My sundry seas, Black, White, and Adriatic,
Ionian, Baltic, and the vast Atlantic,
Ægean, Caspian, golden rivers five,
Asphaltites Lake, where naught remains alive;-
But I should go beyond thee in my boasts
If I should name more seas than thou hast coasts.
And be thy mountains e'er so high and steep,
I soon can match them with my seas as deep.
To speak of kinds of waters I neglect –
My divers fountains, and their strange effect;
My wholesome baths, together with their cures;
My water sirens, with their guileful lures;
The uncertain cause of certain ebbs and flows,
Which wondering Aristotle's wit ne'er knows.
Nor will I speak of waters made by art,
Which can to life restore a fainting heart;
Nor fruitful dews; nor drops distilled from eyes,
Which pity move, and oft deceive the wise;
Nor yet of salt and sugar, sweet and smart-
Both, when we list, to water we convert.
Alas, thy ships and oars could do no good
Did they but want my ocean and my flood.
The wary merchant on his weary beast
Transfers his goods from south to north and east,
Unless I ease his toil and do transport
The wealthy freight unto his wishéd port.
These be my benefits, which may suffice.
I now must show what ill there in me lies.
The phlegmy constitution I uphold;
All humors, tumors, which are bred of cold.
O'er childhood and o'er winter I bear sway,
And Luna for my regent I obey.
As I with showers ofttimes refresh the earth,
So oft in my excess I cause a dearth,
And with abundant wet so cool the ground,
By adding cold to cold, no fruit proves sound.
The farmer and the grasier do complain
Of rotten sheep, lean kine, and mildewed grain.
And with my wasting floods and roaring torrent
Their cattle, hay, and corn I sweep down current.
Nay, many times my ocean breaks his bounds,
And with astonishment the world confounds,
And swallows countries up, ne'er seen again,
And that an island makes which once was main.
Thus Britain fair, 't is thought, was cut from France;
Sicily from Italy by the like chance;
And but one land was Africa and Spain
Until proud Gibraltar did make them twain.
Some say I swallowed up (sure 't is a notion)
A mighty country in the Atlantic Ocean.
I need not say much of my hail and snow,
My ice and extreme cold, which all men know;
Whereof the first so ominous I rained
That Israel's enemies therewith were brained;
And of my chilling snows such plenty be
That Caucasus' high mounts are seldom free.
Mine ice doth glaze Europe's great rivers o'er;
Till sun release, their ships can sail no more.
All know that inundations I have made,
Wherein not men, but mountains, seemed to wade:
As when Achaia all under water stood,
That for two hundred years it ne'er proved good;
Deucalion's great deluge, with many more.
But these are trifles to the flood of Noah;
Then wholly perished earth's ignoble race,
And to this day impairs her beauteous face.
That after times shall never feel like woe,
Her confirmed sons behold my colored bow.
Much might I say of wrecks; but that I'll spare,
And now give place unto our sister Air."
"Content," quoth Air, "to speak the last of you, Yet am not ignorant first was my due.
I do suppose you 'll yield, without control,
I am the breath of every living soul.
Mortals, what one of you that loves not me
Abundantly more than my sisters three?
And though you love Fire, Earth, and Water well,
Yet Air beyond all these you know to excel.
I ask the man condemned, that's near his death,
How gladly should his gold purchase his breath;
And all the wealth that ever earth did give,
How freely should it go, so he might live.
No, Earth, thy witching trash were all but vain
If my pure air thy sons did not sustain.
The famished, thirsty man that craves supply,
His moving reason is, Give, lest I die,
So loth he is to go, though nature's spent,
To bid adieu to his dear element.
Nay, what are words, which do reveal the mind?-
Speak who or what they will, they are but wind.
Your drums', your trumpets', and your organs' sound,
What is it but forcéd air which doth rebound?
And such are echoes, and report of the gun
That tells afar the exploit which it hath done.
Your songs and pleasant tunes, they are the same;
And so the notes which nightingales do frame.
Ye forging smiths, if bellows once were gone
Your red-hot work more coldly would go on.
Ye mariners, 't is I that fills your sails,
And speeds you to your port with wishéd gales.
When burning heat doth cause you faint, I cool;
And when I smile, your ocean's like a pool.
I help to ripe the corn, I turn the mill,
And with myself I every vacuum fill.
The ruddy, sweet sanguine is like to air,
And youth and spring sages to me compare.
My moist, hot nature is so purely thin,
No place so subtilely made but I get in.
grow more pure and pure as I mount higher,
And when I'm throughly rarefied, turn fire.
So, when I am condensed, I turn to water,
Which may be done by holding down my vapor;
Thus I another body can assume,
And in a trice my own nature resume.
Some for this cause of late have been so bold
Me for no element longer to hold.
Let such suspend their thoughts, and silent be,
For all philosophers make one of me;
And what those sages either spake or writ
Is more authentic than our modern wit.
Next, of my fowls such multitudes there are,
Earth's beasts and Water's fish scarce can compare-
The ostrich with her plumes, the eagle with her eyen,
The phenix, too, if any be, are mine;
The stork, the crane, the partridge, and the pheasant,
The thrush, the wren, the lark,-a prey to the peasant,-
With thousands more which now I may omit
Without impeachment to my tale or wit.
As my fresh air preserves all things in life,
So, when corrupt, mortality is rife:
Then fevers, purples, pox, and pestilence,
With divers more, work deadly consequence;
Whereof such multitudes have died and fled,
The living scarce had power to bury the dead.
Yea, so contagious countries have we known,
That birds have not 'scaped death as they have flown;
Of murrain, cattle numberless did fall;
Men feared destruction epidemical.
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