But hark you, wealthy merchants, who for prize
Send forth your well-manned ships where sun doth rise:
After three years, when men and meat are spent,
My rich commodities pay double rent.
Ye Galenists, my drugs that come from thence
Do cure your patients, fill your purse with pence;
Besides the use of roots, of herbs, and plants
That with less cost near home supply your wants.
But, mariners, where got you ship and sail,
And oars to row, when both my sisters fail?
Your tackling, anchor, compass, too, is mine,
Which guides when sun nor moon nor stars do shine.
Ye mighty kings, who for your lasting fames
Built cities, monuments, called by your names,
Were those compiléd heaps of massy stones
That your ambition laid aught but my bones?
Ye greedy misers, who do dig for gold,
For gems, for silver, treasures which I hold,
Will not my goodly face your rage suffice
But you will see what in my bowels lies?
And ye artificers, all trades and sorts,
My bounty calls you forth to make reports
If aught you have to use, to wear, to eat,
But what I freely yield upon your sweat?
And choleric sister, thou, for all thine ire,
Well knowest my fuel must maintain thy fire;
As I ingenuously with thanks confess,
My cold thy fruitful heat doth crave no less
But how my cold, dry temper works upon
The melancholy constitutiön,
How the autumnal season I do sway,
And how I force the grayhead to obey,
I should here make a short yet true narration,
But that thy method is mine imitation.
Now must I show mine adverse quality,
And how I oft work man's mortality.
He sometimes finds, maugre his toiling pain,
Thistles and thorns where he expected grain;
My sap to plants and trees I must not grant;
The vine, the olive, and the fig-tree want;
The corn and hay do fall before they 're mown;
And buds from fruitful trees as soon as blown.
Then dearth prevails; that nature to suffice,
The mother on her tender infant flies;
The husband knows no wife, nor father sons,
But to all outrages their hunger runs.
Dreadful examples soon I might produce,
But to such auditors 't were of no use.
Again, when delvers dare, in hope of gold,
To ope those veins of mine, audacious, bold,
While they thus in mine entrails love to dive,
Before they know they are interred alive.
Ye affrighted wights appalled, how do ye shake.
When once you feel me, your foundation, quake?-
Because in the abyss of my dark womb
Your cities and your selves I oft entomb.
O dreadful sepulcher! that this is true,
Dathan and all his company well knew;
So did that Roman, far more stout than wise,
Burying himself alive for honor's prize;
And since fair Italy full sadly knows
What she hath lost by these remediless woes.
Again, what veins of poison in me lie;
Some kill outright, and some do stupefy-
Nay, into herbs and plants it sometimes creeps,
In heats, and colds, and gripes, and drowsy sleeps.
Thus I occasion death to man and beast
When food they seek and harm mistrust the least.
Much might I say of the hot Libyan sand
Which rise like tumbling billows on the land.
Wherein Cambyses' army was o'erthrown
(But, windy sister, 't was when you have blown).
I'll say no more; but this thing add I must:
Remember, sons, your mold is of my dust;
And after death, whether interred or burned,
As earth at first, so into earth returned."
Scarce Earth had done, but the angry Water moved.
"Sister," quoth she, it had full well behooved,
Among your boastings, to have praised me,
Cause of your fruitfulness, as you shall see.
This, your neglect, shows your ingratitude,
And how your subtilty would men delude.
Not one of us, all knows, that's like to thee,
Ever, in craving from the other three.
But thou art bound to me above the rest,
Who am thy drink, thy blood, thy sap, and best.
If I withhold, what art thou? Dead, dry lump,
Thou bearest nor grass, nor plant, nor tree, nor stump.
Thy extreme thirst is moistened by my love
With springs below and showers from above,
Or else thy sun-burned face and gaping chops.
Complain to the heavens, if I withhold my drops.
Thy bear, thy tiger, and thy lion stout,
When I am gone their fierceness none needs doubt;
Thy camel hath no strength, thy bull no force,
Nor mettle's found in the courageous horse;
Hinds leave their calves, the elephant the fens,
The wolves and savage beasts forsake their dens;
The lofty eagle and the stork fly low;
The peacock and the ostrich share in woe;
The pine, the cedar, yea, and Daphne's tree
Do cease to flourish in this misery.
Man wants his bread and wine, and pleasant fruits;
He knows such sweets lie not in Earth's dry roots,
Then seeks me out, in river and in well,
His deadly malady I might expel.
If I supply, his heart and veins rejoice;
If not, soon ends his life, as did his voice.
That this is true, Earth, thou canst not deny.
I call thine Egypt this to verify,
Which, by my fatting Nile, doth yield such store
That she can spare when nations round are poor;
When I run low, and not o'erflow her brinks,
To meet with want each woeful man bethinks.
And such I am, in rivers, showers, and springs.
But what's the wealth that my rich ocean brings?—
Fishes so numberless I there do hold,
If thou shouldst buy it would exhaust thy gold.
There lives the oily whale, whom all men know,—
Such wealth, but not such like, Earth, thou mayst show,-
The dolphin, loving music, Arion's friend,
The witty barbel, whose craft doth her commend,
With thousands more which now I list not name,
Thy silence of thy beasts doth cause the same.
My pearls that dangle at thy darlings' ears
Not thou, but shell-fish, yield, as Pliny clears.
Was ever gem so rich found in thy trunk
As Egypt's wanton Cleopatra drunk?
Or hast thou any color can come nigh
The Roman purple, double Tyrian dye?-
Which Cæsar's consuls, tribunes, all adorn,
For it to search my waves they thought no scorn.
Thy gallant, rich, perfuming ambergris.
I lightly cast ashore as frothy fleece;
With rolling grains of purest massy gold,
Which Spain's Americas do gladly hold.
Earth, thou hast not more countries, vales, and mounds Than I have fountains, rivers, lakes, and ponds:
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