The Forest

Edited by Colin Burrow

Introduction

The Forest was first printed in the folio of 1616, where it follows the Epigrams. Like the Epigrams, it is an artfully arranged collection of pieces, several of which had already appeared in print, and some of which date from about fifteen years before the volume’s publication. The epistle to the Countess of Rutland (Forest 12) was originally conceived as a new year’s gift in 1600, while versions of Forest 10 and 11 had been printed in Love’s Martyr in 1601. Forest 5 and 6 had been sung by the predatory Volpone to the unfortunate Celia in Volpone (1605). The collection contains no poem which can be firmly dated after 1612, but it is of course not impossible that undatable poems, such as ‘Drink to me only’, were composed or revised after this date. The likelihood, though, is that Jonson worked on it at roughly the same time as he was completing the Epigrams.

While the collection of Epigrams takes as its formal model the epigram books of Martial, The Forest looks to Statius for the animating principle of its organisation. Statius’s Silvae (‘Woods’) contains a mixture of panegyrics, epithalamia, consolations, and epigrams, which Statius presents as having been occasional pieces composed in some haste. The Latin word silva (‘wood’) and the English word ‘forest’ had many associations on which the collection plays (see A. Fowler, 1982). Silva could be used as an equivalent of the Greek ὕλη to mean ‘the raw material from which the world is fashioned’, but it is usually deployed in the rhetorical tradition to refer to fragmentary pieces or rough copies which were subsequently worked up for publication (Quintilian, 10.3.17–18). This view Scaliger (Poetices, 1561, 150) developed: for him, as for Statius, Silvae are poems thrown off in the heat, and collections of such pieces might contain a variety of genres, including panegyric, elegy, epigram, and consolation. The title might therefore both hint at grandeur (‘the matter from which the world is made’) and display modesty (‘these are occasional pieces worked up for publication’), as well as promising variety. Certainly Jonson’s preface to his posthumous collection The Underwood emphasizes the miscellaneity of the silva tradition (and in this he follows Gellius, Attic Nights, pref. 5–6). The word silva also carried a moral charge: a strong tradition of commentary associated the dark woods through which Aeneas travels in Aeneid 6.131 with moral error. This tradition, which derives from the early Virgilian commentator Servius, is of course registered in the selva oscura in which Dante’s wayfarer finds himself at the start of the Inferno. Although the one direct reference to ‘lust’s wild forest’ in poems from the collection occurs only in the version of Forest 10 originally sent to John Salusbury of Lleweni (See p. 00, line 19), the dark central poems of this collection, which deal with physical disease and sexual temptation, admit a strong element of moral threat to Jonson’s forest. These poems suggest that the further you go into a wood the darker its landscape becomes.

Other earlier poems in the collection hint that some of the literal associations of early modern English forests determined the choice and disposition of poems in the volume. A forest in England in the seventeenth century was not simply a wood, but was specifically a place set apart for royal sport. The allusions to hunting in ‘To Penshurst’ and ‘To Sir Robert Wroth’ remind readers of the collection that forests are also literal places in which noblemen can seek ease and entertainment, and from which they can produce the food, conviviality, and wealth which might sustain larger communities around them. The literal associations of the title reach at once their brightest and darkest point in the penultimate poem in the collection, in which logs – dead wood – blaze to celebrate Sir William Sidney’s birthday. There is a faint suggestion of the burning of souls after the Last Judgement in this highly critical poem of ostensive praise: in the course of the collection wood is gradually transformed from the growing trees which populate the Sidney estate at Penshurst into the raw material for both a warming and a warning. The Forest presents human life as a time of sport, of sustaining reciprocal exchanges between the nobility and their dependants, of danger, and ultimately of judgement. It presents poetry both as a raw material which can be hewn into order and as a potential source of moral guidance through a gloomy wood.

The collection makes frequent allusions to the family of Sir Philip Sidney (d. 1586), who was by 1616 widely regarded as the first English theoretical defender of the art of poetry and as the originator of a new wave of rhetorically refined and morally elevating versification. Allusions to the Sidney family flank the dark centre of The Forest. The casual mention of the ‘Sidney Oak’, which grows in the grounds of the family home of the Sidneys in Penshurst in Kent in Forest 2.13–14, grafts the life of Sir Philip Sidney into the woody metaphors that dominate the whole collection. Panegyrics on Sidney’s sister, the Countess of Rutland, and to Sir Robert Wroth (who married Sidney’s niece), and the final ode to Sidney’s nephew, Sir William Sidney, invite readers to meditate on how families reproduce their ancestral virtue, and on how poetic traditions grow and renew themselves after the death of their originator. One of Jonson’s most consistently voiced beliefs is that families should replicate the virtuous activity of their ancestors in order to remain truly noble, and the Sidney family is by no means exempt from this stringent requirement (see McCanles, 1992). At its darker moments this collection envisages the decline and biological death even of the line of Sir Philip Sidney. Sir Robert Wroth, who married Sidney’s niece, ran up massive debts, which may give a faint hint of bitterness to the conclusion of the poem addressed to him (‘when thy latest sand is spent / Thou mayst think life a thing but lent’, Forest 3.105–6), and Sir William Sidney, the addressee of the penultimate poem in the collection, having stabbed a schoolmaster, had shown no signs of emulating his uncle’s virtue. Both of these men were dead by the time the poems addressed to them appeared in print in 1616. Sir William had died at the age of twenty-two in 1612. Robert Wroth had died in 1614. His wife, Lady Mary Wroth (who was Sidney’s niece), was still alive, and furthermore was continuing the tradition of her uncle both by writing poems and, if Jonson is to be believed, by her virtuous life (Epigr. 103 and 105 and Und. 28; see Brennan, 1999). Significantly, she is not mentioned in this collection: indeed Jonson must have made a conscious decision to position Epigr. 105, which presents Lady Mary’s virtue as sufficient to revive all antiquity, among the epigrams to named members of the nobility rather than transplanting it to The Forest.

