BEN JONSON'S POEM - A HUE AND CRY AFTER CUPID

  

On the 14th day of the Blog chatter’s #WRITEAPAGEADAY, Here is a poem with love as the major theme.

 

Poet: Ben Jonson

Poem:  A Hue and cry after cupid

BEAUTIES, have yee seen a toy,
Called Love, a little boy,
Almost naked, wanton, blinde;
Cruel now, and then as kinde?
If he be amongst yee, say;
He is Venus' run-away.

Shee, that will but now discover
Where the winged wag doth hover,
Shall to-night receive a kisse,
How and where herselfe would wish;
But who brings him to his mother
Shall have that kisse, and another.

Markes he hath about him plentie,
You may know him among twentie
All his body is a fire,
And his breath a flame entire:
Which, being shot, like lightning, in,
Wounds the heart, but not the skin.

Wings he hath, which though yee clip,
He will leape from lip to lip,
Over liver, lights, and heart;
Yet not stay in any part.
And, if chance his arrow misses,
He will shoot himselfe in kisses.

He doth beare a golden bow,
And a quiver hanging low,
Full of arrowes, which outbrave
Dian's shafts; where, if he have
Any head more sharpe than other,
With that first he strikes his mother.

Still the fairest are his fuell,
When his daies are to be cruell;
Lovers hearts are all his food,
And his baths their warmest bloud:
Nought but wounds his hands doth season.
And he hates none like to Reason.

Trust him not: his words, though sweet,
Seldome with his heart doe meet;
All his practice is deceit;
Everie gift is but a bait;
Not a kisse but poyson beares;
And most treason's in his teares.

Idle minutes are his raigne;
Then the straggler makes his gaine,
By presenting maids with toyes
And would have yee thinke them joyes;
'Tis the ambition of the elfe
To have all childish as himselfe.

If by these yee please to know him,
Beauties, be not nice, but show him.
Though yee had a will to hide him,
Now, we hope, yee'le not abide him,
Since yee heare this falser's play,
And that he is Venus' run-away.

Ben Jonson ‘s masques, replete in folklore learning and classical imagery, are enlivened with gay interludes and pretty fights fancy , for which he has less scope in the orthodox drama.

If some of his contemporaries excelled him, as certainly they did in lyric sweetness and abandon, or displayed a more delicate invention on the purely imaginative side,  no other writer of the time equalled, much less excelled him, in the all-round excellence of the masques, in the piquant blend of scholastic learning and fantastic frippery; indeed the famous Court masque of the Jacobean times owes its form and comeliness  largely to his indefatigable labours. Akin to the Masques, is the unfinished Pastoral, The Sad Shepherd written with a lightness of touch, and delightful abandonment that comes on the reader as a surprise.