
As if Diogenes aloud had cried;  
Ho, fools of Myndus, keep you in those straits,  
Lest that your city do run through your gates;  
Lordlike, these travel, and do spend the time  
Only for fashions in a foreign Clime,  
Without observant searching of the heart,  
Of nations, customs, or the rational part  
Of fundamental policy; and with fashion  
Are more transformed, then formed in their creation:  
Yet, like an antic mountibanck commends  
The virtue of his drugs: and then pretends  
Experience of his oils far fetched from hence;  
How foreign States admired his excellence,  
when he (perhaps) this task did entertain  
For three to one at his return again:  
Yet these italianated antic shapes,  
Transformed from men to immitationes Apes,  
Like Hyppocentaures, or some monstrous creature,  
Changed from pure English, to outlandish nature:  
Or rather, in both sexes take delight,  
Divided half, like an Hermaphrodite,  
From their own fashions, most do alienate,  
Like monstrous births, and kinds degenerate:  
When their fond travel at the dearest price,  
Brought nothing home, but their ill fashioned vice:  
Fond-medling- fools, that bear the character,  
Of that poore-carping, and base-shoomaker,  
That checks Apelles in his curious frame;  
Go not beyond your last▪ lest to your shame,  
Your sullen humours to that Orb aspire,  
Where your pride burns you in your politic fire.  
Pack to the centre you dull-pated slaves,  
And there in gross and melancholy caves,  
●ie mischiefs with your Planet, and let state  
Be left to him, that shares a worthier fate:  
Those, whom bright honour and intelligence  
Of their high secrets, crowns with reverence  
Of age and solid judgement: those whose pains  
(Like Chimes at midnight seasons) strikes their brains  
With vigilantest motion; whose desire,  
Like to a Glassehouse, keeps continual fire  
Of zealous flames, whose stately honours rise,  
Even from the ashes of that sacrifice:  
That in whose Hecatombs of loyal blood,  
Their Noble houses ever have made good,  
Unto their Prince and Country; such shall ride,  
Like Ariadne's honours stellified,  
Throughout the milk-white circle, and there shine,  
To foreign nations in that golden line  
Of Roman Curtius; till the marble heart  
Of envy and detraction break and part  
From his starved kar●as; and times Almanac,  
With golden Epacts and new Moons do crack  
The sturdy joints of Ephemerideses,  
With yearly Suns, and annual compasses:  
Whose merit, even the voice of God proclaims,  
With voice of all the people, in the names  
Of our most reverent Senate; in which place  
Our grave Patricians, more than th'outward grace,  
Stands like a Centre, from whose point divine,  
To Brittanis Circle comes an equal line  
Of state and conscience; which but drawn from hence,  
Makes up an honoured state-circumference.  
'Tis not quick siluer'd-spirits that can run,  
Throughout the vain of earth with motion  
Of unconcockted travels, that can merit  
The name of a State-mettall; till the spirit,  
By which his active nature still goes round,  
Betempered with more massy stuff and sound,  
That in the winding Labyrinth of state,  
judicious ears may rightly terminate  
The most large bodies of the ranging time,  
To a confined and superficial line:  
Not travel, but the minds grave residence,  
That, like the suns united excellence,  
Collected to the centre of the glass:  
With greater virtue doth the object pass,  
Makes a true Statesman: as in nature's course,  
Not every motion can produce a force 
Omnis motus non est causa calorss. Scaliger.   
To be the cause of heat, as in the Sun  
We feel more heat, when his hot beams do run  
united, not dispersed: so fit for state  
Are judgements settled, and most temperate,  
Not errant like a Planet, but at rest  
Like the Polestarre with in his constant breast.  
Then thou that snarl'st at their transcendent rank,  
And art thyself like some poor Mountebank  
Made up of drugs and tongues of every land,  
More fit for Ordinaries, then command  
In the Abyss of state: that with profound  
And perpendicular judgements, plumbs the ground  
Of every scruple, with deep beams divine,  
Even to th'unmeasured bottom of each Mine,  
The infinite thought creates: repent thus far,  
Curse thy Dog-days, and rate thy sullen star;  
Pack fool to French-Baloone, and there at play,  
Consume the progress of thy sullen day:  
For such light pastimes suit a giddy brain;  
Or if thy muddy and gross feeding vain,  
Must needs be spiced with Saturn: walk morefield's,  
The shades of malcontents; whose causes yields  
Whole shoals of travelers: there may thine eyes  
Surfeit, to see thy dull aspect arise,  
And Planet-strike the Organ of thy sense,  
With gross and melancholy influence,  
Cast here and there with envious characters,  
On limping Soldiers, and wild travelers,  
That sit a Sunning under some green tree,  
Wondering what riches are, or rich men be.  
But leaving these unto the silent night,  
Raw airs and hayecockes: and the best delight  
Of such poor Grasshoppers, that only sing  
The Summer of their years with wandering,  
Of fruitless voyages. Next we present  
A gracious star, fair, and benevolent:  
Drop Saturn with thy sullens to the earth,  
Whilst Ioues bright star gets more auspicious birth     


Of jubiter. TO THE HIGH AND MIGHTY PRINCE CHARLES' a long life, mortal and immortal.  

TO you sweet Prince I sacrifice these lines,  
Princes should live by princely disciplines:  
'Tis most collateral Manna, Angel's food,  
It's not so princely to be great as good.  
Planets rule man: but Princes, as they are  
Called gods, sway us; by virtue rule their star,  
What almanaks have written in their praise  
In you have greater power, that oreswaies  
The doubt of art: for certainly we know  
The full Moons of your virtues, how they grow:  
I wish your life may run, as doth your star  
Orbd nobly, and most nobly regular,  
Or rather more: for heavenly things above  
If they but cross us, have more hate, then love  
The teeming ploughman thus will curse their powers,  
When stars do promise more in show, than showers:  
But you are far more prosperous, and shall shine  
Blest in your influence, mortal and divine.  
Enough is said, in fine, this book shall tell.  
'tis good to be borne great, best to do well.   
Your graces poor Subject, R. A.   

