Classic Poem

His most kind sister all his secrets knew,
And to her singing like a shower he flew,
Sprinkling the earth, that to their tombs took in
Streams dead for love to leave his ivory skin,
Which yet a snowy foam did leave above,
As soul to the dead water that did love;
And from thence did the first white roses spring
(For love is sweet and fair in every thing)
And all the sweetened shore, as he did go,
Was crowned with odorous roses, white as snow.
Love-blest Leander was with love so filled,
That love to all that touched him he instilled.
And as the colours of all things we see
To our sight's powers communicated be;
So to all objects that in compass came
Of any sense he had, his sense's flame
Flowed from his parts with force so virtual,
It fired with sense things mere insensual.
Now, with warm baths and odours comforted,
When he lay down he kindly kissed his bed,
As consecrating it to Hero's right,
And vowed thereafter that whatever sight
Put him in mind of Hero, or her bliss,
Should be her altar to prefer a kiss.
Then laid he forth his late enriched arms,
In whose white circle Love writ all his charms,
And made his characters sweet Hero's limbs,
When on his breast's warm sea she sideling swims.
And as those arms, held up in circle, met,
He said: " See, sister, Hero's carcanet,
Which she had rather wear about her neck,
Than all the jewels that doth Juno deck."
But, as he shook with passionate desire
To put in flame his other secret fire,
A music so divine did pierce his ear,
As never yet his ravished sense did hear:
When suddenly a light of twenty hues
Brake through the roof, and like the rainbow views
Amazed Leander; in whose beams came down
The goddess Ceremony, with a crown
Of all the stars, and heaven with her descended.
Her flaming hair to her bright feet extended,
By which hung all the bench of deities;
And in a chain, compact of ears and eyes,
She led Religion; all her body was
Clear and transparent as the purest glass:
For she was all presented to the sense;
Devotion, Order, State, and Reverence
Her shadows were; Society, Memory;
All which her sight made live, her absence die.
A rich disparent pentacle she wears,
Drawn full of circles and strange characters;
Her face was changeable to every eye;
One way looked ill, another graciously;
Which while men viewed, they cheerful were and holy;
But looking off, vicious and melancholy.
The snaky paths to each observed law
Did Policy in her broad bosom draw:
One hand a mathematic crystal sways,
Which gathering in one line a thousand rays
From her bright eyes, Confusion burns to death,
And all estates of men distinguisheth.
By it Morality and Comeliness
Themselves in all their sightly figures dress.
Her other hand a laurel rod applies,
To beat back Barbarism and Avarice,
That followed, eating earth and excrement
And human limbs; and would make proud ascent
To seats of gods, were Ceremony slain;
The Hours and Graces bore her glorious train,
And all the sweets of our society
Were sphered and treasured in her bounteous eye.
Thus she appeared, and sharply did reprove
Leander's bluntness in his violent love;
Told him how poor was substance without rites,
Like bills unsigned, desires without delights;
Like meats unseasoned; like rank corn that grows
On cottages, that none or reaps or sows:
Not being with civil forms confirmed and bounded,
For human dignities and comforts founded,
But loose and secret, all their glories hide;
Fear fills the chamber, darkness decks the bride.
She vanished, leaving pierced Leander's heart
With sense of his unceremonious part,
In which, with plain neglect of nuptial rites,
He close and flatly fell to his delights;
And instantly he vowed to celebrate
All rites pertaining to his married state.
So up he gets, and to his father goes,
To whose glad ears he doth his vows disclose:
The nuptials are resolved with utmost power,
And he at night would swim to Hero's tower.
From whence he meant to Sestos' forked bay
To bring her covertly, where ships must stay,
Sent by his father, throughly rigged and manned,
To waft her safely to Abydos' strand.
There leave we him, and with fresh wing pursue
Astonished Hero, whose most wished view
I thus long have forborne, because I left her
So out of countenance, and her spirits bereft her.
To look of one abashed is impudence,
When of slight faults he hath too deep a sense.
Her blushing het her chamber: she looked out,
And all the air she purpled round about,
And after it a foul black day befell,
Which ever since a red morn doth foretell,
And still renews our woes for Hero's woe,
And foul it proved, because it figured so
The next night's horror, which prepare to hear;
I fail, if it profane your daintiest ear.
Then thou most strangely-intellectual fire,
That proper to my soul hast power t' inspire
Her burning faculties, and with the wings
Of thy unsphered flame visit'st the springs
Of spirits immortal; now (as swift as Time
Doth follow Motion) find th' eternal clime
Of his free soul, whose living subject stood
Up to the chin in the Pierian flood,
And drunk to me half this Musaean story,
Inscribing it to deathless memory:
Confer with it, and make my pledge as deep,
That neither's draught be consecrate to sleep.
Tell it how much his late desires I tender
(If yet it know not) and to light surrender
My soul's dark offspring, willing it should die
To loves, to passions, and society.