University of Virginia Library

[Poore Painters oft with silly Poets joyne]

Poore Painters oft with silly Poets joyne,
To fill the world with strange but vaine conceits:
One brings the stuffe, the other stamps the coine,
Which breeds nought else but gloses of deceits.
Thus Painters Cupid paint, thus Poets do
A naked god, young blind, with arrowes two.
Is he a God, that ever flies the light?
Or naked he, disguis'd in all untruth?
If he be blind, how hitteth he so right?
How is he young, that tam'de old Phœbus youth?
But arrowes two, and tipt with gold or leade:
Some hurt accuse a third with horny head.
No, nothing so; an old false knave he is
By Argus got on Io, then a cow:
What time for her Juno her Jove did misse,
And charge of her to Argus did allow.
Mercury kill'd his false sire for this act,
His damme a beast was pardon'd beastly fact.
With fathers death, and mothers guiltie shame,
With Joves disdaine at such a rivals seed,
The wretch compell'd a runnagate became,
And learn'd what ill a miser state doth breed,
To lye, faine, gloze, to steale, pry, and accuse,
Naught in himselfe ech other to abuse.
Yet beares he still his parents stately gifts,
A horned head, cloven foote, and thousand eyes,
Some gazing still, some winking wilye shiftes,
With long large eares where never rumour dyes.
His horned head doth seeme the heaven to spight:
His cloven foote doth never treade aright.
Thus halfe a man, with man he dayly haunts,
Cloth'd in the shape which soonest may deceave:
Thus halfe a beast, ech beastly vice he plants,
In those weake harts that his advice receave.
He proules ech place stil in new colours deckt,
Sucking ones ill, another to infect.
To narrow brests he comes all wrapt in gaine:
To swelling harts he shines in honours fire:
To open eyes all beauties he doth raine;
Creeping to ech with flattering of desire.
But for that Loves desire most rules the eyes,
Therein his name, there his chiefe triumph lyes.
Millions of yeares this old drivell Cupid lives;
While still more wretch, more wicked he doth prove:
Till now at length that Jove him office gives,
(At Junos suite who much did Argus love)
In this our world a hang-man for to be,
Of all those fooles that will have all they see.