All of this means that The Forest increasingly qualifies the optimism of ‘To Penshurst’ (which presents Lady Lisle as fruitful, and her husband as the centre of a community of reciprocal gifts and favours) by focusing on the perishability of the Sidney line. By 1616 it was clear that Sir Philip’s sister, the Countess of Rutland, would not provide any immediate biological heirs to the family line, since her husband was known to be impotent. For this reason the printed version of Forest 12 is abruptly curtailed with ‘The rest is lost’ (the original ending, which survives in two manuscripts, is reproduced in the collation). This moment suggests an association between the physical fragility of human beings and the frailty of manuscript poetry. But at the same time it suggests a qualified optimism: that Jonson’s printed poem perpetuates the memory of the couple in a way that biological reproduction could not.

By the end of the collection it is not so much the virtue or the physical fecundity of the Sidney family which is presented as the means of continuing the legacy of Sir Philip: it is rather the mimetic and imitative powers of a poet, and specifically of Ben Jonson. The end of Forest 12 leaves it artfully uncertain as to whether it is the virtue of Jonson’s patroness or the vividness of Jonson’s poetry which transforms the Countess of Rutland into an image of virtue: ‘There, like a rich and golden pyramid, / Borne up by statues, shall I rear your head / Above your under-carvèd ornaments’ (83–5). The syntax here allows for a moment’s uncertainty, but it hints that the ‘rich and golden pyramid’ is Jonson’s art rather than the beauty of his patroness.

In the poem that follows the abruptly curtailed Forest 12, Katherine d’Aubigny, the wife of the patron in whose house Jonson lived for several years, is praised as an image of virtue to which the poet can simply hold up the mirror of art. The fact that his patroness was probably pregnant at the time of the poem’s composition gives to Jonson’s praise an added pulse of the life that seems to have all but died away from the Sidney dynasty by this stage in the collection.

The collection delicately implies that it is through a continuation of Sidney’s poetics by Ben Jonson, rather than through the conduct of his literal descendants, that his legacy will live on. In this respect The Forest both builds on and goes beyond the poems to named patrons in the Epigrams: it makes powerful implicit claims for Jonson’s artistry, and attempts to embed that artistry within a community of aristocratic patrons, from whom Jonson receives both images of virtue and material rewards, and to whom he returns images of virtue which are at once idealizing and admonitory. It is, as several critics in the 1980s first suggested, a volume crafted every bit as carefully as the Epigrams (see, e.g., A. Fowler, 1982; Kamholz, 1981; R. C. Newton, 1982). Like the Epigrams, this collection also makes use of the time lag between the original composition of the poems that it contains and their presentation in printed form. However, its attempts to turn the fragility of its human subjects into grounds for affirming the power of a poet go beyond anything in the earlier volume. It may be for this reason that The Forest also anticipates some of the emphasis on personal fragility which runs through Jonson’s later and more miscellaneous collection, The Underwood. It begins with a modest recusatio of love poetry, and ends with a direct address to God, in which the poet is represented as both humbled and aging. Fowler’s view of the collection as ‘a ladder of love, ascending to God’ (A. Fowler, 1982, 173) may make too much of a line of argument which is only sketched in the volume itself; but the collection leaves its readers with a strong impression that life means striving towards something beyond. The Forest is the high point of Jonson’s career as a poet of the book. In it he balances disparate elements within his own poetic oeuvre against each other: he combines a worldly aspiration to revive the spirit of Sidney with a humble recognition that for poems to function as exhortations to live well they need gods, patrons, and images of virtue.

Several poems from the collection (notably Forest 5, 6, and 9 to Celia) were favourites for transcription into manuscript miscellanies from the Caroline period, and sententious phrases from several more were selectively transcribed into commonplace books during the first half of the seventeenth century. No autograph manuscripts of poems from The Forest survive. Nonetheless, it is likely that Jonson presented manuscript copies of poems in the collection to their respective addressees, as he is known to have done with some of the Epigrams (43, 63, 91). It is possible, too, that Jonson did not limit manuscript circulation to the addressees of his poems: Forest 8 ‘To Sickness’ is one of a number of poems that survive in two closely related manuscript miscellanies from the early seventeenth century. These witnesses may partially record an early attempt, probably in the first decade of the seventeenth century, to circulate a verse-collection to a small, aristocratic audience; but the evidence for this is tantalizingly fragmentary. The texts in these manuscripts show that Jonson worked over the phrasing of the poems carefully before they were printed, and that he also thought carefully about how his now rather elderly poems would sound to his patrons in the changed circumstances of 1616. The most notable revision is the tactful omission from the printed version of the original ending of Forest 12, but other poems were also revised and rethought, some of them radically. In the first years of the seventeenth century Jonson circulated to the Salusbury family of Lleweni a version of the Forest 10 which differs so extensively from the printed version that it must be regarded as a separate work. This poem, along with an early version of ‘To Celia’ (Forest 9), is reproduced here after the main sequence of the collection as it was printed. These alternative versions should serve as reminders that, despite Jonson’s reputation as a poet of the printed book, he was also an exceptionally careful composer of manuscript poetry. A full collation of manuscript versions is reproduced in the electronic edition. The selective collation presented in the print edition is designed to foreground Jonson’s probable revisions.

