Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SELIMUS: SOLILOQUY OF SELIMUS, USURPER AND TYRANT, by ROBERT GREENE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SELIMUS: SOLILOQUY OF SELIMUS, USURPER AND TYRANT, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Now, selimus, consider who thou art
Last Line: Unless old bajazet do die the death.
Subject(s): Courts & Courtiers; Tyranny & Tyrants; War; Royal Court Life; Royalty; Kings; Queens; Dictators


Now, Selimus, consider who thou art;
Long hast thou march'd in disguis'd attire,
But now unmask thyself, and play thy part,
And manifest the heat of thy desire;
Nourish the coals of thine ambitious fire;
And think that then thy empire is most sure,
When men for fear thy tyranny endure.
Think that to thee there is no worse reproach
Than filial duty in so high a place.
Thou ought'st to set barrels of blood abroach,
And seek with sword whole kingdoms to displace:
Let Mahound's laws be locked up in their case,
And meaner men, and of a baser spirit,
In virtuous actions seek for glorious merit.
I count it sacrilege for to be holy,
Or reverence this threadbare name of good;
Leave to old men and babes that kind of folly,
Count it of equal value with the mud:
Make thou a passage for thy gushing flood,
By slaughter, treason, or what else thou can,
And scorn religion; it disgraces man.

Nor pass I what our holy votaries
Shall here object against my forward mind;
I reck not of their foolish ceremonies,
But mean to take my fortune as I find:
Wisdom commands to follow tide and wind,
And catch the front of swift Occasion,
Before she be too quickly overgone:
Some men will say I am too impious
Thus to lay siege against my father's life,
And that I ought to follow virtuous
And godly sons; that virtue is a glass
Wherein I may my errant life behold,
And frame myself by it in ancient mould.
Good Sir, your wisdom's overflowing wit,
Digs deep with Learning's wonder-working spade:
Perhaps you think that now forsooth you sit
With some grave wizard in a prattling shade.
Avaunt such glasses; let them view in me,
The perfect picture of right tyranny.

Is he my father? why, I am his son;
I owe no more to him than he to me.

But for I see the Schoolmen are prepar'd
To plant 'gainst me their bookish ordinance,
I mean to stand on a sententious guard;
And without any far-fetched circumstance,
Quickly unfold mine own opinion,
To arm my heart with Irreligion.
When first this circled round, this building fair,
Some god took out of the confusèd mass
(What god I do not know, nor greatly care);
Then every man of his own 'dition was,
And everyone his life in peace did pass.
War was not then, and riches were not known,
And no man said this, or this, is mine own.
The ploughman with a furrow did not mark
How far his great possessions did reach;
The earth knew not the share, nor seas the bark.
The soldiers enter'd not the batter'd breach,
Nor trumpets the tantara loud did teach.
There needed then no judge, nor yet no law,
Nor any king of whom to stand in awe.
But after Ninus, warlike Belus' son,
The earth with unknown armour did array,
Then first the sacred name of king begun,
And things that were as common as the day,
Did then to set possessors first obey.
Then they establish'd laws and holy rites,
To maintain peace, and govern bloody fights.
Then some sage man, above the vulgar wise,
Knowing that laws could not in quiet dwell,
Unless they were observ'd; did first devise
The names of gods, religion, heaven and hell,
And 'gan of pains and feign'd rewards to tell:
Pains for those men which did neglect the law,
Rewards for those that liv'd in quiet awe.
Whereas indeed they were mere fictions,
And if they were not, Selim thinks they were;
And these religious observations,
Only bug-bears to keep the world in fear,
And make men quietly a yoke to bear.
So that Religion of itself a bable,
Was only found to make us peaceable.
Hence in especial come the foolish names
Of father, mother, brother, and such like:
For whoso well his cogitation frames,
Shall find they serve but only for to strike
Into our minds a certain kind of love.
For these names too are but a policy
To keep the quiet of society.
Indeed, I must confess they are not bad,
Because they keep the baser sort in fear;
But we, whose mind in heavenly thoughts is clad;
Whose body doth a glorious spirit bear;
That hath no bounds, but flieth everywhere;
Why should we seek to make that soul a slave,
To which dame Nature so large freedom gave?
Amongst us men there is some difference
Of actions, termèd by us good or ill:
As he that doth his father recompence,
Differs from him that doth his father kill.
And yet I think, think other what they will,
That parricides, when death hath given them rest,
Shall have as good a part as have the best;
And that's just nothing: for as I suppose
In death's void kingdom reigns eternal night:
Secure of evil, and secure of foes,
Where nothing doth the wicked man affright,
No more than him that dies in doing right.
Then since in death nothing shall to us fall,
Here while I live, I'll have a snatch at all;
And that can never, never be attain'd
Unless old Bajazet do die the death.





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