Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A SATIRE, by JOHN HALL (1627-1656)


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A SATIRE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Pray let m' alone; what do you think can I
Last Line: More fitly far with tears than gall indite.
Alternate Author Name(s): Hall Of Durham, John


PRAY let m' alone; what, do you think can I
Be still, while pamphlets thus like hailstones fly
About mine ears? When every other day
Such huge gigantic volumes doth display,
As great Knockfergus' self could hardly bear,
Though he can on his knee th' ale standard rear;
To see such paper tyrants reign, who press
Whole harmless reams to death, which, ne'ertheless,
Are dogg'd by worser fates; tobacco can
Calcine them soon to dust; the dripping-pan
Pack them to th' dunghill; if they groc'ry meet,
They do the office of a winding sheet:
How better were it for you to remain
(Poor quires!) in ancient rags, than thus sustain
Such antic forms of tortures, then to lie
In sweating tubs, and thus unpitied fry:
Y' are common drudges of the world; if 't chance
A pedant mend his shoes, you must advance
To Frankfort mart, and there demurely stand
Cloth'd in old fustian rags, and shake the hand
With every greasy Dutchman, who, perhaps,
Puts ye 'ith' self-same pocket with his scraps;
Or if you into some blind convent fly,
Y' are inquisition'd straight for heresy,
Unless your daring frontispiece can tell
News of a relic, or brave miracle;
Then are you entertain'd, and desk'd up by
Our Lady's psalter and the rosary;
There to remain, till that their wisdoms please
To let you loose among the novices.
But if you light at court, unless you can
Audaciously claw some young nobleman,
Admire the choicest Beauties of the Court,
Abuse the country parson, and make sport,
Chalk out set forms of compliments, and tell
Which fashions on which bodies might do well,
No surer paints my lady, than you shall
Into disgrace irrevocably fall.
But if you melt in oily lines, and swell
With amorous deep expressions, and can tell
Quaint tales of lust, and make Antiquity
A patron of black patches, and deny
That perukes are unlawful, and be-saint
Old Jezebel for showing how to paint,
Then th' art my Golden Book, then may'st thou lie
Adorn'd with plush or some embroidery
Upon her ladyship's own couch, where ne'er
A book that tastes religion dare appear.
Thus must ye wretched shreds comply, and bend
To every humour, or your constant friend,
The stationer, will never give you room;
Y' are younger brothers, welcomest from home.
Yet to speak truly, 'tis your just deserts
To run such various hazards and such thwarts:
Suppose ye that the world is peopled now
With cockneys or old women, that allow
Canon to every fable; that can soon
Persuade themselves the ass drunk up the moon;
That fairies pinch the peccant maids; that pies
Do ever love to pick at witches' eyes;
That Monsieur Tom Thumb on a pin's point lay;
That Pictrees feed the devil nine times a day?
Yet such authentic stories do appear
In no worse garb than folio, and still bear
No meaner badge than Aristotle's name,
Or else descent from reverend Pliny claim.
One in a humour gives great Homer th' lie,
And pleases to annihilate poor Troy;
Another scourges Virgil, 'cause 'tis said
His fiction is not in due order laid:
This will create a monster; this will raise
A ne'er found mountain; this will pour out seas;
This great Camillus to a reckoning calls
For giving so much money to the Gauls;
This counts how much the state of Egypt made
Of frogs that in the slimes of Nilus laid.
We'll not digest these gudgeons; th' world is now
At age, if't do not towards dotage grow.
That starch'd-out beard that sits in th' Porph'ry chair,
And but for's crown's light-headed, cannot err,
Barthius has read all books, Jos. Scaliger
Proportion'd lately the diameter
Unto the circle Galileo's found,
Though not drunk, thinking that the earth ran round;
Tycho has tumbled down the orbs, and now
Fine tenuous air doth in their places grow;
Maurolycus at length has cast it even,
How many pulses' journey 'tis to heaven.
A world of such knacks know we; think ye, then,
Sooner to peep out than be kick'd from men;
Whether ye gallop in light rhymes, or chose
Gently to amble in a Yorkshire prose;
Whether ye bring some indigested news
From Spanish surgeons, or Italian stews;
Whether ye fiercely raise some false alarm,
And in a rage the Janizaries arm;
Whether ye reinforce old times, and con
What kind of stuff Adam's first suit was on;
Whether Eve's toes had corns; or whether he
Did cut his beard spadewise or like a T:
Such brokage as is this will never do 't,
We must have matter and good words to boot;
And yet how seldom meet they? most our rhymes
Rally in tunes, but speak no sense like chimes:
Grave deep discourses full as ragged be
As are their author's doublets; you'll not see
A word creep in, that cannot quickly show
A genealogy to th' ark of Noah,
Or at the least pleads not prescription
From that great cradle of confusion.
What pamphlet is there, where some Arabic
Scours not the coast? from whence you may not pick
Some Chinese character or mystic spell,
Whereon the critics for an age may dwell;
Where there's some sentence to be understood,
As hard to find as where old Athens stood:
Why do we live, why do our pulses beat,
To spend our bravest flames, our noblest heat,
