Prince1

AN EPISTLE TO A PATRON

My lord, hearing lately of your opulence in promises and your house

Busy with parasites, of your hands full of favours, your statutes

Admirable as music, and no fear of your arms not prospering, 1 have

Considered how to serve you and breed from my talents

These few secrets which 1 shall make plain

To your intelligent glory. You should understand that 1 have plotted,

Being in command of all the ordinary engines

Of defence and offence, a hundred and fifteen buildings

Less others less complete: complete, some are courts of serene stone,

Some the civil structures of a war-like elegance as bridges,

Sewers, aqueducts and citadels of brick, with which 1 declare the fact

That your nature is to vanquish. For these 1 have acquired a knowledge

Of the habits of numbers and of various tempers, and skill in setting

Firm sets of pure bare members which will rise, hanging together

Like an argument, with beams, ties and sistering pilasters:

The lintels and windows with mouldings as round as a girl's chin; thresholds

To libraries; halls that cannot be entered without a sensation as of myrrh

By your vermilion officers, your sages and dancers. There will be chambers

Like the recovery of a sick man, your closet waiting not

Less suitably shadowed than the heart, and the coffers of a ceiling

To reflect your diplomatic taciturnities. You may commission

Hospitals, huge granaries that will smile to bear your filial plunders,

And stables washed with a silver lime in whose middle tower seated

In the slight acridity you may watch

The copper thunder kept in the sulky flanks of your horse, a rolling field

Of necks glad to be groomed, the strong crupper, the edged hoof

And the long back, seductive and rebellious to saddles.

And barracks, fortresses, in need of no vest save light, light

That to me is breath, food and drink, 1 live by effects of light, I live

To catch it, to break it, as an orator plays off

Against each other and his theme his casual gems, and so with light,

Twisted in strings, plucked, crossed or knotted or crumbled

As it may be allowed to be by leaves,

Or clanged back by lakes and rocks or otherwise beaten,

Or else spilt and spread like a feast of honey, dripping

Through delightful voids and creeping along long fractures, brimming

Carved canals, bowls and lachrymatories with pearls: all this the work

Of now advancing, now withdrawing faces, whose use I know.

I know what slabs thus will be soaked to a thumb's depth by the sun

And where to rob them, what colour stifles in your intact quarries. what

Sand silted in your river-gorges will well mix with the dust of flint; I know

What wood to cut by what moon in what weather

Of your sea-winds, your hill-wind: therefore tyrant, let me learn

Your high-ways, ways of sandstone, roads of the oakleaf, and your sea-ways.

Send me to dig dry graves, exposing what you want: I must

Attend your orgies and debates (let others apply for austerities), admit me

To your witty table, stuff me with urban levities, feed me, bind me

To a prudish luxury, free me thus, and with a workshop

From my household consisting

Of a pregnant wife, one female and one boy child and an elder bastard

With other properties; these let me regard, let me neglect, and let

What I begin be finished. Save me, noble sir, from the agony

Of starved and privy explorations such as those 1 stumble

From a hot bed to make, to follow lines to which the night-sky

Holds only faint contingencies. These flights with no end but failure,

And failure not to end them, these palliate or prevent.

I wish for liberty, let me then be tied: and seeing too much

I aspire to be constrained by your emblems of birth and triumph,

And between the obligations of your future and the checks of actual state

To flourish, adapt the stubs of an interminable descent, and place

The crested key to confident vaults; with a placid flurry of petals,

And bosom and lips, will stony functionaries support

The persuasion, so beyond proof, of your power. I will record

In peculiar scrolls your alien alliances,

Fit an apartment for your eastern hostage, extol in basalt

Your father, praise with white festoons the goddess your lady;

And for your death which will be mine prepare

An encasement as if of solid blood. And so let me

Forget, let me remember, that this is stone, stick, metal, trash

Which I will pile and hack, my hands will stain and bend

(None better knowing how to gain from the slow pains of a marble

Bruised, breathing strange climates). Being pressed as I am, being broken

By wealth and poverty, torn between strength and weakness, take me, choose

To relieve me, to receive of me and must you not agree

As you have been to some-a great giver of banquets, of respite from swords,

Who shook out figured cloths, who rained coin,

A donor of laurel and of grapes, a font of profuse intoxicants–and so,

To be so too for me? And none too soon, since the panting mind

Rather than barren will be prostitute, and once

I served a herd of merchants; but since I will be faithful

And my virtue is such, though far from home let what is yours be mine, and this be a match

As many have been proved, enduring exiles and blazed

Not without issue in returning shows: your miserly freaks

Your envies, racks and poisons not out of mind

Although not told, since often borne-indeed how should it be

That you employed them less than we? but now be flattered a little

To indulge the extravagant gist of this communication,

For my pride puts all in doubt and at present I have no patience,

I have simply hope, and I submit me

To your judgement which will be just.