And in the true glass of a human mind.
Your Odysses, the body letting see
All his life past, through infelicity,
And manage of it all. In which to friend,
The full Muse brings you both the prime and end
Of all arts ambient in the orb of man;
Which never darkness most Cimmerian
Can give eclipse, since, blind, he all things saw,
And to all ever since liv’d lord and law.
And through our mere-learn’d men; and modern wise,
Taste not poor Poesy’s ingenuities,
Being crusted with their covetous leprosies,
But hold her pains worse than the spiders’ work,
And lighter than the shadow of a cork,
Yet th’ ancient learn’d, heat with celestial fire,
Affirms her flames so sacred and entire,
That not without God’s greatest grace she can
Fall in the wid’st capacity of man.
If yet the vile soul of this verminous time
Love more the sale-muse, and the squirrel’s chime,
Than this full sphere of poesy’s sweetest prime,
Give them unenvied their vain vein and vent,
And rest your wings in his approv’d ascent
That yet was never reach’d, nor ever fell
Into affections bought with things that sell,
Being the sun’s flow’r, and wrapt so in his sky
He cannot yield to every candle’s eye.
Whose most worthy discoveries, to your lordship’s judicial perspective, in most subdue humility submitteth,
GEORGE CHAPMAN.
ENDNOTES.
1 A simile illustrating the most renowned service of General Norris in his retreat before Gant, never before made sacred to memory.
THE OCCASION OF THIS IMPOSED CROWNE
After this not only Prime of Poets, but Philosophers, had written his two great poems of Iliads and Odysses; which (for their first lights born before all learning) were worthily called the Sun and Moon of the Earth; finding no compensation, he writ in contempt of men this ridiculous poem of Vermin, giving them nobility of birth, valorous elocution not inferior to his heroes. At which the Gods themselves, put in amaze, called councils about their assistance of either army, and the justice of their quarrels, even to the mounting of Jove’s artillery against them, and discharge of his three-forked flashes; and all for the drowning of a mouse. After which slight and only recreative touch, he betook him seriously to the honour of the Gods, in Hymns resounding all their peculiar titles, jurisdictions, and dignities; which he illustrates at all parts, as he had been continually conversant amongst them; and whatsoever authentic Poesy he omitted in the episodes contained in his Iliads and Odysses, he comprehends and concludes in his Hymns and Epigrams. All his observance and honour of the Gods, rather moved their envies against him, than their rewards, or respects of his endeavours. And so like a man verecundi ingenii (which he witnesseth of himself) he lived unhonoured and needy till his death; and yet notwithstanding all men’s servile and manacled miseries, to his most absolute and never-equalled merit, yea even bursten profusion to imposture and impiety, hear our ever-the-same intranced, and never-sleeping, Master of the Muses, to his last accents, incomparably singing.
BATRACHOMYOMACHIA
Ent’ring the fields, first let my vows call on
The Muses’ whole quire out of Helicon
Into my heart, for such a poem’s sake,
As lately I did in my tables take,
And put into report upon my knees.
A fight so fierce, as might in all degrees
Fit Mars himself, and his tumultuous hand,
Glorying to dart to th’ ears of every land
Of all the voice-divided; 1 and to show
How bravely did both Frogs and Mice bestow
In glorious fight their forces, even the deeds
Daring to imitate of Earth’s Giant Seeds.
Thus then men talk’d; this seed the strife begat:
The Mouse once dry, and ‘scaped the dangerous cat,
Drench’d in the neighbour lake her tender beard,
To taste the sweetness of the wave it rear’d.
The far-famed Fen-affecter, seeing him, said:
“Ho, stranger! What are you, and whence, that tread
This shore of ours? Who brought you forth? Reply
What truth may witness, lest I find you lie.
If worth fruition of my love and me,
I’ll have thee home, and hospitality
Of feast and gift, good and magnificent,
Bestow on thee; for all this confluent
Resounds my royalty; my name, the great
In blown-up-count’nances and looks of threat,
Physignathus, 2 adored of all Frogs here
All their days’ durance, and the empire bear
Of all their beings; mine own being begot
By royal Peleus, 3 mix’d in nuptial knot
With fair Hydromedusa, 4 on the bounds
Near which Eridanus 5 his race resounds.
And thee mine eye makes my conceit inclined
To reckon powerful both in form and mind,
A sceptre-bearer, and past others far
Advanc’d in all the fiery fights of war.
Come then, thy race to my renown commend.”
The Mouse made answer: “Why inquires my friend?
For what so well know men and Deities,
And all the wing’d affecters of the skies?
