11 But should I now to you relate

The strength and riches of their state,
The powder, patches, and the pins,
The ribands, jewels, and the rings,
The lace, the paint, and warlike things,
That make up all their magazines:

12 If I should tell the politic arts
To take and keep men's hearts,
The letters, embassies, and spies,
The frowns, the smiles, and flatteries,
The quarrels, tears, and perjuries,
Numberless, nameless mysteries!

13 And all the little lime-twigs laid
By Mach'avel the waiting-maid;
I more voluminous should grow
(Chiefly if I like them should tell
All change of weathers that befell)
Than Holinshed or Stow.

14 But I will briefer with them be,
Since few of them were long with me.
An higher and a nobler strain
My present Emperess does claim,
Heleonora! first o' the name,
Whom God grant long to reign.

THE COMPLAINT.

In a deep vision's intellectual scene,
Beneath a bower for sorrow made,
The uncomfortable shade

Of the black yew's unlucky green,

Mixed with the mourning willow's careful gray,
Where rev'rend Cam cuts out his famous way,
The melancholy Cowley lay;

And, lo! a Muse appeared to his closed sight
(The Muses oft in lands of vision play,)
Bodied, arrayed, and seen by an internal light:
A golden harp with silver strings she bore,
A wondrous hieroglyphic robe she wore,
In which all colours and all figures were
That Nature or that Fancy can create.
That Art can never imitate,

And with loose pride it wantoned in the air,
In such a dress, in such a well-clothed dream,
She used of old near fair Ismenus' stream
Pindar, her Theban favourite, to meet;

A crown was on her head, and wings were on her feet.

She touched him with her harp and raised him

from the ground;

The shaken strings melodiously resound.
'Art thou returned at last,' said she,
'To this forsaken place and me?
Thou prodigal! who didst so loosely waste
Of all thy youthful years the good estate;
Art thou returned here, to repent too late?
And gather husks of learning up at last,
Now the rich harvest-time of life is past,
And winter marches on so fast?

But when I meant to adopt thee for my son,
And did as learned a portion assign

As ever any of the mighty nine
Had to their dearest children done;

When I resolved to exalt thy anointed name
Among the spiritual lords of peaceful fame;

Thou changeling! thou, bewitch'd with noise and

show,

Wouldst into courts and cities from me go;

Wouldst see the world abroad, and have a share
In all the follies and the tumults there;

Thou wouldst, forsooth, be something in a state,
And business thou wouldst find, and wouldst create:
Business! the frivolous pretence

Of human lusts, to shake off innocence;

Business! the grave impertinence;

Business! the thing which I of all things hate;

Business! the contradiction of thy fate.

'Go, renegado! cast up thy account,

And see to what amount

Thy foolish gains by quitting me:

The sale of knowledge, fame, and liberty,
The fruits of thy unlearned apostasy.

Thou thoughtst, if once the public storm were past,
All thy remaining life should sunshine be:
Behold the public storm is spent at last,
The sovereign is tossed at sea no more,
And thou, with all the noble company,
Art got at last to shore:

But whilst thy fellow-voyagers I see,

All marched up to possess the promised land,
Thou still alone, alas! dost gaping stand,
Upon the naked beach, upon the barren sand.
As a fair morning of the blessed spring,

After a tedious, stormy night,

Such was the glorious entry of our king;

Enriching moisture dropped on every thing:

Plenty he sowed below, and cast about him light.
But then, alas! to thee alone

One of old Gideon's miracles was shown,
For every tree, and every hand around,
With pearly dew was crowned,

And upon

all the quickened ground

The fruitful seed of heaven did brooding lie,
And nothing but the Muse's fleece was dry.
It did all other threats surpass,

When God to his own people said,

The men whom through long wanderings he had led, That he would give them even a heaven of brass:

They looked up to that heaven in vain,

That bounteous heaven! which God did not restrain Upon the most unjust to shine and rain.

"The Rachel, for which twice seven years and more, Thou didst with faith and labour serve,

And didst (if faith and labour can) deserve,

Though she contracted was to thee,

Given to another, thou didst see, who had store
Of fairer and of richer wives before,

And not a Leah left, thy recompense to be.

Go on, twice seven years more, thy fortune try,
Twice seven years more God in his bounty may
Give thee to fling away

Into the court's deceitful lottery:

But think how likely 'tis that thou,

With the dull work of thy unwieldy plough,
Shouldst in a hard and barren season thrive,
Shouldst even able be to live;

Thou! to whose share so little bread did fall

In the miraculous year, when manna rain'd on all.'

Thus spake the Muse, and spake it with a smile,
That seemed at once to pity and revile:

And to her thus, raising his thoughtful head,
The melancholy Cowley said:

'Ah, wanton foe! dost thou upbraid

The ills which thou thyself hast made?
When in the cradle innocent I lay,

Thou, wicked spirit, stolest me away,

And my abused soul didst bear

Into thy new-found worlds, I know not where,
Thy golden Indies in the air;
And ever since I strive in vain
My ravished freedom to regain;
Still I rebel, still thou dost reign;

Lo, still in verse, against thee I complain.
There is a sort of stubborn weeds,

Which, if the earth but once it ever breeds,
No wholesome herb can near them thrive,
No useful plant can keep alive:

The foolish sports I did on thee bestow
Make all my art and labour fruitless now;
Where once such fairies dance, no grass doth

ever grow.

'When my new mind had no infusion known, Thou gavest so deep a tincture of thine own, That ever since I vainly try

To wash away the inherent dye:

Long work, perhaps, may spoil thy colours quite, But never will reduce the native white.

To all the ports of honour and of gain

I often steer my course in vain;

Thy gale comes cross, and drives me back again,
Thou slacken'st all my nerves of industry,
By making them so oft to be

The tinkling strings of thy loose minstrelsy.