History & Politics

On ye Gunpowder-Treason (I)

by Richard Crashaw 1613–1649

From Complete Works, ed. Grosart (1872), vol. I

History & Politics

I sing Impiety beyond a name:
Who stiles it any thinge, knowes not the same.
Dull, sluggish Ile! what more than lethargy
Gripes thy cold limbes soe fast, thou canst not fly,
And start from of[f] thy center? hath Heauen's loue
Stuft thee soe full with blisse, thou can'st not moue?
If soe, oh Neptune, may she farre be throwne
By thy kind armes to a kind world vnknowne:
Lett her surviue this day, once mock her fate,
And shee's an island truely fortunate.
Lett not my suppliant breath raise a rude storme
To wrack my suite: O keepe Pitty warme
In thy cold breast, and yearely on this day
Mine eyes a tributary streame shall pay.
Dos't thou not see an exhalation
Belch'd from the sulph'ry lungs of Phlegeton?
A living comet, whose pestiferous breath
Adulterates the virgin aire? with death
It laboures: stif'led Nature's in a swound,
Ready to dropp into a chaos, round
About horror's displai'd; It doth portend,
That earth a shoure of stones to heauen shall send,
And crack the christall globe; the milkly streame
Shall in a siluer raine runne out, whose creame
Shall choake the gaping earth, wch then shall fry
In flames, & of a burning feuer dy.
That wonders may in fashion be, not rare,
A Winter's thunder with a groane shall scare,
And rouze the sleepy ashes of the dead,
Making them skip out of their dusty bed.
Those twinckling eyes of heauen, wch eu'n now shin'd,
Shall with one flash of lightning be struck blind.
The sea shall change his youthfull greene, & slide
Along the shore in a graue purple tide.
It does praesage, that a great Prince shall climbe,
And gett a starry throne before his time.
To vsher in this shoale of prodigies,
Thy infants, Aeolus, will not suffice.
Noe, noe, a giant wind, that will not spare
To tosse poore men like dust into the aire;
Justle downe mountaines: Kings courts shall be sent,
Like bandied balles, into the firmament.
Atlas shall be tript vpp, Ioue's gate shall feele
The weighty rudenes of his boysterous heele.
All this it threats, & more: Horror, that flies
To th' empyraeum of all miseries.
Most tall hyperbole's cannot descry it;
Mischeife, that scornes expression should come nigh it.
All this it only threats: the meteor ly'd;
It was exhal'd, a while it hung, & dy'd.
Heauen kickt the monster downe: downe it was throwne,
The fall of all things it praesag'd, its oune
It quite forgott: the fearfull earth gaue way,
And durst not touch it, heere it made noe stay.
At last it stopt at Pluto's gloomy porch;
He streightway lighted vpp his pitchy torch.
Now to those toiling soules it giues its light,
Wch had the happines to worke ith' night.
They banne the blaze, & curse its curtesy,
For lighting them vnto their misery.
Till now Hell was imperfect; it did need
Some rare choice torture; now 'tis Hell indeed.
Then glutt thy dire lampe with the warmest blood,
That runnes in violett pipes: none other food
It can digest, then watch the wildfire well,
Least it breake forth, & burne thy sooty cell.

MLA

Crashaw, Richard. “On ye Gunpowder-Treason (I).” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/crashaw/121/.

Chicago

Crashaw, Richard. “On ye Gunpowder-Treason (I).” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/crashaw/121/.

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