Psicharpax 6 I am call’d; Troxartes’ 7 seed,
Surnamed the mighty-minded. She that freed
Mine eyes from darkness was Lichomyle, 8
King Pternotroctes’ 9 daughter, showing me,
Within an aged hovel, the young light,
Fed me with figs and nuts, and all the height
Of varied viands. But unfold the cause,
Why, ‘gainst similitude’s most equal laws
Observed in friendship, thou mak’st me thy friend?
Thy life the waters only help t’ extend;
Mine, whatsoever men are used to eat,
Takes part with them at shore; their purest cheat,
Thrice boulted, kneaded, and subdued in paste,
In clean round kymnels, cannot be so fast
From my approaches kept but in I eat;
Nor cheesecakes full of finest Indian wheat,
That crusty-weeds 10 wear, large as ladies’ trains;
Liverings, 11 white-skinn’d as ladies; nor the strains,
Of press’d milk, renneted; nor collops cut
Fresh from the flitch; nor junkets, such as put
Palates divine in appetite; nor any
Of all men’s delicates, though ne’er so many
Their cooks devise them, who each dish see deckt
With all the dainties all strange soils affect. 12
Yet am I not so sensual to fly
Of fields embattled the most fiery cry,
But rush out straight, and with the first in fight
Mix in adventure. No man with affright
Can daunt my forces, though his body be
or never so immense a quantity,
But making up, even to his bed, access,
His fingers’ ends dare with my teeth compress,
His feet taint likewise, and so soft seize both
They shall not taste th’ impression of a tooth.
Sweet sleep shall hold his own in every eye
&
nbsp; Where my tooth takes his tartest liberty.
But two there are, that always, far and near,
Extremely still control my force with fear,
The Cat, and Night-hawk, who much scathe confer
On all the outrays where for food I err.
Together with the straits-still-keeping trap, 13
Where lurks deceitful and set-spleen’d mishap.
But most of all the Cat constrains my fear,
Being ever apt t’ assault me everywhere;
For by that hole that hope says I shall ‘scape,
At that hole ever she commits my rape.
The best is yet, I eat no pot-herb grass,
Nor radishes, nor coloquintidas,
Nor still-green beets, nor parsley; which you make
Your dainties still, that live upon the lake.”
The Frog replied: “Stranger, your boasts creep all
Upon their bellies; though to our lives fall
Much more miraculous meats by lake and land,
Jove tend’ring our lives with a twofold hand,
Enabling us to leap ashore for food,
And hide us straight in our retreatful flood.
Which, if you will serve, you may prove with ease.
I’ll take you on my shoulders; which fast seize,
If safe arrival at my house y’ intend.”
He stoop’d, and thither spritely did ascend,
Clasping his golden neck, that easy seat
Gave to his sally; who was jocund yet,
Seeing the safe harbours of the king so near,
And he a swimmer so exempt from peer.
But when he sunk into the purple wave,
He mourn’d extremely, and did much deprave
Unprofitable penitence; his hair
Tore by the roots up, labour’d for the air
With his feet fetch’d up to his belly close;
His heart within him panted out repose,
For th’ insolent plight in which his state did stand;
Sigh’d bitterly, and long’d to greet the land,
Forced by the dire need of his freezing fear.
First, on the waters he his tail did stere,
Like to a stern; then drew it like an oar,
Still praying the Gods to set him safe ashore;
Yet sunk he midst the red waves more and more,
And laid a throat out to his utmost height;
Yet in forced speech he made his peril slight,
And thus his glory with his grievance strove:
“Not in such choice state was the charge of love
Borne by the bull, when to the Cretan shore
He swum Europa through the wavy roar,
As this Frog ferries me, his pallid breast
Bravely advancing, and his verdant crest
(Submitted to my seat) made my support,
Through his white waters, to his royal court.”
But on the sudden did apparance make
An horrid spectacle, — a Water-snake
Thrusting his freckled neck above the lake.
Which seen to both, away Physignathus
Dived to his deeps, as no way conscious
Of whom he left to perish in his lake,
But shunn’d black fate himself, and let him take
The blackest of it; who amidst the fen
Swum with his breast up, hands held up in vain,
Cried Peepe, and perish’d; sunk the waters oft,
And often with his sprawlings came aloft,
Yet no way kept down death’s relentless force,
But, full of water, made an heavy corse.