THE PHILOSOPHERS THIRD satire of jupiter. ♃  

NOt jupiter, transformed to many shapes,  
His transmutations, or celestial 'scapes;  
Amorous embracings, and adulterate fires,  
Hot scalding passions, and unchaste desires:  
Nor of his triformed thunder we describe,  
That mauled th' aspiring Giants for their pride:  
But of a heavenly body, from whose merit,  
Heroic actions draw a noble spirit.  
Under this stately and majestic star,  
Made happy by the reign of jupiter;  
Are all those royal actions sweetly sung  
By our Welsh Bards: or the poettick tongue  
Of ravishing Lyrickes; whose high Muses sings  
Starre-kissing Poems, of the state of Kings:  
The swelling tide of time, whose mighty flood.  
Like to an Ocean, curled the streams of blood  
Of Kings and Worthies, with true honour died,  
Under this Princely Planet stellified.  
True noble sparks, that can the soul define  
In honoured persons, in this Planet shine;  
And gives essential forms to royal bloods,  
Eternal to their names, more than their goods  
Or fortunes can distinguish; and derives  
True honour not in name, but in their lives.  
Gentility from hence so riches bred,  
That like a silk-worm, it spins out his web,  
That others might give arms, and wear his good,  
More rich in virtues, then blazed forth in blood.  
Young Alexander (whose triumphant hand,  
Like some great earthquake shook the solid land,  
With warlike rufflings of his princely mind,  
By this aspect was at his birth assigned  
To honoured enterprises: and from hence,  
Imperial sceptres draw their eminence;  
And every noble action of high fame,  
That gives to honour an immortal name:  
To Chronicles and times, this star doth bless,  
With an eternal Trophy of success.  
Which since his Princely flames scorns common men,  
In a heroic fury chafes our pen:  
Tell me, thou Royal States man to the Sun,  
Great signor of the world's perfection;  
High Treasurer, for honourable breasts,  
That with imperial wreaths adorns their crests:  
Where are those Heroes, whom jupiter  
Did canonize, even in their Sepulchre:  
And after death blest with thy influence,  
Enspheard their souls with thy intelligence.  
Crane up true honour through the horned Moon  
That now usurps the day, and shames bright noon,  
With their confused actions: where are those  
That had more honour in their minds then clothes;  
Great Caesar's Court did shine with warlike hands,  
jeer Atlas. jeer, and laugh at yellow bands,  
That now do stain the times. Tell jupiter  
The world's mad after Safforn: and prefer,  
A most surreverence fashion (like a purge),  
Before the conquest of the world's large verge:  
Gentility looks like some painted whore,  
Whom wise men pity, though times-Bands adore:  
Rather bright star of heaven drop from thy place,  
And kiss the Chaos, than thy smiles disgrace  
On their nativities, that do pretend  
Their lineage from the Sun, which loath doth lend  
His beams to such corruptions purified,  
As that most noisome muckhill of their prides  
Whose vapours sluffe the organ of man's sense  
With such mortality of peslilence,  
That each fantastic corner of the land,  
Stinks with infection of a yellow band:  
And yet can boast their gentry from a star  
Kind in conjunction, and familiar  
To their high Fates. Laugh, Laugh Democritus,  
here's a right Comedy, though vicious,  
To stretch forth all thy powers to excess,  
And fat thy heart with mortal foolishness:  
These are those atoms of nobility,  
Which in thy school thou taugh'st erroneously,  
To be the world's beginning. Laugh fond Sir:  
Such moats of gentry makes a Usurer.  
Rail foul-mouthed Cynic, lend thy lantern here,  
That to thy candle's brightness may appear  
These Scums of gentry; turn my beagle-Muse  
To lash these Butterflies, that do abuse  
The name of that bright Planet, that shoots forth  
More virtue, than their Tailors-billes are worth:  
And if my satire, gently letting blood,  
Might of true nobler breasts be understood,  
What we call honour or Nobility;  
Who knows not virtue is gentility: 
Virtus vera nobil●tas.   
An habit of the mind, not of the clothes,  
Which every poor Logician truly knows;  
To be in divers Categories placed,  
The one in quality, the other graced  
With Art and Situation: Courtiers than  
Would scorn such gaudy Galley-foists of men:  
And rather fill their honoured train with stars,  
Such whose unspotted virtues wears no Scars  
Of bankrupt Citizens, that wears his own,  
Like Bias still about him, and not grown 
Omnia mea mecum port.   
To surfeits with excess in suits of trust,  
Filling his hot veins with insatiate lust,  
To forms of alteration: yet at last  
Is always poor in virtue, rich in waist.  
The honour of this Planet shows the mind,  
And not the cast-clotheses of some fawning hind,  
That by observance to his mighty Lord,  
Hath crept into good outsides by a word,  
Bought afore moved. For some poor office feed,  
That now is fallen to help the busy need,  
Of some poor Groom. Great jupiter forbear,  
To hurl thy influence from thy princely Sphere,  
That these may claim their most abortive birth,  
Upon this leastall of this noisome earth.  
From thy heroic flames, as from their sire:  
But to right noble breasts, give nobler fire.  
Let such adore thy rising in thy East,  
That feel an honoured fury in their breast,  
Charm all ignoble-thoughts; and with the age,  
Leave relics of his honoured pilgrimage,  
Even to his speaking- marble, that his stone  
May sweat with memory, and his dust bemoan,  
The lifeless form of his dead Element,  
Hearst up in death: whose living- Monument,  
Can, with this heavenly Echo, thus resound,  
Prince (Henry's) steps hath taught us the same ground  
Of noble buildings: and since him succeeds,  
A Princely jupiter▪ in noble-deeds,  
And honoured hopes: how then can honour er,  
That shares the spirits of this jupiter,  
And Princely beams: whose motion most direct,  
Treads worthy of so bright and fair aspect,  
That troubled at his birth his princely rays.  
Behold great Prince, what in these Antic days,  
May make true honour currant, and exclude  
The ends of high bloods from the multitude  
And fire of base ranks; that when your age  
Shall come to understand the Bedlam rage  
Of this distracted time, and ripely see  
That not by reason, but base fantasy,  
Reflext from our opinions: we define  
Honours to be the fashion of the time:  
Like coloured Rainbows that deceive our eyes  
With superficial shapes of vanities,  
And with mature and clearer beams of sight  
Distinguish of all objects of the light,  
In your perspicuous judgement; then your sense  
Shall in one point unite the difference  
Of what a long time, your too tender eye,  
Your Organ not disposed, could ne'er descry:  
Then all things rightly set, the Medium fair,  
And the most gross parts of this sinful air,  
Diaphanal and clear, your eye shall see,  
That the true species of nobility  
Is not th' extreme and outward visible part,  
But the profound concealment of the heart,  
Exempt from outward fashions so applied,  
As it is truly noble, without pride,  
Or foreign imitation, but entire  
To his own fashion; made not to admire,  
But to attire poor nature, and to draw  
The people's hearts, with an obsequious awe,  
Unto the Commons love: not common gaze  
Of Player-like-fashions: for true honours praise,  
Is like the blessed Hebrew tongue so strange,  
That in confusions it did never change  
His primitive pureness; and how unlike we be  
To heavenly boays in simplicity,  
In motion and in forms: speak heavens in thunder,  
And rate this mad world in a peal of wonder:  
That ever since the order of thy frame,  
Keeps still one fashion, and moves still the same:  
Nor is the soul (as fond Pithagor as said) 
Pithegoeas his opinion.   
Of a true nóble man; to be conveyed  
By transmigration, or fantastic shapes,  
Into the bodies of such Zainie-Apes,  
As fashions make the English: but assigned  
To the immortal virtue of the mind:  
That's not traduc'e, or mixed of elements,  
But of the most infused temperaments,  
Subject to no mortality of Fate,  
Except base actions do degenerate,  
From that immortal and pure quintessence;  
That virtue gives us in our innocence;  
From which, if honour by relapse digress,  
We lose that paradise of happiness,  
Where honour was created: and that place,  
Where virtue did infuse original grace  
Into a great man's soul: Princes may eat  
Of every tree, that virtue made for meat,  
Only that tree, in midst of Eden spread,  
The tree of vice: a touch of that strikes dead:  
Think what it is, great Prince, that makes you live  
Greater, than you were borne: when worth shall give  
Unto your actions such a long-lived fame,  
As to all ages shall enrol your name:  
And such is virtue, that can ne'er expire,  
But like a Salamander lives in fire,  
And fury of the times; and there ne'er burns.  
After the funeral ashes of our Urns:  
For 'tis not that great title, that you wear  
Of princely greatness, and a future fear:  
That can make you controller of the stars,  
Or write your name in endless Characters  
To all posterities: nor ist applause,  
Or popularity, that can give cause,  
To make you live for ever: but in fine,  
'Tis virtue gives a Godhead, makes divine;  
Not Caesar's birth made Caesar to survive,  
But Caesar's virtues, that are yet alive.  
Great Alexander Homer's Iliads read,  
Whose virtues made him live, when he was dead.  
A great man's vices dams his fame so deep,  
there's no redemption, when his virtues sleèpe:  
Actions crown virtues, and like Pulses prove,  
Whether the soul of greatness sweetly move  
With Nature's harmony: which standing still,  
Or faintly beating, shows them dead or ill.  
All this (sweet Prince) is to instruct your youth,  
Without equivocation to the truth,  
Of honourable actions, that do rise  
And mount by virtue, to possess the skies:  
For mark but that divorce, that time hath sued  
From such a Kingly troup and multitude,  
Of memory and fame, and with their tomb,  
Buried their honours with an equal doom.  
In silence and oblivion, you shall see,  
That virtue reads the Art of memory;  
And can do miracles even from the dead,  
To raise true worth by time canonised:  
And fetch new breath in princes, when our shame  
And vice in Limbo shall ram up our name,  
What pen shall blaze that Epicures damned vain  
That wished his irish palate like a Crane  
In surfeits, and high sparklings healths of wine.  
Unless some satire with his lashing line,  
Flea his abuse: or else the stage hath stung  
His life and vice with some base Player's tongue;  
When virtue shall command, like Orpheus' strings,  
Even senseless stones to follow when he singes.  
The music of the soul, that sweetly sounds  
The means of honour, and the virtuous grounds  
Of our well fingered actions; and snall tell  
In Oracles, how our best acts excel  
The worst of envy; though her toadelike womb,  
Burst in her venom, even within our tomb.  
Then since great Prince, that time must bring you rage.  
To act one part upon this earthly stage:  
Oh let your virtuous actions keep such mean,  
As Angels may applaud your life's best Scene:  
Which you shall do, by acting what is good,  
That when your riper years have understood,  
That the chief seat of honour is the heart,  
Diffusing motion to each princely part.  
And like the soul, whom Schools hold all in all, 
Anima est tota●toto & in qualibet part. Thales opinion of water to be the mother of all things.   
In every member is essential,  
Complete and undivided: not begot  
Of Thales element to die and rot:  
Then your experience with confession joined,  
Shall hold that practic virtue of the mind,  
Is your best summum bonum: and not stroll  
To Plato's feigned Ideas of the soul:  
Or Epicures sect, whose happiness,  
Their Schools maintained to be voluptuousness:  
And not in fortune, that all power can,  
Or Stoical necessity in man:  
Or in this later heresy that grows,  
That the best bonum counts the best of clothes.  
But virtue put to action, which doth keep,  
And put a waking difference from sleep,  
And drowsiness in virtue: which though good,  
If ne'er in action, ne'er is understood.  
These cautions make you worthy of this star,  
When others only hear of jupiter:  
That your bright honour ever may appear,  
And move within an unecclipsed Sphere  
But now I mount unto the soldiers star,  
Some Cannon fire my pen to rage and war.     

