PETRONIUS

TO Ush, take the wench I showed thee now, or else some other seek; What? can your choler no way be allayed? But with Imperial titles? Will you more titles unto Caesar give? Indeed the steals, and robs each partly o'th world, With borrowed beauty's to inflame thine eye; The Sea, to fetch her Pearl, is dived into: The Diomond rocks are cut, to make her shine: To plume her pride, the Birds do naked sing When my Enanthe, in a homely gown. I, homely in her gown, But look upon her face, and that's set out With no small grace, no veiled shadows help; Fool; that hadst rather with false lights, and dark Beguiled be, then see the beware thou buy est. Why true; And other of thy blindnesses thou seest, Such one to love thou darest not speak unto. Give me a wench, that will be easily had, Not wooed with cost; And, being sent for, comes, And when I have her folded in mine arms, Then Cleopatra sh , or Lucres is: I'll give her any title. What gone? but she will come again sure, no; It passes clean my cunning, all my rules; For Women's wantonness there is no rule. To take her, in the itching of her Lust, A proper youngman putting forth himself? Why Fate; There's Fate and hidden providence In cod piece matters. Yet, know you not that any being dead, Repen ed them, and would have lived again, They then there errors saw, and foolish prayers, But you are blinded in the love of life, Death is but sweet to them that do approach it To me as one that taken n with Delphic rage, When the divining God his breast does fill, He sees what others cannot standing by, It seems a beauteous, and a pleasant thing; Where is my death's Physician? Chastity, fool a word not known in Courts: Well may it lodge in mean, and country homes, Where poverty, and labour keeps them down, Short sleeps, and hands made hard with Tuscan Will. But never comes to great men's Palaces, Where ease, and riches, stirring thoughts beget, Provoking meats, and surfeit wines Inflame: Where all there setting forth's but to be wooed, And wooed they would not be, but to be won. Will one man serve Poppea? Nay, thou shalt Make her, as soon, contented with and eye. I, and her too? Antonius knowest thou him? Why? Is he raised? You Remember, when Gallus, Celsus, And others too, though now forgotten were Great in Poppeas eyes. The cause is one of theirs, and this men grace, I once was great in wavering smiles of Court, I fell because I knew: Sense have I given My time to my own pleasures, and would now Advise thee too, to mean, and safe delights: The thigh's as soft the sheeps back covereth As that which crimson, and with Gold adorned: Yet cause I see, that thy restrained desires. Cannot their own way choose, come thou with me Perhaps I'll show thee means of remedy. He does better then I thought he would. All this is but to edge his appetite. On, on, thou hast the goal, the fort is beaten, Women are won when they begin to threaten. counsel your self, I'll teach no more but learn. Farewell to her, to my Euanthe welcome, Who, now, will to my burning kisses stoop, Now, with and easy cruelty deny, That, which she, rather then the asker, would Have forced from her, then begins her self. Their loves, that list upon great Ladies set; I still will love the Wench that I can get. Senica I was, and saw your kingly Pupyll In Mynstrils habit, stand before the Judges, Bowing those hands, which the world's Sceptre hold, And with great awe and reverence beseeching Indifferent hearing, and and equal doom: Then Caesar doubted first to be oreborne, And so he joined himself to th'other singers, And straightly all other Laws oth' Stage observed, As not (though weary) to fit down, not spit; Not wipe his sweat off, but with what he wore; Mean time how would he eye his adversaries, How he would seek to-have all they did disgraced, Traduce them privily, openly rail at them: And them he could not conquer so, he would Corrupt with money, to do worse then he. This was his singing partly, his acting now. Why Seneca, 'Tis better in Play Be Aegamemnon, then himself indeed; How oft, with danger of the field beset, Or with home mutineys, would he vnbee Himself, or, over cruel alters weeping, Wish, that with putting off a vizard, he Might his true inward sorrow lay aside; The shows of things are better then themselves: How does it stir this airy partly