Before he perish’d yet, he threaten’d thus:
“Thou lurk’st not yet from heaven, Physignathus,
Though yet thou hid’st here, that hast cast from thee,
As from a rock, the shipwrack’d life of me,
Though thou thyself no better was than I,
O worst of things, at any faculty,
Wrastling or race. But, for thy perfidy
In this my wrack, Jove bears a wreakful eye;
And to the host of Mice thou pains shalt pay,
Past all evasion.” This his life let say,
And left him to the waters. Him beheld
Lichopinax, 14 placed in the pleasing field,
Who shriek’d extremely, ran and told the Mice;
Who having heard his wat’ry destinies,
Pernicious anger pierced the hearts of all,
And then their heralds forth they sent to call
A council early, at Troxartes’ house,
Sad father of this fatal shipwrack’d Mouse;
Whose dead corse upwards swum along the lake,
Nor yet, poor wretch, could be enforced to make
The shore his harbour, but the mid-main Swum.
When now, all haste made, with first morn did come
All to set council; in which first rais’d head
Troxartes, angry for his son, and said:
“O friends, though I alone may seem to bear
All the infortune, yet may all met here
Account it their case. But ’tis true, I am
In chief unhappy, that a triple flame
Of life feel put forth, in three famous sons;
The first, the chief in our confusions,
The Cat, made rape of, caught without his hole:
The second, Man, made with a cruel soul,
Brought to his ruin with a new-found sleight,
And a most wooden engine of deceit,
They term a Trap, mere murth’ress of our Mice.
The last, that in my love held special price,
And his rare mother’s, this Physignathus
(With false pretext of wafting to his house)
Strangled in chief deeps of his bloody stream.
Come then, haste all, and issue out on them,
Our bodies deck’d in our Dædalean arms.”
This said, his words thrust all up in alarms,
And Mars himself, that serves the cure of war,
Made all in their appropriates circular.
First on each leg the green shales of a bean
They closed for boots, that sat exceeding clean; 15
The shales they broke ope, boothaling by night,
And ate the beans; their jacks art exquisite
Had shown in them, being cats’ skins, everywhere
Quilted with quills; their fenceful bucklers were
The middle rounds of can’sticks; but their spear
A huge long needle was, that could not bear
The brain of any but be Mars his own
Mortal invention; their heads’ arming crown
Was vessel to the kernel of a nut.
And thus the Mice their powers in armour put.
This the Frogs hearing, from the water all
Issue to one place, and a council call
Of wicked war; consulting what should be
Cause to this murmur and strange mutiny.
While this was question’d, near them made his stand
An herald with a sceptre in his hand,
Embasichytrus 16 call’d, that fetch’d his kind
From Tyroglyphus 17 with the mighty mind,
Denouncing ill-named war in these high terms:
“O Frogs! the Mice send threats to you of arms,
And bid me bid ye battle and fix’d fight;
Their eyes all wounded with Psicharpax’ sight
&nb
sp; Floating your waters, whom your king hath kill’d,
And therefore all prepare for force of field,
You that are best born whosoever held.”
This said, he sever’d: his speech firing th’ ears
Of all the Mice, but freez’d the Frogs with fears,
Themselves conceiting guilty; whom the king
Thus answer’d, rising, “Friends! I did not bring
Psicharpax to his end; he, wantoning
Upon our waters, practising to swim,
Aped us, 18 and drown’d without my sight of him.
And yet these worst of vermin accuse me,
Though no way guilty. Come, consider we
How we may ruin these deceitful Mice.
For my part, I give voice to this advice,
As seeming fittest to direct our deeds:
Our bodies decking with our arming weeds,
Let all our pow’rs stand rais’d in steep’st repose
Of all our shore; that, when they charge us close,
We may the helms snatch off from all so deckt,
Daring our onset, and them all deject
Down to our waters; who, not knowing the sleight.
To dive our soft deeps, may be strangled straight,
And we triumphing may a trophy rear,
Of all the Mice that we have slaughter’d here.”
These words put all in arms; and mallow leaves
They drew upon their legs, for arming greaves. 19
Their curets, broad green beets; their bucklers were
Good thick-leaved cabbage, proof ‘gainst any spear;
Their spears sharp bulrushes, of which were all
Fitted with long ones; their parts capital
They hid in subtle cockleshells from blows.
And thus all arm’d, the steepest shores they chose
T’ encamp themselves; where lance with lance they lined,
And brandish’d bravely, each Frog full of mind.
Then Jove call’d all Gods in his flaming throne,
And show’d all all this preparation
For resolute war; these able soldiers,
Many, and great, all shaking lengthful spears,
In show like Centaurs, Or the Giants’ host.
When, sweetly smiling, he inquired who, most
Of all th’ Immortals, pleased to add their aid
To Frogs or Mice; and thus to Pallas said:
“O Daughter! Must not your needs aid these Mice,
That, with the odours and meat sacrifice
Used in your temple, endless triumphs make,
The Complete Poetical Works of George Chapman Page 164
