Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Edward Farr, ed. Select Poetry of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. 1845.

Eupheme’s Mind

XXIV. Benjamin Jonson

PAINTER, you’re come, but may be gone,

Now I have a better thought thereon,

This work I can performe alone,

And give you reasons more then one.

Not that your art I doe refuse,

But here I may no colours use;

Beside, your hand will never hit,

To draw a thing that cannot sit.

You could make shift to paint an eye,

An eagle towring in the skye,

The sunne, a sea, or soundlesse pit;

But these are like a mind, not it.

No, to expresse a mind to sense,

Would aske a Heaven’s intelligence;

Since nothing can report that flame

But what’s of kinne to whence it came.

A mind so pure, so perfect, fine,

As ’tis not radiant, but divine;

And so disdaining any tryer,

’Tis got where it can try the fire.

There high exalted in the spheare,

As it another nature were

It moveth all, and makes a flight

As circular as infinite.

Whose notions when it will expresse

In speech, it is with that excesse

Of grace and musique to the eare,

As what it spoke it planted there.

The voyce so sweet, the words so faire,

As some soft chime had stroak’d the ayre;

And though the sound were parted thence,

Still left an eccho in the sense.

But, that a mind so rapt, so high,

So swift, so pure, should yet apply

It selfe to us, and come so nigh

Earth’s grossnesse; there’s the how, and why.

Is it because it sees us dull,

And stuck in clay here, it would pull

Us forth by some celestiall flight

Up to her owne sublimed hight?

Or hath she here, upon the ground,

Some paradise or palace found

In all the bounds of beautie fit

For here to inhabit? There is it.

Thrice happy house, that hast receipt

For this so loftie forme, so streight,

So polisht, perfect, round, and even,

As it slid moulded off from heaven.

Not swelling like the ocean proud,

But stooping gently, as a cloud,

As smooth as oyle pour’d forth, and calme

As showers, and sweet as drops of balme.

Smooth, soft, and sweet, in all a floud

Where it may run to any good;

And where it staves, it there becomes

A nest of odorous spice and gummes.

In action, winged as the wind,

In rest, like spirits left behind

Upon a banke or field of flowers,

Begotten by that wind and showers.

In thee, faire mansion, let it rest,

Yet know with what thou art possest;

Thou entertaining in thy brest

But such a mind, mak’st God thy guest.