Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. I. Early Poetry: Chaucer to Donne
Samuel Daniel (15621619)To the Lady Margaret, Countess of Cumberland
H
And rear’d the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,
As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame
Of his resolvèd powers; nor all the wind
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same,
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey!
Upon these lower regions of turmoil!
Where all the storms of passion mainly beat
On flesh and blood; where honour, power, renown
Are only gay afflictions, golden toil;
Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet
As frailty doth, and only great doth seem
To little minds, who do it so esteem.
But only as on stately robberies;
Where evermore the fortune that prevails
Must be the right: the ill-succeeding mars
The fairest and the best-faced enterprise.
Great pirate Pompey lesser pirates quails:
Justice, he sees, (as if seduced) still
Conspires with power, whose cause must not be ill.
As are the passions of uncertain man;
Who puts it in all colours, all attires,
To serve his ends and make his courses hold.
He sees, that let deceit work what it can,
Plot and contrive base ways to high desires,
That the all-guiding Providence doth yet
All disappoint, and mocks this smoke of wit.
Of tyrants’ threats, or with the surly brow
Of Pow’r, that proudly sits on others’ crimes,
Charg’d with more crying sins than those he checks.
The storms of sad confusion, that may grow
Up in the present for the coming times,
Appal not him, that hath no side at all
But of himself, and knows the worst can fall.
Cannot but pity the perplexed state
Of troublous and distress’d mortality,
That thus make way unto the ugly birth
Of their own sorrows, and do still beget
Affliction upon imbecility;
Yet seeing thus the course of things must run,
He looks thereon not strange, but as foredone.
And is encompass’d; whilst as craft deceives,
And is deceiv’d; whilst man doth ransack man,
And builds on blood, and rises by distress;
And th’ inheritance of desolation leaves
To great-expecting hopes: he looks thereon
As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye,
And bears no venture in impiety.