T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
Aldobrandino, a Fat Cardinal
Anonymous(From Choice Drollery, 1656) NEVER was human soul so overgrown, | |
| With an unreasonable Cargazon | |
| Of flesh, as Aldobrandino, whom to pack, | |
| No girdle serv’d less than the zodiac: | |
| So thick a Giant, that he now was come | 5 |
| To be accounted an eighth hill in Rome, | |
| And as the learn’d Tostatus kept his age, | |
| Writing for every day he liv’d a page; | |
| So he no less voluminous than that | |
| Added each day a leaf, but ’twas of fat. | 10 |
| The choicest beauty that had been devised | |
| By Nature, was by her parents sacrificed | |
| Up to this Monster, upon whom to try, | |
| If as increase, he could, too, multiply. | |
| Oh, how I tremble lest the tender maid | 15 |
| Should die like a young infant over-laid! | |
| For when this Chaos would pretend to move | |
| And arch his back for the strong act of Love, | |
| He falls as soon o’erthrown with his own weight, | |
| And with his ruins doth the Princess fright. | 20 |
| She lovely Martyr there lies stew’d and pressed, | |
| Like flesh under the tarred saddle dressed, | |
| And seems to those that look on them in bed, | |
| Larded with him, rather than married. | |
| Oft did he cry, but still in vain, to force | 25 |
| His fatness, powerfuller then a divorce; | |
| No herbs, no midwives profit here, nor can | |
| Of his great belly free the teeming man. | |
| What though he drink the vinegars most fine, | |
| They do not waste his fleshy Apennine; | 30 |
| His paunch like some huge Isthmus runs between | |
| The amorous Seas, and lets them not be seen; | |
| Yet a new Dedalus invented how | |
| This Bull with his Pasiphae might plow. | |
| Have you those artificial torments known, | 35 |
| With which long sunken Galeos are thrown | |
| Again on Sea, or the dead Galia | |
| Was rais’d that once behind St. Peters lay: | |
| By the same rules he this time engine made, | |
| With silken cords in nimble pullies laid; | 40 |
| And when his Genius prompteth his slow part | |
| To works of Nature, which he helps with Art: | |
| First he intangles in those woven bands, | |
| His groveling weight, and ready to commands, | |
| The sworn Prinadas of his bed, the Aids | 45 |
| Of Love’s Camp, necessary Chambermaids; | |
| Each runs to her known tackling, hastes to hoise, | |
| And in just distance of the urging voice, | |
| Exhorts the labour till he smiling rise | |
| To the bed’s roof, and wonders how he flies. | 50 |
| Thence as the eager Falcon having spied | |
| Fowl at the brook, or by the River’s side, | |
| Hangs in the middle Region of the air, | |
| So hovers he, and plains above his fair: | |
| Blest Icarus first melted at those beams, | 55 |
| That he might after fall into those streams, | |
| And there allaying his delicious flame, | |
| In that sweet Ocean propagate his name. | |
| Unable longer to delay, he calls | |
| To be let down, and in short measure falls | 60 |
| Toward his Mistress, that without her smock | |
| Lies naked as Andromeda at the Rock, | |
| And through the Skies see her wingèd Perseus strike | |
| Though for his bulk, more that sea-monster like. | |
| Meantime the Nurse, who as the most discreet, | 65 |
| Stood governing the motions at the feet, | |
| And balanc’d his descent, lest that amiss | |
| He fell too fast, or that way more than this; | |
| Steers the Prow of the pensile Galleys, | |
| Right on Love’s Harbour the Nymph lets him pass | 70 |
| Over the Chains, and ’tween the double Fort | |
| Of her encastled knees, which guard the Port. | |
| The Burs as she had learnt still diligent, | |
| Now girt him backwards, now him forwards bent; | |
| Like those that levelled in tough Cordage, teach | 75 |
| The mural Ram, and guide it to the Breach. | |