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Richard Lovelace - A Fly Caught In A Cobweb
Work rating: Low

Small type of great ones, that do hum
Within this whole world`s narrow room,
That with a busie hollow noise
Catch at the people`s vainer voice,
And with spread sails play with their breath,
Whose very hails new christen death.
Poor Fly, caught in an airy net,
Thy wings have fetter`d now thy feet;
Where, like a Lyon in a toyl,
Howere thou keep`st a noble coyl,
And beat`st thy gen`rous breast, that o`re
The plains thy fatal buzzes rore,
Till thy all-bellyd foe (round elf)
Hath quarter`d thee within himself.

  Was it not better once to play
I` th` light of a majestick ray,
Where, though too neer and bold, the fire
Might sindge thy upper down attire,
And thou i` th` storm to loose an eye.
A wing, or a self-trapping thigh:
Yet hadst thou fal`n like him, whose coil
Made fishes in the sea to broyl,
When now th`ast scap`d the noble flame;
Trapp`d basely in a slimy frame,
And free of air, thou art become
Slave to the spawn of mud and lome?

  Nor is`t enough thy self do`s dresse
To thy swoln lord a num`rous messe,
And by degrees thy thin veins bleed,
And piecemeal dost his poyson feed;
But now devour`d, art like to be
A net spun for thy familie,
And, straight expanded in the air,
Hang`st for thy issue too a snare.
Strange witty death and cruel ill
That, killing thee, thou thine dost kill!
Like pies, in whose entombed ark
All fowl crowd downward to a lark,
Thou art thine en`mies` sepulcher,
And in thee buriest, too, thine heir.

  Yet Fates a glory have reserv`d
For one so highly hath deserv`d.
As the rhinoceros doth dy
Under his castle-enemy,
As through the cranes trunk throat doth speed,
The aspe doth on his feeder feed;
Fall yet triumphant in thy woe,
Bound with the entrails of thy foe.
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