Sic, O sic fiat! læto exultate triumpho, Terra ferax, mare fluctisonum, resonabilis Echo: Vivant, æternum vivant, pia numina, fratres! Vivant, Vivant! The [h]umblest servant of your sacred Majesty, _John Marston_. [615] From Royal MSS. 18A xxxi. (British Museum). [616] MS. "juvenibus_que_"--an unmetrical reading. [617] MS. "Hi." [618] MS. "Tridentifere." [619] MS. "pleno fraterna." [620] "In MS. legitur, Neptunus, Eolus, Jupiter; Monosyllaba hæc duo interposita metrum ad iambicos Marstonianos (non Horatianos, fatemur) restituunt."--_Halliwell._ VERSES BY MARSTON. From Sir Robert Chester's _Love's Martyr_,[621] 1601. _A Narration and Description of a most exact wondrous Creature, arising out of the Phoenix and Turtle-Dove's ashes._ O, 'twas a moving Epicedium! Can fire, can time, can blackest fate consume So rare creation? No, 'tis thwart to sense; Corruption quakes to touch such excellence; Nature exclaims for justice, justice fate,-- Ought into nought can never remigrate. Then look; for see what glorious issue, brighter Than clearest fire, and beyond faith far whiter Than Dian's tier, now springs from yonder flame! Let me stand numb'd with wonder; never came 10 So strong amazement on astonish'd eye As this, this measureless pure rarity. Lo, now, th' extracture of Divinest essence, The soul of Heaven's laboured quintessence, (Pæans to Phoebus!) your dear lover's death Takes sweet creation and all-blessing breath. What strangeness is't, that from the Turtle's ashes Assumes such form, whose splendour clearer flashes Than mounted Delius? Tell me, genuine muse! Now yield your aids, you spirits that infuse 20 A sacred rapture, light my weaker eye, Raise my invention on swift fantasy; That whilst of this same Metaphysical, God, man, nor woman, but elix'd of all, My labouring thoughts with strainèd ardour sing, My muse may mount with an uncommon wing. _The Description of this Perfection._ Dares then thy too audacious sense Presume define that boundless _Ens_, That amplest thought transcendeth? O yet vouchsafe, my muse, to greet That wondrous rareness, in whose sweet All praise begins and endeth. Divinest Beauty! that was slightest, That adorn'd this wondrous Brightest, Which had nought to be corrupted. In this perfection had no mean; 10 To this earth's purest was unclean, Which virtue even instructed. By it all beings deck'd and stainèd, Ideas that are idly feignèd Only here subsist invested; Dread not to give strain'd praise at all, No speech is hyperbolical To this Perfection blessèd.