Beaumont and Fletcher's Works, Vol. 10 of 10Fletcher, John
General
Beaumont and Fletcher's Works, Vol. 10 of 10
Fletcher, John
English drama
_You that can look through Heaven, and tell the Stars,_
_Observe their kind conjunctions, and their wars;_
_Find out new Lights, and give them where you please,_
_To those men honors, pleasures, to those ease;_
_You that are God's Surveyers, and can show_
_How far, and when, and why the wind doth blow;_
_Know all the charges of the dreadful thunder,_
_And when it will shoot over, or fall under:_
_Tell me, by all your Art I conjure ye,_
_Yes, and by truth, what shall become of me?_
_Find out my Star, if each one, as you say,_
_Have his peculiar Angel, and his way;_
_Observe my fate, next fall into your dreams,_
_Sweep clean your houses, and new line your Sceames,_
_Then say your worst: or have I none at all?_
_Or is it burnt out lately? or did fall?_
_Or am I poor? not able, no full flame?_
_My Star, like me, unworthy of a name?_
_Is it your Art can only work on those,_
_That deal with dangers, dignities, and cloaths?_
_With Love, or new Opinions? you all lye,_
_A Fish-wife hath a fate, and so have I,_
_But far above your finding; he that gives,_
_Out of his providence, to all that lives,_
_And no man knows his treasure, no, not you:_
_He that made_ Egypt _blind, from whence you grew_
_Scabby and lowzie, that the world might see_
_Your Calculations are as blind as ye:_
_He that made all the Stars, you daily read,_
_And from thence filtch a knowledge how to feed;_
_Hath hid this from you, your conjectures all_
_Are drunken things, not how, but when they fall:_
_Man is his own Star, and the soul that can_
_Render an honest, and a perfect man,_
_Commands all light, all influence, all fate,_
_Nothing to him falls early, or too late._
_Our Acts our Angels are, or good or ill,_
_Our fatal shadows that walk by us still,_
_And when the Stars are labouring, we believe_
_It is not that they govern, but they grieve_
_For stuborn ignorance; all things that are_
_Made for our general uses, are at war,_
_Even we among our selves, and from the strife,_
_Tour first unlike opinions got a life._
_Oh man! thou Image of thy Makers good,_
_What canst thou fear, when breathed into thy bloud,_
_His spirit is, that built thee? what dull sence_
_Makes thee suspect, in need, that Providence?_
_Who made the morning, and who plac'd the light_
_Guide to thy labours? who call'd up the night,_
_And bid her fall upon thee like sweet showers_
_In hollow murmurs, to lock up thy powers?_
_Who gave thee knowledge, who so trusted thee,_
_To let thee grow so near himself, the Tree?_
_Must he then be distrusted? shall his frame_
_Discourse with him, why thus, and thus I am?_
_He made the Angels thine, thy fellows all,_
_Nay, even thy servants, when Devotions call._
_Oh! canst thou be so stupid then, so dim,_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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