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destiny, Iā€™ll maintain:
True as Apollo ever spoke,
Or oracle from heart of oak:94
And if youā€™ll give my flame but vent,
Now in close hugger-mugger pent,
And shine upon me but benignly,
With that one and that other pigsney,
The sun and day shall sooner part,
Than love of you shake off my heart;
The sun, that shall no more dispense
His own, but your bright influence.
Iā€™ll carve your name on barks of trees,
With true-loveā€™s-knots and flourishes,
That shall infuse eternal spring,
And everlasting flourishing;
Drink evā€™ry letter onā€™t in stum,
And make it brisk champagne become:
Whereā€™er you tread, your foot shall set
The primrose and the violet:
All spices, perfumes, and sweet powders,
Shall borrow from your breath their odours:
Nature her charter shall renew,
And take all lives of things from you;
The world depend upon your eye,
And when you frown upon it, die:
Only our loves shall still survive,
New worlds and natures to outlive:
And, like to heraldsā€™ moons, remain
All crescents, without change or wane.

Hold, hold, quoth she; no more of this,
Sir Knight; you take your aim amiss:
For you will find it a hard chapter
To catch me with poetic rapture,
In which your mastery of art
Doth shew itself, and not your heart:
Nor will you raise in mine combustion
By dint of high heroic fustian.
She that with poetry is won,
Is but a desk to write upon;
And what men say of her, they mean
No more than on the thing they lean.
Some with Arabian spices strive
Tā€™ embalm her cruelly alive;
Or season her, as French cooks use
Their haut-gouts, bouillies, or ragouts:
Use her so barbarously ill,
To grind her lips upon a mill,
Until the facet doublet doth
Fit their rhimes rather than her mouth:
Her mouth comparā€™d to an oysterā€™s, with
A row of pearl inā€™tā ā€”ā€™stead of teeth.
Others make posies of her cheeks,
Where red and whitest colours mix;
In which the lily, and the rose,
For Indian lake and ceruse goes.
The sun and moon by her bright eyes
Eclipsā€™d and darkenā€™d in the skies,
Are but black patches, that she wears,
Cut into suns, and moons, and stars:
By which astrologers, as well
As those in heavā€™n above, can tell
What strange events they do foreshow
Unto her under-world below.
Her voice, the music of the spheres,
So loud, it deafens mortals ears,
As wise philosophers have thought;
And thatā€™s the cause we hear it not.
This has been done by some, who those
Thā€™ adorā€™d in rhyme would kick in prose;
And in those ribbons would have hung,
On which melodiously they sung;
That have the hard fate to write best
Of those still that deserve it least;
It matters not how false or forcā€™d:
So the best things be said oā€™ thā€™ worst:
It goes for nothing when ā€™tis said;
Only the arrowā€™s drawn to thā€™ head,
Whether it be a swan or goose
They level at: so shepherds use
To set the same mark on the hip
Both of their sound and rotten sheep:
For wits, that carry low or wide,
Must be aimā€™d higher, or beside
The mark, which else they neā€™er come nigh,
But when they take their aim awry.
But I do wonder you should choose
This way tā€™ attack me with your Muse,
As one cut out to pass your tricks on,
With fulhams of poetic fiction:
I rather hopā€™d I should no more
Hear from you oā€™ thā€™ gallanting score:
For hard dry-bastings usā€™d to prove
The readiest remedies of love;
Next a dry-diet; but if those fail,
Yet this uneasy loop-holā€™d jail,
In which yā€™ are hamperā€™d by the fetlock,
Cannot but put yā€™ in mind of wedlock:
Wedlock, thatā€™s worse than any hole here,
If that may serve you for a cooler,
Tā€™ allay your mettle, all agog
Upon a wife, the heavier clog:
Or rather thank your gentler fate,
That for a bruisā€™d or broken pate
Has freed you from those knobs that grow
Much harder on the marryā€™d brow;
But if no dread can cool your courage,
From ventā€™ring on that dragon, marriage,
Yet give me quarter, and advance
To nobler aims your puissance:
Level at beauty and at wit;
The fairest mark is easiest hit.

Quoth Hudibras, Iā€™m beforehand
In that already, with your command;
For where does beauty and high wit
But in your constellation meet?

Quoth she, What does a match imply,
But likeness and equality?
I know you cannot think me fit
To be thā€™ yoke-fellow of your wit;
Nor take one of so mean deserts,
To be the partner of your parts;
A grace, which, if I could believe,
Iā€™ve not the conscience to receive.

That conscience, quoth Hudibras,
Is misinformā€™d: Iā€™ll state the case:
A man may be a legal donor,
Of any thing whereof heā€™s owner,
And may confer it where he lists,
Iā€™ thā€™ judgment of all casuists;
Then wit, and parts, and valour, may
Be aliā€™nated, and made away,
By those that are proprietors,
As I may give or sell my horse.

Quoth she, I grant the case is true,
And proper ā€™twixt your horse and you;
But whether I may take as well
As you may give away or sell?
Buyers, you know, are bid beware;
And worse than thieves receivers are.
How shall I answer hue and cry,
For a roan gelding, twelve hands high,
All spurrā€™d and switchā€™d, a lock on ā€™s hoof,
A sorrel mane? Can I bring proof
Where, when, by whom, and what yā€™ were sold for,
And in the open market tollā€™d for?
Or should I take you for a stray,
You must be kept a year and day
(Ere I can own you) here iā€™ the pound,
Where, if yā€™ are sought, you may be found:
And in the meantime I must pay
For all your provender and hay.

Quoth he, It stands me much upon
Tā€™ enervate this objection,
And prove myself, by topic clear,
No gelding, as you would infer.
Loss of virilityā€™s averrā€™d
To be the cause of loss of beard,
That does (like embryo in the womb)
Abortive on the chin become.
This first a woman did invent,
In envy of manā€™s ornament;
Semiramis of Babylon,95
Who first of all cut men oā€™ thā€™ stone,
To mar their beards, and lay foundation
Of sow-geldering operation.
Look on this beard, and tell me whether
Eunuchs wear such, or geldings either?
Next it appears I am no horse;
That I can argue and discourse
Have but two legs, and neā€™er a tail.

Quoth she, That nothing will avail;
For some philosophers of late here,96
Write men have four legs by nature,
And that ā€™tis custom makes them go
Erronā€™ously upon but two;
As ā€™twas in Germany made good
Bā€™ a boy that lost himself in a wood,
And growing down tā€™ a man, was wont
With wolves upon all four to hunt.
As for your

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