abour dwells.
How[97] young heads count to build on had I wist.
Conscience but few respect, all hunt for gain:
Except the camel have his provender
Hung at his mouth, he will not travel on.
Tyresias to Narcissus promised
Much prosperous hap and many golden days,
If of his beauty he no knowledge took.
Knowledge breeds pride, pride breedeth discontent:
Black discontent, thou urgest to revenge:
Revenge opes not her ears to poor men's prayers.
That dolt destruction is she without doubt,
That hales her forth and feedeth her with nought.
Simplicity and plainness, you I love!
Hence, double diligence, thou mean'st deceit:
Those that now serpent-like creep on the ground,
And seem to eat the dust, they crouch so low--
If they be disappointed of their prey,
Most traitorously will trace their nails and sting.
Yea, such as, like[98] the lapwing, build their nests
In a man's dung, come up by drudgery,
Will be the first that, like that foolish bird,
Will follow him with yelling and false cries.
Well[99] sung a shepherd, that now sleeps in skies,[100]
"Dumb swans do love, and not vain chattering pies."
In mountains, poets say, Echo is hid,
For her deformity and monstrous shape:
Those mountains are the houses of great lords,
Where Stentor, with his hundred voices, sounds
A hundred trumps at once with rumour fill'd.
A woman they imagine her to be,
Because that sex keep nothing close they hear;
And that's the reason magic writers frame[101]
There are more witches women, than of men;
For women generally, for the most part,
Of secrets more desirous are than men[102],
Which having got, they have no power to hold.
In these times had Echo's first fathers liv'd,
No woman, but a man, she had been feign'd
(Though women yet will want no news to prate);
For men (mean men), the scum and dross of all,
Will talk and babble of they know not what,
Upbraid, deprave, and taunt they care not whom.
Surmises pass for sound approved truths;
Familiarity and conference,
That were the sinews of societies,
Are now for underminings only us'd;
And novel wits, that love none but themselves,
Think wisdom's height as falsehood slyly couch'd,
Seeking each other to o'erthrow his mate.
O friendship! thy old temple is defac'd:
Embracing envy,[103] guileful courtesy,
Hath overgrown fraud-wanting honesty.
Examples live but in the idle schools:
Sinon bears all the sway in princes' courts.
Sickness, be thou my soul's physician;
Bring the apothecary Death wit