University of Virginia Library

Vpon an Honest Mans Fortune. By Mr. John Fletcher.

You that can look through Heaven, and tell the Stars,
Observe their kind conjunctions, and their wars;
Find out new lights, and give them where you please,
To those men honors, pleasures, to those ease;
You that are Gods surveyers, and can show
How far, and when, and why the wind doth blow;
Know all the charges of the dreadfull thunder,
And when it will shoot over, or fall under:
Tell me, by all your art I conjure ye,
Yes, and by truth, what shall become of me?
Find out my star, if each one, as you say,
Have his peculiar Angel, and his way;
Observe my fate, next fall into your dreames,
Sweep clean your houses, and new line your sceames,
Then say your worst: or have I none at all?
Or is it burnt out lately? or did fall?
Or am I poor, not able, no full flame?
My star, like me, unworthy of a name?
Is it, your art can only work on those
That deale with dangers, dignities, and cloaths?
With love, or new opinions? you all lye,
A fishwife hath a fate, and so have I,
But far above your finding; he that gives,
Out of his providence, to all that lives,
And no man knowes his treasure, no not you:
He that made Egypt blind, from whence you grew
Scaby and lowsy, that the world might see
Your calculations are as blind as ye,
He that made all the stars, you dayly read,
And from thence filtch a knowledge how to feed;
Hath hid this from you, your conjectures all
Are drunken things, not how, but when they fall;
Man is his own star, and the soule that can
Render an honest, and a perfect man
Command all light, all influence, all fate,
Nothing to him fals early or too late.
Our acts our Angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatall shadowes that walke by us still,
And when the stars are labouring, we believe
Jt is not that they govern, but they grive
For stubborn ignorance; all things that are
Made for our generall uses are at war,
Even we among our selves, and from the strife
Your first unlike opinions got a life.
O man, thou image of thy makers good,
What canst thou fear, when breath'd into thy blood
His spirit is, that built thee? what dull sence
Makes thee suspect, in need, that providence?
Who made the morning, and who plact the light
Guid to thy labours? who cal'd up the night,
And bid her fall upon thee, like sweet showers
In hollow murmurs, to lock up thy powers?
Who gave thee knowledge, who so trusted thee,
To let thee grow so neer himselfe, the Tree?
Must he then be distrusted? shall his frame
Discourse with him, why thus, and thus I am?
He made the Angels thine, thy fellowes all,
Nay even thy servants, when devotions call.
Oh canst thou be so stupid then, so dim,
To seek a saving influence, and loose him?
Can Stars protect thee? or can poverty,
Which is the light to Heaven, put out his eye?
He is my star, in him all truth I find,
All influence, all fate, and when my mind
Is furnished with his fullnesse, my poor story
Shall outlive all their Age, and all their glory.
The hand of danger cannot fall amisse,
When I know what, and in whose power it is.
Nor Want, the cause of man, shall make me groan,
A holy hermit is a mind alone.
Doth not experience teach us all we can
To work our selves into a glorious man?
Love's but an exhalation to best eyes
The matter spent, and then the fooles fire dyes?
Were I in love, and could that bright star bring
Increase to wealth, honour, and every thing:
Were she as perfect good as wee can aime,
The first was so, and yet she lost the Game.
My mistris then be knowledge and faire truth;
So I enjoy all beauty and all youth,
And though to time her lights and lawes she lends,
She knowes no Age that to corruption bends.
Friends promises may lead me to believe,
But he that is his own friend knowes to live.
Affliction when J know it is but this,
A deep allay whereby man tougher is
To bear the hammer, and the deeper still,
We still arise more image of his will.
Sicknesse an humorous cloud twixt us and light,
And Death, at longest but another night.
Man is his own Star, and that soule that can
Be honest is the only perfect man.