Classic Poem

Poore painters oft with sillie poets ioyne
To fill the world with straunge but vaine conceits:
One brings the stuffe, the other stamps the coine,
Which breeds nought else but glosses of deceits.
Thus painters Cupid paint; thus poets do
A naked God, blind, young, with arrowes two.
Is he a God, that euer flies the light?
Or naked he, diguis'd in all vntruth?
If he be blind, how hitteth he so right?
How is he young, that tam'd ould Phaebus' youth?
But arrowes two, and tipt with gold or lead?
Some, hurt, accuse a third with hornie head.
No, nothing so: an old, false knaue he is,
By Argus got on Io, then a cow;
What time for her Iuno her Ioue did misse,
And charge of her to Argus did allow.
Mercurie kill'd his false sire for this act;
His damme, a beast, was pardon'd beastlie fact.
With father's death and mother's guiltie shame,
With Ioue's disdaine at such a rival's seed,
The wretch, compeld, a runnagate became,
And learn'd what ill a miser-state doth breed.
To lie, to steale, to prie, and to accuse,
Naught in himselfe, each other to abuse.
Yet beares he still his parents' stately gifts, —
A horned head, clouen feet, and thousand eyes,
Some gazing still, some winking wilie shifts;
With long large eares, where neuer rumor dies.
His horned head doth seeme the heauen to spight,
His clouen foot doth neuer tread aright.
Thus halfe a man, with men he dayly haunts,
Cloth'd in the shape which soonest may deceiue:
Thus halfe a beast, each beastly vice he plants
In those weake hearts that his aduice receiue;
He proules each place, still in new colours deckt,
Sucking one's ill, another to infect.
To narrow breasts he comes all wrapt in gaine;
To swelling hearts he shines in Honour's fire;
To open eyes all beauties he doth raine,
Creeping to each with flattering of desire.
But for that loue is worst which rules the eyes,
Thereon his name, there his chiefe triumph lyes.
Millions of yeares this old driuell Cupid liues,
While still more wretch, more wicked he doth proue;
Till now at length that Ioue him office giues,
At Iuno's suite, who much did Argus loue,
In this our world a hang-man for to be
Of all those fooles that will haue all they see.