1 Why I Write Not of Love

Some act of Love’s bound to rehearse,

I thought to bind him in my verse:

Which when he felt, ‘Away!’ quoth he,

‘Can poets hope to fetter me?

It is enough they once did get 5

Mars and my mother in their net.

I wear not these my wings in vain.’

With which he fled me; and again

Into my rhymes could ne’er be got

By any art. Then wonder not 10

That, since, my numbers are so cold,

When Love is fled, and I grow old.

2 To Penshurst

Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show,

Of touch or marble; nor canst boast a row

Of polished pillars, or a roof of gold.

Thou hast no lantern whereof tales are told,

Or stair, or courts; but stand’st an ancient pile, 5

And these grudged at, art reverenced the while.

Thou joy’st in better marks, of soil, of air,

Of wood, of water: therein thou art fair.

Thou hast thy walks for health, as well as sport:

Thy Mount, to which the Dryads do resort, 10

Where Pan and Bacchus their high feasts have made

Beneath the broad beech, and the chestnut shade;

That taller tree, which of a nut was set

At his great birth, where all the muses met.

There, in the writhèd bark, are cut the names 15

Of many a silvan, taken with his flames.

And thence the ruddy satyrs oft provoke

The lighter fauns to reach thy lady’s oak.

Thy copse, too, named of Gamage, thou hast there,

That never fails to serve thee seasoned dear, 20

When thou wouldst feast, or exercise thy friends.

The lower land, that to the river bends,

Thy sheep, thy bullocks, kine and calves do feed:

The middle grounds thy mares and horses breed.

Each bank doth yield thee conies; and the tops 25

Fertile of wood, Ashour and Sidney’s copse,

To crown thy open table, doth provide

The purpled pheasant with the speckled side:

The painted partridge lies in every field,

And for thy mess is willing to be killed. 30

And if the high-swol’n Medway fail thy dish,

Thou hast thy ponds, that pay thee tribute fish,

Fat, agèd carps, that run into thy net,

And pikes, now weary their own kind to eat,

As loath the second draught or cast to stay, 35

Officiously, at first, themselves betray;

Bright eels, that emulate them, and leap on land,

Before the fisher, or into his hand.

Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers,

Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours. 40

The early cherry with the later plum,

Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come:

The blushing apricot and woolly peach

Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach.

And though thy walls be of the country stone, 45

They’re reared with no man’s ruin, no man’s groan.

There’s none that dwell about them wish them down,

But all come in, the farmer and the clown,

And no-one empty-handed, to salute

Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit. 50

Some bring a capon, some a rural cake,

Some nuts, some apples; some that think they make

The better cheeses, bring ’em; or else send

By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend

This way to husbands; and whose baskets bear 55

An emblem of themselves, in plum or pear.

But what can this (more than express their love)

Add to thy free provisions, far above

The need of such? Whose liberal board doth flow

With all that hospitality doth know! 60

Where comes no guest but is allowed to eat,

Without his fear, and of thy lord’s own meat:

Where the same beer and bread, and self-same wine,

That is His Lordship’s, shall be also mine.

And I not fain to sit (as some, this day, 65

At great men’s tables) and yet dine away.

Here no man tells my cups; nor, standing by,

A waiter, doth my gluttony envy;

But gives me what I call, and lets me eat;

He knows below he shall find plenty of meat. 70

Thy tables hoard not up for the next day,

Nor, when I take my lodging, need I pray

For fire, or lights, or livery: all is there,

As if thou, then, wert mine, or I reigned here:

There’s nothing I can wish, for which I stay. 75

That found King James, when hunting late this way

With his brave son, the Prince, they saw thy fires

Shine bright on every hearth, as the desires

Of thy Penates had been set on flame

To entertain them; or the country came, 80

With all their zeal, to warm their welcome here.

What (great I will not say, but) sudden cheer

Didst thou, then, make ’em! And what praise was heaped

On thy good lady then! Who, therein, reaped

The just reward of her high huswifery, 85

To have her linen, plate, and all things, nigh

When she was far: and not a room but dressed

As if it had expected such a guest!

These, Penshurst, are thy praise, and yet not all.

Thy lady’s noble, fruitful, chaste withal. 90

His children thy great lord may call his own:

A fortune, in this age, but rarely known.

They are, and have been taught religion: thence

Their gentler spirits have sucked innocence.

Each morn and even they are taught to pray, 95

With the whole household, and may, every day,

Read, in their virtuous parents’ noble parts,

The mysteries of manners, arms, and arts.

Now, Penshurst, they that will proportion thee

With other edifices, when they see 100

Those proud, ambitious heaps, and nothing else,

May say, their lords have built, but thy lord dwells.

3 To Sir Robert Wroth

How blest art thou canst love the country, Wroth,

Whether by choice, or fate, or both;

And, though so near the city and the court,

Art ta’en with neither’s vice nor sport;

That at great times art no ambitious guest 5

Of sheriff’s dinner, or mayor’s feast.

Nor com’st to view the better cloth of state,

The richer hangings, or crown-plate;

Nor throng’st ( when masquing is) to have a sight

Of the short bravery of the night; 10

To view the jewels, stuffs, the pains, the wit

There wasted, some not paid for yet!

