 | Poems By John Hall |  |
31
To the Deformed X. R.
As Scriveners sometime delight to seeTheir basest writing, Nature has in thee
Essai'd how much she can transgresse at once
Apelles draughts, Durers proportions;
And for to make a jest and try a wit
Has not (a woman) in thy forehead writ,
But scribl'd so, and gon so far about
Indagine would never smell the out,
But might exclaim, here onely riddles be
And Heteroclites in Physiognomie;
But as the Mystick Hebrew backward lies,
And Algebra's gest by absurdities,
So must we spell thee, for who would suppose
That globous piece of wanescot were a nose,
That crockt &c's were wrinkles, and
Five Napers bones glued to a wrest, an hand;
Egyptian Antiquaries might survay
Here Hieroglyphicks time hath worn away,
And wonder at an English face more od
And antick, then was ere a Memphian God,
32
A raw and unexperienc'd Conjurer,
And tawny Africk blush to see her fry
Of Monsters in one skin so kenneld lie:
Thou maist without a guard her deserts passe
When savages but look upon thy face.
Were but some Pict now living, he would soon
Deem thee a fragment of his Nation;
And wiser Ethiopians infer
From thee, that sable's not the onely fair;
Thou Privative of Beauty, whose one eye
Doth question Metaphysick veritie;
Whose many crosse aspects may prove anon
Foulnesse, more then a mere negation,
Blast one place still, and never dare t'escape
Abroad out of thy mother darknesse lap,
Least that thou make the world affraid, and be
Even hated by thy nurse deformity.
| Poems By John Hall | |