Hero and Leander and Other Poems | Page 9

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 impudence,?When of slight faults he hath too deep a sense.?Her blushing het her chamber: she look'd out,?And all the air she purpled round about;?And after it a foul black day befell,?Which ever since a red morn doth foretell,?And