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MADAM—
You have refined me, and to worthiest things— | |
| Virtue, art, beauty, fortune. Now I see | |
| Rareness or use, not nature, value brings; | |
| And such, as they are circumstanced, they be. | |
| Two ills can ne’er perplex us, sin to excuse; | 5 |
| But of two good things we may leave and choose. 1 | |
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| Therefore at court—which is not virtue’s clime, | |
| Where a transcendent height (as lowness me) | |
| Makes her not be, 2 or not show—all my rhyme | |
| Your virtues challenge, which there rarest be; | 10 |
| For, as dark texts need notes, there 3 some must be | |
| To usher Virtue, and say, “This is she.” | |
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| So in the country ’s beauty. To this place | |
| You are the season, Madam, you the day; | |
| ’Tis but a grave of spices, till your face | 15 |
| Exhale them, and a thick close bud display; | |
| Widow’d and reclused else, her sweets she enshrines | |
| As China, when the sun at Brazil dines. | |
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| Out from your chariot morning breaks at night, | |
| And falsifies both computations; so, | 20 |
| Since a new world doth rise here from your light, | |
| We, your new creatures, by new reckonings go. | |
| This shows that you from nature lothly stray, | |
| That suffer not an artificial day. | |
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| In this you’ve made the court th’ antipodes, | 25 |
| And will’d your delegate, the vulgar sun, | |
| To do profane autumnal offices, | |
| Whilst here to you we sacrificers run; | |
| And whether priests or organs, you we obey; | |
| We sound your influence, and your dictates say. | 30 |
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| Yet to that deity which dwells in you, | |
| Your virtuous soul, I now not sacrifice; | |
| These are petitions and not hymns; they sue | |
| But that I may survey the edifice; | |
| In all religions as much care hath been | 35 |
| Of temples’ frames and beauty, as rites within. | |
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| As all which go to Rome do not thereby | |
| Esteem religions, and hold fast the best, | |
| But serve discourse and curiosity, | |
| With that which doth religion but invest; | 40 |
| And shun th’ entangling labyrinths of schools, | |
| And make it wit, to think the wiser fools; | |
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| So in this pilgrimage I would behold | |
| You as you’re Virtue’s temple, not as she; | |
| What walls of tender crystal her enfold, | 45 |
| What eyes, hands, bosom, her pure altars be; | |
| And after this survey, oppose to all | |
| Babblers 4 of chapels, you, th’ Escurial. | |
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| Yet not as consecrate, but merely as fair; | |
| On these I cast a lay and country eye. | 50 |
| Of past and future stories, which are rare, | |
| I find you all record and prophecy. | |
| Purge but the book of Fate, that it admit | |
| No sad nor guilty legends—you are it. | |
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| If good and lovely were not one, of both | 55 |
| You were the transcript and original, | |
| The elements, the parent, and the growth; | |
| And every piece of you is both their all; 5 | |
| So entire are all your deeds, and you, that you | |
| Must do the same things still; you cannot two. | 60 |
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| But these—as nice thin school divinity 6 | |
| Serves heresy to further or repress— | |
| Taste of poetic rage, or flattery; | |
| And need not, where all hearts one truth profess. | |
| Oft from new proofs, and new phrase, new doubts grow, | 65 |
| As strange attire aliens the men 7 we know. | |
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| Leaving then busy praise and all appeal 8 | |
| To higher courts, sense’s decree is true. | |
| The mine, the magazine, the common-weal, | |
| The story of beauty, in Twickenham is, and you. | 70 |
| Who hath seen 9 one, would both; as, who had been | |
| In Paradise, would seek the cherubin. | |
