Social Commentaries

The Authour in Prayse of His Precedent Poem

by John Marston 1575?–1634

From The Metamorphosis of Pigmalions Image and Certaine Satyres (1598)

Social Commentaries

NOw Rufus, by old Glebrons fearefull mace
Hath not my Muse deseru'd a worthy place?
Come come Luxurio, crowne my head with Bayes,
Which like a Paphian, wantonly displayes
The Salaminian titillations,
Which tickle vp our leud Priapians.
Is not my pen compleate? are not my lines
Right in the swaggering humor of these times?
O sing Peana to my learned Muse.
Io bis dicite. Wilt thou refuse?
Doe not I put my Mistres in before?
And pitiously her gracious ayde implore?
Doe not I flatter, call her wondrous faire?
Vertuous, diuine most debonaire?
Hath not my Goddesse in the vaunt-gard place,
The leading of my lines theyr plumes to grace?
And then ensues my stanzaes, like odd bands
Of voluntaries, and mercenarians:
Which like Soldados of our warlike age,
March rich bedight in warlike equipage:
Glittering in dawbed lac'd accoustrements,
And pleasing sutes of loues habiliments.
Yet puffie as Dutch hose they are within,
Faint, and white liuer'd, as our gallants bin:
Patch'd like a beggars cloake, and run as sweet
As doth a tumbrell in the paued street.
And in the end, (the end of loue I wot)
Pigmalion hath a iolly boy begot.
So Labeo did complaine his loue was stone,
Obdurate, flinty, so relentlesse none:
Yet Lynceus knowes, that in the end of this,
He wrought as strange a metamorphosis.
Ends not my Poem then surpassing ill?
Come, come, Augustus, crowne my laureat quill.
Now by the whyps of Epigramatists,
Ile not be lasht for my dissembling shifts.
And therefore I vse Popelings discipline,
Lay ope my faults to Mastigophoros eyne:
Censure my selfe, fore others me deride
And scoffe at mee, as if I had deni'd
Or thought my Poem good, when that I see
My lines are froth, my stanzaes saplesse be.
Thus hauing rail'd against my selfe a while,
Ile snarle at those, which doe the world beguile
With masked showes. Ye changing Proteans list,
And tremble at a barking Satyrist.

MLA

Marston, John. “The Authour in Prayse of His Precedent Poem.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/marston/3/.

Chicago

Marston, John. “The Authour in Prayse of His Precedent Poem.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/marston/3/.

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