Each window like a pill'ry appears,
With heads thrust thro' nailed by the ears;
All trades run in as to the sight
Of monsters, or their dear delight
The gallow-tree, when cutting purse 395
Breeds bus'ness for heroic verse,[1]
Which none does hear, but would have hung
T' have been the theme of such a song.[2]
Those two together long had liv'd,
In mansion, prudently contriv'd,[3] 400
Where neither tree nor house could bar
The free detection of a star;
And nigh an ancient obelisk
Was rais'd by him, found out by Fisk,[4]
On which was written, not in words, 405
But hieroglyphic mute of birds,[5]
Many rare pithy saws, concerning
The worth of astrologic learning:
Prom top of this there hung a rope,
To which he fasten'd telescope; 410
The spectacles with which the stars
He reads in smallest characters.
It happen'd as a boy, one night,
Did fly his tarsel[6] of a kite,
- ↑ "Copies of Verses," indited in the name of the culprit, as well as his "last dying speech and confession," were then customarily hawked about, on the day of the execution.
- ↑ Sir John Denham sings of the Earl of Strafford:
So did he move our passions, some were known
To wish, for the defence, the crime their own. - ↑ Lilly had a house and grounds at Hersham, Walton-on-Thames, which was his regular abode when not in London. He tells us in his Life that he bought them in 1652, for £950.
- ↑ Fisk was a licentiate in medicine of good parts and very studious, but he abandoned his profession in pursuit of astrology. "In the year 1663," says Lilly in his own Life, "I became acquainted with Nicholas Fisk, licentiate in physic, born in Suffolk, fit for, but not sent to, the university, studying at home astrology and physic, which he afterwards practised at Colchester. He had a pension from the Parliament; and during the civil war, and the whole of the usurpation, prognosticated on that side."
- ↑ That is, the dung of birds. See the account of Tobit's loss of his eyesight in the Book of Tobit.
- ↑ Tiersel, or tiercelet, is the French name of the male goss-hawk. See Wright's Glossary.