But canst, at home, in thy securer rest,

Live, with unbought provision blest,

Free from proud porches or their gilded roofs, 15

’Mongst lowing herds and solid hoofs:

Alongst the curlèd woods and painted meads,

Through which a serpent river leads

To some cool, courteous shade, which he calls his,

And makes sleep softer than it is! 20

Or, if thou list the night in watch to break,

Abed canst hear the loud stag speak,

In spring, oft rousèd for thy master’s sport,

Who, for it, makes thy house his court;

Or with thy friends, the heart of all the year 25

Divid’st upon the lesser deer;

In autumn, at the partridge makes a flight,

And giv’st thy gladder guests the sight;

And, in the winter, hunt’st the flying hare

More for thy exercise than fare, 30

While all that follow their glad ears apply

To the full greatness of the cry:

Or hawking at the river, or the bush,

Or shooting at the greedy thrush,

Thou dost with some delight the day outwear, 35

Although the coldest of the year!

The whilst the several seasons thou hast seen

Of flow’ry fields, of copses green,

The mowèd meadows, with the fleecèd sheep,

And feasts, that either shearers keep; 40

The ripened ears, yet humble in their height,

And furrows laden with their weight;

The apple-harvest, that doth longer last;

The hogs returned home fat from mast;

The trees cut out in log; and those boughs made 45

A fire now, that lent a shade!

Thus Pan and Silvan, having had their rites,

Comus puts in, for new delights,

And fills thy open hall with mirth and cheer,

As if in Saturn’s reign it were; 50

Apollo’s harp and Hermes’ lyre resound,

Nor are the muses strangers found.

The rout of rural folk come thronging in

(Their rudeness then is thought no sin)

Thy noblest spouse affords them welcome grace; 55

And the great heroes of her race

Sit mixed with loss of state, or reverence.

Freedom doth with degree dispense.

The jolly wassail walks the often round,

And in their cups their cares are drowned: 60

They think not then which side the cause shall leese,

Nor how to get the lawyer fees.

Such, and no other, was that age of old

Which boasts t’have had the head of gold.

And such, since thou canst make thine own content, 65

Strive, Wroth, to live long innocent.

Let others watch in guilty arms, and stand

The fury of a rash command,

Go enter breaches, meet the cannon’s rage,

That they may sleep with scars in age, 70

And show their feathers shot and colours torn,

And brag that they were therefore born.

Let this man sweat and wrangle at the bar

For every price, in every jar,

And change possessions, oftener with his breath 75

Than either money, war, or death:

Let him than hardest sires more disinherit,

And each-where boast it as his merit

To blow up orphans, widows, and their states;

And think his power doth equal fate’s. 80

Let that go heap a mass of wretched wealth,

Purchased by rapine worse than stealth,

And brooding o’er it sit, with broadest eyes,

Not doing good, scarce when he dies.

Let thousands more go flatter vice, and win, 85

By being organs to great sin;

Get place and honour, and be glad to keep

The secrets that shall break their sleep:

And so they ride in purple, eat in plate,

Though poison, think it a great fate. 90

But thou, my Wroth, if I can truth apply,

Shalt neither that nor this envy:

Thy peace is made; and when man’s state is well,

’Tis better, if he there can dwell.

God wisheth none should wreck on a strange shelf: 95

To him man’s dearer than t’himself.

And, howsoever we may think things sweet,

He always gives what he knows meet;

Which who can use is happy: such be thou.

Thy morning’s and thy evening’s vow 100

Be thanks to him, and earnest prayer, to find

A body sound with sounder mind;

To do thy country service, thyself right;

That neither want do thee affright,

Nor death; but when thy latest sand is spent 105

Thou mayst think life a thing but lent.

4 To the World: A Farewell for a Gentlewoman, Virtuous and Noble

False world, good-night: since thou hast brought

That hour upon my morn of age,

Henceforth I quit thee from my thought;

My part is ended on thy stage.

Do not once hope that thou canst tempt 5

A spirit so resolved to tread

Upon thy throat, and live exempt

From all the nets that thou canst spread.

I know thy forms are studied arts,

Thy subtle ways be narrow straits; 10

Thy courtesy but sudden starts,

And what thou call’st thy gifts are baits.

I know too, though thou strut and paint,

Yet art thou both shrunk up and old,

That only fools make thee a saint, 15

And all thy good is to be sold.

I know thou whole art but a shop

Of toys and trifles, traps and snares,

To take the weak or make them stop;

Yet art thou falser than thy wares. 20

And, knowing this, should I yet stay,

Like such as blow away their lives,

And never will redeem a day,

Enamoured of their golden gyves?

Or, having ’scaped, shall I return 25

And thrust my neck into the noose

From whence, so lately, I did burn

With all my powers myself to loose?

What bird or beast is known so dull

That, fled his cage, or broke his chain, 30

And tasting air and freedom, wull

Render his head in there again?

If these, who have but sense, can shun

The engines that have them annoyed,

Little for me had reason done 35

If I could not thy gins avoid.

Yes, threaten, do. Alas, I fear

As little as I hope from thee:

I know thou canst nor show nor bear

More hatred than thou hast to me. 40

My tender, first, and simple years

Thou didst abuse and then betray;

Since stirred’st up jealousies and fears

When all the causes were away.

Then in a soil hast planted me, 45

Where breathe the basest of thy fools;

Where envious arts professèd be,

And pride and ignorance, the schools;

Where nothing is examined, weighed,

But, as ’tis rumoured, so believed; 50

Where every freedom is betrayed,

And every goodness taxed or grieved.

But what we’re born for, we must bear:

Our frail condition it is such

That, what to all may happen here, 55

If ’t chance to me, I must not grutch.

Else I my state should much mistake,

To harbour a divided thought

From all my kind: that, for my sake,

There should a miracle be wrought. 60

No, I do know that I was born

To age, misfortune, sickness, grief:

But I will bear these with that scorn

As shall not need thy false relief.

