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MADAM—
Man to God’s image, Eve to man’s was made, | |
| Nor find we that God breathed a soul in her; | |
| Canons will not Church functions you invade, | |
| Nor laws to civil office you prefer. | |
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| Who vagrant transitory comets sees, | 5 |
| Wonders because they’re rare; but a new star, | |
| Whose motion with the firmament agrees, | |
| Is miracle; for there, no new things are. | |
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| In woman so perchance mild innocence | |
| A seldom comet is; but active good | 10 |
| A miracle, which reason ’scapes, and sense; | |
| For art and nature this in them withstood. | |
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| As such a star the Magi 1 led to view | |
| The manger-cradled infant, God below, | |
| By virtue’s beams—by fame derived from you— | 15 |
| May apt souls—and the worst may—virtue know. | |
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| If the world’s age and death be argued well | |
| By the sun’s fall, which now towards earth doth bend, | |
| Then we might fear that virtue, since she fell | |
| So low as woman, should be near her end. | 20 |
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| But she’s not stoop’d, but raised; exiled by men | |
| She fled to heaven, that’s heavenly things, that’s you; | |
| She was in all men thinly scatter’d then, | |
| But now a mass 2 contracted in a few. | |
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| She gilded us, but you are gold; and she | 25 |
| Informed us, but transubstantiates you. 3 | |
| Soft dispositions, which ductile be, | |
| Elixirlike, she makes not clean, but new. | |
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| Though you a wife’s and mother’s name retain, | |
| ’Tis not as woman, for all are not so; | 30 |
| But virtue, having made you virtue, is fain | |
| To adhere in these names, her and you to show. | |
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| Else, being alike pure, we should neither see; | |
| As, water being into air rarified, | |
| Neither appear, till in one cloud they be, | 35 |
| So, for our sakes, you do low names abide. | |
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| Taught by great constellations—which being framed | |
| Of the most stars take low names, Crab and Bull, | |
| When single planets by the gods are named— | |
| You covet not great names, of great things full. | 40 |
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| So you, as woman, one doth comprehend, | |
| And in the veil 4 of kindred others see; | |
| To some you are reveal’d, as in a friend, | |
| And as a virtuous prince far off to me. | |
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| To whom, because from you all virtues flow, | 45 |
| And ’tis not none, to dare contemplate you, | |
| I, which do so, as your true subject owe | |
| Some tribute for that; so these lines are due. | |
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| If you can think these flatteries, they are, | |
| For then your judgment is below my praise. | 50 |
| If they were so, oft, flatteries work as far | |
| As counsels, and as far th’ endeavour raise. | |
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| So my ill, reaching you, might there grow good, | |
| But I remain a poison’d fountain still; | |
| And not your beauty, virtue, knowledge, blood | 55 |
| Are more above all flattery, than my will. | |
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| And if I flatter any, ’tis not you, | |
| But my own judgment, who did long ago | |
| Pronounce, that all these praises should be true, | |
| And virtue should your beauty and birth outgrow. | 60 |
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| Now that my prophecies are all fulfill’d, | |
| Rather than God should not be honour’d too, | |
| And all these gifts confessed, which He instill’d, | |
| Yourself were bound to say that which I do. | |
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| So I but your Recorder am in this, | 65 |
| Or mouth, and Speaker 5 of the universe, | |
| A ministerial notary, for ’tis | |
| Not I, but you and fame, that make this verse. | |
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| I was your prophet in your younger days, | |
| And now your chaplain, God in you to praise. | 70 |
