And lo the Sea that fleets about the land And like a girdle clips her solid waist, Music and measure both doth understand. For his great crystal eye is always cast Up to the Moon, and on her fixed fast; And as she danceth in her pallid sphere, So danceth he about the centre here. This is lofty poetry, and one cannot but regret that the poet should have put it in the mouth of so unworthy a person as one of Penelope's suitors, though the best of them has been chosen. The moral application which he makes to matrimony conveys a wholesome lesson: If they whom sacred love hath link'd in one, Do, as they dance, in all their course of life; Never shall burning grief, nor bitter moan, Nor factious difference, nor unkind strife, Arise betwixt the husband and the wife; For whether forth, or back, or round he go, As the man doth, so must the woman do. What if, by often interchange of place Sometimes the woman gets the upper hand? That is but done for more delightful grace; For on that part she doth not ever stand; But as the measure's law doth her command, She wheels about, and ere the dance doth end, Into her former place she doth transcend.[8] [Footnote 8: It is remarkable that Sir John Davies should have written this Poem, which he entitled the Orchestra, and that very remarkable and beautiful one on the Immortality of the Soul.] This poem of Sir John Davies's could not have been unknown to Burton, for Burton read every thing; but it must have escaped his memory, otherwise he who delighted in quotations and quoted so well, would have introduced some of his stanzas, when he himself was treating of the same subject and illustrated it with some of the same similitudes. “The Sun and Moon, some say,” (says he) “dance about the earth; the three upper planets about the Sun as their centre, now stationary, now direct, now retrograde, now _in apogæo_, then in _perigæo_, now swift, then slow; occidental, oriental, they turn round, jump and trace [symbol for venus] and [symbol for mercury] about the Sun, with those thirty-three _Maculæ_ or Burbonian planets, _circa Solem saltantes cytharedum_, saith Fromundus. Four Medicean stars dance about Jupiter, two Austrian about Saturn, &c. and all belike to the music of the spheres.” Sir Thomas Browne had probably this passage in his mind, when he said “acquaint thyself with the _choragium_ of the stars.”