| |
|
Small type of
great ones, that do hum
Within this whole world's
narrow room,
That with a busie hollow noise
Catch
at the people's vainer voice,
And with spread sails
play with their breath,
Whose very hails new christen
death.
Poor Fly, caught in an airy net,
Thy wings
have fetter'd now thy feet;
Where, like a Lyon in a
toyl,
Howere thou keep'st a noble coyl,
And
beat'st thy gen'rous breast, that o're
The plains thy
fatal buzzes rore,
Till thy all-bellyd foe (round
elf)
Hath quarter'd thee within himself.
Was
it not better once to play
I' th' light of a
majestick ray,
Where, though too neer and bold, the
fire
Might sindge thy upper down attire,
And thou
i' th' storm to loose an eye.
A wing, or a
self-trapping thigh:
Yet hadst thou fal'n like him,
whose coil
Made fishes in the sea to broyl,
When
now th'ast scap'd the noble flame;
Trapp'd basely in
a slimy frame,
And free of air, thou art become
Slave to the spawn of mud and lome?
Nor is't
enough thy self do's dresse
To thy swoln lord a
num'rous messe,
And by degrees thy thin veins bleed,
And piecemeal dost his poyson feed;
But now devour'd,
art like to be
A net spun for thy familie,
And,
straight expanded in the air,
Hang'st for thy issue
too a snare.
Strange witty death and cruel ill
That, killing thee, thou thine dost kill!
Like pies,
in whose entombed ark
All fowl crowd downward to a
lark,
Thou art thine en'mies' sepulcher,
And in
thee buriest, too, thine heir.
Yet Fates a glory
have reserv'd
For one so highly hath deserv'd.
As
the rhinoceros doth dy
Under his castle-enemy,
As
through the cranes trunk throat doth speed,
The aspe
doth on his feeder feed;
Fall yet triumphant in thy
woe,
Bound with the entrails of thy foe.
|
|
|
