The chambers made of Amber that is clear,
Do give a fine sweet smell, if fire be near;
Her bed a cherry stone, is carved throughout,
And with a butterfly’s wing hung about;
Her sheets are of the skin of Dove’s eyes made
Where on a violet bud her pillow’s laid.
So she could write when she was young. But her fairies, if they survived at all, grew up into hippopotami. Too generously her prayer was granted:
Give me the free and noble style,
Which seems uncurb’d, though it be wild.
She became capable of involutions, and contortions and conceits of which the following is among the shortest, but not the most terrific:
The human head may be likened to a town:
The mouth when full, begun
Is market day, when empty, market’s done;
The city conduct, where the water flows,
Is with two spouts, the nostrils and the nose.
She similised, energetically, incongruously, eternally; the sea became a meadow, the sailors shepherds, the mast a maypole. The fly was the bird of summer, trees were senators, houses ships, and even the fairies, whom she loved better than any earthly thing, except the Duke, are changed into blunt atoms and sharp atoms, and take part in some of those horrible manoeuvres in which she delighted to marshal the universe. Truly, “my Lady Sanspareille hath a strange spreading wit”. Worse still, without an atom of dramatic power, she turned to play-writing.
