MERCURY

FRom the high Senate of the gods, to You Bright glorious Twins of Love and Majesty, Before whose Throne three warlike Nations bend Their willing knees, on whose Imperial brows The Regal Circle prints no awful frowns To fright your Subject's, but whose calmer eyes Shed joy and safety on their melting hearts That flow with cheerful loyal reverence, Come I Cyllenius, Jove's Ambassador: Not, as of old, to whisper amorous tales Of wanton love, into the glowing ear Of some choice beauty in this numerous train; Those days are fled, the rebel flame is quenched In heavenly breasts, the gods have sworn by Styx Never to tempt yielding mortality To lose embraces. Your exemplar life Hath not alone transfused a zealous heat Of imitation through your virtuous Court, By whose bright blaze your Palace is become The envied pattern of this underworld, But the aspiring flame hath kindled heaven; the immortal bosoms burn with emulous fires, Jove rivals your great virtues, Royal Sir, And Juno, Madam, your attractive graces; He his wild lustest, her raging jealousies She lays aside, and through the Olympic hall, As yours does here, their great Example spreads. And though of old, when youthful blood conspired With his new Empire, prove to heats of lust, He acted incests, rapes, adulteries On earthly beauty's, which his raging Queen, Swollen with revengeful fury, turned to beasts, And in despite he retransform'd to Stars, Till he had filled the crowded Firmament With his lose Strumpets, and their spurious raze, Where the eternal records of his shame Shine to the world in flaming Characters; When in the Crystal mirror of your reign He viewed himself, he found his loathsome stains; And now, to expiate the infectious gilded Of those detested luxuries, hee'll chase the infamous lights from their usurped Sphere, And drown in the Lethae and flood, their cursed Both names and memories. In whose vacant rooms First you succeed, and of the wheeling Orb In the most eminent and conspicuous point, With dazzling beams, and spreading magnitude, Shine the bright Polestar of this Hemisphere. Next, by your side, in a triumphant Chair, And crowned with Ariadnes Diadem, Sits the fair Consort of your heart, and Throne; Diffused about you, with that share of light As they of virtue have derived from you, Hee'll fix this Noble train, of either sex; So to the British Stars this lower Globe Shall owe its light, and they alone dispense To'th' world a pure refined influence. Peace Railer, bridle your licentious tongue, And let this Presence teach you modesty. No more impertinent Trifeler, you disturb The great Affair with your rude scurrilous chat: What does the knowledge of your abject state Concern Jove's solemn Message? I shun in vain the importunity With which this Snarler vexes all the gods, Jove cannot escape him: well, what else from heaven? Momus thou shalt prevail, for since thy bold Intrusion hath inverted my resolves, I must obey necessity, and thus turn My face, to breath the Thunderers just decree against this adulterate Sphere, which first I purge Of loathsome Monsters, and misshapen forms: Down from her azure concave, thus I charm The Lyrnean Hydra, the rough unlick'd Bear, The watchful Dragon, the storm-boding Whale, The Centaur, the horned Goatfish Capricorn, The Snake-heard Gorgon, and fierce Sagittar: Divested of your gorgeous starry robes, Fallen from the circling Orb, and ever you suck Fresh venom in, measure this happy earth, Then to the Fens, Caves, Forests, Deserts, Seas, Fly, and resume your native qualities. Look up, and mark where the bright Zodiac Hangs Like a Belt about the breast of heaven; On the right shoulder, Like a flaming Jewel, His shell, with nine rich Topazes adorned, Lord of this Tropic, sits the scalding Crab: He, when the Sun gallops in full career His annual raze; his ghastly claws upreared, Frights at the confines of the torrid Zone, The fiery term, and proudly stops their course, Making a solstice, till the fierce Steeds learn His backward paces, and so retrograde Post downhill to the opposed Capricorn. Thus I depose him from his laughty Throne; Drop from the Sky, into the briny flood, There teach thy motion to the ebbing Sea, But let those fires that beautified thy shell Take humane shapes, and the disorder show Of thy regressive paces here below. Vice, that unbodied, in the Appetite Erects his Throne, hath yet, in bestial shapes, Branded, by Nature, with the Character And distinct stamp of some peculiar Ill, Mounted the Sky, and fixed his Trophies there: As fawning flattery in the little Dog; I'th bigger, churlish Murmur; Cowardice I'th timorous Hare: Ambition in the Eagle; Rapine and Avarice in the adventurous Ship That sailed to Colchos for the golden fleece; Drunken distemper in the Goblet flows; I'th Dart and Scorpion, biting Calumny; In Hercules and the Lion, furious rage; Vain Ostentation in Cassiope: All these I to eternal exile doom, But to this place their emblemed Vices summon, Clad in those proper Figures, by which best Their incorporeal nature is expressed. They cannot breath this pure and temperate Air Where Virtue lives, but will with hasty flight, amongst fogs and vapours, seek unsound abodes. Fly after them, from your usurped seats, You foul remainders of that viperous brood: Let not a Star of the luxurious raze With his lose blaze stain the skies crystal face. Before the entry of every Antimasque, the Stars in those figures in the Sphere which they were to repre sent, were extinct; so as, by the end of the Antimasques in the Sphere no more Stars were seen. Who's this appears? Plutus, the gods know and confess your power Which feeble Virtue seldom can resist; Stronger then Towers of brass, or Chastity; Jove knew you when he courted Danae, And Cupid wears you on that Arrows head That still prevails. But the gods keep their Thrones To enstall Virtue, not her Enemies. They dread thy force, which even themselves have felt, Witness Mount-Ida, where the Martial Maid, And frowning Juno, did to mortal eyes Naked, for gold, their sacred bodies show, Therefore