Nor for my peace will I go far 65

As wand’rers do that still do roam,

But make my strengths, such as they are,

Here in my bosom, and at home.

5 Song To Celia

Come, my Celia, let us prove,

While we may, the sports of love;

Time will not be ours for ever:

He, at length, our good will sever.

Spend not then his gifts in vain. 5

Suns that set may rise again:

But if once we lose this light

’Tis, with us, perpetual night.

Why should we defer our joys?

Fame and rumour are but toys. 10

Cannot we delude the eyes

Of a few poor household spies?

Or his easier ears beguile,

So removèd by our wile?

’Tis no sin love’s fruit to steal, 15

But the sweet theft to reveal:

To be taken, to be seen,

These have crimes accounted been.

6 To the Same

Kiss me, sweet: the wary lover

Can your favours keep and cover,

When the common courting jay

All your bounties will betray.

Kiss again: no creature comes. 5

Kiss, and score up wealthy sums

On my lips, thus hardly sund’red,

While you breathe. First give a hundred,

Then a thousand, then another

Hundred, then unto the tother 10

Add a thousand, and so more:

Till you equal with the store

All the grass that Romney yields,

Or the sands in Chelsea fields,

Or the drops in silver Thames, 15

Or the stars that gild his streams,

In the silent summer nights,

When youths ply their stol’n delights.

That the curious may not know

How to tell ’em, as they flow, 20

And the envious, when they find

What their number is, be pined.

7 Song That Women Are but Men’s Shadows

Follow a shadow, it still flies you;

Seem to fly it, it will pursue:

So court a mistress, she denies you;

Let her alone, she will court you.

Say, are not women truly, then, 5

Styled but the shadows of us men?

At morn and even shades are longest;

At noon they are or short, or none:

So men at weakest, they are strongest,

But grant us perfect, they’re not known. 10

Say, are not women truly, then,

Styled but the shadows of us men?

8 To Sickness

Why, Disease, dost thou molest

Ladies? And of them the best?

Do not men enough of rites

To thy altars, by their nights

Spent in surfeits: and their days 5

And nights too, in worser ways?

Take heed, Sickness, what you do;

I shall fear you’ll surfeit too.

Live not we as all thy stalls,

Spitals, pest-house, hospitals, 10

Scarce will take our present store?

And this age will build no more:

Pray thee, feed contented then,

Sickness, only on us men.

Or if needs thy lust will taste 15

Woman-kind, devour the waste-

Livers round about the town.

But, forgive me, with thy crown

They maintain the truest trade,

And have more diseases made. 20

What should yet thy palate please?

Daintiness and softer ease,

Sleekèd limbs and finest blood?

If thy leanness love such food,

There are those that, for thy sake, 25

Do enough, and who would take

Any pains, yea, think it price

To become thy sacrifice.

That distil their husbands’ land

In decoctions; and are manned 30

With ten emp’rics in their chamber,

Lying for the spirit of amber;

That for th’oil of talc dare spend

More than citizens dare lend

Them and all their officers; 35

That, to make all pleasure theirs,

Will by coach and water go

Every stew in town to know;

Dare entail their loves on any,

Bald or blind, or ne’er so many: 40

And, for thee, at common game

Play away health, wealth, and fame.

These, Disease, will thee deserve:

And will, long ere thou shouldst starve,

On their beds, most prostitute, 45

Move it as their humblest suit

In thy justice to molest

None but them, and leave the rest.

9 Song To Celia

Drink to me only with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine;

Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

And I’ll not look for wine.

The thirst that from the soul doth rise 5

Doth ask a drink divine;

But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,

I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,

Not so much honouring thee 10

As giving it a hope that there

It could not withered be.

But thou thereon didst only breathe

And sent’st it back to me:

Since when it grows, and smells, I swear, 15

Not of itself, but thee.

10

And must I sing? What subject shall I choose?

Or whose great name in poets’ heaven use

For the more countenance to my active muse?

Hercules? Alas, his bones are yet sore

With his old earthly labours. T’exact more 5

Of his dull god-head were sin. I’ll implore

Phoebus. No? Tend thy cart still. Envious day

Shall not give out that I have made thee stay,

And foundered thy hot team, to tune my lay.

Nor will I beg of thee, Lord of the vine, 10

To raise my spirits with thy conjuring wine,

In the green circle of thy ivy twine.

Pallas, nor thee I call on, mankind maid,

That at thy birth mad’st the poor smith afraid,

Who, with his axe, thy father’s midwife played. 15

Go cramp dull Mars, light Venus, when he snorts,

Or with thy tribade trine invent new sports;

Thou, nor thy looseness, with my making sorts.

Let the old boy, your son, ply his old task,

Turn the stale prologue to some painted masque; 20

His absence in my verse is all I ask.

Hermes, the cheater, shall not mix with us,

Though he would steal his sister’s Pegasus

And rifle him, or pawn his petasus.

Nor all the ladies of the Thespian lake,25

(Though they were crushed into one form) could make

A beauty of that merit, that should take

My muse up by commission: no, I bring

My own true fire. Now my thought takes wing,

And now an epode to deep ears I sing. 30

11 Epode

Not to know vice at all, and keep true state,

Is virtue and not fate;

Next to that virtue is to know vice well,

And her black spite expel.

Which to effect (since no breast is so sure 5

Or safe but she’ll procure

Some way of entrance) we must plant a guard

Of thoughts to watch and ward

At th’eye and ear (the ports unto the mind)

That no strange or unkind 10

Object arrive there, but the heart (our spy)

Give knowledge instantly

To wakeful reason, our affections’ king:

Who (in th’examining)

Will quickly taste the treason, and commit 15

Close the close cause of it.