 

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF ESSEX, BARON OF EWE: R. A. wisheth all grace with heaven and earth.  
Of Mars. ♂  
NOble Lord, Themistccles desired the art of oblivion. I the practic of memory, whose hell and heaven presentive faculty cannot produce a fairer form of eternity, then in the unimitable Idea of your Mars borne honourable Father, the best of his fortunes I could wish were traduced to you, and the best of his actions deserving a fixed constellation, as totally diffused through every noble vein of your Honour as the best part of your essence is in your body the contemplative part of time admits not a fairer prospective of Honour. The character of Mars is but his counterfeit, and I could wish it yours by adoption, Arts and Arms should be like hippocrates twins reciprocal in their first ingredience, and borne together with a most sweet and loving sympathy. The merit of a Soldier and a Scholar hates polygamy, and are but one flesh. I know you are nobly tutored in the one, and I could wish you Laurcated in the other. The poison of the times hath no better. Antidote then virtue: the least dose of it makes honour nobly preservative. I have here prescribed it, and may it work in you his physical operation: my duty bound to the strictest, and most peremptory remembrance of your Honour: administers this diet: digest, and be a long lived patient, it is the Soldiers cordial, and a Noble restorative.  
Your Honour's humble devoted, Robert Anton.   

THE PHILOSOPHERS FOURTH satire of Mars. ♂  

WHat by his nature moves, and would aspire  
Under this Planet borrows his hot fire:  
What horrid fury bursts his chains in hell,  
And frights the earth, doth in this Planet dwell:  
Blood, death and, tragic stories Mars doth yield.  
A Golgotha of graves: whose purple field,  
Died crimson with his fatal massacres,  
Craves bloody ink, and Scarlet Characters:  
A pen, that like a bullets force would reel  
A marble conscience, or a heart of steel:  
But not of battles, or that Sanguine flood,  
That at Phillipi Brutus stained with blood.  
Nor of that cruel, and Barbarian war,  
Wherein two Kings signed by a blazing star  
To a prodigious death, such horror won,  
As with amazement, frighted Christendom.  
Nor of that bloody siege, and tragical,  
Made famous by our English General,  
That in our age fell in the Belgian wars,  
When like an Ocean, with red Massacres,  
The moorish earth did tie up o'er the brim,  
As if the centre did against nature swim:  
But to another Postern, drills our Muse,  
Marching in martial Satyrs of abuse.  
Tell me thou ragged man of Arms, that wears  
Only thy Pass for service many years;  
And by each petty Constable conveide,  
As if thy wounds in peace were greater made  
With Headboughes and Beadles, then grim war  
Could through a grove of Pikes launch in so far.  
Why are thy scars bought with such precious cost.  
So tortured by a senseless whipping post:  
But a more grosser time, that cannot see  
In peaceful times, what want of Soldiers be.  
The dull Athenians offered sacrifice  
To Mars, when wars began to tyrannize:  
But when the fury of stern war did cease,  
His hallowed Altars lay untouched with peace.  
Soldiers are Saints in steel, Gods in their beavers,  
Adored like Esculapius in hot Fevers  
Of blood and war: but when their steele-coates rust,  
And their bright arms o'ercast with peaceful dust.  
Behold you sons of thunder, th'end of all  
Are usurers alms, and a poor Hospital.  
Let Sacars, culverins, and Cannons sound  
In honour of their bones, and rock the ground  
With all your deafening terrors: for behold  
The Balsam for your wounds, are rich men's gold,  
Powder the world with wonder, and thus cry,  
The Camel now may pass the needle's eye.  
The jewish age grows holy and precise,  
And builds a Synagogue to sacrifice  
Their charitable surfeits, when they die,  
That living, whipped away bright charity.  
You hackster's fleshed in bleeding Massacres,  
Think on your maimed stumps: your powerful stars,  
That work this operation in proud man.  
Misers live jews, and die as Christian,  
That el e in peace had laid, as if forlorn,  
The bitter subject of the age's scorn.  
The Stockfish to severest justices  
Beaten to death with warrants of the peace  
And good behaviour, martyred with the rage  
Of Constables, whose fury can assuage  
Nothing but night and wine, that all things steep  
In the deep Lethe of the god of sleep:  
For seest thou not, thou man of oaths and harms,  
When Mars makes holiday, and allth ' Alarms  
Of your Rock-braining Engines are struck dumb  
By bright Astrea's charms, and Union;  
How arms are banished to his iron Mines,  
And time grown bankrupt of those disciplines,  
That martial Pyrrhus to his Soldiers red,  
O'er the brave Romans in Phalanges led,  
That than who cares for Soldiers, but forgot  
In wars they lose their limbs, in peace they rot,  
As if our blessings had so sure a Creed  
ne'er to use Soldiers, for we scorn their need.  
Or doth our careless peace, like Scipio deem  
Never less sole, then when it sole doth seem  
Without a Soldiers strong Atlantic power,  
That on his shoulders props that starry bower  
And fabric of a State, as if a Lethargy  
Had silenceed up th' eternal memory  
Of Norris, Veare, and valiant Willobee,  
That like three Comets bearded prodigy,  
Amazed the world: besides the register  
Of those Sea-Gods, Drake, Candish, Furbusher,  
That like three Neptunes on the curled main,  
Danced with their Tritons in a martial vain  
Who to a Tragic Muse hath left their fame,  
Scorning a Comic seckt to score their name,  
The temple of the bifront God's not open,  
As if the earth had universal hope  
Of a most mild Augustus to sway th' earth,  
In whose great reign the King of Peace took birth:  
Then vanish all your furies to black hell,  
Duelloes, combats to the loathsome Cell,  
of burning Ambriscadoes, cruelty,  
Rape, ruin, horror and impiety,  
Seconds in combats, challenges in wine;  
Giving the lie, and all wild discipline  
Of senses, desperate distance; quarrels common,  
For some damned Cockatrice, or Strumpet woman.  
And all those razors, that made France to bleed;  
And England sad, in peace be well agreed:  
For lo, an Olive Sceptre sways our land,  
Not crushed to powder with an iron hand:  
Which sooner may the Seas forsake their bound,  
Fire from the concave lepp, and the fixed ground,  
Be tumbled from the centre: all that's made  
Rome from his ordered fashion retrograde;  
Eagles be finned, and swim the Ocean's deep,  
Whales mount the air, & Ducks with Dolphins keep,  
Before this peace fall, and united-calme  
Forsake the virtue of his sovereign Balm:  
Soldiers turn Maunderers, and live to shame,  
By Soldiers base attempts, a soldiers name:  
Riot upon this happy time of truce,  
With pursing, cheating, and all base abuse,  
Till millions of these Roarers, size by size,  
Drop through the hangman's budget, and so dies,  
Before our Olive-scepter change his bud,  
And graft it in a scarlet stock of blood.  
Yet I could wish, that in this golden time,  
A golden mean were kept, that in this clime,  
Where the Hesperides of peace doth dwell,  
Though guarded with a power that doth expel,  
The doubt of civil and outrageous jars,  
Men lived, as if their very lives made wars  
Against that peace, the heavens doth earth assure,  
Upon condition, that no man is secure:  
Nor are our best of blessings but so lent,  
As heaven may change, what men in peace misspent:  
For time may come, ah, may it never come,  
When the loud thunder of our yet mute drum,  
May rail in martial marches, and their arms  
May scar this peaceful Island with Alarms:  
Invasion may rouse horror from his den;  
And Soldiers then thought rather Gods than men,  
That now art barked at by each dogged Sir.  
Poor fools, yourselves may need a Soldier,  
To chase hostility and hellborn spirits  
Of war and blood, by their triumphant merits  
From your Percullic'd gates: oh than take heed,  
He that scorns Soldiers, may a Soldier need:  
For though all things in peace do symbolise,  
As with a blessing, where all contraries  
Are leagued with Gordian knots of amity,  
And live in one united harmony:  
The ravening Wolf, and the poor sheep,  
Combined by supernatural blessings silly sleep,  
Like two faith-plighted friends: the fruitful vine,  
That near the Colewort is observed to pine,  
Troubles the God of surfeits sparkling juice:  
The Oak and Olive kiss in calms of truce:  
The Maswe, scares not the Hyaena's sight.  
The Mouse the Elephant doth not affright:  
The poisoned- Henbane, whose cold juice doth kill  
His meat unto the Thrush, when wars grow still.  
And all things that bears natural enmity,  
Conjoin their individual Sympathy:  
In a most blessed coherence of their forms:  
Yet such a time may come, when nature storms  
And Plants, and senseless things grow discontent,  
Their factious forms scorning this sweet consent,  
Familiar concord turned to qualities  
Of proud exceptions, and hot contraries,  
And mutinous nature all things turns to hate,  
That in sweet peace did most participate.  
And if that old Philosophy hold sure,  
That the Soul tracktes the body's temperature,  
Although all natural causes we confine 
Himmasequitur temperamentum corporis opino Galen.   
To the great movers power, and will divine;  
Yet never had our temperaments more fire,  
Nor never apt to the hot desire  
Of wars and innovations; when our age  
In Taverns show the stabbing signs of rage.  
Never more choleric constitutions known  
So practic in revenge, as now are shown.  
Hot bloods in every Courtier boils to fight:  
No sooner graced, but he dares bark and bite,  
New hotspur humours every day arise,  
In cutting Ruffians borne to pandarize,  
Fiery distempers in our bloods exceed,  
Which great Hypocrates could never read:  
Each base Mechanic hath a Fencer's devil,  
And fain would fight, although the cause be evil.  
there's scarce a Coward borne to the times curse,  
But having sucked he roars, and kicks his Nurse:  
Man from his Cradle now like Hercules,  
Is borne to strangle, not to live at case:  
When every Roister his twelve labours slight,  
And hand to hand dares with his Lion's fight:  
Or tug with that three headed dog of hell,  
Or in a single Mona-machy quell  
The hundred headed Hydra to conclude,  
By whom we moralise the multitude.  
If then, by natural causes we descry  
How our corrupted tempers do apply  
Themselves to bloody projects, and hot jars:  
Spurning at peace, inflamed still to wars:  
Our blessings ought thus much to know in fears,  
That Mine and Thine may set kings by the ears:  
Which two poor words, as they have set on fire  
The world with law, so to the world inspire  
A quarrelsome nature, that even France and Spain,  
By these poor syllables lost thousands slain:  
And seuen-hill'd-Rome, whose victories have won,  
e'en time to canonize, what she hath done:  
Only with these two words, so pampered fame,  
That like a jennet of a prowd-trust frame,  
It paced the ample earth with such large pride,  
As if 'twere made not to be rid, but ride:  
Peace is not of an individual size,  
Like to a Phoenix, from whose ashes rise  
Another of that kind, that can restore,  
Succession to that peace, that went before:  
And it may be the utmost date she bears,  
Shall be confined within these peaceful years,  
Wherein her jocs merrily we sing,  
Never was such a time, and such a King:  
Or whether the great Genius of these days,  
Hath left to him the glory of that praise,  
Sphynx cannot well vnridle or define:  
For it may be, in him it may resign  
Her utmost Royalties: then why d'we live,  
Like the fond Megarenses, who did give  
Such cost unto their houses, as if never  
They thought of changes, but to live for ever?  
Not like the wise Egyptians, who still gave  
Less cost unto their house, more to their grave:  
Since then these changes follow times aspect,  
And peace like to the Moon doth but reflect  
His beams from others: who can then presume  
That still her quarters hold full Pleni-lune:  
Commit not then such fierce Idolatry  
Unto this Saint: more than the Deity,  
That gave her those bright virtues, though divine:  
For Angels may fall from their blessed Shrine:  
But now we sound a Parle and Rereate  
From bloody Mars his Planet to the Seat  
Of the bright day-star: rise bright Venus, rise,  
Whilst City wives prepare thy Sacrifice.     


