Hymnus in Noctem

Great goddess, to whose throne in Cynthian fires,
This earthly altar endless fumes expires;
Therefore, in fumes of sighs and fires of grief,
To fearful chances thou send'st bold relief,
Happy, thrice happy type, and nurse of death,
Who, breathless, feeds on nothing but our breath,
In whom must virtue and her issue live,
Or die for ever; — now let humour give
Seas to mine eyes, that I may quickly weep
The shipwrack of the world : or let soft sleep
(Binding my senses) loose my working soul,
That in her highest pitch she may control
The court of skill, compact of mystery
Wanting but franchisement and memory
To reach all secrets: then in blissful trance,
Raise her, dear night, to that perseverance,
That in my torture, she all Earth's may sing,
And force to tremble in her trumpeting
Heaven's crystal temples; in her powers implant
Skill of my griefs, and she can nothing want.

Then like fierce bolts, well ramm'd with heat and cold
In Jove's artillery, my words unfold,
To break the labyrinth of every ear,
And make each frighted soul come forth and hear.

Let them break hearts, as well as yielding airs,
That all men's bosoms (pierced with no affairs
But gain of riches) may be lanced wide,
And with the threats of virtue terrified.

Sorrow's dear sovereign, and the queen of rest,
That when unlightsome, vast, and indigest,
The formless matter of this world did lie,
Fill'd'st every place with thy divinity,
Why did thy absolute and endless sway
License heaven's torch, the sceptre of the day,
Distinguish'd intercession to thy throne,
That long before, all matchless ruled alone?
Why lett'st thou Order, orderless disperse
The fighting parents of this universe?
When earth, the air, and sea, in fire remain'd ;
When fire, the sea, and earth, the air contain'd ;
When air, the earth, and fire, the sea enclosed;
When sea, fire, air, in earth were indisposed ;
Nothing, as now, remain'd so out of kind,
All things in gross, were finer than refined,
Substance was sound within, and had no being ;
Now form gives being, all our essence seeming,
Chaos had soul without a body then.
Now bodies live without the souls of men,
Lumps being digested; monsters in our pride.

And as a wealthy fount that hills did hide,
Let forth by labour of industrious hands,
Pours out her treasure through the fruitful strands,
Seemly divided to a hundred streams,
Whose beauties shed such profitable beams,
And make such Orphean music in their courses,
That cities follow their enchanting forces;
Who running far, at length each pours her heart
Into the bosom of the gulfy desart,
As much confounded there and indigest,
As in the chaos of the hills comprest:
So all things now (extract out of the prime)
Are turn'd to chaos, and confound the time.

A step-dame Night of mind about us clings,
Who broods beneath her hell-obscuring wings,
Worlds of confusion, where the soul defamed,
The body had been better never framed,
Beneath thy soft and peaceful covert then
(Most sacred mother both of gods and men),
Treasures unknown, and more unprized did dwell ;
But in the blind-born shadow of this hell,
This horrid step-dame, blindness of the mind,
Nought worth the sight, no sight, but worse than blind,
A Gorgon, that with brass and snaky brows
(Most harlot-like) her naked secrets shows;
For in th' expansure, and distinct attire
Of light, and darkness, of the sea, and fire;
Of air, and earth, and all, all these create,
First set and ruled, in most harmonious state,
Disjunction shows, in all things now amiss,
By that first order what confusion is:
Religious curb, that managed men in bounds,
Of public welfare, loathing private grounds
(Now cast away by self-love's paramours),
All are transform'd to Caledonian boars,
That kill our bleeding vines, displough our fields,
Rend groves in pieces ; all things nature yields
Supplanting: tumbling up in hills of dearth,
The fruitful disposition of the earth,
Ruin creates men : all to slaughter bent,
Like envy, fed with others' famishment.

