For when he found that life had took his seat Within the breast of his kind beauteous love-- When that he found that warmth and wishèd heat Which might a saint and coldest spirit move-- 220 Then arms, eyes, hands, tongue, lips, and wanton thigh, Were willing agents in love's luxury!
Who knows not what ensues? O pardon me! Ye gaping ears that swallow up my lines, Expect no more: peace, idle poesy, Be not obscene though wanton in thy rhymes; And, chaster thoughts, pardon if I do trip, Or if some loose lines from my pen do slip.
Let this suffice, that that same happy night, So gracious were the gods of marriage, 230 Midst all their pleasing and long-wish'd delight Paphus was got; of whom in after age Cy[p]rus was Paphos call'd, and evermore Those islanders do Venus' name adore.
_The_ AUTHOR _in praise of his precedent Poem._
Now, Rufus, by old Glebron's fearful mace, Hath not my muse deserved a worthy place? Come, come, Luxurio, crown my head with bays, Which, like a Paphian, wantonly displays The Salaminian[340] titillations, Which tickle up our lewd Priapians. Is not my pen complete? Are not my lines Right in the swaggering humour of these times? O sing pæana to my learnèd muse: _Io bis dicite!_ Wilt thou refuse? 10 Do not I put my mistress in before, And piteously her gracious aid implore? Do not I flatter, call her wondrous fair, Virtuous, divine, most debonair? Hath not my goddess, in the vaunt-guard[341] place, The leading of my lines their plumes to grace? And then ensues my stanzas, like odd bands Of voluntaries[342] and mercenarians, Which, like soldados[343] of our warlike age, March rich bedight in warlike equipage, 20 Glittering in dawbèd laced accoustrements,[344] And pleasing suits of love's habiliments; Yet puffy as Dutch hose they are within, Faint and white-liver'd, as our gallants bin; Patch'd like a beggar's cloak, and run as sweet As doth a tumbril[345] in the pavèd street. And in the end (the end of love, I wot), Pygmalion hath a jolly boy begot. So Labeo did complain his love was stone, Obdurate, flinty, so relentless none; 30 Yet Lynceus knows that in the end of this He wrought as strange a metamorphosis. Ends not my poem then surpassing ill? Come, come, Augustus, crown my laureate quill. Now, by the whips of epigrammatists, I'll not be lasht for my dissembling shifts; And therefore I use Popelings'[346] discipline, Lay ope my faults to Mastigophoros' eyne; Censure my self, 'fore others me deride And scoff at me, as if I had denied 40 Or thought my poem good, when that I see My lines are froth, my stanzas sapless be. Thus having rail'd against myself a while, I'll snarl at those which do the world beguile With maskèd shows. Ye changing Proteans, list, And tremble at a barking satirist.