Enter SOLSTITIUM very richly attired,
    with a noise of musicians before him.

SUM. Ay, marry, here comes majesty in pomp,
Resplendent Sol, chief planet of the heavens!
He is our servant, looks he ne'er so big.

SOL. My liege, what crav'st thou at thy vassal's hands?

SUM. Hypocrisy, how it can change his shape!
How base is pride from his own dunghill put!
How I have rais'd thee, Sol. I list not tell,
Out of the ocean of adversity,
To sit in height of honour's glorious heaven,
To be the eyesore[43] of aspiring eyes:
To give the day her life from thy bright looks,
And let nought thrive upon the face of earth,
From which thou shalt withdraw thy powerful smiles.
What hast thou done, deserving such high grace?
What industry or meritorious toil
Canst thou produce to prove my gift well-placed?
Some service or some profit I expect:
None is promoted but for some respect.

SOL. My lord, what need these terms betwixt us two?
Upbraiding ill-beseems your bounteous mind:
I do you honour for advancing me.
Why, 'tis a credit for your excellence
To have so great a subject as I am:
This is your glory and magnificence,
That, without stooping of your mightiness,
Or taking any whit from your high state,
You can make one as mighty as yourself.

AUT. O arrogance exceeding all belief!
Summer, my lord, this saucy upstart Jack,
That now doth rule the chariot of the sun,
And makes all stars derive their light from him,
Is a most base, insinuating slave,
The sum[44] of parsimony and disdain;
One that will shine on friends and foes alike,
That under brightest smiles hideth black show'rs
Whose envious breath doth dry up springs and lake
And burns the grass, that beasts can get no food.

WIN. No dunghill hath so vile an excrement,
But with his beams he will thenceforth exhale.
The fens and quagmires tithe to him their filth:
Forth purest mines he sucks a gainful dross.
Green ivy-bushes at the vintner's doors
He withers, and devoureth all their sap.

AUT. Lascivious and intemperate he is:
The wrong of Daphne is a well-known tale.
Each evening he descends to Thetis' lap,
The while men think he bathes him in the sea.
O, but when he returneth whence he came
Down to the west, then dawns his deity,
Then doubled is the swelling of his looks.
He overloads his car with orient gems,
And reins his fiery horses with rich pearl.
He terms himself the god of poetry,
And setteth wanton songs unto the lute.

WIN. Let him not talk, for he hath words at will,
And wit to make the baldest[45] matter good.

SUM. Bad words, bad wit! O, where dwells faith or truth?
Ill usury my favours reap from thee,
Usurping Sol, the hate of heaven and earth.

SOL. If envy unconfuted may accuse,
Then innocence must uncondemned die.
The name of martyrdom offence hath gain'd
When fury stopp'd a froward judge's ears.
Much I'll not say (much speech much folly shows):
What I have done you gave me leave to do.
The excrements you bred whereon I feed;
To rid the earth of their contagious fumes,
With such gross carriage did I load my beam
I burnt no grass, I dried no springs and lakes;
I suck'd no mines, I wither'd no green boughs,
But when to ripen harvest I was forc'd
To make my rays more fervent than I wont.
For Daphne's wrongs and 'scapes in Thetis' lap,
All gods are subject to the like mishap.
Stars daily fall ('tis use is all in all),
And men account the fall but nature's course.
Vaunting my jewels hasting to the west,
Or rising early from the grey-ey'd morn,
What do I vaunt but your large bountyhood,
And show how liberal a lord I serve?
Music and poetry, my two last crimes,
Are those two exercises of delight,
Wherewith long labours I do weary out.
The dying swan is not forbid to sing:
The waves of Hebrus[46] play'd on Orpheus' strings,
When he (sweet music's trophy) was destroy'd.
And as for poetry, words'[47] eloquence
(Dead Phaeton's three sisters' funeral tears
That by the gods were to Electrum turn'd),
Not flint or rock, of icy cinders flam'd,
Deny the force[48] of silver-falling streams.
Envy enjoyeth poetry's unrest;[49]
In vain I plead; well is to me a fault,
And these my words seem the sleight[50] web of art,
And not to have the taste of sounder truth.
Let none but fools be car'd for of the wise:
Knowledge' own children knowledge most despise.

SUM. Thou know'st too much to know to keep the mean:
He that sees all things oft sees not himself.
The Thames is witness of thy tyranny,
Whose waves thou dost exhaust for winter show'rs.
The naked channel 'plains her of thy spite,
That laid'st her entrails unto open sight.[51]
Unprofitably borne to man and beast,
Which like to Nilus yet doth hide his head,
Some few years since[52] thou lett'st o'erflow these walks,
And in the horse-race headlong ran at race,
While in a cloud thou hidd'st thy burning face.
Where was thy care to rid contagious filth,
When some men wet-shod (with his waters) droop'd?[53]
Others that ate the eels his heat cast up
Sicken'd and died by them impoisoned.
Sleptest, or kept'st thou then Admetus' sheep,
Thou drov'st not back these flowings of the deep?

SOL. The winds, not I, have floods and tides in chase.
Diana, whom our fables call the moon,
Only commandeth o'er the raging main:
She leads his wallowing offspring up and down,
She waning, all streams ebb: in the year
She was eclips'd, when that the Thames was bare.

SUM. A bare conjecture, builded on per-haps.[54]
In laying thus the blame upon the moon,
Thou imitat'st subtle Pythagoras
Who, what he would the people should believe,
The same he wrote with blood upon a glass,
And turn'd it opposite 'gainst the new moon,
Whose beams, reflecting on it with full force,
Show'd all those lines to them that stood behind,
Most plainly writ in circle of the moon:
And then he said: not I, but the new moon,
Fair Cynthia, persuades you this and that.
With like collusion shalt thou now blind me;
But for abusing both the moon and me
Long shalt thou be eclipsed by the moon,
And long in darkness live and see no light—
Away with him, his doom hath no reverse!

SOL. What is eclips'd will one day shine again:
Though winter frowns, the spring will ease my pain.
Time from the brow doth wipe out every stain.
                                       [Exit SOL.

WILL SUM. I think the sun is not so long in passing through the twelve signs, as the son of a fool hath been disputing here about had I wist.[55] Out of doubt, the poet is bribed of some that have a mess of cream to eat, before my lord go to bed yet, to hold him half the night with raff-raff of the rumming of Elinor.[56] If I can tell what it means, pray God I may never get breakfast more, when I am hungry. Troth, I am of opinion he is one of those hieroglyphical writers, that by the figures of beasts, plants, and of stones, express the mind, as we do in A B C; or one that writes under hair, as I have heard of a certain notary, Histiaesus,[57] who, following Darius in the Persian wars, and desirous to disclose some secrets of import