And what makes men without the parts of men,
Or in their manhoods, less than childeren,
But manless natures? All this world was named
A world of him, for whom it first was framed,
Who (like a tender cheveril) shrunk with fire
Of base ambition, and of self-desire,
His arms into his shoulders crept for fear
Bounty should use them ; and fierce rape forbear,
His legs into his greedy belly run,
The charge of hospitality to shun.
In him the world is to a lump reversed
That shrunk from form, that was by form dispersed,
And in nought more than thankless avarice,
Not rendering virtue her deserved price:
Kind Amalthea was transferr'd by Jove,
Into his sparkling pavement, for her love,
Though but a goat, and giving him her milk;
Baseness is flinty, gentry soft as silk,
In heavens she lives, and rules a living sign
In human bodies : yet not so divine,
That she can work her kindness in our hearts.

The senseless Argive ship, for her deserts,
Bearing to Colchos, and for bringing back
The hardy Argonauts, secure of wrack,
The fautor, and the god of gratitude,
Would not from number of the stars exclude.

A thousand such examples could I cite
To damn stone-peasants, that like Typhons fight
Against their Maker, and contend to be
Of kings, the abject slaves of drudgery.

Proud of their thraldom: love the kindest least,
And hate, not to be hated of the best.
If then we frame man's figure by his mind,
And that at first, his fashion was assigned,
Erection in such god-like excellence
For his soul's sake, and her intelligence :
She so degenerate, and grown depress'd,
Content to share affections with a beast;
The shape wherewith he should be now endued
Must bear no sign of man's similitude.
Therefore Promethean poets with the coals
Of their most genial, more-than-human souls
In living verse, created men like these,
With shapes of Centaurs, Harpies, Lapithes,
That they in prime of erudition,
When almost savage vulgar men were grown,
Seeing themselves in those Pierian founts,
Might mend their minds, ashamed of such accounts :
So when ye hear the sweetest Muse's son,
With heavenly rapture of his music won
Rocks, forests, floods, and winds to leave their course
In his attendance: it bewrays the force
His wisdom had, to draw men grown so rude
To civil love of art and fortitude,
And not for teaching others insolence
Had he his date-exceeding excellence
With sovereign poets, but for use applied,
And in his proper acts exemplified.

And that in calming the infernal kind,
To wit, the perturbations of his mind,
And bringing his Eurydice from hell
(Which justice signifies) is proved well.
But if in right's observance any man
Look back, with boldness less than Orphean,
Soon falls he to the hell from whence he rose:
The fiction then would temperature dispose
In all the tender motives of the mind,
To make man worthy his hell-daunting kind.
The golden chain of Homer's high device
Ambition is, or cursed avarice,
Which all gods haling being tied to Jove,
Him from his settled height could never move;
Intending this, that though that powerful chain
Of most Herculean vigour to constrain
Men from true virtue, or their pristine states
Attempt a man that manless changes hates,
And is ennobled with a deathless love
Of things eternal, dignified above:
Nothing shall stir him from adorning still
This shape with virtue, and his power with will.

But as rude painters that contend to show
Beasts, fowls, or fish, all artless to bestow
On every side his native counterfeit,
Above his head, his name had need to set :
So men that will be men, in more than face
(As in their foreheads), should in actions place
More perfect characters, to prove they be
No mockers of their first nobility,
Else may they easily pass for beasts or fowls :
Souls praise our shapes, and not our shapes our souls.

And as when Chloris paints th' enamell'd meads,
A flock of shepherds to the bagpipe treads
Rude rural dances with their country loves :
Some afar off observing their removes,
Turns, and returns, quick footing, sudden stands,
Reelings aside, odd actions with their hands;
Now back, now forwards, now lock'd arm in arm,
Not hearing music, think it is a charm,
That like loose froes at bacchanalian feasts,
Makes them seem frantic in their barren jests.
And being cluster'd in a shapeless crowd,
With much less admiration are allow'd ;
So our first excellence, so much abused,
And we (without the harmony was used,
When Saturn's golden sceptre struck the strings
Of civil government) make all our doings
Savour of rudeness and obscurity,
And in our forms show more deformity,
Than if we still were wrapt and smothered
In that confusion out of which we fled.

