To their benumbed* wills, resist the same;
There is a law in each well-order'd nation,
To curb those raging appetites that are
Most disobedient and refractory.

396

26-ii. 2.

Gold all things obey.

'Tis gold,

Which buys admittance; oft it doth; yea, and makes Diana's rangers, false themselves, yield up

Their deer to the stand of the stealer; and 'tis gold Which makes the true man kill'd, and saves the thief; Nay, sometimes hangs both thief and true man: What

Can it not do, and undo?

31-ii. 3.

397

This yellow slave

Gold

The mind contaminated by gold.

Will knit and break religious; bless the accursed;
Make the hoar leprosy adored; place thieves,
And give them title, knee, and approbation,
With senators on the bench: this is it,

That makes the wappen'dt widow wed again;
She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores
Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices
To the April day again.‡

398

The venom of Slander.

Slander,

27-iv. 3.

Whose edge is sharper than the sword; whose tongue

Outvenoms all the worms of Nile; whose breath

Rides on the posting winds, and doth belie

All corners of the world; kings, queens, and states,

Maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave,

This viperous slander enters.

All unavoided|| is the doom of destiny,

When avoided grace makes destiny.

* Inflexible.

† Sorrowful.

31-iii. 4.

24-iv. 4.

31-iii. 5.

‡ i. e. Gold restores her to all the sweetness and freshness of youth.

Persons of highest rank.

Unavoidable.

Heb. ii. 3. Rom. xiii. 7.

401

The world deluded by appearances.
The world is still deceived with ornament.
In Law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,
But, being season'd with a gracious voice,*
Obscures the show of evil? In Religion,
What damned error, but some sober brow
Will bless it, and approve it with a text,
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?
There is no vice so simple, but assumes
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.
How many Cowards, whose hearts are all as false
As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins
The beards of Hercules, and frowning Mars;
Who, inward search'd, have livers white as milk?
And these assume but valour's excrement,
To render them redoubted. Look on Beauty,
And you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight;
Which therein works a miracle in nature,
Making them lightest that wear most of it:
So are those crispedt snaky golden locks,
Which make such wanton gambols with the wind,
Upon supposed fairness, often known
To be the dowry of a second head,
The scull that bred them, in the sepulchre.
Thus ornament is but the guiled‡ shore
To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf
Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word,
The seeming truth which cunning times put on
To entrap the wisest.

402

Futurity wisely concealed.

9-iii. 2.

O heaven! that one might read the book of fate;
And see the revolution of the times

Make mountains level, and the continent

(Weary of solid firmness) melt itself

Into the sea! and, other times, to see

The beachy girdle of the ocean

Too wide for Neptune's hips; how chances mock,

And changes fill the cup of alteration

With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,

The happiest youth,-viewing his progress through,

What perils past, what crosses to ensue,-
Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.

When love begins to sicken and decay,
It useth an enforced ceremony.

19-iii. 1.

There are no tricks in plain and simple faith:
But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,

Make gallant show and promise of their mettle:
But, when they should endure the bloody spur,
They fall their crests, and, like deceitful jades,
Sink in the trial.

29-iv. 2.

O, world, thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn,
Whose double bosoms seem to wear one heart,
Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal and exercise,
Are still together, who twin, as 'twere in love

Unseparable, shall within this hour,
On a dissension of a doit, break out

To bitterest enmity: So, fellest foes,

Whose passions, and whose plots, have broke their

sleep

To take the one the other, by some chance,
Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends,
And interjoin their issues.
28-iv. 4.

405 Sorrow, heaviest when unaided by the tongue.
The heart hath treble wrong,

When it is barr'd the aidance of the tongue.
An oven that is stopped, or river staid,
Burneth more hotly, swelleth with more rage:
So of concealed sorrow may be said.

Poems.

To say, extremity was the trier of spirits;
That common chances common men could bear;

That, when the sea was calm, all boats alike

Show'd mastership in floating: fortune's blows,
When most struck home, being gentle wounded,

crave

A noble cunning.

28-iv. 1.

407

Female frailty.

Women are frail;

Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves;
Which are as easy broke as they make forms.
Nay, call us ten times frail;

For we are soft as our complexions are,
And credulous to false prints.

The untainted virtue of your years Hath not yet dived into the world's deceit: No more can you distinguish of a man,

5-ii. 4.

Than of his outward show; which, God he knows,

Seldom, or never, jumpeth with the heart.

24-iii. 1.

Riotous madness,

To be entangled with those mouth-made vows,
Which break themselves in swearing!

410

Hypocrisy.

It oft falls out,

30-i. 3.

To have what we'd have, we speak not what we mean.

5-ii. 4.

You take my house, when you do take the prop
That doth sustain my house; you take my life,
When you do take the means whereby I live.

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot,
That it do singe yourself:* We may outrun,
By violent swiftness, that which we run at,
And lose by over-running. Know you not,
The fire that mounts the liquor till it run o'er,
In seeming to augment it, wastes it?

413

Marriage.

Earthlier happy is the rose distill'd,

9-iv. 1.

25-i. 1.

Than that, which, withering on the virgin thorn,
Grows, lives, and dies, in single blessedness.

Let still the woman take An elder than herself; so wears she to him, So sways she level in her husband's heart.

However we do praise ourselves,

unfirm,

Our fancies are more giddy and un
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
Than women's are.

Filial ingratitude!

Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand,

7-i. 1.

4-ii. 4.

34-iii. 4.

If I am traduced by tongues, which neither know

My faculties, nor person, yet will be

The chronicles of my doing-let me say,

'Tis but the fate of place, and the rough brake*

That virtue must go through.

417 Benefit of communication with friends.

25-i. 2.

You do, surely, but bar the door upon your own liberty, if you deny your griefs to your friend.

418

Human nature alike in all.

36-iii. 2.

Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? if you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die ? 9-iii. 1.

419

Good may be extracted from evil. There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distil it out;