William Shake-speare - Ashes of Two Bodies and One Name
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... in that which becks
Our ready minds to fellowship divine,
A fellowship with essence, till we shine
Fully alchemized, and free of space.
(Keats, Endymion I)
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_Venus and Adonis_ - Epigram - Shakespeare
Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi flavus Apollo
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua.
[from Ovid, Amores 1:15]
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Poetaster, Ben Jonson
(...)The suffering ploughshare or the flint may wear;
But heavenly poesy no death can fear.
Kings shall give place to it, and kingly shows,
The banks o'er which gold-bearing Tagus flows.
*Kneel hinds to trash: me let bright Phoebus swell
With cups full-flowing from the Muses' well!_
The frost-drad myrtle shall impale my head,
And of sad lovers I 'll be often read!
Envy the living not the dead doth bite,
For after death all men receive their right.
*Then when this body falls in funeral fire,
My name shall live and my best part aspire. *
[after Ovid, Amores 1:15]
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Aspire:
intransitive verb
1: to seek to attain or accomplish a particular goal
2: ASCEND, SOAR
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Best Part/Aspire:
Love's Martyr
[Marston's] "Perfectioni hymnus" begins:
What should I call this creature
That now is grown unto maturity?
[He] ends with a witty adaptation of a Senecan sententia - "the difference between gods and mortals: in ourselves, mind is the best part indeed; but for the gods, there is mind alone, nothing else: - which Marston gives as
no Suburbs, all is mind
As far from spot as possible defining.
(From Love's Martyr, Walter Oakshotte)
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My Shakespeare, rise! - Jonson
--thou art a monument without a tomb
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Loves Martyr - Chester
(snip)
Phoenix:
Why now my heart is light, this very doome
Hath banisht sorrow from pensive breast:
And in a manner sacrificingly,
*Burne both our bodies to revive one name*:
And in all humblenesse we will intreate
The hot earth parching Sunne to lend his heate.
(note – Phoenix calls upon Apollo to kindle the wood)
Phoenix:
O holy, sacred, and pure perfect fire,
More pure then that ore which faire Dido mones,
More sacred in my loving kind desire,
Then that which burnt old Esons aged bones,
*Accept into your ever hallowed flame,
Two bodies, from the which may spring one name.*
Turtle.
O sweet perfumed flame, made of those trees,
Under the which the Muses nine have song
The praises of vertuous maids in misteries,
To whom the faire fac’d Nymphes did often throng;
Accept my body as a Sacrifice
Into your flame, *of whom one name may rise.*
Phoenix.
O wilfulnesse, see how with smiling cheare,
My poore deare hart hath flong himselfe to thrall,
Looke what a mirthfull countenance he doth beare,
Spreading his wings abroad, and joyes withall:
Learne thou corrupted world, learne, heare, and see,
Friendships unspotted true sincerity.
I come sweet Turtle, and with my bright wings,
I will embrace thy burnt bones as they lye,
*I hope of these another Creature springs,
That shall possesse both our authority:*
I stay too long, o take me to your glory,
And thus I end the Turtle Doves true story.
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Creature that rises from ashes - two bodies/one name, possessing the authority of both Phoenix (Elizabeth/Cynthia) and Turtle Dove (Oxford/Endymion) - William Shakespeare
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Love's Martyr, Marston poem
A narration and description of a most exact WONDROUS CREATURE, ARISING out of the Phoenix and Turtle Doues ashes.
O Twas a mouing Epicedium!
Can Fire? can Time? can blackest Fate consume
So rare creation? No; tis thwart to sence,
Corruption quakes to touch such excellence,
Nature exclaimes for Iustice, Iustice Fate,
Ought into nought can neuer remigrate.
Then looke; for see what glorious issue brighter
Then clearest fire, and beyond faith farre whiter
Then Dians tier) now springs from yonder flame?
Let me stand numb'd with WONDER, neuer came
So strong amazement on ASTONISH’D eie
As this, this measurelesse pure RARITIE.
Lo now; th'xtracture of deuinest ESSENCE,
The Soule of heauens labour'd Quintessence,
(Peans to Phoebus) from deare Louer's death,
Takes sweete creation and all blessing breath.
What STRANGENESS is't that from the Turtles ashes
Assumes such forme? (whose splendor clearer flashes,
Then mounted Delius) tell me genuine Muse.