TO THE RIGHT WORSHIPFUL AND VIRTUOUS LADY, THE Lady Anne Randyll, health in both the Worlds.  
Of Venus. ♀  

MAdam, behold, your virtues do entice  
The best of art to write the worst of vice,  
That as the beauteous form of crystal light,  
Opposed to darkness seems more richly-bright:  
So from the times worst objects you may spy,  
How virtue shines best by her contrary,  
And best doth edify, when to our sense,  
She seems to virtue in her innocence,  
Like some clear liquid cloud against the Sun  
In proudest forms of opposition,  
here shall you see the Anatomy of times  
And imperfections bowelld with the crimes  
Of brazen impudence condemned to death,  
Like Traitors breathing an infectious breath.  
From your sweet favours I began this book:  
And hope a fair success from your fair look:  
As earth to heaven presented to our sense  
Seems but a point to the circumference,  
Compared to his large body: so in show  
Are these my studies unto that I owe,  
Unto your Ladyship: this mite shall speak  
My Art and heart both grateful, although weak,  
As Dwarves seem gracious, so may prove this elf.  
This book, though small, may teach great time itself.   
Your ladyships humble and poor Kinsman of his duty. Robert Anton.   

THE PHILOSOPHERS fifth satire of Venus. ♀.  

NExt unto blood and death, the Paphian queen  
Of the inferiour-planets first is seen:  
The harbinger of fair Aurora's light,  
Bright day-star, sliking the rough brow of night,  
Fair Citharaea: amorous flame of love,  
That next unto the glorious sun doth move:  
Goddess of generation, that dost give  
A father to each Bastard how to live:  
Make my Muse ramble, that it truly tell  
The 'scapes of lust, that in thy influence dwell:  
Appear you horned-monsters, that do swell  
With high-brow-Antlers, that 'gainst heaun rebel:  
And stumble against Taurus with your horns.  
Behold the lustful Planet of your scorns:  
By whose insatiate and hot lustful fire,  
Your wives are strumpets, & your brows reared higher  
Under this star bright Helena was bred,  
That made her husband higher by the head.  
And Messalina by this planet's power  
Wife to great Claudius, Rome's high Emperor,  
Fall two and twenty times in one sole day,  
Cornuted Caesar with her lustful play:  
Here may thy satire riot with thy pen,  
And lash to blood this crooked fate of men,  
Whose shameleswives, o'er warmed with bastard wine  
Like Messalina breaks that sacred sign,  
That holy wedlock in their vows hath made,  
By that lascivious and insatiate trade:  
That nature grows so horrid and so full,  
That, like Pasiphae, amored of a Bull  
In any form of incest, or hot rape,  
The sensual appetite affects his shape:  
Preposterous motions in this planet reign,  
Mothers turn Bawds unto their Daughter's gain:  
Husbands have sold their wives like Galliflaves  
Unto a stranger's bed: whole streets of knaves,  
Deep red in hot Adultery so confounds  
The reputation of our honest grounds,  
As if the world and justices agreed,  
To make a Chaos of their bastard seed.  
Why frowns not Minos at that civil whore,  
That in a Puritans habit dwells next door,  
Unto his worship: and with Saintlike motion,  
Minces the pavement with her pure devotion:  
Whom some hot Tradesman keeps, & doth disguise,  
In Angel's robes to gull the jealous eyes  
Of shallow judgement, following Machavell  
Cunning in sin treads warily to hell.  
Why Carts not justice that old Dipsas Bawd,  
That with her sorcerous charms dispersed abroad  
Among the vestal Virgins holy bred,  
Hath betrayed many a well-born Maidenhead,  
To the luxurious hands of riotous heirs;  
Drowning their mother's happiness in tears?  
Why do our lustful theatres entice,  
And personate in lively action vice:  
Draw to the City's shame, with guilded clothes,  
Such swarms of wives to break their nuptial oaths:  
Or why are women rather grown so mad,  
That their immodest feet like planets gad  
With such irregular motion to base Plays,  
Where all the deadly sins keep holidays.  
There shall they see the vices of the times,  
Orestes incest, Cleopatres crimes;  
Lucullus surfeits, and Poppea's pride.  
virginea's rape and wanton Lais hide  
Her Sirens charms in such ear charming sense;  
As it would turn a modest audience,  
To brazen-fac'et profession of a whore.  
Their histories persuade, but action more,  
Vices well couched in pleasing Scenes present,  
More will to act, than action can invent.  
And this the reason, unless heaven prevent,  
Why women most at Plays turn impudent,  
And yet not to their sex do we apply,  
A Stoical and stout necessity,  
Of shameful sin to women in this kind.  
But I could wish their modesty confined,  
To a more civil and grave liberty,  
Of will and free election: carefully  
Hating this hellish confluence of the stage,  
That breeds more gross infections to the age  
Of separations, and religious bonds,  
Then ere religion with her hallowed hands  
Can reunite: rather renew thy web,  
With chaste Penelope, then stain thy bed  
With such base incantations: But why in vain,  
Do I confound the music of my strain  
With such unrellisht Pantomimmicke slaves,  
Whose lives profane a lashing satire craves?  
Oh yet my grave muse be not to profuse,  
Applaud their good, scourge only their abuse,  
No, rather my keen pen with art dissect,  
The Anatomy of woman, whose defect,  
May read such Physic to their longing sex,  
As what most horrid guilt of lust de●ects,  
And cast aspersions on their Angel's faces,  
May salve their burning fevers of disgraces:  
Not in a squibbling vain my pen shall task  
Your feeble imperfections, but unmask  
With far more reverent hand your slippery natures,  
Since your first fall proves you backsliding creatures;  
When heaven and earth from his confusion took  
Proportion firm, and a more gracious look  
Of order and creation, than was crowned  
Man, the imperial Monarch of this Round:  
Which being made of a gross element,  
Unfit alone for Kingly government.  
Woman as his adiutor was assigned,  
That to their powers the earth might be confined.  
And man, than one in number, therefore none,  
In her might be more perfect then alone.  
When she was made in that prime innocence,  
Each element bestowed the quintessence  
Of his best qualities: fire than was more remiss  
With out hot lust, that now more excellent is.  
Water did temper his moist quality,  
Without the swetting palms of venery;  
The subtle parts of air did not inspire  
A lightness to their body or desire.  
The solid parts of earth upheld their frame,  
That now falls back to ruinate the same:  
Her harmony of nature most refined  
From the dull Man's, an Angel in her kind.  
Her face as beauteous as the crisped Morn,  
Struck from smudg'dnight: created and not borne,  
To keep gross-pated adam's from foul sin,  
With adoration like some Cherubin.  
Which not alone that naked Sill could do:  
Except the mighty mover had made two;  
Both which had kept fair Eden's royalties,  
To their succession and posterities:  
And then uncensured had the woman been,  
From th'original cause of mortal sin,  
Had not that Hellbred Politician  
Beguiled the woman, and the woman man:  
But since her sacred reason was beguiled,  
And she for him, and he for both exiled  
From that foure-river-running-paradice,  
To the large cursed centre of their vice:  
Behold this rare Idea of a woman  
Made to admire beyond an object common,  
Transformed into a loathsome mass of dust,  
Salt tides of passions, and hot foaming lust,  
Keep their high floods, and wait on appetite;  
As flowing Seas attend the Queen of night,  
Inconstant flames glow in their skittish breast,  
And chastity runs like a man possessed  
With Legion and his devils: and so raves,  
As it scorns life in streets, but lives in graves,  
As if all virtues unto heaven were fled,  
And women scarce thought honest, although dead.  
Nature is now grown monstrous to the earth,  
That in excess creates this creatures birth:  
Or those prime elementall-quali●ies,  
