Hero and Leander and Other Poems | Page 9

quencheth thirst,
Clothes but our nakedness, and makes us live,

Praise doth not any of her favours give:
But what doth plentifully
minister
Beauteous apparel and delicious cheer,
So order'd that it
still excites desire,
And still gives pleasure freeness to aspire,
The
palm of Bounty ever moist preserving;
To Love's sweet life this is the
courtly carving.
Thus Time and all-states-ordering Ceremony
Had
banish'd all offence: Time's golden thigh
Upholds the flowery body
of the earth
In sacred harmony, and every birth
Of men and actions
makes legitimate;
Being us'd aright, the use of time is fate.
Yet did
the gentle flood transfer once more
This prize of love home to his
father's shore,
Where he unlades himself of that false wealth
That
makes few rich,--treasures compos'd by stealth;
And to his sister,
kind Hermione,
(Who on the shore kneel'd, praying to the sea
For
his return,) he all love's goods did show,
In Hero seis'd for him, in
him for Hero.
His most kind sister all his secrets knew,
And to her,
singing, like a shower, he flew,
Sprinkling the earth, that to their
tombs took in
Streams dead for love, to leave his ivory skin,
Which
yet a snowy foam did leave above,
As soul to the dead water that did
love;
And from thence did the first white roses spring
(For love is
sweet and fair in every thing),
And all the sweeten'd shore, as he did
go,
Was crown'd with odorous roses, white as snow.
Love-blest
Leander was with love so fill'd,
That love to all that touch'd him he
instill'd;
And as the colours of all things we see,
To our sight's
powers communicated be,
So to all objects that in compass came
Of
any sense he had, his senses' flame
Flow'd from his parts with force
so virtual,
It fir'd with sense things mere insensual.
Now, with
warm baths and odours comforted,
When he lay down, he kindly

kiss'd his bed,
As consecrating it to Hero's right,
And vow'd
thererafter, that whatever sight
Put him in mind of Hero or her bliss,

Should be her altar to prefer a kiss.
Then laid he forth his
late-enriched arms,
In whose white circle Love writ all his charms,

And made his characters sweet Hero's limbs,
When on his breast's
warm sea she sideling swims;
And as those arms, held up in circle,
met,
He said, "See, sister, Hero's carquenet!
Which she had rather
wear about her neck,
Than all the jewels that do Juno deck."
But, as
he shook with passionate desire
To put in flame his other secret fire,

A music so divine did pierce his ear,
As never yet his ravish'd
sense did hear;
When suddenly a light of twenty hues
Brake
through the roof, and, like the rainbow, views
Amaz'd Leander: in
whose beams came down
The goddess Ceremony, with a crown
Of
all the stars; and Heaven with her descended:
Her flaming hair to her
bright feet extended,
By which hung all the bench of deities;
And in
a chain, compact of ears and eyes,
She led Religion: all her body was

Clear and transparent as the purest glass,
For she was all presented
to the sense:
Devotion, Order, State, and Reverence,
Her shadows
were; Society, Memory;
All which her sight made live, her absence
die.
A rich disparent pentacle she wears,
Drawn full of circles and
strange characters.
Her face was changeable to every eye;
One way
look'd ill, another graciously;
Which while men view'd, they cheerful
were and holy,
But looking off, vicious and melancholy.
The snaky
paths to each observed law
Did Policy in her broad bosom draw.

One hand a mathematic crystal sways,
Which, gathering in one line a
thousand rays

From her bright eyes, Confusion burns to death,
And
all estates of men distinguisheth:
By it Morality and Comeliness

Themselves in all their sightly figures dress.
Her other hand a laurel
rod applies,
To beat back Barbarism and Avarice,
That follow'd,
eating earth and excrement
And human limbs; and would make proud
ascent
To seats of gods, were Ceremony slain.
The Hours and
Graces bore her glorious train;
And all the sweets of our society

Were spher'd and treasur'd in her bounteous eye.
Thus she appear'd,

and sharply did reprove
Leander's bluntness in his violent love;

Told him how poor was substance without rites,
Like bills unsign'd;
desires without delights;
Like meats unseason'd; like rank corn that
grows
On cottages, that none or reaps or sows;
Not being with civil
forms confirm'd and bounded,
For human dignities and comforts
founded;
But loose and secret all their glories hide;
Fear fills the
chamber, Darkness decks the bride.
She vanish'd, leaving pierc'd
Leander's heart
With sense of his unceremonious part,
In which,
with plain neglect of nuptial rites,
He close and flatly fell to his
delights:
And instantly he vow'd to celebrate
All rites pertaining to
his married state.
So up he gets, and to his father goes,
To whose
glad ears he doth his vows disclose.
The nuptials are resolv'd with
utmost power;
And he at night would swim to Hero's tower,
From
whence he meant to Sestos' forked bay
To bring her covertly, where
ships must stay,
Sent by his father, throughly rigg'd and mann'd,
To
waft her safely to Abydos' strand.
There leave we him; and with fresh
wing pursue
Astonish'd Hero, whose most wished view
I thus long
have forborne, because I left her
So out of countenance, and her
spirits bereft her:
To look of one abashed is