Classic Poem

CHAPTER XIV

As doth one little spark make a great flame,
Kindled from forth the bosom of the flint;
As doth one plague infect with it self name,
With watery humours making bodies' dint;
So, even so, this idol-worshipper
Doth make another idol-practiser.

The shipman cannot team dame Tethys' waves
Within a wind-taught capering anchorage,
Before he prostrate lies, and suffrage craves,
And have a block to be his fortune's gage:
More crooked than his stern, yet he implores her;
More rotten than his ship, yet he adores her.

Who made this form? he that was form'd and made;
'Twas avarice, 'twas she that found it out;
She made her craftsman crafty in his trade,
He cunning was in bringing it about:
O, had he made the painted show to speak,
It would have call'd him vain, herself to wreak!

It would have made him blush alive, though he
Did dye her colour with a deadly blush;
Thy providence, O father! doth decree
A sure, sure way amongst the waves to rush;
Thereby declaring that thy power is such,
That though a man were weak, thou canst do much.

What is one single bar to double death?
One death in death, the other death in fear;
This single bar a board, a poor board's breath,
Yet stops the passage of each Neptune's tear:
To see how many lives one board can have,
To see how many lives one board can save!

How was this board first made? by wisdom's art,
Which is not vain, but firm, not weak, but sure;
Therefore do men commit their living heart
To planks which either life or death procure;
Cutting the storms in two, parting the wind,
Ploughing the sea till they their harbour find.

The sea, whose mountain-billows, passing bounds,
Rusheth upon the hollow-sided bark,
With rough-sent kisses from the water-grounds,
Raising a foaming heat with rage's spark:
Yet sea nor waves can make the shipman fear;
He knows that die he must, he cares not where.

For had his timorous heart been dy'd in white,
And sent an echo of resembling woe,
Wisdom had been unknown in folly's night,
The sea had been a desolation's how;
But one world, hope, lay hovering on the sea,
When one world's hap did end with one decay.

Yet Phaebus, drowned in the ocean's world,
Phaebe disgrac'd with Tethys' billow-rolls,
And Phaebus' fiery-golden wreath uncurl'd,
Was seated at the length in brightness souls;
Man, toss'd in wettest wilderness of seas,
Had seed on seed, increase upon increase:

Their mansion-house a tree upon a wave;
O happy tree, upon unhappy ground!
But every tree is not ordain'd to have
Such blessedness, such virtue, such abound:
Some trees are carved images of nought,
Yet godlike reverenc'd, ador'd, besought.

Are the trees nought? alas, they senseless are!
The hands which fashion them condemn their growth,
Cuts down their branches, vails their forehead bare;
Both made in sin, though not sin's equal both:
First God made man, and vice did make him new,
And man made vice from vice, and so it grew.

Now is her harvest greater than her good,
Her wonted winter turn'd to summer's air,
Her ice to heat, her sprig to cedar's wood,
Her hate to love, her loathsome filth to fair:
Man loves her well, by mischief new created;
God hates her ill, because of virtue hated.

O foolish man, mounted upon decay,
More ugly than Alastor's pitchy back,
Night's dismal summoner, and end of day,
Carrying all dusky vapours hemm'd in black;
Behold thy downfall ready at thy hand,
Behold thy hopes wherein thy hazards stand!

O, spurn away that block out of thy way,
With virtue's appetite and wisdom's force!
That stumbling-block of folly and decay,
That snare which doth ensnare thy treading corse:
Behold, thy body falls! let virtue bear it;
Behold, thy soul doth fall! let wisdom rear it.

Say, art thou young or old, tree or a bud?
Thy face is so disfigured with sin:
Young I do think thou art; in what? in good;
But old, I am assur'd, by wrinkled skin:
Thy lips, thy tongue, thy heart, is young in praying,
But lips, and tongue, and heart, is old in straying:

Old in adoring idols, but too young
In the observance of divinest law;
Young in adoring old, though old in tongue;
Old and too old, young and too young in awe;
Beginning that which doth begin misdeeds,
Inventing vice, which all thy body feeds.