of us, To hear our Poets tell imagined fights, And the strange blows, that feigned courage gives, When I Achilles hear upon the Stage Speak Honour, and the greatness of his soul; Me thinks I too, could on a Phrygian Spear Run boldly, and make tales for after times; But when we come to act it in the deed, Death mares this bravery, and the ugly fears Of th'other world, fit on the proudest brow, And boasting valour loses his read cheek. Where? what fire. Leave me a while, Centurion to my friends, Let me my farewell take, and thou shalt see, Nero;s commandment quickly obeyed in me. ex. Centurion. Come let us drink, and dash the posts with wine Here throw your flowers; fill me a swelling bowl, Such as Mecenas, or my Lucan drank On Virgills birth day. The pain is life's, death rids that pain away, Come boldly, there's no danger in this ford, Children pass through it: If it be a pain, You have this comfort, that you passed it are. How came this fire, by whom? Why is't not quenched? What? are the Gauls returned? Does Brenius brandish firebrands again. Why with false Auguries have we been deceived? Why was our Empire told us, should endure With Sun, and Moon, in time; in brightness pass them, And that our end should be oth' world, and it. What, can Celestial Godheads double too? Here fair Enanthe, whose plump ruddy cheek Exceeds the grape, it makes this; here my g yrle. He drinks. And thinkest thou death, a matter of such harm, Why, he must have this pretty dimpling chin, And will peck out those eyes that now so wound. It is indeed the last, and end of ills; The Gods, before th'would let us taste death's Joys, Placed us ith toil, and sorrows of this world, Because we should perceive th'amends, and thank them, Death, the grim knave, but leads you to the door, Where entered once, all curious pleasures come To meet, and welcome you. A troop of beauteous Ladies from whose eyes, Love, thousand arrows, thousand graces shoots; Puts forth their fair hands to you, and invites To their green arbours, and close shadowed walls, Whence, banished is the roughness of our years: Only the west wind blows; Ith ever Spring, And ever Summer: There the laden bows Offer their tempting burdens to your hand, Doubtful your eye, or taste inviting more: There every man his own desires enjoys; Fair Lucrese lies, by lusty Tarquin's side, And wooes him now again to ravish her. Nor us, (though Roman) Lais will refuse, To Corinth any man may go; no mask, No envious garment does those beauty's hide, Which Nature made, so moving, to be spied, But in bright Crystal, which does supply all, And white transparent vails they are attired, Through which the pure snow underneath does shine; (Can it be snow, from whence such flames arise?) Mingled with that fair company, shall we On banks of Violets, and of Hiacinths Of loves devising, fit, and gently sport, And all the while melodious Music hear, And Poets songs, that Music far exceed The old Anaicean crowned with smiling flowers, And amorous Sapho, on her Lesbian Lute B a ties sweet Scam res, and Cupid's godhead sing, st nothing that I say? Why, thou requirest some instance of the eye, Wilt thou go with me then, and see that world? Which either will return thy old delights; Or square thy appetite anew to theirs. Your pleasures must of force resign to these, In vain you shun the sword, in vain the sea, In vain is Nero feared, or flattered; Hither you must, and leave your purchased houses, Your new made garden, and your black browd wife, And of the trees thou hast so quaintly set; Not one, but the displeasant Cypress shall Go with thee. Perhaps thou thinkest to live yet twenty years, Which may unlooked for be cut off, as mine, If not, to endless time compared, is nothing What you endure must ever, endure now; Nor stay not, to be last at table set, Each best day of our life at first does go, To them succeeds diseased age, and woe; Now die your pleasures, and the days your pray Your rhymes, and loves, and jests will take away. Therefore my sweet, yet thou wilt go with me, And not live here, to what thou wouldst not see. What places dost thou fear? The'll favoured lake they tell thee thou must pass. And thy black frogs that croak about the brim. Art ready? Judge them by deed, you see them doe't apace And I for thee: Nero, my end shall mock thy tyranny. Exeun