Tixall Poetry/The Forehead the First Assault
The Forehead the First Assault.
Let fickle, wanton lovers seekeTheyre garlands in a smiling cheeke;My love aspires unto the crowneThat hovers ore a foreheads frowne.They'r idle lookes that can bee ledInchanted to a rosy bed;My watchfull eyes will onely dwellWhere awfull frownes kepe sentinell.The cheekes are humble dowry plaines,Where vulger pleasure onely raignes;The towring fronts majestick hightDisplays a mountaine of delight.Each rurall Pan his nimph can spyeTrip ore a cheekes fayre Thesaly; The Muses onely Sol alowTo clime Parnassus loftye brow.The cheekes an earthly garden bed,With lilys and with roses spreade;The forehead is a spheare de vine,Where plants not grow, but planits shine.The torid zone may now be past,With every saile, and every mast,But thats a venterous vessel daresGoe plow the ice o'th poler starres.Leander-like, the calme I hateUpon the smoothest cheekes to wate,But love the furrowed HellespontOf my deare cruells swelling front.The sinner his temtation seekesI' th' earthy aples of the cheekes;But thats a saintly paradiseThat beares the aples of the eyes.The cheeke, or age or death devowrs,As soft and fading as its flowres;The foreheads bloome no season culls,But keepes its forme in buried sculls. The foreheads in loves edificeThe faire engraved frontispeece,Where nature gave in beautys faceThe uper end and midle place.Are they not natures enemyes,Who steale it thence to cheekes or eyes?Nor will the single forehead mone,Because the cheekes are two for one;Since beautys dread soveraigntyCan onely dwell in unetye.The cheekes, the lips, the hands, the feete,Outmatched alone, in couples meete.Had not the forehead matchles bin,We, Janus-like, still two had sene;But nature made it one, becauseShe could not such another cause,And wisely left it single yet,Till she knows how to doble it:Or, least so high a doble blisseShould cause a doble presipice,For murderd harts she did inventA single toombe and monument. So while the fickle lover seekesTwo pitfalls in two dimpled cheakes,My constant hart shall dying craveOne forheads wrinkle for a grave.