That give our constitutions properties;  
Turn panders in the action of their life,  
To make a fair face a dishonest wife:  
Or else imaginations deeply wrought  
By strong impression makes the age so nought:  
As when some lust full blood swollen high with wine,  
And stirring delicates, bears still in mind.  
The object of her dalliance, to exchange  
Her sacred bridal bed for sheets more strange:  
Since the most simple essence of her soul,  
Immortal and divine, now black and foul,  
With more than Ethiopian graceless stain,  
Ne'er blushing at her sinful die in grain,  
Tasted the Philtre compounds of sins harms,  
With the sweet magic of her pleasing charms,  
Since all their passions, that kept golden means,  
Without the amorous flames of loves extremes,  
Since women did corrupt their natural graces,  
And by complexion did create new faces,  
Since their proud sex did study to repair,  
Robbing the dead: their own more comely hair,  
Since their Apostate sex began to slide  
From faith to super sttoion, and to pride,  
Since all this metamorphosis began  
Woman, you make a local hell for man:  
he misery of man affords but this,  
An Aristippus, and Semiramis:  
Murder and lust like two insatiate twins,  
Revels in surfeits of our noble sins.  
Well unto Cato, this the world did give:  
" Oh Cato thou alone knowst how to live,  
" That not in palaces, and princely bowers,  
" Didst spend the last glass of thy aged bowers,  
" Where Venus sports are like to tennis balls,  
" Bandied from one to tother: till it falls  
" Into the hazards of their honoured names,  
" The chases lost, are rumours and defames:  
" Nor in the scalding Suburbs didst thou dwell,  
" Where lust appears in his hot shape of hell,  
" The devils whores, and the tormenting fire.  
" The stewing steam of sulphured hot desire:  
" Nor in that great Metropolis of Dames,  
" That like to Dog-days burn the earth with flames,  
" As hot in their lascivious appetites,  
" As Monkeys: more luxurious in delights,  
" Then amorous Flora, that Italian Whore,  
" That proudly writ upon her painted door,  
" Let none but Kings here enter: and as vild  
In their loose purges of their bed defiled  
With their adulterate lovers, as if trades  
Did neither marry widows, wives, or maids.  
Sooner may shameless wives hate Braindford feasts,  
Albertus Magnus, or the pilfered jests  
Of some spruce Skipjack Citizen from Plays,  
A Coach, the secret Bawdy-house for ways,  
And riotous waste of some new Freeman made,  
That in one year to pieces breaks his trade,  
Then wash the toadlike speckles of defame,  
That swell the world with poison of their shame:  
What Comedies of errors swell the stage  
With your most public vices, when the age  
Dares personate in action, for, your eyes  
Rank Scenes of your lust-sweating qualities:  
Why are your civil and domestic names,  
Questioned by every Page, or graver Dames  
Censured by every Courtier in your streets,  
Unless the speaking- figures of your Sheets  
Could number one, two, three; and tell that trick,  
Whereby you multiply Arithmetic,  
And cast your false accounts in others beds,  
Whilst horns like siphers only show their heads  
Of your neglected Pheares: or rather why  
Are graver heads so rich in policy,  
Industrious and so cunning in their wares:  
Wretched in nothing but in doubtful heirs:  
And yet see not with what immodest croudes,  
Their Turtles lie with Centaurs in the clouds,  
Why scours the shallow Merchant the deep Ocean,  
Even to the burnt line with his three years motion:  
Leaving his dainty Pinnace on the land,  
Like to a man of war well rigged and manned  
By other cunning Pilots: Pirates rather  
That robs him of the honour of a father:  
And nails not his profession to the Burss,  
To save her shipwrecked honour dangerous,  
From Rovers hands and lustful piracy  
Of this hot ru●ting age: whose luxury,  
e'en from the hoary graybeard to the bold  
And youthful beardless boy-wench we behold  
Priapus Altars reak with smoke and fire  
Of quenchless passions and untamed desire  
The bawdy times tutor their Goatish sense  
In ribawld sciences, and do commence  
Proficients in the art of Midwifetrie.  
Pages can nonplus deep obcenitie  
In Aristotle's Problems: and in fine,  
He's best, that best disputes in Aretine.  
And I much wonder that this lusty time,  
That women can both sing and sigh in rhyme,  
Weep and dissemble both in bawdy metre,  
Laugh in luxurious pamphlets, like a creature  
Whose very breath, some Ovid did create  
With provocations, and a longing fate  
After some stirring meats: wives covet books,  
Not penned by Artists, but the fruits of Cooks  
Prescribing lusty dishes, to inflame  
Their lusty fight brood unto their game  
Confections with infections of their kind,  
Roth both their body, and corrupts the mind.  
Ladies are turned Musk-cats, and do sent,  
As if perfumers bought their excrement:  
As though their imperfections so did smell,  
As without Civet it would poison hell.  
there's scarce a face, as it was first baptised,  
That keeps his Christian colour: but disguised  
With Lozenges and lotions: as if their hate  
Found fault with God, and could regenerate  
A better face with painting; when their forms,  
May poison men, but never poison worms:  
All these, as if an Academic sect,  
Had studied new opinions to infect  
The soul with fond mortality, define  
The soul organical, and not divine:  
And of a physick-bodie the best part,  
Misconstring physic for the Doctor's art:  
These vices flesh the hot reigned time with lust,  
And bake cold Phlegine to humours more adust  
And hotter slips of wedlock: the Romans Guise  
To lillie-vesta, offered Sacrifice.  
To Esculapius a cock they gave:  
But now for Venus all our Hens we save.  
Look you fond Doves chained to your goddess car,  
Those Roman sons, that have out-primed your star  
In chaster beams, and with their motion run:  
Till maids turn Turks, and leave their Christendom:  
Hypsicrataea, and chaste Livia score  
For your examples, and with zeal adore  
The memorable tomb of Portia's name,  
That eat hot flaming coals to keep her fame,  
From the rough surgery of scandalous tongues,  
That time might sing with praise her funeral songs.  
Which Antiquaries in a golden page  
May name the gelded: not the guilded age,  
Sweet meats and all your delicates of vice:  
Pack to the Comfit-maker's, there entice  
The bawdy midwife, and the pifering nurse  
To rotten teeth and tattling: but thy curse  
Light not upon the thrift of City wives  
Life's sweet, good name's far sweeter than their lives:  
Perfumes and powders that make faces look  
Like Skulls in Churchyards, that but late was took  
From ghastly bones, as if the world did lust  
Like Sextons to appear in deadman's dust:  
As if their periwigs to death they gave,  
To meal it in some ghastly dead men's grave:  
And thus like Ghosts appear to human sight:  
As if a resurrection should affright  
The weakness of our natures: which (indeed)  
Should with diviner use the moral read  
Of their own frailties: and like Phillip's slave  
Ring a memento of their ashy grave,  
Just of that colour: for in such a face  
I read the horrors of that deadly place,  
Where Golgotha was found: this must I tell:  
Nor Schrichowses, nor the fatal passing-bell,  
Makes me remember pale necessity,  
Eternal silence of mortality,  
Nore oft then powdered faces: oh there's grace,  
theyare living graves, and have a saving face.  
Hence than you horrid drugs that do consume  
The noble ranks like graves: and yet perfume,  
Your ugliness with pleasure to the sense,  
Chase their bloods with your hot excellence  
Of lust and amorous charms: begun, grow dull,  
And deck the forehead of one ghastly skull:  
That our fair forms may in their beauties rise  
Admired, for red and whites simplicities.  
But now from Venus' Nunnery of Love,  
Unto the god of shifts our sphere we move:  
Charm earth great Hermes with thy Snaky rod,  
Whilst England's joy adores the shifting God.     