’Tis the securest policy we have

To make our sense our slave.

But this true course is not embraced by many:

By many? Scarce by any. 20

For either our affections do rebel,

Or else the sentinel

(That should ring larum to the heart) doth sleep,

Or some great thought doth keep

Back the intelligence, and falsely swears 25

They’re base and idle fears

Whereof the loyal conscience so complains.

Thus, by these subtle trains,

Do several passions still invade the mind,

And strike our reason blind. 30

Of which usurping rank some have thought love

The first, as prone to move

Most frequent tumults, horrors, and unrests

In our inflamèd breasts:

But this doth from the cloud of error grow, 35

Which thus we over-blow.

The thing they here call love is blind desire,

Armed with bow, shafts, and fire,

Inconstant like the sea, of whence ’tis born,

Rough, swelling, like a storm: 40

With whom who sails rides on the surge of fear,

And boils, as if he were

In a continual tempest. Now, true Love

No such effects doth prove:

That is an essence far more gentle, fine, 45

Pure, perfect, nay, divine;

It is a golden chain let down from heaven,

Whose links are bright and even;

That falls like sleep on lovers, and combines

The soft and sweetest minds 50

In equal knots: this bears no brands nor darts

To murder different hearts,

But in a calm and god-like unity

Preserves community.

Oh, who is he that (in this peace) enjoys 55

Th’ elixir of all joys?

A form more fresh than are the Eden bowers

And lasting as her flowers:

Richer than Time, and as Time’s virtue rare,

Sober as saddest care: 60

A fixèd thought, an eye untaught to glance;

Who (blest with such high chance)

Would at suggestion of a steep desire

Cast himself from the spire

Of all his happiness? But soft: I hear 65

Some vicious fool draw near,

That cries we dream, and swears there’s no such thing

As this chaste love we sing.

Peace, Luxury: thou art like one of those

Who, being at sea, suppose 70

Because they move the continent doth so:

No, vice, we let thee know,

Though thy wild thoughts with sparrows’ wings do fly,

Turtles can chastely die;

And yet ( in this t’express ourselves more clear) 75

We do not number here

Such spirits as are only continent

Because lust’s means are spent;

Or those who doubt the common mouth of fame,

And for their place and name 80

Cannot so safely sin. Their chastity

Is mere necessity.

Nor mean we those whom vows and conscience

Have filled with abstinence:

Though we acknowledge who can so abstain 85

Makes a most blessèd gain.

He that for love of goodness hateth ill

Is more crown-worthy still

Than he which for sin’s penalty forbears.

His heart sins, though he fears. 90

But we propose a person like our dove,

Graced with a phoenix’ love;

A beauty of that clear and sparkling light

Would make a day of night,

And turn the blackest sorrows to bright joys; 95

Whose od’rous breath destroys

All taste of bitterness, and makes the air

As sweet as she is fair.

A body so harmoniously composed,

As if nature disclosed 100

All her best symmetry in that one feature!

Oh, so divine a creature

Who could be false to? Chiefly when he knows

How only she bestows

The wealthy treasure of her love on him, 105

Making his fortunes swim

In the full flood of her admired perfection?

What savage, brute affection

Would not be fearful to offend a dame

Of this excelling frame? 110

Much more a noble and right generous mind

(To virtuous moods inclined)

That knows the weight of guilt: he will refrain

From thoughts of such a strain.

And to his sense object this sentence ever: 115

‘Man may securely sin, but safely never.’

12 Epistle To Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland

Madam,

Whilst that for which all virtue now is sold,

And almost every vice, almighty gold,

That which, to boot with hell, is thought worth heaven,

And, for it, life, conscience, yea, souls are given, 5

Toils by grave custom up and down the court

To every squire or groom that will report

Well or ill only all the following year,

Just to the weight their this day’s presents bear;

While it makes ushers serviceable men, 10

And someone apteth to be trusted then,

Though never after; whiles it gains the voice

Of some grand peer, whose air doth make rejoice

The fool that gave it, who will want and weep

When his proud patron’s favours are asleep; 15

While thus it buys great grace, and hunts poor fame,

Runs between man and man, ’tween dame and dame,

Solders cracked friendship, makes love last a day,

Or perhaps less; whilst gold bears all this sway,

I, that have none (to send you) send you verse. 20

A present which (if elder writs rehearse

The truth of times) was once of more esteem

Than this our gilt, nor golden age can deem,

When gold was made no weapon to cut throats,

Or put to flight Astraea, when her ingots 25

Were yet unfound, and better placed in earth

Than here to give pride fame and peasants birth.

But let this dross carry what price it will

With noble ignorants, and let them still

Turn upon scornèd verse their quarter-face: 30

With you, I know, my off’ring will find grace.

For what a sin ’gainst your great father’s spirit

Were it to think that you should not inherit

His love unto the muses, when his skill

Almost you have, or may have, when you will? 35

Wherein wise nature you a dowry gave

Worth an estate, treble to that you have.

Beauty, I know, is good, and blood is more;

Riches thought most: but, madam, think what store

The world hath seen, which all these had in trust, 40

And now lie lost in their forgotten dust.

It is the muse alone can raise to heaven,

And, at her strong arm’s end, hold up and even

The souls she loves. Those other glorious notes,

Inscribed in touch or marble, or the coats 45

Painted or carved upon our great men’s tombs,

Or in their windows, do but prove the wombs,

That bred them, graves: when they were born, they died,

That had no muse to make their fame abide.

How many equal with the Argive Queen 50

Have beauty known, yet none so famous seen?

