Classic Poem

Fourth Song, The: Lines 1ÔÇô108

Happy ye days of old, when every waste
Was like a Sanctuary to the chaste;
When incests, rapes, adulteries, were not known;
All pure as blossoms which are newly blown.
Maids were as free from spots, and soils within,
As most unblemish'd in the outward skin.
Men every plain and cottage did afford,
As smooth in deeds, as they were fair of word.
Maidens with men as sisters with their brothers,
And men with maids convers'd as with their mothers;
Free from suspicion, or the rage of blood.
Strife only reign'd, for all striv'd to be good.
But then as little wrens but newly fledge,
First, by their nests hop up and down the hedge;
Then one from bough to bough gets up a tree:
His fellow noting his agility,
Thinks he as well may venture as the other,
So flushing from one spray unto another,
Gets to the top, and then embolden'd flies,
Unto an height past ken of human eyes:
So time brought worse, men first desir'd to talk;
Then came suspect; and then a private walk;
Then by consent appointed times of meeting,
Where most securely each might kiss his sweeting;
Lastly, with lusts their panting breasts so swell,
They came to — — But to what I blush to tell,
And enter'd thus, rapes used were of all,
Incest, adultery, held as venial:
The certainty in doubtful balance rests,
If beasts did learn of men, or men of beasts.
Had they not learn'd of man who was their king,
So to insult upon an underling,
They civilly had spent their lives' gradation,
As meek and mild as in their first creation;
Nor had th' infections of infected minds
So alter'd nature, and disorder'd kinds,
Fida had been less wretched, I more glad,
That so true love so true a progress had,
When Remond left her (Remond then unkind)
Fida went down the dale to seek the hind;
And found her taking soil within a flood:
Whom when she call'd straight follow'd to the wood.
Fida, then wearied, sought the cooling shade,
And found an arbour by the shepherds made
To frolic in (when Sol did hottest shine)
With cates which were far cleanlier than fine;
For in those days men never us'd to feed
So much for pleasure as they did for need.
Enriching then the arbour down she sat her;
Where many a busy bee came flying at her:
Thinking when she for air her breasts discloses,
That there had grown some tuft of damask roses,
And that her azure veins which then did swell,
Were conduit-pipes brought from a living well;
Whose liquor might the world enjoy for money,
Bees would be bankrupt; none would care for honey
The hind lay still without (poor silly creature,
How like a woman art thou fram'd by Nature?
Timorous, apt to tears, wily in running,
Caught best when force is intermix'd with cunning)
Lying thus distant, different chances meet them,
And with a fearful object Fate doth greet them.
Something appear'd, which seem'd, far off, a man
In stature, habit, gait, proportion:
But when their eyes their objects' masters were,
And it for stricter censure came more near,
By all his properties one might well guess,
Than of a man, he sure had nothing less.
For verily since old Deucalion's flood,
Earth's slime did ne'er produce a viler brood.
Upon the various earth's embroidered gown
There is a weed upon whose head grows down;
Sow-thistle 'tis yclept, whose downy wreath,
If any one can blow off at a breath,
We deem her for a maid: such was his hair,
Ready to shed at any stirring air.
His ears were strucken deaf when he came nigh,
To hear the widow's or the orphan's cry;
His eyes encircled with a bloody chain,
With poring in the blood of bodies slain;
His mouth exceeding wide, from whence did fly
Vollies of execrable blasphemy,
Banning the heavens, and he that rideth on them,
Dar'd vengeance to the teeth to fall upon him:
Like Scythian wolves, or men of wit bereaven,
Which howl and shoot against the lights of heaven.
His hands (if hands they were) like some dead corse,
With digging up his buried ancestors;
Making his father's tomb and sacred shrine
The trough wherein the hog-herd fed his swine,
And as that beast hath legs (which shepherds fear,
Yclept a badger, which our lambs doth tear)
One long, the other short, that when he runs
Upon the plains, he halts; but when he wons
On craggy rocks, or steepy hills, we see
None runs more swift, nor easier than he:
Such legs the monster had, one sinew shrunk,
That in the plains he reel'd, as being drunk;
And halted in the paths to virtue tending,
And therefore never durst be that way bending:
But when he came on carved monuments,
Spiring colosses, and high-raised rents,
He pass'd them o'er, quick, as the Eastern wind
Sweeps through a meadow; or a nimble hind,
Or satyr on a lawn, or skipping roe,
Or well-wing'd shaft forth of a Parthian bow.
His body made (still in consumptions rife)
A miserable prison for a life.English