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Title: Another [The Centaur, Syren, I Foregoe]
Author: Richard Lovelace [
More Titles by Lovelace]
The Centaur, Syren, I foregoe;
Those have been sung, and lowdly too:
Nor of the mixed Sphynx Ile write,
Nor the renown'd Hermaphrodite.
Behold! this huddle doth appear
Of horses, coach and charioteer,
That moveth him by traverse law,
And doth himself both drive and draw;
Then, when the Sunn the south doth winne,
He baits him hot in his own inne.
I heard a grave and austere clark
Resolv'd him pilot both and barque;
That, like the fam'd ship of TREVERE,
Did on the shore himself lavere:
Yet the authentick do beleeve,
Who keep their judgement in their sleeve,
That he is his own double man,
And sick still carries his sedan:
Or that like dames i'th land of Luyck,
He wears his everlasting huyck.<1>
But banisht, I admire his fate,
Since neither ostracisme of state,
Nor a perpetual exile,
Can force this virtue, change his soyl:
For, wheresoever he doth go,
He wanders with his country too.
Note:
<1> i.q. HUKE. "Huke," says Minshen, "is a mantle such as women use in Spaine, Germanie, and the Low Countries, when they goe abroad." Lovelace clearly adopts the word for the sake of the metre; otherwise he might have chosen a better one.
[The end]
Richard Lovelace's poem: Another [The Centaur, Syren, I Foregoe]
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