On such poor trifles? to enlarge the day
By gloomy lamps; yet for no other prey
Than a moth-eaten radix, or to know
The fashion of Deucalion's mother's shoe.
It will not quit the cost, that men should spend
Themselves, time, money, to no other end;
That people should with such a deal of pains
Buy knowing nothing, and wise men's disdains.
But to prevent this, the more politic sort
Of parents will to handicrafts resort:
If they observe their children do produce
Some flashings of a mounting genius,
Then must they with all diligence invade
Some rising calling, or some gainful trade;
But if it chance they have one leaden soul
Born for to number eggs, he must to school;
Especiall' if some patron will engage
Th' advowson of a neighbouring vicarage.
Strange hedly-medly! who would make his swine
Turn greyhounds, or hunt foxes with his kine?
Who would employ his saddle-nag to come,
And hold a trencher in the dining room?
Who would engage Sir James, that knows not what
His cassock's made of, in affairs of state?
Or pluck a Richelieu from the helm to try
Conclusions to still children when they cry?
Who would employ a country schoolmaster
To construe to his boys some new-found star?
Poor leaden creatures yet shap'd up to rule,
Perpetual dictators in a school;
Nor do you want your rods, though only fed
With scraps of Tully and coarse barley bread;
Great threadbare princes, which like chess-kings brave,
No longer than your masters give you leave,
Whose large dominions in some brew-house lies,
Asses commands o'er you, you over boys;
Who still possess the lodgings next the leads,
And cheat your ladies of their waiting maids;
Who, if some lowly carriage do befriend,
May grace the table at the lower end,
Upon condition that ye fairly rise
At the first entrance of th' potato pies,
And while his lordship for discourse doth call
You do not let one dram of Latin fall;
But tell how bravely your young master swears,
Which dogs best like his fancy, and what ears;
How much he undervalues learning, and
Takes pleasure in a sparrow-hawk well mann'd
How oft he beats his foot-boy, and will dare
To gallop when no serving man is near;
How he blackberries from the bushes caught,
When antidoted with a morning's draught;
How rather than he'll construe Greek, he'll choose
To English Ovid's Arte into prose:
Such talk is for his lordship's palate, he
Takes much delight in such-like trumpery;
But still remember ye forbear to press
Unseasonably some moral sentences;
Take heed, by all means, how rough Seneca
Sally into your talk; that man, they say,
Rails against drinking healths, and merits hate,
As sure as Ornis mocked a graduate.
What a grand ornament our gentry would
Soon lose, if every rug-gown might be bold
To rail at such heroic feats? pray who
Could honour's Mistress' health, if this did grow
Once out of fashion? 'las, fine idols! they,
E'er since poor Cheapside cross in rubbidge lay,
E'er since the play-houses did want their prease,
And players lay asleep like dormouses,
Have suffered, too, too much: be not so sour
With tender beauties, they had once some power;
Take that away, what do you leave them? what?
To marshal fancies in a youngster's hat.
And well so too, since feathers were cashier'd
The ribbands have been to some office rear'd;
'Tis hard to meet a Lanspresado, where
Some ells of favours do not straight appear
Plastered and daubed o'er, and garnished,
As feathers on a southern hackney's head,
Which, if but tied together, might at least
Trace Alexander's conquests o'er the East;
Or, stitch'd into a web, supply anew
With annuary cloaks the Wandering Jew.
So learned an age we live in, all are now
Turn'd Poets, since their heads with fancies glow.
'Las! Poets? yes: O bear me witness all
Short-winded ballads, or whate'er may fall
Within the verge of three half-quarters, say,
Produce we not more poems in a day
(By this account) than waves on waves do break,
Or country justices false English speak?
Suppose Dame Julia's messet thinks it meet
To droop or hold up one of 't's hinder feet,
What swarms of sonnets rise? how every wit
Capers on such an accident, to fit
Words to her fairship's grief? but if by fate
Some long presumptuous slit do boldly grate
Don Hugo's doublet, there's a stir as though
Nile should his ancient limits overflow;
Or some curst treason would blow up the state,
As sure as gamesters use to lie too late.
But if some fortune cog them into love,
In what a fifteenth sphere then do they move!
Not the least title of a word is set,
That is not flank'd with a stout epithet.
What rocks of diamonds presently arise
In the soft quagmires of two squinting eyes!
How teeth discoloured and half rotten be
Transformed into pearl or ivory!
How every word's chang'd at a finest note,
And Indian gums are planted in her throat!
Speak in good earnest: are they not worse than boys
Of four year old, to doat on painted toys?
Yet O how frequent! most our sages shake
Off their old furs, and needs will laurels take,
That it will be no wonder to rehearse
The crabb'dst of geometry in verse;
Or from the dust of knotty Suarez see
A strange production of some poetry.
But stay, too lavish Muse! where run you? Stay!
Take heed your tongue bite not your ears away;
Besides, y' have other business, and you might
More fitly far with tears than gall indite.





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