PLANGUS Alas, how long this pilgrimage doth last? What greater ills have now the heavens in store, To couple coming harms with sorrows past? Long since my voice is hoarse, and throat is sore, With cries to skies, and courses to the ground, But more I plain, I feel my woes the more. Ah, where was first that cruel cunning found, To frame of earth, a vessel of the mind, Where it should be to self-destruction bound? What needed so high spirits, such mansions blind? Or wrapped in flesh what do they here obtain. But glorious name of wretched human kind? Balls to the stars, and thralls to Fortune’s reign; Turn’d from themselves, infected with their rage, Where death is fear’d, and life is held with pain, Like players plac’d to fill a filthy stage, Where change of thoughts one fool to other shows, And all but jests, save only sorrow’s rage. The child feels that, the man that feeling knows, Which cries first born, the presage of his life, Where wit but serves, to have true taste of woes. A shop of shame, a book where blots be rife, This body is, this body so compos’d, As in itself to nourish mortal strife: So divers be the elements dispos’d. In this weak work, that it can never be Made uniform to any state repos’d. Grief only makes his wretched state to see (Even like a top which nought but whipping moves) This man, this talking beast, this walking tree, Grief is the stone which finest judgments proves: For who grieves not, hath but a blockish brain, Since cause of grief no cause from life removes. BASILIUS How long wilt thou with mournful music stain The cheerful notes those pleasant places yield, Where all good haps a perfect state maintain? {188} PLANGUS Cursed be good haps, and cursed be they that build Their hopes on haps, and do not make despair For all those certain blows the surest shield. Shall I that saw Erona’s shining hair, Torn with her hands, and those same hands of snow With loss of purest blood themselves to tear? Shall I that saw those breasts, where beauties flow, Swelling with sighs, made pale with mind’s disease, And saw those eyes, those suns, such showers to show? Shall I whose ears her mournful words did seize, Her words in syrup laid of sweetest breath, Relent those thoughts which then did so displease? No, no: despair my daily lesson faith, And faith, although I seek my life to fly, Plangus must live to see Erona’s death. Plangus must live some help for her to try (Though in despair) for love so forceth me, Plangus doth live, and shall Erona die? Erona die? O heaven, if heaven there be, Hath all thy whirling course so small effect? Serve all thy starry eyes this shame to see? Let dolts in haste some altars fair erect To those high powers, which idly sit above, And virtue do in greatest need neglect.