TO THE RIGHT WORSHIPFUL AND WORTHY GENTLEMAM Sir john Woodward Knight, R. A. wisheth the best temporal happiness, and future riches.  
Of Mercury. ☿.  
Worthy Sir, me thought I observed in you a Saintlike adoration of virtue, not to her Image, but to her substance: your actions crowns your worthy intentions, and speaks you more than Gentleman like formality: the eager appetite of her beauty makes me present her to you unmasked, and unpainted with adulterate complexion: your encouragements are massy, and this labour Geometrically proportioned to your person. Your only character is to be ingenious and generous: I have proved it, you may hap find your nativity calculated under some of these Planets: when their influence shall in some of them answer to your acute conceit, I stand bound to you, that have so nobly espoused this labour for your bedfellow, as Alexander kept Homer's Iliads▪ under his pillow: this quintessence extracte● from the Philosophical body of art without quacksalving poetry: may perhaps teach you more than Paracelsian skill in the spirits of virtue: and make you more than a bare professor of Alchemy, rich and wealthy in the practice of her: you know her grounds are infallible: seek her therefore in these Satyrs, and prove rich in her Elixir.  
Your worships to the best of art and power. Robert Anton.   

THE PHILOSOPHERS six satire of Mercury. ☿  

WHen I observe how Alchemists disclose  
The fallacy of art, with only shows  
Of Mineral spirits, and with cheats present,  
The alterations of each element,  
And with their tricks like some most powerful jet,  
Draw greedy fools to kiss the counterfeit,  
Of the Elixir, as if art had done,  
And made more gold, than nature or the sun:  
Or their purse-purging-misterie of fire,  
Could find more wealth, than Crassus could desire,  
When I behold rich sweeting Clowns bemoan,  
The loss of lands for the Philosopher's stone:  
Men of good worship gulled with oils and glasses,  
Pawning their plate in hope of gold like asses:  
Oh then, thou God of crotchets, and sly tricks.  
My jerking Muse adores thy politics,  
When I behold a peasant rich in clothes  
Clad in a Tirian-die, and scarlet hose,  
Obscure in parentage, and base in friends,  
Having no lands to help, but fingers ends,  
And a false bale of dice, and yet so roars  
In Ordinaries with his band of scoares  
And library of reckonings bravely paid  
With a high festivall-surfet, though displayed.  
Then witty Hermes, tell, the age permits,  
How many gallants only live by wits,  
When I observe some Lawyer shift a case,  
With Angels from his right from place to place,  
juggle with by-clarkes, and with counterfees,  
Of either party, stretch their practices  
Unto an Ambidexter course of right,  
Smooth up the weak, and fawn on men of might,  
Then winged Mercury I do admire,  
The active flames of thy most subtle fire,  
When I behold so many slights of men,  
e'en from the scraping and rough Citizen,  
Unto the loftie-climing-dignitie  
Of some smooth Courtiers craving subtlety:  
Then thou deep charmer of quick Argus' eyes,  
Thy art with thy bright planet do arise,  
When I behold a Usurer ensnare,  
The lavish issue of some hopeful heir,  
Wrapped up in bonds for some commodities,  
With his damned broker by his policies,  
Procures for composition, than my brain  
Adores the Engines of thy witty train,  
But tell me (thou acute ingenious man)  
That namest thyself a sly Mercurian:  
Thou that like Scenica in memory,  
Transcends the vulgar in capacity.  
Thou whose rare virtues are unparaleld,  
Whose words, like Delphos Oracles are held)  
Thou that dost censure Homer to be blind,  
Both in his mole-eied sense, and in his mind,  
And call'st thyself a wit at every feast,  
That cares to lose thy friends more than thy jest,  
Keep'st company at Taverns, and canst write  
A baudie-pamphlet for a bawds delight,  
Art critical on stages, and think'st Art,  
To be diffused through every senseless part  
Of thy weak judgement, like some great man's son,  
Sent only unto Cambridge to begun,  
Afore he reads his elements aright,  
A great man's learning only rests in sight.  
knowst thou not fend usurper of sharp man,  
How art defines a true Mercurian:  
Not every Brazier (though his art be rare)  
Can equal skilful Mirons molten mare,  
Whose brazen frame live Stallions used to cover,  
As if to art proud nature were a lover:  
Not every limmer of fantastic shapes  
Can wear the name of Zeuxes for his grapes: 
Zeuxis an excellent Painter.   
Not every slash of airs most subtle spirit,  
Shall wear this planet's influence with his merit:  
Not every brickle Poet, that aspires,  
And fain would fly with Sidneys noble fires  
Into the breast of greatness, we insert  
Into the laureate Chor us of quick art.  
And though the Kalends of these days permits,  
That every man will company the wits:  
Scipio will have his Ennius to indite,  
And great Maecenas bawdy Horace write  
A Pamphlet to I dolatrize their name.  
Yet in the passage of immortal fame,  
'tis not the stirring motion of the pen,  
Nor the fantastic humours of those men,  
No, nor their flames begot in smoke and wine,  
That can inspire their blockheads with divine,  
And most inventions strains of ravishing fits:  
Unless great Hermes charm their apish wits  
With arts and deeper skill, then that which wine,  
Brings forth to shame good births with bastard rhyme:  
Nor every Almanac-maker, that can tell,  
How every Planet in his house doth dwell,  
The quarters of the Moon, and give the reason  
To plow, to purge, to lib in every season:  
No, nor a Gypsies tricks in Palmistry,  
Can merit a true birth from Mercury.  
No, nor a plodding Graduate, deep in art,  
That searches even the centre and the heart  
Of every scruple, that with Snake-like twins,  
Circles the earth with winding disciplines,  
We call a right Mercurian, that so looks,  
As if his soul were nailed unto his books,  
Except his practic studies well do show,  
Experience in the age more then to know  
The literal sense of arts: for out of schools,  
Your merest scholars are the merest fools.  
Not he, that taken from his College teats,  
And weaned from schools unto the nobler seats  
Of Lordly houses: can sharp Hermes boast  
The God of wits to be his sire and host:  
If to his formal and more solid vain,  
He join not sprightful carriage to his brain  
To apprehend the times gross ignorance,  
By application of each circumstance  
Unto his noble charge he takes in hand,  
That not a trick, but he can understand  
Within his active spirit, and still tries  
With his own Test the best of subtleties,  
That can prove fatal: as for others than  
They may teach scholars, but not Gentlemen,  
Monastick-walkes, and circumscriptive walls,  
Are fit for plodding wits; when Lordly Halls,  
And noble Pupils, fit men of those parts,  
That know the world, and are more than the arts: 
Singulariae sensus vniuersali● intellectus. Aris. Topi. lib. prim.   
For singularities best please our sense,  
But universals give intelligence  
In the whole kind of learning: such as these  
Are right Mercurians in their practices,  
That join with nature, art; and with their art  
Experience, as a quintessential part:  
Nor nature, nor experience joined in one,  
Gives a Mercurian true perfection:  
Except deep art do help to load his brain:  
For both without some learning are in vain,  
And far from politic influence: but he's best  
That hath all three joined in a complete breast:  
For if instinct of nature make a man  
With subtle tricks a right Mercurian:  
I see not but the Ichnumon, Memphis God,  
Should challenge in his kind sly Hermes rod: 
Ichnumon or Pharoahs' rat   
For in his natural gifts, he doth excel  
All other slights that men or stories tell:  
For on his coat he wraps an earthen cake,  
