An Execration upon Vulcan

And why to me this? thou lame Lord of Fire!
What had I done that might call on thine ire?
Or urge thy greedy flames thus to devour
So many my years' labours in an hour?
I ne'er attempted aught against thy life;
Nor made least line of love to thy loose wife;
Or in remembrance of thy affront and scorn,
With clowns and tradesmen, kept thee clos'd in horn.
'Twas Jupiter that hurl'd thee headlong down,
And Mars that gave thee a lantern for a crown.
Was it because thou wert of old denied,
By Jove, to have Minerva for thy bride;
That since, thou tak'st all envious care and pain
To ruin every issue of the brain?
Had I wrote treason here, or heresy,
Imposture, witchcraft, charms, or blasphemy;
I had deserv'd then thy consuming looks,
Perhaps to have been burned with my books.
But, on thy malice, tell me, Didst thou spy
Any least loose or scurril paper lie
Conceal'd, or kept there, that was fit to be,
By thy own vote, a sacrifice to thee?
Did I there wound the honour of the crown,
Or tax the glory of the church, or gown?
Itch to defame the state, or brand the times,
And myself most, in lewd self-boasting rhymes?
If none of these, then why this fire? Or find
A cause before, or leave me one behind.
Had I compiled from Amadis de Gaul,
The Esplandians, Arthurs, Palmerins, and all
The learned library of Don Quixote,
And so some goodlier monster had begot;
Or spun out riddles, or weav'd fifty tomes
Of Logographes, or curious Palindromes,
Or pump'd for those hard trifles, Anagrams,
Or Eteostics, or your finer flams
Of eggs, and halberds, cradles, and a herse,
A pair of scissars, and a comb in verse;
Acrostichs, and telestichs on jump names,
Thou then hadst had some colour for thy flames,
The Tristrams, Lancelots, Turpins, and the Peers,
All the mad Rolands, and sweet Olivers;
To Merlin's marvels, and his Cabal's loss,
With the chimera of the Rosie-cross,
Their seals, their characters, hermetic rings,
Their jem of riches, and bright stone that brings
Invisibility, and strength, and tongues;
The art of kindling the true coal by Lungs;
With Nicolas' Pasquils, Meddle with your match,
And the strong lines that do the times so catch;
Or captain Pamphlet's horse and foot, that sally
Upon the Exchange still, out of Pope's-head alley;
The weekly courants, with Paul's seal; and all
The admired discourses of the prophet Ball.
These, hadst thou pleas'd either to dine or sup,
Had made a meal for Vulcan to lick up.
But, in my desk, what was there to accite
So ravenous and vast an appetite?
I dare not say a body, but some parts
There were of search, and mastery in the arts.
All the old Venusine, in poetry,
And lighted by the Stagerite, could spy,
Was there made English; with a grammar too,
To teach some that their nurses could not do,
The purity of Language; and, among
The rest, my journey into Scotland sung,
With all the adventures: three books, not afraid
To speak the fate of the Sicilian maid,
To our own ladies; and in story there
Of our fifth Henry, eight of his nine year;
Wherein was oil, beside the succours spent,
Which noble Carew, Cotton, Selden lent:
And twice twelve years stored up humanity,
With humble gleanings in divinity;
After the fathers, and those wiser guides,
Whom faction had not drawn to study sides.
How in these ruins, Vulcan, dost thou lurk,
All soot and embers! odious as thy work!
I now begin to doubt if ever Grace,
Or goddess, could be patient of thy face.
Thou woo Minerva! or to wit aspire!
'Cause thou canst halt with us in arts and fire!
Son of the Wind! for so thy mother, gone
With lust, conceiv'd thee; father thou hadst none.
When thou wert born, and that thou look'dst at best,
She durst not kiss, but flung thee from her breast;
And so did Jove, who ne'er meant thee his cup.
No marie the clowns of Lemnos took thee up!
For none but smiths would have made thee a god.
