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Yea, and the prophet of the heavenly lyre,
Great Solomon, sings in the English quire;
And is become a new-found sonnetist,
Singing his love, the holy spouse of Christ :
Like as she were some light-skirts of the rest,
In mightiest inkhornisms he can thither wrest
Ye Sion Muses shall by my dear will,
For this your zeal and far-admired skill,
Be straight transported from Jerusalem,
Unto the holy house of Bethlehem.

SATIRE IX.

ENVY, ye Muses, at your thriving mate,
Cupid hath crowned a new laureat :
I saw his statue gayly 'tir'd in green,
As if he had some second Phœbus been.
His statue trimm'd with the venerean tree,
And shrined fair within your sanctuary.
What, he, that erst to gain the rhyming goal,
The worn recital-post of capitol,

Rhymed in rules of stewish ribaldry,
Teaching experimental bawdery!

Whiles th' itching vulgar, tickled with the song,
Hanged on their unready poet's tongue.

Take this, ye patient Muses; and foul shame
Shall wait upon your once profaned name :
Take this, ye Muses, this so high despite,
And let all hateful luckless birds of night;
Let screeching owls nest in your razed roofs,
And let your floors with horned satyres' hoofs

Be dinted, and defiled every morn :
And let your walls be an eternal scorn.
What if some Shoreditch fury should incite
Some lust-strung lecher: must he needs indite
The beastly rites of hired venery,

The whole world's universal bawd to be?
Did never yet no damned libertine,
Nor elder heathen, nor new Florentine,*
Though they were famous for lewd liberty,
Venture upon so shameful villany;

Our epigrammatarians, old and late,

Were wont be blam'd for too licentiate.

Chaste men, they did but glance at Lesbia's deed,
And handsomely leave off with cleanly speed.
But arts of whoring, stories of the stews,
Ye Muses will ye bear, and may refuse?
Nay, let the Devil and St. Valentine

Be gossips to those ribald rhymes of thine.

• Peter Aretine.

SATIRES.

BOOK II.

PROLOGUE.

On been the manes of that Cynic spright,
Cloath'd with some stubborn clay, and led to light?
Or do the relic ashes of his grave

Revive and rise from their forsaken cave?
That so with gall-wet words and speeches rude
Controuls the manners of the multitude.

Envy belike incites his pining heart,

And bids it sate itself with others' smart.
Nay, no despight: but angry Nemesis,

Whose scourge doth follow all that done amiss:
That scourge I bear, albe in ruder fist,

And wound, and strike, and pardon whom she list.

SATIRE I.

Fon shame! write better, Labeo, or write none; Or better write, or Labeo write alone:

Nay, call the Cynic but a wittie foole,

Thence to abjure his handsome drinking bowl;

Because the thirstie swaine with hollow hand,
Conveied the streame to weet his drie weasand.
Write they that can, though they that cannot doe:
But who knowes that, but they that do not know.
Lo! what it is that makes white rags so deare,
That men must give a teston for a queare.
Lo! what it is that makes goose wings so scant,
That the distressed sempster did them want:
So lavish ope-tyde causeth fasting lents,
And starveling famine comes of large expense.
Might not (so they were pleas'd that beene above)
Long paper-abstinence cur death remove?
Then manie a Lollerd would in forfaitment,
Beare paper-faggots o'er the pavement.

But now men wager who shall blot the most,
And each man writes. There's so much labour lost,
That's good, that's great: nay much is seldome well
Of what is bad, a little's a greate deale.
Better is more but best is nought at all.
Lesse is the next, and lesser criminall.
Little and good, is greatest good save one,
Then, Labeo, or write little, or write none.
Tush, but small paines can be but little art,
Or lode full drie-fats fro the forren mart,
With folio volumes, two to an oxe hide,

Or else ye pamphleteer go stand aside;

Reade in each schoole, in everie margent quoted,
In everie catalogue for an authour noted.
There's happiness well given and well got,
Lesse gifts, and lesser gaines, I weigh them not.
So may the giant roam and write on high,
Be he a dwarfe that writes not their as I.
But well fare Strabo, which, as stories tell,
Contriv'd all Troy within one walnut shell.

His curious ghost now lately hither came;
Arriving neere the mouth of luckie Tame,
I saw a pismire struggling with the load,
Dragging all Troy home towards her abode.
Now dare we hither, if we durst appeare,
The subtile stithy-man that liv'd while ere:
Such one was once, or once I was mistaught,
A smith at Vulcan's owne forge up brought,
That made an iron chariot so light,

The coach-horse was a flea in trappings dight.
The tamelesse steed could well his waggon wield,
Through downes and dales of the uneven field.
Strive they, laugh we meane while the black storie
Passes new Strabo, and new Strabo's Troy.
Little for great; and great for good; all one:
For shame! or better write, or Labeo write none.
But who conjur'd this bawdie Poggie's ghost,
From out the stewes of his lewde home-bred coast:
Or wicked Rablais' dronken revellings,

To grace the mis-rule of our tavernings?
Or who put bayes into blind Cupid's fist,
That he should crown what laureats him list?
Whose words are those, to remedie the deed,
That cause men stop their noses when they read?
Both good things ill, and ill things well; all one?
For shame! write cleanly, Labeo, or write none.

SATIRE II.

To what end did our lavish auncestours
Erect of old these stately piles of ours?

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