The Argument of the Sixth Sestyad.
Leucote flies to all the winds,
And from the Fates their outrage blinds,
That Hero and her love may meet.
Leander, with Love's complete fleet
Mann'd in himself, puts forth to seas,
When straight the ruthless Destinies,
With Até*, stir the winds to war
Upon the Hellespont: their jar
Drowns poor Leander. Hero's eyes,
Wet witnesses of his surprise,
Her torch blown out: grief casts her down
Upon her love, and both doth drown.
In whose just ruth the God of Seas
Transforms them to th' Acanthides.
* With art do stir, &c. edit. 1637.
THE SIXTH SESTYAD.
No longer could the Day nor Destinies
Delay the Night, who now did frowning rise
Into her throne; and at her humorous breasts,
Visions and Dreams lay sucking: all men's rests
Fell like the mists of death upon their eyes,
Day's too long darts so kill'd their faculties.
The winds yet, like the flowers, to cease began;
For bright Leucote, Venus' whitest swan,
That held sweet Hero dear, spread her fair wings,
Like to a field of snow, and message brings
From Venus to the Fates, t' entreat them lay
Their charge upon the winds their rage to stay,
That the stern battle of the seas might cease,
And guard Leander to his love in peace.
The Fates consent, (aye me! dissembling Fates)
They show'd their favours to conceal their hates,
And draw Leander on, lest seas too high
Should stay his too obsequious destiny:
Who like a fleering* slavish parasite,
In warping profit or a traitorous sleight,
Hoops round his rotten body with devotes,
And pricks his descant face full of false notes;
Praising with open throat, and oaths as foul
As his false heart, the beauty of an owl;
Kissing his skipping hand with charmed skips,
That cannot leave, but leaps upon his lips
Like a cock-sparrow, or a shameless quean
Sharp at a red lipp'd youth, and nought doth mean
Of all his antic shows, but doth repair
More tender fawns, and takes a scatter'd hair From his tame subject's shoulder; whips and calls For every thing he lacks; creeps 'gainst the walls With backward humblesse, to give needless way: Thus his false fate did with Leander play.
First to black Eurus flies the white Leucote, (Born 'mongst the negroes in the Levant sea, *fleeting, edit. 1637.
On whose curl'd head the glowing sun doth rise)
And shows the sovereign will of Destinies,
To have him cease his blasts, and down he lies.
Next, to the fenny Notus course she holds,
And found him leaning with his arms in folds
Upon a rock, his white hair full of showers,
And him she chargeth by the fatal powers,
To hold in his wet checks his cloudy voice.
To Zephyr then that doth in flowers rejoice:
To snake-foot Boreas next she did remove,
And found him tossing of his ravish'd love,
To heat his frosty bosom hid in snow;
Who with Leucote's sight did cease to blow.-
Thus all were still to Hero's heart's desire,
Who with all speed did consecrate a fire
Of flaming gums, and comfortable spice,
To light her torch, which in such curious price
She held, being object to Leander's sight,
That nought but fires perfum'd must give it light.
She lov'd it so, she griev❜d to see it burn,
Since it would waste and soon to ashes turn:
Yet if it burn'd not, 'twere not worth her eyes,
What made it nothing, gave it all the prize.
Sweet torch! true glass of our society;
What man does good, but he consumes thereby?
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