But this corrupting and infecting food,
This caterpillar of eternity,
The foe to bliss, the canker unto good,
The new-accustom'd way of vanity,
It hath not ever been, nor shall it be,
But perish in the branch of folly's tree.

As her descent was vanity's alline,
So her descending like to her descent;
Here shall she have an end, in hell no fine,
Vain-glory brought her vainly to be spent:
You know all vanity draws to an end;
Then needs must she decay, because her friend.

Is there more folly than to weep at joy,
To make eyes watery when they should be dry?
To grieve at that which murders grief's annoy?
To keep a shower where the sun should lie?
But yet this folly-cloud doth oft appear,
When face should smile and watery eye be clear.

The father mourns to see his son life-dead,
But seldom mourns to see his son dead-liv'd;
He cares for earthly lodge, not heaven's bed,
For death in life, not life in death surviv'd:
Keeping the outward shadow of his face
To work the inward substance of disgrace.

Keeping a show to counterpoise the deed,
Keeping a shadow to be substance' heir,
To raise the thing itself from shadow's seed,
And make an element of lifeless air;
Adoring that which his own hands did frame,
Whose heart invention gave, whose tongue the name.

But could infection keep one settled place,
The poison would not lodge in every breast,
Nor feed the heart, the mind, the soul, the face,
Lodging but in the carcass of her rest;
But this idolatry, once in man's use,
Was made a custom then without excuse:

Nay, more, it was a tyranny's command;
And tyrants cannot speak without a doom,
Whose judgment doth proceed from heart to hand,
From heart in rage, from hand in bloody tomb;
That if through absence any did neglect it,
Presence should pay the ransom which reject it.

Then to avoid the doom of present hate,
Their absence did perform their presence' want,
Making the image of a kingly state,
As if they had new seed from sin's old plant;
Flattering the absence of old mischief's mother
With the like form and presence of another:

Making an absence with a present sight,
Or rather presence with an absent view;
Deceiving vulgars with a day of night,
Which know not good from bad, nor false from true;
A craftsman cunning in his crafty trade,
Beguiling them with that which he had made.

Like as a vane is turn'd with every blast,
Until it point unto the windy clime,
So stand the people at his word aghast,
He making old-new form in new-old time;
Defies and deifies all with one breath,
Making them live and die, and all in death.

They, like to Tantalus, are fed with shows,
Shows which exasperate, and cannot cure;
They see the painted shadow of suppose,
They see her sight, yet what doth sight procure?
Like Tantallus they feed, and yet they starve;
Their food is carv'd to them, yet hard to carve.

The craftsman feeds them with a starving meat
Which doth not fill, but empty, hunger's gape;
He makes the idol comely, fair, and great,
With well-limn'd visage and best-fashion'd shape,
Meaning to give it to some noble view,
And feign his beauty with that flattering hue.

Enamour'd with the sight, the people grew
To divers apparitions of delight;
Some did admire the portraiture so new,
Hew'd from the standard of an old tree's height;
Some were allur'd through beauty of the face,
With outward eye to work the soul's disgrace:

Adored like a god, though made by man;
To make a god of man, a man of god,
'Tis more than human life or could or can,
Though multitudes' applause in error trode:
I never knew, since mortal lives abod,
That man could make a man, much less a god.

Yes, man can make his shame without a maker,
Borrowing the essence from restored sin;
Man can be virtue's foe and vice's taker,
Welcome himself without a welcome in:
Can he do this? yea, more; O shameless ill!
Shameful in shame, shameless in wisdom's will.

The river of his vice can have no bound,
But breaks into the ocean of deceit;
Deceiving life with measures of dead ground,
With carved idols, disputation's bait;
Making captivity, cloth'd all in moan,
Be subject to a god made of a stone.

