THE LEGEND OF ARTEGALL, OR OF JUSTICE.
So oft as I with state of present time
The image of the antique world compare,
Whenas man's age was in his freshest prime,
And the first blossom of fair virtue bare;
Such odds I find twixt those, and these which are,
As that, through long continuance of his course,
Me seems the world is run quite out of square
From the first point of his appointed source;
And being once amiss grows daily worse and worse:
For from the golden age, that first was nam'd,
It's now at erst1 become a stony one;
And men themselves, the which at first were
Of earthly mould, and form'd of flesh and bone,
Are now transforméd into hardest stone;
Such as behind their backs (so backward bred)
Were thrown by Pyrrha and Deucalione:
And if than those may any worse be red,2
They into that ere long will be degendered.
Let none then blame me, if, in discipline
Of virtue and of civil uses' lore,
I do not form them to the common line
Of present days which are corrupted sore;
But to the antique use1 which was of yore,
When good was only for itself desired,
And all men sought their own, and none no more;
When Justice was not for most meed out-hired,
But simple Truth did reign, and was of all admired.
For that which all men then did Virtue call,
Is now call'd Vice; and that which Vice was hight,2
Is now hight Virtue, and so us'd of all:
Right now is wrong, and wrong that was is right;
As all things else in time are changed quite:
Ne wonder; for the heavens' revolution
Is wander'd far from where it first was pight,3
And so do make contráry constitution
Of all this lower world toward his dissolution.
For whoso list into the heavens look,
And search the courses of the rolling spheres, Shall find that from the point where they first took Their setting forth, in these few thousand years They all are wander'd much; that plain appears: For that same golden fleecy ram, which bore Phryxus and Helle from their stepdame's fears, Hath now forgot where he was plac'd of yore, And shoulder'd hath the bull which fair Europa bore.
And eke the bull hath with his bow-bent horn
So hardly butted those two twins of Jove,
That they have crush'd the crab, and quite him
Into the great Nemæan lion's grove.
So now all range, and do at random rove
Out of their proper places far away,
And all this world with them amiss do move, And all his creatures from their course astray; Till they arrive at their last ruinous decay.
Ne is that same great glorious lamp of light,
That doth enlumine all these lesser fires,
In better case, ne keeps his course more right,
But is miscarried with the other spheres:
For since the term of fourteen hundred years,
That learned Ptolemy his height did take,
He is declinéd from that mark of theirs
Nigh thirty minutes to the southern lake;
That makes me fear in time he will us quite forsake.
And if to those Ægyptian wizards old
(Which in star-read1 were wont have best insight) 1 KnowFaith may be given, it is by them told
That since the time they first took the sun's height,
Four times his place he shifted hath in sight,
And twice hath risen where he now doth west,
And wested twice where he ought rise aright.
But most is Mars amiss of all the rest;
And next to him old Saturn, that was wont be best.
For during Saturn's ancient reign it's said
That all the world with goodness did abound;
All lovéd virtue, no man was afraid
* Thirty minutes:' refers to the diminution of the obliquity of the ecliptic, by which the sun recedes from the pole, and approaches the equator.
Of force, ne fraud in wight was to be found;
No war was known, no dreadful trumpet's sound;
Peace universal reign'd 'mongst men and beasts:
And all things freely grew out of the ground:
Justice sat high ador'd with solemn feasts,
And to all people did divide her dread beheasts:
Most sacred Virtue she of all the rest,
Resembling God in his imperial might;
Whose sov'reign power is herein most exprest,
That both to good and bad he dealeth right,
And all his works with justice hath bedight.1
That power he also doth to princes lend,
And makes them like himself in glorious sight
To sit in his own seat, his cause to end,
And rule his people right, as he doth recommend.
Dread sov'reign goddess,* that dost highest sit
In seat of judgment in th' Almighty's stead,
And with magnific might and wondrous wit
Dost to thy people righteous doom aread,2
That farthest nations fills with awful dread,
Pardon the boldness of thy basest thrall,
That dare discourse of so divine a read,3
As thy great justice praised over all;
The instrument whereof lo here thy Artegall.
'Sovereign goddess:' Queen Elizabeth.
CANTO I.
Artegall train'd in Justice' lore
Irena's quest pursued;
He doth avenge on Sanglier
His lady's blood embrued.
THOUGH virtue then were held in highest price,
In those old times of which I do intreat,1
Yet then likewise the wicked seed of vice
Began to spring; which shortly grew full great,
And with their boughs the gentle plants did beat:
But evermore some of the virtuous race
Rose up, inspiréd with heroic heat,
That cropt the branches of the sient2 base,
And with strong hand their fruitful rankness did
Such first was Bacchus, that with furious might
All th' East, before untam'd, did over-run,
And wrong represséd, and establish'd right,
Which lawless men had formerly fordone:3
There Justice first her princely rule begun.
Next Hercules his like ensample shew'd,
Who all the West with equal conquest won,
And monstrous tyrants with his club subdu'd;
The club of Justice dread with kingly power endu'd.
And such was he of whom I have to tell,
The champion of true justice, Artegall:
Whom (as ye lately might remember well)
An hard adventure, which did then befall,
Into redoubted peril forth did call;
That was, to succour a distresséd dame
Whom a strong tyrant did unjustly thrall,
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