Hudibras - Samuel Butler (story reading txt) 📗

no contusion, nor discretion.
A Saxon duke did grow so fat,84
That mice (as histories relate)
Eat grots and labyrinths to dwell in
His postic parts without his feeling:
Then how is’t possible a kick
Should e’er reach that way to the quick?

Quoth she, I grant it is in vain.
For one that’s basted to feel pain,
Because the pangs his bones endure
Contribute nothing to the cure:
Yet honor hurt is wont to rage
With pain no med’cine can assuage.

Quoth he, That honour’s very squeamish
That takes a basting for a blemish;
For what’s more hon’rable than scars,
Or skin to tatters rent in wars?
Some have been beaten till they know
What wood a cudgel’s of by th’ blow;
Some kick’d until they can feel whether
A shoe be Spanish or neat’s leather;
And yet have met, after long running,
With some whom they have taught that cunning.
The furthest way about t’ o’ercome,
In the end does prove the nearest home.
By laws of learned duellists,
They that are bruis’d with wood or fists,
And think one beating may for once
Suffice, are cowards and pultroons:
But if they dare engage t’ a second,
They’re stout and gallant fellows reckon’d.

Th’ old Romans freedom did bestow,
Our princes worship, with a blow.
King Pyrrhus85 cur’d his splenetic
And testy courtiers with a kick.
The Negus, when some mighty lord
Or potentate’s to be restor’d,
And pardon’d for some great offence,
With which he’s willing to dispense,
First has him laid upon his belly,
Then beaten back and side to a jelly;
That done, he rises, humbly bows,
And gives thanks for the princely blows;
Departs not meanly proud, and boasting
Of this magnificent rib-roasting.
The beaten soldier proves most manful,
That, like his sword, endures the anvil,
And justly’s held more formidable,
The more his valour’s malleable:
But he that fears a bastinado
Will run away from his own shadow:
And though I’m now in durance fast,
By our own party basely cast,
Ransom, exchange, parole refus’d,
And worse than by the en’my us’d:
In close catasta shut,86 past hope
Of wit or valour to elope;
As beards the nearer that they tend
To th’ earth still grow more reverend,
And cannons shoot the higher pitches,
The lower we let down their breeches;
I’ll make this low dejected fate
Advance me to a greater height.

Quoth she, Y’ have almost made me in love
With that which did my pity move.
Great wits and valours, like great states,
Do sometimes sink with their own weights:
Th’ extremes of glory and of shame,
Like east and west, become the same:
No Indian prince has to his palace
More foll’wers than a thief to th’ gallows.
But if a beating seem so brave,
What glories must a whipping have
Such great achievements cannot fail
To cast salt on a woman’s tail:
For if I thought your nat’ral talent
Of passive courage were so gallant,
As you strain hard to have it thought,
I could grow amorous, and dote.

When Hudibras this language heard,
He prick’d up’s ears and strok’d his beard;
Thought he, this is the lucky hour;
Wines work when vines are in the flow’r.
This crisis then I’ll set my rest on,
And put her boldly to the question.

Madam, what you would seem to doubt,
Shall be to all the world made out,
How I’ve been drubb’d, and with what spirit
And magnanimity I bear it;
And if you doubt it to be true,
I’ll stake myself down against you:
And if I fail in love or troth,
Be you the winner, and take both.

Quoth she, I’ve beard old cunning stagers
Say, fools for arguments use wagers;
And though I prais’d your valour, yet
I did not mean to baulk your wit;
Which, if you have, you must needs know
What I have told you before now,
And you b’ experiment have prov’d,
I cannot love where I’m belov’d.

Quoth Hudibras, ’tis a caprich
Beyond th’ infliction of a witch;
So cheats to play with those still aim
That do not understand the game.
Love in your heart as icily burns
As fire in antique Roman urns,
To warm the dead, and vainly light
Those only that see nothing by’t.
Have you not power to entertain,
And render love for love again;
As no man can draw in his breath
At once, and force out air beneath?
Or do you love yourself so much,
To bear all rivals else a grutch?
What fate can lay a greater curse
Than you upon yourself would force?
For wedlock without love, some say,
Is but a lock without a key.
It is a kind of rape to marry
One that neglects, or cares not for ye:
For what does make it ravishment,
But b’ing against the mind’s consent?
A rape that is the more inhuman
For being acted by a woman.
Why are you fair, but to entice us
To love you, that you may despise us?
But though you cannot love, you say,
Out of your own fanatic way,
Why should you not at least allow
Those that love you to do so too?
For, as you fly me, and pursue
Love more averse, so I do you;
And am by your own doctrine taught
To practise what you call a fau’t.

Quoth she, If what you say is true,
You must fly me as I do you;
But ’tis not what we do, but say,
In love and preaching, that must sway.

Quoth he, To bid me not to love,
Is to forbid my pulse to move,
My beard to grow, my ears to prick up,
Or (when I’m in a fit) to hiccup:
Command me to piss out the moon,
And ’twill as easily be done:
Love’s power’s too great to be withstood
By feeble human flesh and blood.
’Twas he that brought upon his knees
The hect’ring, kill-cow Hercules;
Transform’d his leager-lion’s skin
T’ a petticoat, and made him spin;
Seiz’d on his club, and made it dwindle
T’ a feeble distaff and a spindle.
’Twas he that made emp’rors gallants
To their own sisters and their aunts;
Set popes and cardinals agog,
To play with pages at leap-frog.
’Twas he that gave our senate purges,
And flux’d the house of many a burgess;
Made those that represent the nation
Submit, and suffer amputation;
And all the grandees o’ the cabal
Adjourn to tubs at spring and fall.
He mounted synod-men, and rode ’em
To Dirty-Lane and little Sodom;
Made ’em curvet like Spanish jenets,
And take the ring at Madam ⸻87
’Twas he that made Saint Francis do88
More than the Devil could tempt him to,
In cold and frosty weather grow
Enamour’d of a wife of snow;
And though she were of rigid temper,
With melting flames accost and tempt her;
Which after in enjoyment quenching,
He