Reynolds & Midway XIX

Use The Force, Luke, quoth that Obi Wan,

God told me to endite this daye the twentieth
~ One minus wich ~ November, there ! to him
That hath an ear, pray, let him listen than
& heede what we wi Christes' succor spieth
As thro' the luikinge glass our eye descryeth,
Quod Reynolds, in the welkin waxen dim

And thicke with mony spiral galaxies,

And nebulas, and vasty constellations,
Wherein we may imagine sundrie things
Swich as the Scorpion, that poisond is;
The greate Beare; & the Haywaine; & creations
Of still more coy and subtile variations
To glad the harts of pauperes and of kings

Of any race of loose or stiffneckd people,

Whether they haile out of the balmy dessert
Or northen tundras of quhite ice and snowe
That braketh mony a prow & goode shippes cripple.
'Tis written there for any quho will hazard
Ane upward glance. Ye need not bene a wizzard
To see the signes and signals wrote thereto,

Made large by One whose hand doth never shirke
Nor vainly tarry on a trivial matter,
But is the Fountainhead of Industrie,
The Prime, set standard of all goodly werke,
Who in th' eternal void the Light did scatter;
Who on the globe divided erde and water,
And lit His living lanterne in the skie.

11.21.13

[Chaucer, Douglas, Spenser, Berryman]