Now yeeld your aides, you spirites that infuse
A sacred rapture, light my weaker eie:
Raise my inuention on swift Phantasie,
That whilft of this same Metaphisicall
God, Man, nor Woman, but elix'd of all
My labouring thoughts, with strained ardor sing,
My Muse may mount with an vncommon wing.
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Marston, Love's Martyr
Then looke; for see what glorious issue brighter
Then clearest fire, and beyond faith farre whiter
Then Dians tier) now springs from yonder flame?
Let me stand numb'd with WONDER, neuer came
So strong amazement on ASTONISH’D eie
As this, this measurelesse pure RARITIE.
Lo now; th'xtracture of deuinest ESSENCE,
The Soule of heauens labour'd Quintessence,
(Peans to Phoebus) from deare Louer's death,
Takes sweete creation and all blessing breath.
What STRANGENESS is't that from the Turtles ashes
Assumes such forme?
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Jonson, on Shakespeare
From thence to honour thee, I would not seek
For names; but call forth thund'ring Aeschylus,
Euripides and Sophocles to us;
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life again, to hear thy buskin tread,
And shake a stage; or, when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
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Love's Martyr, Chester
With what a spirit did the Turtle fly
Into the fire, and cheerfully did die.
He looked more pleasant in his countenance
Within the flame, than when he did advance
His pleasant wings upon the natural ground
True perfect love has so his poor heart bound.
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Billy Budd/Beauty/Foundling and another martyr to Love:
Hawthorne and His Mosses
By Herman Melville
The Literary World, August 17 and 24, 1850
Would that all excellent books were FOUNDLINGS, without father or mother, that so it might be, we could glorify them, without including their ostensible authors. Nor would any true man take exception to this;--least of all, he who writes,--"When the
Artist rises high enough to achieve the Beautiful, the symbol by which he makes it perceptible to mortal senses becomes of little value in his eyes, while his spirit possesses itself in the enjoyment of the reality."
But more than this, I know not what would be the right name to put on the title-page of an excellent book, but this I feel, that the names of all fine authors are fictitious ones, far more than that of Junius,--simply standing, as they do, for the
mystical, ever-eluding SPIRIT of all BEAUTY, which ubiquitously possesses men of genius. Purely imaginative as this fancy may appear, it nevertheless seems to receive some warranty from the fact, that on a personal interview no great author has ever come
up to the idea of his reader. But that dust of which our bodies are composed, how can it fitly express the nobler intelligences among us? With reverence be it spoken, that not even in the case of one deemed more than man, not even in our Saviour, did his
visible frame betoken anything of the augustness of the nature within...
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Shakespeare - Sonnet 124
If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for Fortune’s bastard be unfathered,
As subject to time’s love or to time’s hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flow’rs with flowers gathered.
No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thrallèd discontent,
Whereto th’ inviting time our fashion calls.
It fears not policy, that heretic,
Which works on leases of short numb’red hours.
But all alone stands hugely politic,
That it nor grows with heat nor drowns with showers.
To this I witness call the fools of time,
Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.
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Cynthia! I cannot tell the greater blisses,
That follow'd thine, and thy dear shepherd's kisses:
Was there a Poet born? - but now no more,
My wand'ring spirit must no further soar. --
(Keats, I Stood *Tip-toe*)
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Jonson, Cynthia's Revels - censuring Amorphus/Oxford and his crew of courtly
revellers?
O vanity,
How are thy painted beauties doted on,
By LIGHT, and empty Idiots how pursu'd
With open and extended Appetite!
How they do sweat, and run themselves from breath,
*Rais'd on their Toes*, to catch thy AIRY FORMS,
Still turning GIDDY, till they reel like Drunkards,
That buy the merry madness of one hour,
With the long irksomness of following time!
O how despis'd and base a thing is a Man,
If he not strive t'erect his groveling Thoughts
Above the strain of Flesh! But how more cheap,
When, even his best and understanding Part,
(The crown and strength of all his Faculties)
Floats like a dead drownd Body, on the Stream
Of vulgar humour, mixt with common'st dregs? [note - Ophelia?]
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(...) in that which becks
Our ready minds to fellowship divine,
A fellowship with essence, till we shine
Fully alchemized, and free of space. (Keats, Endymion I)
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Of Mere Being
The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.
You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.
The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.
~Wallace Stevens, 1954~
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