Achilles was not first that valiant was,

Or in an army’s head, that, locked in brass,

Gave killing strokes. There were brave men before

Ajax or Idomen, or all the store 55

That Homer brought to Troy; yet none so live:

Because they lacked the sacred pen could give

Like life unto ’em. Who heaved Hercules

Unto the stars? Or the Tyndarides?

Who placèd Jason’s Argo in the sky? 60

Or set bright Ariadne’s crown so high?

Who made a lamp of Berenice’s hair?

Or lifted Cassiopeia in her chair?

But only poets, rapt with rage divine?

And such, or my hopes fail, shall make you shine. 65

You and that other star, that purest light

Of all Lucina’s train, Lucy the bright.

Than which a nobler heaven itself knows not.

Who, though she have a better verser got,

(Or ‘poet’ in the court account) than I, 70

And who doth me (though I not him) envy,

Yet, for the timely favours she hath done

To my less sanguine muse, wherein sh’ath won

My grateful soul, the subject of her powers,

I have already used some happy hours 75

To her remembrance; which when time shall bring

To curious light, the notes I then shall sing

Will prove old Orpheus’ act no tale to be:

For I shall move stocks, stones no less than he.

Then all that have but done my muse least grace 80

Shall thronging come, and boast the happy place

They hold in my strange poems, which, as yet,

Had not their form touched by an English wit.

There, like a rich and golden pyramid,

Borne up by statues, shall I rear your head 85

Above your under-carvèd ornaments,

And show how, to the life, my soul presents

Your form impressed there: not with tinkling rhymes

Or commonplaces filched, that take these times,

But high and noble matter, such as flies 90

From brains entranced and filled with ecstasies;

Moods which the god-like Sidney oft did prove,

And your brave friend and mine so well did love.

Who, wheresoe’re he be . . .

The rest is lost.

13 Epistle To Katherine, Lady Aubigny

’Tis grown almost a danger to speak true

Of any good mind, now: there are so few.

The bad by number are so fortified

As what they’ve lost t’expect they dare deride.

So both the praised and praisers suffer: yet 5

For others’ ill ought none their good forget.

I, therefore, who profess myself in love

With every virtue, wheresoe’er it move,

And howsoever; as I am at feud

With sin and vice, though with a throne endued; 10

And in this name am given out dangerous

By arts and practice of the vicious,

Such as suspect themselves and think it fit

For their own cap’tal crimes t’indict my wit;

I, that have suffered this, and though forsook 15

Of Fortune, have not altered yet my look,

Or so myself abandoned, as because

Men are not just, or keep no holy laws

Of nature and society, I should faint;

Or fear to draw true lines, ’cause others paint: 20

I, Madam, am become your praiser. Where,

If it may stand with your soft blush to hear

Yourself but told unto yourself, and see

In my character what your features be,

You will not from the paper slightly pass: 25

No lady but at some time loves her glass.

And this shall be no false one, but as much

Removed as you from need to have it such.

Look then, and see yourself. I will not say

Your beauty, for you see that every day: 30

And so do many more. All which can call

It perfect, proper, pure, and natural,

Not taken up o’th’doctors, but as well

As I can say, and see, it doth excel.

That asks but to be censured by the eyes: 35

And in those outward forms all fools are wise.

Nor that your beauty wanted not a dower

Do I reflect. Some alderman has power,

Or cozening farmer of the customs so,

T’advance his doubtful issue, and o’erflow 40

A prince’s fortune: these are gifts of chance

And raise not virtue; they may vice enhance.

My mirror is more subtle, clear, refined,

And takes and gives the beauties of the mind.

Though it reject not those of fortune, such 45

As blood and match. Wherein how more than much

Are you engagèd to your happy fate,

For such a lot, that mixed you with a state

Of so great title, birth, but virtue most,

Without which all the rest were sounds, or lost! 50

’Tis only that can time and chance defeat:

For he that once is good is ever great.

Wherewith, then, madam, can you better pay

This blessing of your stars than by that way

Of virtue which you tread? What if alone? 55

Without companions? ’Tis safe to have none.

In single paths dangers with ease are watched:

Contagion in the press is soonest catched.

This makes that wisely you decline your life

Far from the maze of custom, error, strife, 60

And keep an even and unaltered gait;

Not looking by, or back (like those that wait

Times and occasions to start forth and seem)

Which, though the turning world may disesteem

Because that studies spectacles and shows, 65

And after varied, as fresh, objects goes,

Giddy with change, and therefore cannot see

Right the right way; yet must your comfort be

Your conscience, and not wonder if none asks

For truth’s complexion where they all wear masks. 70

Let who will follow fashions and attires

Maintain their liegers forth for foreign wires,

Melt down their husbands’ land, to pour away

On the close groom and page on new year’s day,

And almost all days after, while they live; 75

(They find it both so witty and safe to give).

Let ’em on powders, oils, and paintings spend

Till that no usurer nor his bawds dare lend

Them or their officers: and no man know

Whether it be a face they wear or no. 80

Let ’em waste body and state; and, after all,

When their own parasites laugh at their fall,

May they have nothing left whereof they can

Boast, but how oft they have gone wrong to man,

And call it their brave sin. For such there be 85

That do sin only for the infamy,

And never think how vice doth every hour

Eat on her clients, and some one devour.

You, madam, young have learned to shun these shelves,

Whereon the most of mankind wreck themselves, 90

And, keeping a just course, have early put

Into your harbour, and all passage shut

’Gainst storms or pirates, that might charge your peace;

For which you worthy are the glad increase

Of your blest womb, made fruitful from above, 95

To pay your lord the pledges of chaste love:

And raise a noble stem, to give the fame

To Clifton’s blood that is denied their name.