for ever be from heaven banished. But since with toil from undiscovered World's Thou aret brought hither, where thou first didst breathe The thirst of Empire, into Regal breasts, And frightedst quiet Peace from her meek Throne, Filling the World with tumult, blood, and war, Follow the Camps of the contentious earth, And be the Conqu'rers slave, but he that can Or conquer thee, or give thee Virtues stamp, Shall shine in heaven a pure immortal Lamp. What Creature's this? Thou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch, To claim a station in the Firmament, Because thy humble Cottage, or thy Tub Nurse's some lazy or Pedantic virtue In the cheap Sunshine, or by shady springs With roots and potherbs; where thy rigid hand, Tearing those humane passion from the mind, Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish, Degradeth Nature, and benumbeth sense, And Gorgonlike, turns active men to stone. We not require the dull society Of your necessitated Temperance, Or that unnatural stupidity That knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your forced Falsely exalted passive Fortitude Above the active: This low abject brood, That fix their seats in mediocrity, Become your servile minds; but we advance Such virtues only as admit excess, Brave bounteous Acts, Regal Magnificence, All-seeing Prudence, Magnanimity That knows no bound, and that Heroic virtue For which Antiquity hath left no name, But patterns only, such as Hercules, Achilles, Theseus. Back, to thy loathed cell, And when thou seest the new enlightened Sphere, Study to know but what those Worthies were. Tiche, enters, hor head bald behind, and one great lock before, wings at her shoulders, and in her hand a wheel, her appear parts naked, and the skirt of her gar meant wrought all over with Crowns, Sceptres, Boakes, and such other things as express both her greatest and smallest gifts. The mists, in which future events are wrapped, That oft succeed beside the purposes Of him that works, his dull eyes not discerning The first great cause, offered thy clouded shape To his inquiring search; so in the dark The groping world first found thy Deity, And gave thee rule over contingencies, Which, to the piercing eye of Providence, Being fixed and certain, where passed and to come, Are always present, thou dost disappear, Losest thy being, and art not all. Be thou then only a deluding Phantom, At best a blind guide, leading blinder fools; Who, would they but survey their mutual wants, And help each other, there were left no room For thy vain aid. Wisdom, whose strong-built plots Leave nought to hazard, mocks thy futile power. Industrious labour drags thee by the locks. Bound to his toiling Car, and not attending Till thou dispense, reaches his own reward. Only the lazy sluggard yawning lies Before thy threshold, gaping for thy dole, And licks the easy hand that feeds his sloth. The shallow, rash, and unadvised man Makes thee his stale, disburdens all the follies Of his misguided actions, on thy shoulders. Vanish from hence, and seek those Idiots out That thy fantastic godhead hath allowed, And rule that giddy superstitious crowd. Hedone, Pleasure, a young woman with a smiling face, in a light lascivious habit, adorned with silver and gold, her Temples crowned with a garland of Roses, and over that a Rainbow eireling her head down to her shoulders. What wanton's this? Bewitching Syren, guilded rottenness, Thou hast with cunning artifice displayed the enameled outside, and the honeyed verge Of the fair cup, where deadly poison lurks. Within, a thousand sorrows dance the round; And Like a shell, Pain circles thee without, Grief is the shadow waiting on thy steps, Which, as thy joyes' gin towards their West decline, Does to a Giants spreading form extend Thy Dwarfish stature. Thou thy self art Pain, Greedy, intense Desire, and the keen edge Of thy fierce Appetite, oft strangles thee, And cuts thy slender thread; but still the terror And apprehension of thy hasty end, Mingles with Gall thy most refined sweets; Yet thy Cyrcaean charms transform the world. Captains, that have resisted war and death, Nations, that over Fortune have triumphed, Are by thy Magic made effeminate. Empires, that knew no limits but the Poles, Have in thy wanton lap melted away. Thou Wertenberg the Author of the first excess That drew this reformation on the gods. Canst thou then dream, those Powers, that from heaven have Banished the effect, will there enthrone the cause? To thy voluptuous Den, fly Witch, from henee, There dwell, for ever drowned in brutish sense. These, with forced reasons, and strained arguments, Urge vain pretences, while your Actions plead, And with a silent importunity Awake the drowsy Justice of the gods To Crown your deeds with immortality. The growing Titles of your Ancestors, These Nations glorious Acts, joined to the stock Of your own Royal virtues, and the clear Reflex they take from imitation Of your famed Court, make Honours story full, And have to that secure fixed state advanced Both you and them, to which the labouring world, Wading through streams of blood, sweats to aspire. Those ancient Worthies of these famous Isles, That long have slept, in fresh and lively shapes Shall straight appear, where you shall see your self Circled with modern Heroes, who shall be In Act, whatever elder times can boast, Noble, or Great; as they in Prophesy Were all but what you are. Then shall you see The sacred hand of bright Eternity Mould you to Stars, and six you in the Sphere. To you, your Royal half, to them shee'll join Such of this train, as with industrious steps In the fair prints your virtuous feet have made, Though with unequal paces, follow you. This is decreed by Jove, which my return Shall see performed; but first behold the rude And old Abiders here, and in them view The point from which your full perfections grew. You naked, ancient wild Inhabitants, That breathed this Air, and pressed this flowery Earth, Come from those shades where dwells eternal night, And see what wonders Time hath brought to light.