Pardon, ye glowing ears; needs will it out,
Though brazen walls compassed my tongue about,
As thick as wealthy Scrobio's quick-set rows
In the wide common that he did enclose.
Pull out mine eyes, if I shall see no vice,
Or let me see it with detesting eyes.
Renowned Aquine, now I follow thee
Far as I may for fear of jeopardy,
And to thy hand yield up the ivy-mace
From crabbed Persius and more smooth Horace,
Or from that shrew, the Roman poetess,
That taught her gossips learned bitterness;
Or Lucile's Muse whom thou didst imitate,
Or Menips old, or Pasquillers of late.
Yet name I not Mutius, or Tigilline,
Though they deserve a keener style than mine;
Nor mean to ransack up the quiet grave,
Nor burn dead bones, as he example gave.
I tax the living, let dead ashes rest,
Whose faults are dead, and nailed in their chest;
Who can refrain, that's guiltless of their crime,
Whiles yet he lives in such a cruel time?
When Titius' grounds that in his grandsire's days
But one pound fine, one penny rent did raise,
A summer snowball, or a winter rose,
Is grown to thousands as the world now goes.
So thrift and time sets other things on float,
That now his son swoops in a silken coat.
Whose grandsire haply a poor hungry swain
Begged some cast abbey in the Church's wane,
And but for that, whatever he may vaunt,
Who now's a monk, had been a mendicant;
While freezing Matho, that for one lean fee
Wont term each term the Term of Hilary,
May now instead of those his simple fees
Get the fee-simples of fair manneries.
What, did he counterfeit his Prince's hand,
For some strave lordship of concealed land?
Or on each Michael, and Lady Day,
Took he deep forfeits for an hour's delay?
And gained no less by such injurious brawl
Than Gamius by his sixth wife's burial?
Or hath he won some wider interest,
By hoary charters from his grandsire's chest,
Which late some bribed scribe for slender wage
Writ in the characters of another age
That Plowden self might stammer to rehearse,
Whose date o'erlooks three centuries of years?
Who ever yet the tracks of weal so tried
But there hath been one beaten way beside?
He, when he lets a lease for life, or years,
(As never he doth until the date expires;
For when the full state in his fist doth lie,
He may take vantage of the vacancy),
His fine affords so many trebled pounds
As he agreeth years to lease his grounds:
His rent in fair respondence must arise
To double trebles of his one year's price.
Of one bay's breadth, God wot, a silly cote,
Whose thatched spars are furred with sluttish soot
A whole inch thick, shining like black-moor's brows
Through smoke that down the headless barrel blows.
At his bed's-feet feeden his stalled team,
His swine beneath, his pullen o'er the beam:
A starved tenement, such, as I guess,
Stand straggling in the wastes of Holderness,
Or such as shiver on a Peak hill-side,
When March's lungs beat on their turf-clad hide;
Such as nice Lipsius would grudge to see
Above his lodging in wild Westphaly;
Or as the Saxon king his court might make
When his sides plained of the neat-herd's cake.
Yet must he haunt his greedy landlord's hall
With often presents at each festival;
With crammed capons every New Year's morn,
Or with green cheeses when his sheep are shorn,
Or many maunds-full of his mellow fruit
To make some way to win his weighty suit.
Whom cannot gifts at last cause to relent,
Or to win favour, or flee punishment?
When gripple patrons turn their sturdy steel
To wax, when they the golden flame do feel;
When grand Maecenas casts a glavering eye
On the cold present of a poesy,
And lest he might more frankly take than give,
Gropes for a French crown in his empty sleeve:
Thence Clodius hopes to set his shoulders free
From the light burden of his napery.
The smiling landlord shows a sunshine face,
Feigning that he will grant him further grace,
And leers like Æsop's fox upon a crane,
Whose neck he craves for his chirurgeon;
So lingers off the lease until the last —
What recks he then of pains, or promise past?
Was ever feather, or fond woman's mind,
More light than words; the blasts of idle wind?
What's sib or sire, to take the gentle slip,
And in th'Exchequer rot for surety-ship?
Or thence thy starved brother live and die
Within the cold Coal-harbour sanctuary?
Will one from Scot's-bank bid but one groat more,
My old tenant may be turned out of door,
Though much he spent in th'rotten roof's repair
In hope to have it left unto his heir,
Though many a load of marl and manure led,
Revived his barren leas, that erst lay dead.
Were he as Furius, he would defy
Such pilf'ring slips of petty landlordry,
And might dislodge whole colonies of poor,
And lay their roof quite level with their floor,
Whiles yet he gives as to a yielding fence
Their bag and baggage to his citizens,
And ships them to the new-named Virgin-lond,
Or wilder Wales, where never wight yet wonned.
Would it not vex thee, where thy sires did keep,
To see the dunged folds of dag-tailed sheep,
And ruined house where holy things were said,
Whose free-stone walls the thatched roof upbraid,
Whose shrill saint's-bell hangs on his louvery,
While the rest are damned to the plumbery?
Yet pure devotion lets the steeple stand,
And idle battlements on either hand,
Lest that, perhaps, were all those relics gone,
Furius's sacrilege could not be known.