Some alchemist there may be yet, or odd
'Squire of the squibs, against the pageant day,
May to thy name a Vulcanale say;
And for it lose his eyes with gun-powder,
As th' other may his brains with quicksilver.—
Well fare the wise men yet, on the Bank-side,
My friends, the watermen! they could provide
Against thy fury, when to serve their needs,
They made a Vulcan of a sheaf of reeds,
Whom they durst handle in their holiday coats,
And safely trust to dress, not burn their boats.
But, O those reeds! thy mere disdain of them,
Made thee beget that cruel stratagem.
Which some are pleased to style but thy mad prank,
Against the Globe, the glory of the Bank:
Which, though it were the fort of the whole parish,
Flank'd with a ditch, and forced out of a marish,
I saw with two poor chambers taken in,
And razed; ere thought could urge this might have been!
See the World's ruins! nothing but the piles
Left, and wit since to cover it with tiles.
The brethren they straight nosed it out for news,
'Twas verily some relict of the stews;
And this a sparkle of that fire let loose,
That was raked up in the Winchestrian goose,
Bred on the Bank in time of Popery,
When Venus there maintain'd the mystery.
But others fell, with that conceit, by the ears,
And cried it was a threatning to the bears,
And that accursed ground, the Paris-garden:
Nay, sigh'd a sister, Venus' nun, Kate Arden,
Kindled the fire! — but then, did one return,
No fool would his own harvest spoil or burn!—
If that were so, thou rather wouldst advance
The place that was thy wife's inheritance.
O no, cried all, Fortune, for being a whore,
Scap'd not his justice any jot the more:
He burnt that idol of the Revels too.
Nay, let Whitehall with revels have to do,
Though but in dances, it shall know his power;
There was a judgment shewn too in an hour.
He is right Vulcan still! he did not spare
Troy, though it were so much his Venus' care.
Fool, wilt thou let that in example come?
Did not she save from thence to build a Rome?
And what hast thou done in these petty spites,
More than advanced the houses and their rites?
I will not argue thee, from those, of guilt,
For they were burnt but to be better built:
'Tis true, that in thy wish they were destroy'd,
Which thou hast only vented, not enjoy'd.
So would'st thou've run upon the rolls by stealth,
And didst invade part of the common-wealth,
In those records, which, were all chronicles gone,
Would be remembered by Six Clerks to one.
But say all six, good men, what answer ye?
Lies there no writ out of the Chancery
Against this Vulcan? no injunction,
No order, no decree? — though we be gone
At common-law; methinks, in his despite,
A court of equity should do us right.
But to confine him to the brew-houses,
The glass-house, dye-fats, and their furnaces;
To live in sea-coal, and go forth in smoke;
Or, lest that vapour might the city choak,
Condemn him to the brick-kilns, or some hill-
Foot, (out in Sussex,) to an iron mill;
Or in small faggots have him blaze about
Vile taverns, and the drunkards piss him out;
Or in the Bellman's lanthorn, like a spy,
Burn to a snuff, and then stink out and die:
I could invent a sentence, yet were worse;
But I'll conclude all in a civil curse.
Pox on your flameship, Vulcan! if it be
To all as fatal as't hath been to me,
And to Paul's steeple; which was unto us
'Bove all your fire- works had at Ephesus,
Or Alexandria; and, though a divine
Loss, remains yet as unrepair'd as mine.
Would you had kept your forge at Ætna still!
And there made swords, bills, glaves, and arms your fill:
Maintained the trade at Bilboa, or elsewhere,
Struck in at Milan with the cutlers there;
Or staid but where the friar and you first met,
Who from the devil's arse did guns beget;
Or fixt in the Low Countries, where you might
On both sides do your mischief with delight:
Blow up and ruin, mine and countermine,
Make your petards and granades, all your fine
Engines of murder, and enjoy the praise
Of massacring mankind so many ways!
We ask your absence here, we all love peace,
And pray the fruits thereof and the encrease;
So doth the king, and most of the king's men
That have good places: therefore once agen,
Pox on thee, Vulcan! thy Pandora's pox,
And all the ills that flew out of her box
Light on thee! or, if those plagues will not do,
Thy wife's pox on thee, and Bess Broughton's too!