The purple island : a poem / by Phineas Fletcher ; with the critical remarks of the late Henry Headley, and a biographical sketch by William Jaques.

  • Fletcher, Phineas, 1582-1650.
Date:
1816
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The purple island : a poem / by Phineas Fletcher ; with the critical remarks of the late Henry Headley, and a biographical sketch by William Jaques. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    XVII. His native beauty is a lily white* ; Which still some other colour’d stream infecteth, Least like itself; with divers stainings diglit, The inward disposition it detecteth: If white, it argues wet; if purple, fire ; If black, a heavy cheer, and fix’d desire ; Youthful and blithe, if suited in a rosy tire. XVIII. It cover’d stands with silken flourishingf, Which as it oft decays, renews again, The other’s sense and beauty perfecting ; Which else would feel, but with unusual pain : Whose pleasing sweetness, and resplendent shine, Soft’ning the wanton touch, and wand’ring eyn, Doth oft the t Prince himself with witch’ries undermine. XIX The second §rampier’s of a softer matter. Made by the purple rivers overllotving : . Whose airy wa ve and swelling waters, fatter, (For want of heat, congeal’d,) and thicker growing, The wand’ring heat||, which quiet ne’er subsisteth Sends back again to what confine it listeth ; And outward enemies by yielding, most resisteth. * The native colour of thesk in is white, but(as Hippocrates)it is changed into the colour of the predominant humour. Where melancholy abounds, it is dark; where phlegm, it is white and pale ; where choler reigns, it isred an.l fiery, &c. + The cutkle or scarf-skin, is an extremely thin and transparent membrane, void of scuse, and covering the skin all over, it consists of several layers of exceeding small scales, which cover one another. | The mind. $ The fat is a whitish, oily substance, void of sense, is secreted from the blood, and lodged in small, oval, membranous bigs, which shoot out of the arteries. |] The fat increases inward heat, by keeping it from outward parts; and defends the parts subject to it from bruises.