And as when hosts of stars attend thy flight,
Day of deep students, most contentful night,
The morning (mounted on the Muses' steed)
Ushers the sun from Vulcan's golden bed,
And then from forth their sundry roofs of rest,
All sorts of men, to sorted tasks address'd,
Spread this inferior element, and yield
Labour his due: the soldier to the field,
Statesmen to council, judges to their pleas,
Merchants to commerce, mariners to seas:
All beasts, and birds, the groves and forests range,
To fill all corners of this round Exchange,
Till thou (dear Night, O goddess of most worth)
Lett'st thy sweet seas of golden humour forth ;
And eagle-like dost with thy starry wings
Beat in the fowls and beasts to Somnus' lodgings
And haughty Day to the infernal deep,
Proclaiming silence, study, ease, and sleep.
All things before thy forces put in rout,
Retiring where the morning fired them out.

So to the chaos of our first descent
(All days of honour and of virtue spent)
We basely make retreat, and are no less
Than huge impolish'd heaps of filthiness.
Men's faces glitter, and their hearts are black,
But thou (great mistress of heaven's gloomy rack)
Art black in face, and glitter'st in thy heart.
There is thy glory, riches, force, and art;
Opposed earth beats black and blue thy face
And often doth thy heart itself deface,
For spite that to thy virtue-famed train,
All the choice worthies that did ever reign
In eldest age, were still preferr'd by Jove,
Esteeming that due honour to his love.
There shine they: not to seamen guides alone,
But sacred precedents to every one.
There fix'd for ever, when the day is driven,
Almost four hundred times a year from heaven.
In hell then let her sit, and never rise,
Till morns leave blushing at her cruelties.

Meanwhile, accept, as followers of thy train
(Our better parts aspiring to thy reign),
Virtues obscured and banished the day,
With all the glories of this spongy sway,
Prison'd in flesh, and that poor flesh in bands
Of stone and steel, chief flowers of virtue's garlands.

O then most tender fortress of our woes,
That bleeding lie in virtue's overthrows,
Hating the whoredom of this painted light :
Raise thy chaste daughters, ministers of right,
The dreadful and the just Eumenides,
And let them wreak the wrongs of our disease,
Drowning the world in blood, and stain the skies
With their spilt souls, made drunk with tyrannies.

Fall, Hercules, from heaven, in tempests hurl'd,
And cleanse this beastly stable of the world:
Or bend thy brazen bow against the sun,
As in Tartessus, when thou hadst begun
Thy task of oxen: heat in more extremes
Than thou wouldst suffer, with his envious beams.
Now make him leave the world to Night and dreams.

Never were virtue's labours so envied
As in this light: shoot, shoot, and stoop his pride.
Suffer no more his lustful rays to get
The earth with issue: let him still be set
In Somnus' thickets: bound about the brows,
With pitchy vapours, and with ebon boughs.

Rich-taper'd sanctuary of the blest,
Palace of ruth, made all of tears, and rest,
To thy black shades and desolation
I consecrate my life; and living moan,
Where furies shall for ever fighting be,
And adders hiss the world for hating me,
Foxes shall bark, and night-ravens belch in groans,
And owls shall halloo my confusions:
There will I furnish up my funeral bed,
Strew'd with the bones and relics of the dead.
Atlas shall let th' Olympic burthen fall,
To cover my untombed face withal.
And when as well the matter of our kind,
As the material substance of the mind,
Shall cease their revolutions, in abode
Of such impure and ugly period,
As the old essence and insensive prime:
Then shall the ruins of the fourfold time,
Turn'd to that lump (as rapting torrents rise),
For ever murmur forth my miseries.

Ye living spirits then, if any live,
Whom like extremes do like affections give,
Shun, shun this cruel light, and end your thrall,
In these soft shades of sable funeral:
From whence with ghosts whom vengeance holds from rest,
Dog-fiends and monsters haunting the distressed,
As men whose parents tyranny hath slain,
Whose sisters rape, and bondage do sustain.
But you that ne'er had birth, nor ever proved,
How dear a blessing 'tis to be beloved,
Whose friends' idolatrous desire of gold,
To scorn and ruin have your freedom sold :
Whose virtues feel all this, and show your eyes,
Men made of Tartar, and of villanies.
Aspire th' extraction, and the quintessence
Of all the joys in earth's circumference:
With ghosts, fiends, monsters: as men robb'd and rack'd,
Murther'd in life: from shades with shadows black'd :
Thunder your wrongs, your miseries and hells,
And with the dismal accents of your knells
Revive the dead, and make the living die
In ruth and terror of your tortury :
Still all the power of art into your groans,
Scorning your trivial and remissive moans,
Compact of fiction, and hyperboles
(Like wanton mourners cloy'd with too much ease),
Should leave the glasses of the hearers' eyes
Unbroken, counting all but vanities.
But paint, or else create in serious truth,
A body figured to your virtues' ruth,
That to the sense may show what damned sin,
For your extremes this chaos tumbles in.
But woe is wretched me, without a name :
Virtue feeds scorn, and noblest honour, shame :
Pride bathes in tears of poor submission,
And makes his soul the purple he puts on.

