HERCULES

WHat Rites are these? breeds earth more monsters yet? Antaeus scarce is cold: what can beget This store? (and stay) such contraries upon her, Is earth so fruitful of her own dishonour? Or'cause his vice was inhumanity, Hope's she by vicious hospitality To work and expiation first? and then (Help virtue) these are sponges, and not men: Bottles? mere vessels? half a tun of paunch? How? and the other half thrust forth in haunch? Whose feast? the bellies? Comus? and my cup Brought in to fill the drunken Orgies up? And here abused? that was the crowned reward, Of thirsty Heroes, after labour hard? Burdens, and shames of nature, perish, die; (For yet you never lived) but in the sty Of vice have wallowed, and in that swines strife Been buried under the offence of life: Go reel and fallen under the load you make, Till your swollen bowels burst with what you take. Can this be pleasure, to extinguish man? Or so quite change him in his figure? can The belly love his pain? and be content With no delight but what's a punishment? These monsters plague themselves, and fitly too, For they do suffer; what, and all the do, But here must be no shelter, nor no shroud For such: Sink Grove, or vanish into cloud. GReat friend and servant of the good, Let cool a while thy heated blood, And from thy mighty labour cease. Lie down, lie down, And give thy troubled spirits peace, While virtue, for whose sake Thou dost this godlike travail take, May of the choicest herbage make (Here on this Mountain bred,) A crown, a crown For thy immortal head. BUT Hermes stay, a little let me pause, Who's this that leads? And does in sacred harmony comprise His precepts? they may securely prove Then any labyrinth, though it be of love.