Which by reflection of the sun doth bake  
His hardened armour, and with such a slight,  
Impenetrable he begins to fight  
Against the Crocodile, and with a Wren  
He shows more craft than most Foxlike men  
Can pattern in the triumph of their foe:  
For both with conquest join in overthrow  
Of Nilus' mons●r, and if only art,  
Architas wooden Dove shall bear a part,  
Of a most sly Mercurian; or that Fly,  
That late a Germane made most curiously,  
With busy motion and with iron wings,  
Venting forth buzzing, and loud whisperings: 
Regdomontanus made a Fly of Iron like a natural Flie.   
And if alone experience make such men.  
I see no reason, but our sailors then,  
Such as have to wsde the seas with change of land,  
And seen all fashions: but should understand  
The Mazes of sly Mercury, who on shore  
Are ruder than the winds their Sails have boar:  
No, all those three joined in their sweet consents:  
Like the sweet Music of the elements,  
That do agree together in the frame  
Of a sound constitution gives the name,  
Of a most right Mercurian: and not fire,  
Or water by themselves, without the quire  
Of their sweet harmony distinctly fixed:  
Can give a form unto a body mixed:  
As neither Autumn, nor the spring alone  
Can make a full years revolution:  
Unless the frosty winter do conspire  
To make it perfect with the Summer's fire.  
Nor art, nor nature makes our subtlest wits,  
Except in one triplicity it fits  
Experience to them both: for in the mind  
Those two like rougher Diamonds are resigned,  
And polished by experience: and all three must  
Like Diamonds cut themselves with their own dust:  
Which nothing else can perfect but their own:  
Diamonds being parted, never cut alone  
Their proper bodies: and thus man's perfection:  
Shines like a full-pact constellation:  
Invention is an action of the soul,  
Whose essence stars nor influence cancontroule:  
Which Mercury himself can never carry,  
Or take away but prosperously may vary:  
In giving inclinations to our veins,  
But art and ripe experience quicks our brains,  
Or rather all three, like three faculties  
Of sense increase: and reasons properties:  
As in a foursquare figure may be wrought,  
A triangle from the same body brought:  
Rests so in man, and do include each other,  
Nature with art, experience as their mother:  
All which, if ever they did jump in one.  
Or blessed man's reason with infusion:  
Great julius Scaliger in thy spectacle  
I read no wonder but a miracle,  
That with these three so blest thy subtleties.  
Scilfull in thirteen several languages,  
That time shall sing thy sharp nativity,  
Not under, but beyond bright Mercury.  
Besides the mixture of the elements,  
That sweetly play upon our temperaments.  
Either in higher, or in base degrees  
Of active or their passive qualities,  
May add unto the temper of the skull.  
Quick winding Scenes or plots more gross and dull:  
The airy sanguine temper quickly stirs,  
And apprehends, like busy Scribelers,  
That in a Term time, like to vintners lads,  
Up stairs and down with nimble motion god's,  
Subject to agitation, yet consumes  
His slight impressions in his airy fumes:  
Such are the idle motion of those men,  
That with poetic fury of their pen.  
Snatch at each shadow of a sudden wit,  
Like Esop's dog; that in the sunshine bit  
The shadow of the flesh: like Oars or Skulls  
That cry the first man, and so drags and pulls  
At sight of a conceit: that scare their sense.  
Losing their fare by offering violence.  
The choleric complexion hot and dry,  
Writes with a Sergeant's hand most gripingly.  
The Phlegmatic in such a watery vain,  
As if some (riming-Sculler) got his strain.  
But the sound melancholic mixed of earth,  
Ploughs with his wits, and brings a solid birth:  
The laboured lines of some deep reaching skull,  
Is like some Indian ship or stately hull,  
That three years progress furrows up the main,  
Bringing rich Ingots from his loaden brain:  
His art the sun, his labours are the mines,  
His solid stuff the treasure of his lines:  
'mongst which most massive Metals I admire  
The most judicious Beaumond, and his fire:  
The ever Colum builder of his fame,  
Sound searching- Spencer with his Faierie-frame:  
The laboured Muse of johnson, in whose loom  
His silk-worm style shall build an honoured tomb  
In his own work: though his long curious twins  
Hang in the roof of time with dainty lines:  
Greeke-thundring Chapman beaten to the age  
With a deep fury and a solid rage.  
And Moral Daniel with his pleasing phrase,  
Filing the rocky method of these days.  
As for those Dromedary wits, that fly  
With swifter motion, then swift Time can tie  
To a more snail-like progress, slow and sure,  
May their bold becham Muse the curse endure,  
Of a waste-paper pest-house, and so rise,  
As like the suns proud flower it daily dies.  
Besides, another cause of wits rarities,  
Consists upon the climates formed varieties.  
That from the Arctic, to the southern Cape,  
altars our humours to a diverse shape,  
The Northern Tike is fair, gross, dull and hard.  
The Southern man more pliant doth regard  
The witty lays, and madrigals of arts:  
But from the North, are men of tuffer parts,  
Brawny laborious Hinds for labour fit,  
Come from that Pole, from other men of wit:  
Rough-hewne untutord Grooms come from the North,  
But virtues from the South of milder worth.  
And from each Climates variation,  
Proceeds the changes of both men and nation.  
The Alman rutter in his wit more cold,  
The French more sudden, and the Italian bold,  
The Spaniard subtle, though with much delay,  
Crafty in vengeance, witty to betray.  
The Dutch potwittie, and the Irish man,  
A most dissembling politician:  
The Scotch man poor in wit, yet very thriving,  
Of a broad speech, yet subtle in contriving.  
The Englishman more poor than he is known  
For wit and clothes, for neither are his own.  
But here from Mercury again I run,  
Bearing the pillars of Alcmena's son  
With ne plus ultra, in this planet's praise,  
Leaving the learned trophies of green Bays  
To Ioues own nuncius winged Mercury,  
To crown more worthier brows in memory  
Of a more curious model, than my pen  
Can limb out to the life in other men:  
For not like Phoeeton I do aspire,  
To melt myself in this celestial fire,  
Or like vain Poets, listen to the air  
Offond opinion, what it holds for rare:  
But if this satire have erred aught in matter,  
May his tongue blister, that will speak to flatter,  
Yet thus much boldly to the contrary  
I boldly speak, by leave of Mercury,  
That though no ways, I can his influence merit,  
My Muse beyond his stars shall mount in spirit.  
And to a holier Hierarchy fly,  
To sing a more diviner history:  
But now of Cynthia and her beams I writ,  
'Tis now full-moon, Ape's dance in such a night.     


TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THOMAS LORD WINDESOR, R. A. wisheth a prosperous perpetuity of health and happiness.  
Of the Moon. ☽  
MY noble Lord, I much applaud your contemplative election in retiring yourself with many worthy examples, as Cato to Picen, and Scipio to a Farm to a contented country life. You see the poison of populous places, and the Babel fall of popularity, the vicissitude of times are full of pestilent perils. Let your Noble virtues make you happy in knowing yourself, and canonical in making use of the greatest ruins of higher fortunes; my love and ancient duty contend both to gratify your honour. Read here the mutability of time, and be reserving in your Noble nature: what you find doctrine and useful: 'tis a handful, but infinite in my love and services. And I conclude with the Poet, Non rebus exiguis vacat abbess iovi.  
Your Lordships in all service and love, Robert Anton.   