Too stony hearts had they which made this law;
O, had they been as stony as the name,
They never had brought vulgars in such awe,
To be destruction's prey and mischief's game!
Had they been stone-dead both in look and favour,
They never had made life of such a savour.

Yet was not this a too-sufficient doom,
Sent from the root of their sin-o'ergrown tongue,
To cloud God's knowledge with hell-mischief's gloom,
To overthrow truth's right with falsehood's wrong:
But daily practised a perfect way,
Still to begin, and never end to stray.

For either murder's paw did gripe their hearts,
With whispering horrors drumming in each ear,
Or other villanies did play their parts,
Augmenting horror to new-strucken fear;
Making their hands more than a shambles' stall,
To slay their children ceremonial.

No place was free from stain of blood or vice;
Their life was mark'd for death, their soul for sin,
Marriage for fornication's thawed ice,
Thought for despair, body for either's gin:
Slaughter did either end what life begun,
Or lust did end what both had left undone.

The one was sure, although the other fail,
For vice hath more competitors than one;
A greater troop doth evermore avail,
And villany is never found alone:
The blood-hound follows that which slaughter kill'd.
And theft doth follow what deceit hath spill'd.

Corruption, mate to infidelity,
For that which is unfaithful is corrupt;
Tumults are schoolfellows to perjury,
For both are full when either one hath supt;
Unthankfulness, defiling, and disorders,
Are fornication's and uncleanness' borders.

See what a sort of rebels are in arms,
To root out virtue, to supplant her reign!
Opposing of themselves against all harms,
To the disposing of her empire's gain:
O double knot of treble miseries!
O treble knot, twice, thrice in villames!

O idol-worshipping, thou mother art,
She-procreatress of a he-offence?
I know thee now, thou bear'st a woman's part,
Thou nature hast of her, she of thee sense:
These are thy daughters, too, too like the mother;
Black sins, I dim you all with inky smother.

My pen shall be officious in this scene,
To let your hearts blood in a wicked vein;
To make your bodies clear, your souls as clean,
To cleanse the sinks of sin with virtue's rain:
Behold your coal-black blood, my writing-ink,
My paper's poison'd meat, my pen's foul drink.

New christen'd are you with your own new blood;
But mad before, savage and desperate;
Prophesying lies, not knowing what was good;
Living ungodly, evermore in hate;
Thundering out oaths, pale sergeants of despair;
Swore and forswore, not knowing what you were.

Now, look upon the spectacle of shame,
The well-limn'd image of an ill-limn'd thought;
Say, are you worthy now of praise or blame,
That such self-scandal in your own selves wrought?
You were heart-sick before I let you blood,
But now heart-well since I have done you good.

Now wipe blind folly from your seeing eyes,
And drive destruction from your happy mind;
Your folly now is wit, not foolish-wise,
Destruction happiness, not mischief blind;
You put your trust in idols, they deceiv'd you;
You put your trust in God, and he receiv'd you.

Had not repentance grounded on your souls,
The climes of good or ill, virtue or vice,
Had it not flow'd into the tongue's enrolls,
Ascribing mischief's hate with good advice;
Your tongue had spill'd your soul, your soul your tongue,
Wronging each function with a double wrong.

Your first attempt was placed in a show,
Imaginary show, without a deed;
The next attempt was perjury, the foe
To just demeanours and to virtue's seed:
Two sins, two punishments, and one in two,
Make two in one, and more than one can do:

Four scourges from one pain, all comes from sin;
Single, yet double, double, yet in four;
It slays the soul, it hems the body in,
It spills the mind, it doth the heart devour;
Gnawing upon the thoughts, feeding on blood,
For why she lives in sin, but dies in good.

She taught their souls to stray, their tongues to swear,
Their thought to think amiss, their life to die,
Their heart to err, their mischief to appear,
Their head to sin, their feet to tread awry:
This scene might well have been destruction's tent,
To pay with pain what sin with joy hath spent.