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Before the Palace of Antioch. | |
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Enter GOWER. | |
| To sing a song that old was sung, | |
| From ashes ancient Gower is come, | |
| Assuming man’s infirmities, | 5 |
| To glad your ear, and please your eyes. | |
| It hath been sung at festivals, | |
| On ember-eves, and holy-ales; | |
| And lords and ladies in their lives | |
| Have read it for restoratives: | 10 |
| The purchase is to make men glorious; | |
| Et bonum quo antiquius, eo melius. | |
| If you, born in these latter times, | |
| When wit’s more ripe, accept my rimes, | |
| And that to hear an old man sing | 15 |
| May to your wishes pleasure bring, | |
| I life would wish, and that I might | |
| Waste it for you like taper-light. | |
| This Antioch, then, Antiochus the Great | |
| Built up, this city, for his chiefest seat, | 20 |
| The fairest in all Syria, | |
| I tell you what mine authors say: | |
| This king unto him took a fere, | |
| Who died and left a female heir, | |
| So buxom, blithe, and full of face | 25 |
| As heaven had lent her all his grace; | |
| With whom the father liking took, | |
| And her to incest did provoke. | |
| Bad child, worse father! to entice his own | |
| To evil should be done by none. | 30 |
| By custom what they did begin | |
| Was with long use account no sin. | |
| The beauty of this sinful dame | |
| Made many princes thither frame, | |
| To seek her as a bed-fellow, | 35 |
| In marriage-pleasures play-fellow: | |
| Which to prevent, he made a law, | |
| To keep her still, and men in awe, | |
| That whoso ask’d her for his wife, | |
| His riddle told not, lost his life: | 40 |
| So for her many a wight did die, | |
| As yon grim looks do testify. | |
| What now ensues, to the judgment of your eye | |
| I give, my cause who best can justify. [Exit. | |
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