THE PHILOSOPHERS SEVENTH satire of the Moon. ☽  

OF all the Planets, this appears most strange  
In apparitions and inconstant change:  
Sometime she like a scythe her face doth show,  
That barbs the fields, when they uncivil grow:  
Sometimes again she like a rounded-ball:  
Her crumped horns appear most spherical:  
Which forms the bright Sun (heavens imperial star)  
Prints in her pale cheek with his golden car:  
Sometimes approaching with his stately head  
But once a month, Lordlike his Lady's bed:  
Which is the reason why her plump faced Rheums  
Swell man and beast, plants, mines in pleni-lunes,  
As she is near or distant from the sun:  
So divers in aspects her courses run,  
Empress of floods, that swelst as thou dost please  
The flux, and reflux of the sturdy Seas:  
Whisper to Nature that deep mystery  
Of Neptune's mighty tides, whose sophistry  
Made that great problem master dash his brain,  
Against the billows of the curled main,  
Making the Ocean, with his spacious room,  
At once his grave, his coffin, sheet and tomb.  
His double motion (as some understand)  
Was not received from God's eternal hand:  
Although his bounds the Mover hath assigned,  
To which the headstrong Ocean is confined,  
But from that glorious siluer-fionted star.  
That gives high floods, or ebbs, as pleaseth her:  
But why, my Nectared Muse dost thou distill  
Such Rosie-adors from thy bitter quill:  
And cease to advance unto thy Satyr's reed:  
To nettle time and make abuses bleed.  
Launch the impostumed age unto the quick,  
And (Dutchman-like) with desperate sencing stick.  
Among all things that subject are to change,  
There's nothing fixed, but is inclined to range: 
* Copernicus' his opinion.   
Which made Copernicus this Maxim prove,  
That the fixed earth did from his centre move:  
If nothing then in earth, in seas, or skies:  
But (Proteus-like) to change itself applies.  
Bright weathercock of heaven, let me unstrip  
The changing influence of thy Ladyship.  
Woman, I could like bells thy changes ring,  
And like a foule-mouthd Mantuan rail and sing  
" Of thy inconstant words, uncertain vows:  
" Change of thy smiles, thy passions, and thy brows:  
" Change of thy heart, hand, tongue, and rolling eye:  
" Change both in love, and hate setremitie:  
" Change to all changes, and if more change may  
" From Saint to devil, change even when you pray.  
But I enough have dwelled upon your star,  
Let it suffice, the world knows what you are,  
A Bit-borne curse, an Eel, a be to sting:  
A Cockatrice to kill, Siren to sing.  
But leaving you for man's eternal bane:  
Bright Cynthia, let me sing th' inconstant vain  
Of these times, and truly show  
How all things change, and with thy beams do flow:  
Nor woman, nor the change of elements,  
Nor the moons changes do more change present;  
Then the inconstant monstrous multitude:  
Whose giddy Hydra-heads all forms include,  
Mark how the winds breaking their brazen-guard,  
Changes each point of compass, or of card:  
Sometimes full East, sometimes again full west.  
So change the furies of the poopels breast:  
Agreat-mans' fortune, that like full-Moones rise  
Like Dolphins, these adore; but when it dies,  
And wants from fuller influence of Respect.  
When his ambitious beams no more reflect,  
Upon the base bodies; then their tide  
In shallow ebbs, and falling currents aside:  
As greatman's misery, that like the Sun  
Attended with twelue-signes their progress run,  
when their bright honours do ascend the sky  
Like Aries then they bear him company,  
In comfort of his springtide and high state.  
Adore the high Solstitial of his fate:  
But when his rising honours do decline,  
Then with his fall falls the dissembling sign  
Into Aquarius, and from their eyes  
Drop only tears to shroud him, when he dies.  
The Peacooketraine of heavens all-colourd bow,  
Paints not more colours then these jays do show  
That have the falling-sickness: when such fall,  
Moors at their East, Dogs at their funeral.  
Oh Popularity that cost more heads  
Then there are worms within their shamed beds,  
To eat their treasons with their honoured bones  
To their first elements, or weeping stones,  
To wash their shame in tears: how have your charms  
Betrayed the nobler parts of Arts and Arms  
To an untimely grave, which time shall write  
In bleeding characters to after-sight.  
How many stately Cedars have you lopped,  
Whose state cloud-kissing-branches overtopped  
The humble shrub, whose ruin'd timber lies  
To build new hopes to their dead families.  
Here could my Muse with history conclude  
The fatal changes of the multitude.  
And like a vizard to Nobility,  
Fright their depending popularity.  
But this in brief true subjects shall suffice,  
" He's wisest, that by others harms grows wise,  
When I behold the Queen of seas and night,  
Shifting her forms in changes to our sight.  
I see the world (chameleon-like) pursue  
Her changing humours and her divers hue.  
Sometimes me thinks I see a peasant ride,  
In his full-moon, of surfeit and of pride,  
As if he tilted 'gainst authority,  
Defied his tailors importunity,  
Scorned his poor Saffron-laundresse and his host,  
Beat his poor Shoemaker, and rid in post  
To dicing-taverns, next day without fail  
His moon is changed, he damned in a jail.  
Sometimes I see some sacred retiques turned  
To theatres profane, and tapers burnt  
For damned Comedies, where singing quires  
At midnight cast their odoriferous fires:  
Which to a devil would appear a change  
Of most unchristian toleration strange:  
Sometimes I see more than mine eyes would see  
Steeples to stables turned, and Sanctity,  
Changed into ravenous Robes of policy.  
That I more wonder at this transmutation,  
Then at the moons alturnate alteration:  
Again, reflect mine eye upon the age  
That was and is, I see times pilgrimage  
Corrupted with such pestilence of evil,  
That man to man turns wolf: nay more a devil.  
I see ambition begging innocence  
Well-landed, for a fool; as if all sense  
Were tied to pomp or policy of state  
That our best landed men are fools by fate:  
Which makes men count a Scholar blest in Schools,  
Which though they beg: they're seldom begged for fools  
He's got in an Eclipse, so weak by birth,  
He lives by th'air; hath not a foot of earth:  
This is a fatal thing, prodigious chance:  
Great fortunes favour grossest ignorance.  
Sometimes I see the ever-turning sphere  
Of man and fortune like new-Moones appear.  
Still waxing to a full increase of light,  
Till it seem round full- circled and most bright  
To all men eyes: till by the darksome shade  
Of some mischance, a black eclipse be made.  
Thus have I seen inconstant Tradesmen float  
Now rich, to morrow broke not worth a groat.  
'tis the condition of this glorious frame,  
And all things that beneath the Moon we name:  
Nay, e'en the things above her orbed- face,  
Do covet changes from their natural place.  
Till with mutations, all things think it best,  
To melt unto their Chaos, and so rest.  
When man is borne, and (speechless) prophesies  
Of times successions, and his miseries:  
He first begins to wax; then wanes to worse,  
Sees many Moons, and then begins to curse  
The changes of the times: which many years.  
His vexed soul hath marked the swift careeres  
Of Sun and Moon, and notes the age turned jew,  
With tedious hours: then he bids adieu  
Unto his golden days, when in his rage,  
His long lived tongue speaks of the wicked age,  
Tells what a brave world 'twas, when Bullen's towers,  
Trembled like Aspen leaves at Henry's powers:  
Observing not the world the same to stand.  
When 'tis men's manners change and not the land:  
Here could I sing the changes of all states,  
e'en from the conquering and victorious gates  
Of Tyber-grasping Room, tell of her story,  
Writ of her changes and her waning glory.  
Even to this mighty Western Monarchy.  
Since first the Danes subdued her liberty.  
But more than I can write, all things persuade.  
What ever were, or is to be, shall fade.  
And though the world were eviternall thought.  
'tis not eternal, but shall change to nought:  
But now I turn my sails from seas to land.  
Here's more than men will read or understand:  
Though orderly next to the firmament,  
These wandering planets do themselves present:  
And next to them earth, water, air, and fire:  
Succeed in place my spirit to inspire,  
With matter of divine Philosophy,  
To tell of every primate quality:  
That with predomination doth present  
The Lordly pride of every Element  
In bodies mixed: and first I should repair  
To the three Regions of the subtle Air:  
Tell of the fearful Comets in the sky,  
Whose divers forms give to the prodigy  
Ten fearful several kinds: which so we name  
As they are divers in their forms or flame:  
Of thunder, lightning, and their blasting might●  
Of hail, snow, rain, and tempests of the night,  
Of Fires, that haunt Churchyards and forlorn graves:  
Of Winds by which our ships dance on the waves:  
Of earthquakes, and the veins of every mine.  
Of gold, for which we cut the burning line:  
Of plants, of trees, and of their qualities,  
How in their forms and place they symbolize.  
And how again for envy and despite,  
The vine and Colewort never do delight  
To grow one by another: then to sing,  
Of glistering jewels, and each precious thing:  
To tell the virtue of the Chrysolite,  
The sparkling Carbuncle that shines by night,  
The purple Hyacinth, whose stone imparts  
Solace and mirth to our griefe-nummed hearts:  
The heavenly Azure sapphires quality,  
Whom Authors say, preserveth chastity,  
The green Smaragdus, foe to Venus' reaks,  
Whose stone in hot conjunction blushing breaks,  
And many more, that by the glorious Sun  
In the earth's womb take their conception,  
These in their order should my pen incite  
Of Nature's universal works to write,  
And in sweet moral lectures to apply  
The world's abuses to their mystery:  
But that I hardly can be brought, to think  
The time loves gall, by which I make mine ink,  
Or have so much wit in their shallow brains.  
To read and understand me for my pains.  
For by this plague we ever are outstripped,  
When we whip others we ourselves are whipped  
By Carters, and poor silly senseless hinds;  
Whose grosser bodies carry grosser minds  
For understanding: such lend only looks,  
And think of Poems as of conjuring books:  
Where in they see brave circles to the eye,  
But more admire then know the mysteries  
Of Arts profundity: I fear none but such:  
Myself hath lived too long, and writ too much.   
FINIS