To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of That Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Morison

Ben Jonson

The Turn

Brave infant of Saguntum, clear

Thy coming forth in that great year,

When the prodigious Hannibal did crown

His rage with razing your immortal town.

Thou, looking then about,

Ere thou wert half got out,

Wise child, didst hastily return,

And mad’st thy mother’s womb thine urn.

How summed a circle didst thou leave mankind

Of deepest lore, could we the center find!

The Counterturn

Did wiser nature draw thee back

From out the horror of that sack,

Where shame, faith, honor, and regard of right

Lay trampled on; the deeds of death and night

Urged, hurried forth, and hurled

Upon th’ affrighted world;

Sword, fire, and famine, with fell fury met,

And all on utmost ruin set,

As, could they but life’s miseries foresee,

No doubt all infants would return like thee?

The Stand

For what is life, if measured by the space,

Not by the act?

Or maskèd man, if valued by his face

Above his fact?

Here’s one outlived his peers

And told forth fourscore years;

He vexèd time and busied the whole state,

Troubled both foes and friends;

But ever to no ends:

What did this stirrer but die late?

How well at twenty had he fall’n or stood!

For three of his fourscore he did no good.

The Turn

He entered well, by virtuous parts,

Got up and thrived with honest arts;

He purchased friends, and fame, and honors then,

And had his noble name advanced with men;

But weary of that flight

He stooped in all men’s sight

To sordid flatteries, acts of strife,

And sunk in that dead sea of life

So deep, as he did then death’s waters sup,

But that the cork of title buoyed him up.

The Counterturn

Alas, but Morison fell young;

He never fell, thou fall’st, my tongue.

He stood, a soldier to the last right end,

A perfect patriot, and a noble friend,

But most a virtuous son.

All offices were done

By him so ample, full, and round,

In weight, in measure, number, sound,

As, though his age imperfect might appear,

His life was of humanity the sphere.

The Stand

Go now, and tell out days summed up with fears,

And make them years;

Produce thy mass of miseries on the stage

To swell thin age;

Repeat of things a throng,

To show thou hast been long,

Not lived; for life doth her great actions spell

By what was done and wrought

In season, and so brought

To light: her measures are, how well

Each syllabe answered, and was formed how fair;

These make the lines of life, and that’s her air.

The Turn

It is not growing like a tree

In bulk doth make man better be;

Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,

To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:

A lily of a day

Is fairer far in May;

Although it fall and die that night,

It was the plant and flower of light.

In small proportions we just beauties see,

And in short measures life may perfect be.

The Counterturn

Call, noble Lucius, then for wine,

And let thy looks with gladness shine;

Accept this garland, plant it on thy head,

And think, nay know, thy Morison’s not dead.

He leaped the present age,

Possessed with holy rage

To see that bright eternal day;

Of which we priests and poets say

Such truths as we expect for happy men,

And there he lives with memory, and Ben

The Stand

Jonson! who sung thus of him, ere he went

Himself to rest,

Or taste a part of that full joy he meant

To have expressed

In this bright asterism;

Where it were friendship’s schism

(Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry)

To separate these twi-

Lights, the Dioscuri,

And keep the one half from his Harry.

But fate doth so alternate the design,

Whilst that in heaven, this light on earth must shine.

The Turn

And shine as you exalted are,

Two names of friendship, but one star:

Of hearts the union. And those not by chance

Made, or indenture, or leased out t’advance

The profits for a time.

No pleasures vain did chime

Of rimes, or riots, at your feasts,

Orgies of drink, or feigned protests,

But simple love of greatness and of good;

That knits brave minds and manners more than blood.

The Counterturn

This made you first to know the why

You liked, then after to apply

That liking, and approach so one the tother,

Till either grew a portion of the other:

Each styled by his end

The copy of his friend.

You lived to be the great surnames

And titles by which all made claims

Unto the virtue. Nothing perfect done,

But as a Cary, or a Morison.

The Stand

And such a force the fair example had,

As they that saw

The good, and durst not practice it, were glad

That such a law

Was left yet to mankind;

Where they might read and find

Friendship, indeed, was written, not in words;

And with the heart, not pen,

Of two so early men,

Whose lines her rolls were, and recòrds,

Who, ere the first down bloomèd on the chin,

Had sowed these fruits, and got the harvest in.

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Snails by Francis Ponge

Unlike the ashes that make their home with hot coals, snails prefer moist earth. Go on: they advance while gluing themselves to it with their entire bodies. They carry it, they eat it, they shit it. They go through it, it goes through them. It’s the best kind of interpenetration, as between tones, one passive and one active. The passive bathes and nourishes the active, which overturns the other while it eats.

(There is more to be said about snails. First of all their immaculate clamminess. Their sangfroid. Their stretchiness.)

One can scarcely conceive of a snail outside its shell and unmoving. The moment it rests it sinks down deep into itself. In fact, its modesty obliges it to move as soon as it has shown its nakedness and  revealed its vulnerable shape. The moment it’s exposed, it moves on.

During periods of dryness they withdraw into ditches where it seems their bodies are enough to maintain their dampness. No doubt their neighbors there are toads and frogs and other ectothermic animals. But when they come out again they don’t move as quickly. You have to admire their willingness to go into the ditch, given how hard it is for them to come out again.

Note also that though snails like moist soil, they have no affection for places that are too wet such as marshes or ponds. Most assuredly they prefer firm earth, as long as it’s fertile and damp.

They are fond as well of moisture-rich vegetables and green leafy plants. They know how to feed on them leaving only the veins, cutting free the most tender leaves. They are hell on salads.

What are these beings from the depths of the ditches? Though snails love many of their trenches’ qualities they have every intention of leaving. They are in their element but they are also wanderers. And when they emerge into the daylight onto firm ground their shells will preserve their vagabond’s hauteur.

It must be a pain to have to haul that trailer around with them everywhere, but they never complain and in the end they are happy about it. How valuable, after all, to be able to go home any time, no matter where you may find yourself, eluding all intruders. It must be worth it.