Classic Poem

Here stay'd I long; but when to see Aurora
Kiss the perfum'd cheeks of dainty Flora,
Without the vale I trod one lovely morn,
With true intention of a quick return,
An unexpected chance strove to defer
My going back, and all the love of her.
But, maiden, see the day is waxen old,
And 'gins to shut in with the marigold.
The neatherd's kine do bellow in the yard;
And dairy maidens, for the milk prepar'd,
Are drawing at the udder; long ere now
The ploughman hath unyok'd his team from plough.
My transformation to a fearful hind
Shall to unfold a fitter season find.
Meanwhile yond palace, whose brave turrets' tops
Over the stately wood survey the copse,
Promis'th (if sought) a wished place of rest,
Till Sol our hemisphere have repossess'd.
Now must my Muse afford a strain to Riot,
Who, almost kill'd with his luxurious diet,
Lay eating grass (as dogs) within a wood,
So to disgorge the undigested food.
By whom fair Aletheia pass'd along
With Fida, queen of every shepherd's song,
By them unseen (for he securely lay
Under the thick of many a leaved spray)
And through the levell'd meadows gently threw
Their neatest feet, wash'd with refreshing dew,
Where he durst not approach, but on the edge
Of th' hilly wood, in covert of a hedge,
Went onward with them, trod with them in paces,
And far off much admir'd their forms and graces.
Into the plains at last he headlong venter'd;
But they the hill had got and palace enter'd.
When, like a valiant, well-resolved man,
Seeking new paths i' th' pathless ocean,
Unto the shores of monster-breeding Nile,
Or through the North to the unpeopled Thyle,
Where, from the equinoctial of the spring
To that of autumn, Titan's golden ring
Is never off; and till the spring again
In gloomy darkness all the shores remain:
Or if he furrow up the briny sea
To cast his anchors in the frozen bay
Of woody Norway, who hath ever fed
Her people more with scaly fish than bread,
Though rattling mounts of ice thrust at his helm,
And by their fall still threaten to o'erwhelm
His little vessel, and though Winter throw
(What age should on their heads) white caps of snow;
Strives to congeal his blood; he cares not for't,
But arm'd in mind, gets his intended port:
So Riot, though full many doubts arise
Whose unknown ends might grasp his enterprise,
Climbs towards the palace, and with gait demure,
With hanging head, a voice as feigning pure,
With torn and ragged coat, his hairy legs
Bloody, as scratch'd with briars, he entrance begs.
Remembrance sat as portress of this gate:
A lady always musing as she sat,
Except when sometime suddenly she rose;
And with a back-bent eye, at length, she throws
Her hands to heaven; and in a wond'ring guise,
Star'd on each object with her fixed eyes:
As some wayfaring man passing a wood,
Whose waving top hath long a sea-mark stood,
Goes jogging on, and in his mind nought hath,
But how the primrose finely strew the path,
Or sweetest violets lay down their heads
At some tree's root on mossy feather-beds,
Until his heel receives an adder's sting,
Whereat he starts, and back his head doth fling.
She never mark'd the suit he did prefer,
But (careless) let him pass along by her.
So on he went into a spacious court,
All trodden bare with multitudes' resort;
At th' end whereof a second gate appears,
The fabric show'd full many thousand years,
Whose postern-key that time a lady kept,
Her eyes all swoll'n as if she seldom slept,
And would by fits her golden tresses tear,
And strive to stop her breath with her own hair.
Her lily hand (not to be lik'd by Art)
A pair of princers held; wherewith her heart
Was hardly grasped, while the piled stones
Re-echoed her lamentable groans.
Here at this gate the custom long had been
When any sought to be admitted in,
Remorse thus us'd them, ere they had the key,
And all these torments felt, pass'd on their way.
When Riot came, the lady's pains nigh done,
She pass'd the gate; and then Remorse begun
To fetter Riot in strong iron chains,
And doubting much his patience in the pains:
As when a smith and 's man, lame Vulcan's fellows,
Call'd from the anvil or the puffing bellows,
To clap a well-wrought shoe, for more than pay,
Upon a stubborn nag of Galloway,
Or unback'd jennet, or a Flanders mare,
That at the forge stand snuffing of the air;
The swarty smith spits in his buckhorn fist,
And bids his man bring out the five-fold twist,
His shackles, shacklocks, hampers, gyves and chains,
His linked bolts; and with no little pains
These make him fast; and lest all these should falter,
Unto a post with some six-doubled halter
He binds his head; yet all are of the least
To curb the fury of the headstrong beast;
When, if a carrier's jade he brought unto him,
His man can hold his foot whilst he can shoe him:
Remorse was so enforc'd to bind him stronger,
Because his faults requir'd infliction longer
Than any sin-press'd wight which many a day
Since Judas hung himself had pass'd that way.