Kneel then with me, fall worm-like on the ground,
And from th' infectious dunghill of this round,
From men's brass wits and golden foolery,
Weep, weep your souls, into felicity:
Come to this house of mourning, serve the Night,
To whom pale Day (with whoredom soaked quite)
Is but a drudge, selling her beauty's use
To rapes, adulteries, and to all abuse.
Her labours feast imperial Night with sports,
Where loves are Christmass'd, with all pleasure's sorts;
And whom her fugitive and far-shot rays
Disjoin, and drive into ten thousand ways,
Night's glorious mantle wraps in safe abodes,
And frees their necks from servile labour's loads:
Her trusty shadows succour men dismay'd,
Whom Day's deceitful malice hath betray'd:
From the silk vapours of her ivory port,
Sweet Protean dreams she sends of every sort :
Some taking forms of princes, to persuade
Of men deject, we are their equals made,
Some clad in habit of deceased friends,
For whom we mourn'd, and now have wish'd amends ;
And some (dear favour) lady-like attired,
With pride of beauty's full meridian fired:
Who pity our contempts, revive our hearts;
For wisest ladies love the inward parts.

If these be dreams, even so are all things else,
That walk this round by heavenly sentinels :
But from Night's port of horn she greets our eyes
With graver dreams inspired with prophecies,
Which oft presage to us succeeding chances,
We proving that awake, they show in trances.
If these seem likewise vain, or nothing are,
Vain things, or nothing come to virtue's share ;
For nothing more than dreams with us she finds :
Then since all pleasures vanish like the winds,
And that most serious actions not respecting
The second light, are worth but the neglecting,
Since day, or light, in any quality,
For earthly uses do but serve the eye ;
And since the eye's most quick and dangerous use,
Enflames the heart, and learns the soul abuse,
Since mournings are preferred to banquetings,
And they reach heaven, bred under sorrow's wings ;
Since Night brings terror to our frailties still,
And shameless Day, doth marble us in ill.

All you possess'd with indepressed spirits,
Endued with nimble, and aspiring wits,
Come consecrate with me, to sacred Night
Your whole endeavours, and detest the light.
Sweet Peace's richest crown is made of stars,
Most certain guides of honour'd mariners,
No pen can anything eternal write,
That is not steep'd in humour of the Night.

Hence beasts, and birds to caves and bushes then,
And welcome Night, ye noblest heirs of men,
Hence Phoebus to thy glassy strumpet's bed,
And never more let Themis' daughters spread
The golden harness on thy rosy horse,
But in close thickets run thy oblique course.

See now ascends, the glorious bride of brides,
Nuptials, and triumphs, glittering by her sides,
Juno and Hymen do her train adorn,
Ten thousand torches round about them borne:
Dumb silence mounted on the Cyprian star,
With becks rebukes the winds before his car,
Where she advanced ; beats down with cloudy mace,
The feeble light to black Saturnius' palace :
Behind her, with a brace of silver hinds,
In ivory chariot, swifter than the winds,
Great Hyperion's horned daughter drawn.
Enchantress-like deck'd in disparent lawn,
Circled with charms and incantations,
That ride huge spirits, and outrageous passions :
Music, and mood, she loves, but love she hates
(As curious ladies do, their public cates).
This train, with meteors, comets, lightenings,
The dreadful presence of our empress sings:
Which grant for ever (O eternal Night)
Till virtue flourish in the light of light.