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PAINTURE; A PANEGYRIC TO THE BEST PICTURE OF FRIENDSHIP, PETER LELY, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: If pliny, lord high treasurer of all
Last Line: But perish they and their effigies.
Subject(s): Friendship


IF Pliny, Lord High Treasurer of all
Nature's exchequer shuffled in this our ball,
Painture, her richer rival, did admire,
And cri'd she wrought with more almighty fire,
That judg'd the unnumber'd issue of her scroll,
Infinite and various as her mother soul,
That contemplation into matter brought,
Bodi'd ideas, and could form a thought:
Why do I pause to couch the cataract,
And the gross pearls from our dull eyes abstract?
That, pow'rful Lely, now awaken'd, we
This new Creation may behold by thee.
To thy victorious pencil all that eyes
And minds can reach do bow; the deities
Bold poets first but feign'd you do, and make,
And from your awe they our devotion take.
Your beauteous palette first design'd Love's Queen,
And made her in her heav'nly colours seen;
You strung the bow of the bandit her son,
And tipp'd his arrows with religion.
Neptune as unknown as his fish might dwell,
But that you seat him in his throne of shell.
The Thunderer's artillery and brand,
You fanci'd Rome in his fantastic hand.
And the pale frights, the pains and fears of hell,
First from your sullen melancholy fell.
Who cleft th' infernal dog's loath'd head in three,
And spun out Hydra's fifty necks? By thee
As prepossess'd w' enjoy th' Elysian plain,
Which but before was flatter'd in our brain.
Whoe'er yet view'd air's child invisible,
A hollow voice, but in thy subtle skill?
Faint stamm'ring Echo you so draw that we
The very repercussion do see.
Cheat hocus-pocus Nature an essay
O' th' Spring affords us, presto! and away:
You all the year do chain her and her fruits,
Roots to their beds, and flowers to their roots.
Have not mine eyes feasted i' th' frozen zone
Upon a fresh new-grown collation
Of apples, unknown sweets, that seem'd to me
Hanging to tempt as on the fatal tree,
So delicately limn'd I vow'd to try
My appetite impos'd upon my eye?
You, sir, alone, Fame and all-conqu'ring rhyme
Files the set teeth of all-devouring Time.
When Beauty once thy virtuous paint hath on,
Age needs not call her to vermilion;
Her beams ne'er shed or change like th' hair of day,
She scatters fresh her everlasting ray;
Nay, from her ashes her fair virgin fire
Ascends, that doth new massacres conspire,
Whilst we wipe off the num'rous score of years,
And do behold our grandsires as our peers;
With the first father of our house compare
We do the features of our new-born heir;
For though each copied a son, they all
Meet in thy first and true original.
Sacred luxurious! what princess not
But comes to you to have herself begot?
As when first man was kneaded, from his side
Is born to's hand a ready-made-up bride.
He husband to his issue then doth play,
And for more wives remove the obstructed way:
So by your art you spring up in two moons
What could not else be form'd by fifteen suns;
Thy skill doth an'mate the prolific flood,
And thy red oil assimilates to blood.
Where then, when all the world pays its respect,
Lies our transalpine barbarous neglect?
When the chaste hands of pow'rful Titian
Had drawn the scourges of our God and man,
And now the top of th' altar did ascend,
To crown the heav'nly piece with a bright end,
Whilst he who to seven languages gave law,
And always like the sun his subjects saw,
Did, in his robes imperial and gold,
The basis of the doubtful ladder hold:
O Charles! a nobler monument than that
Which thou thine own executor wert at!
When to our huffling Henry there complain'd
A grieved earl, that thought his honour stain'd,
"Away!" frown'd he, "for your own safeties, haste!
In one cheap hour ten coronets I 'll cast;
But Holbein's noble and prodigious worth
Only the pangs of an whole age brings forth."
Henry! a word so princely saving said,
It might new raise the ruins thou hast made.
O sacred painture! that dost fairly draw
What but in mists deep inward poets saw;
'Twixt thee and an Intelligence no odds,
That art of privy counsel to the gods;
By thee unto our eyes they do prefer
A stamp of their abstracted character;
Thou that in frames eternity dost bind,
And art a written and a bodi'd mind;
To thee is ope the junto o' th' Abyss,
And its conspiracy detected is,
Whilst their cabal thou to our sense dost show,
And in thy square paint'st what they threat below.
Now, my best Lely, let 's walk hand in hand,
And smile at this un-understanding land;
Let them their own dull counterfeits adore,
Their rainbow-cloths admire, and no more;
Within one shade of thine more substance is
Than all their varnish'd idol-mistresses:
Whilst great Vasari and Vermander shall
Interpret the deep mystery of all,
And I unto our modern Picts shall show
What due renown to thy fair art they owe,
In the delineated lives of those
By whom this everlasting laurel grows.
Then if they will not gently apprehend,
Let one great blot give to their fame an end;
Whilst no poetic flower their hearse doth dress,
But perish they and their effigies.





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