A Horatian Ode

*************AN ODE TO INCONSTANT LOVE*************
Ingenitive Chryseis, prithee incline, [Cressida and Troilus,
thou hand, thou hand, to mine.          symbol of female inconstantcy.]
Though thou canst not stay for long,
with me, please but for a moment playe,
Mercurial faye.

E'er Yon!

Listen to mine happy song,
and, when the tedium of mine praise,
doe none longer to your taste,
but in it's growth mundane,
thereby offends,
thou goe awaye, thou goe awaye,
Mercurial faye;
thine love is not inconstant,
nor pretend,
but yet capacious,
for which I am so gracious.
So prithee, nowe, go awaye,
awaye, Mercurial faye, awaye.


Ye, that hath oftentimes in my music grown,
that I eat like the Thriae eat honey comb,
that hath felt I twas' worthy to speakest without:
your angelic tounge; thou own poems.
Such verses thou beauty thine own calleth their fount,
thine own grace, thine own lips, and thine mouth.
Thou, upon thine scale, weigheth
but this little droppe of thou ocean,
that is but this gramme of my Love,
Half drawne out of your Hell in mine anguish.
Half of Gramercy it tis, and half of your Heaven:
Halfe of longing for another kiss from thine lips libant.
And against It weigh those of Joves, entreasured,    4
sattelites, that by themselves doth stand, 5
that thou callest: Tamesis flumnis. [Joannis Genesii Sepulvedae]
Men who calleth thou torturous and vain:
Goeth to find thine thoughts, in thine own estate.
Calleth "laudis id, omne tenet" thine escape, [Amerbachius Bonifacius]
that trully is but thou immurement.
in thou own attenuate heart,
wherefor thou is imbar'd:  7
Thou Love, but not to ossibus astra misturus. [Pharsalia: A star's bone]
FOR all thine pretended romance is but a distraction:
whilst thou is not like me, and Engonasis. [See in the bookes of Aratus, a Man kneeling.]
Thou delight in making servants of this Queen
is but an iteration of the same ill-theme:
thou to thine self, thou makest Her to salute, [WHEREOF]
the both of thee, and love itself, art impun'd. 8
This is a Woman far to full for but any one Man,
thou takest with thankfulnessee, but what thou can.
Without something to which to kneel, that is thou love,
thine in thine self hadst thus beene spente.
Love is not meant to simply placate, and to make content,
for as how this Queene thereinto hath been us amonge,
to giveth thou perspective and temparance to exercise.
For that which in itselfe, alone, doth with itselfe die
deserves not, nor could thine ever lament,
nor for could thou e'er move to cry,
that wouldest be eaten, beyonde thou dreriment.
But, prithee, doth not thereunto playe,
thine own plaintive song, of fortune's carelessness.
Thence thou, whereunto we sit,
in this little glade,
turneth thereupon to perdition and dreriment.
Flye like Aëdon from thine own woe:
let me with thou own tune compell thee so.
Let my voice be the air whereunto we flye:
from e'er other Man's need, and e'er other Man's pride.
For to I mattereth not, whereupon how much tyme,
with each other we spend;
but moreover, tis' the kind
of Love whereto thee doth of teach:
and that I hath learned of it.
Prithee thou spreadest thine most eager lampe:
so early, as before with the Earth hath been warmed.
Disperse the fermenting dews of the rorulent night:
and dry the e'er blade of grass, so madescent and dampe,
thence with thou light, with thou warmth and thou light.
Thence mayst no Nymphes, of our estive chear,
from the farthest rivers, and the greenest of woods,
neglecteth thou, and thou: now blessed, revered,
the e'er Man wouldest with spend his life, if he could.
They gather around thee: their new neighbor found,
Atlantides with their wedding gifts, Oenone with wine,
Salmacis, alone, who is the Naiad by Diana unbound;
and who in idleness thence likes spending her time.