Grow, grow, fair tree, and as thy branches shoot,

Hear what the muses sing about thy root, 100

By me, their priest (if they can aught divine):

Before the moons have filled their triple trine

To crown the burden which you go withal,

It shall a ripe and timely issue fall,

T’expect the honours of great Aubigny: 105

And greater rites, yet writ in mystery,

But which the Fates forbid me to reveal.

Only thus much, out of a ravished zeal

Unto your name and goodness of your life,

They speak; since you are truly that rare wife 110

Other great wives may blush at, when they see

What your tried manners are, what theirs should be.

How you love one, and him you should; how still

You are depending on his word and will;

Not fashioned for the court or strangers’ eyes; 115

But to please him, who is the dearer prize

Unto himself by being so dear to you.

This makes that your affections still be new,

And that your souls conspire as they were gone

Each into other, and had now made one. 120

Live that one, still; and as long years do pass,

Madam, be bold to use this truest glass:

Wherein your form you still the same shall find;

Because nor it can change, nor such a mind.

14 Ode To Sir William Sidney, on his Birthday

Now that the hearth is crowned with smiling fire,

And some do drink and some do dance,

Some ring,

Some sing,

And all do strive t’advance 5

The gladness higher:

Wherefore should I

Stand silent by,

Who not the least,

Both love the cause and authors of the feast? 10

Give me my cup, but from the Thespian well,

That I may tell to Sidney what

This day

Doth say,

And he may think on that 15

Which I do tell:

When all the noise

Of these forced joys

Are fled and gone,

And he, with his best genius left alone. 20

This day says, then, the number of glad years

Are justly summed, that make you man;

Your vow

Must now

Strive all right ways it can 25

T’outstrip your peers:

Since he doth lack

Of going back

Little, whose will

Doth urge him to run wrong or to stand still. 30

Nor can a little of the common store

Of nobles’ virtue show in you;

Your blood

So good

And great must seek for new, 35

And study more:

Not, weary, rest

On what’s deceased.

For they that swell

With dust of ancestors in graves but dwell. 40

’Twill be exacted of your name, whose son,

Whose nephew, whose grandchild you are;

And men

Will, then,

Say you have followed far, 45

When well begun:

Which must be now;

They teach you how.

And he that stays

To live until tomorrow hath lost two days. 50

So may you live in honour as in name,

If with this truth you be inspired,

So may

This day

Be more and long desired: 55

And with the flame

Of love be bright,

As with the light

Of bonfires. Then

The birthday shines when logs not burn, but men. 60

15 To Heaven

Good and great God, can I not think of thee,

But it must, straight, my melancholy be?

Is it interpreted in me disease

That, laden with my sins, I seek for ease?

Oh, be thou witness, that the reins dost know 5

And hearts of all, if I be sad for show,

And judge me after: if I dare pretend

To aught but grace, or aim at other end.

As thou art all, so be thou all to me,

First, midst, and last, converted one and three; 10

My faith, my hope, my love: and in this state

My judge, my witness, and my advocate.

Where have I been this while exiled from thee?

And whither rapt, now thou but stoop’st to me?

Dwell, dwell here still: Oh, being everywhere, 15

How can I doubt to find thee ever here?

I know my state, both full of shame and scorn,

Conceived in sin and unto labour born,

Standing with fear, and must with horror fall,

And destined unto judgement after all. 20

I feel my griefs too, and there scarce is ground

Upon my flesh t’inflict another wound.

Yet dare I not complain or wish for death

With holy Paul, lest it be thought the breath

Of discontent; or that these prayers be 25

For weariness of life, not love of thee.

The Forest: Early Versions

Variant Version of Forest 9

Drink to me, Celia, with thine eye,

And I’ll pledge thee with mine.

Leave but a kiss within the cup

And I’ll expect no wine.

The thirst that from the soul proceeds 5

Doth ask a drink divine;

But might I of Jove’s nectar sup

I would not change for thine.

I sent to thee a rosy wreath,

Not so to honour thee, 10

As being well assured that there

It would not withered be;

And thou thereon didst only breathe,

And sent’st it back to me;

Since when it lives, and smells, I swear, 15

Not of itself, but thee.

Proludium [Variant version of Forest 10]

An elegy? No, muse; it asks a strain

Too loose and cap’ring for thy stricter vein.

Thy thoughts did never melt in amorous fire,

Like glass blown up and fashioned by desire.

The skilful mischief of a roving eye 5

Could ne’er make prize of thy white chastity.

Then leave these lighter numbers to light brains,

In whom the flame of every beauty reigns;

Such as in lust’s wild forest love to range,

Only pursuing constancy in change. 10

Let these in wanton feet dance out their souls.

A farther fury my raised spirit controls,

Which raps me up to the true heaven of love,

And conjures all my faculties t’approve

The glories of it. Now our muse takes wing, 15

And now an epode to deep ears we sing.

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

The Forest (1616)

Edited by Colin Burrow

Introduction

The Forest

1

Why I Write Not of Love

2

To Penshurst

3

To Sir Robert Wroth

4

To the World: A Farewell for a Gentlewoman, Virtuous and Noble

5

Song To Celia

6

To the Same

7

Song That Women Are but Men’s Shadows

8

To Sickness

9

Song To Celia

10

11

Epode

12

Epistle To Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland

13

Epistle To Katherine, Lady Aubigny

14

Ode To Sir William Sidney, on his Birthday

15

To Heaven

The Forest: Early Versions

Variant Version of Forest 9

Proludium [Variant version of Forest 10]