SAINT PETERS Complaynt - by Robert Southwell: 217-252/792

Yet love, was loath to part; fear, loath to die:
Stay, daunger, life, did counterplead their causes:
I, favouring stay, and life, bade daunger flie:
But daunger did except against these clauses. [220]
Yet stay, and live, I would, and daunger shunne:
And lost my selfe, while I my verdict wonne.

I stayed, yet did my staying farthest part:
I liv'd; but so, that saving life, I lost it:
Daunger I shun'd, but to my sorer smart: [225]
I gayned nought, but deeper danger crost it.
What daunger, distance, death, is worse than this:
That runnes from God, and spoyles his soul of bliss?

O John, my guide into this earthly hell,
Too well acquainted in so ill a court, [230]
Where rayling mouthes with blasphemies did swell,
With taynted breath infecting all resort.
Why didst thou lead me to this hell of evills:
To shew my selfe a feind among the divels?

Evill president, the tyde that wafts to vice, [235]
Dumme orator, that woes with silent deedes,
Writing in workes lessons of evill advise,
The doing tale that eye in practize reedes:
Taster of joyes to unacquainted hunger:
With leaven of the old seasoning the yonger. [240]

It seemes no fault to doe that all have done:
The nomber of offenders hides the sinne:
Coatch drawne, with many horse doth easely runne.
Soon followeth one where multitudes begin.
O, had I in that Court much stronger bin: [245]
Or not so strong as first to enter in!

Sharpe was the weather in that stormie place,
Best suting hearts benumb'd with hellish frost,
Whose crusted malice could admit no grace,
Where coals are kindled to the warmers cost. [250]
Where feare, my thoughts canded with ysie cold:
Heate did my toungue to perjuries unfold.

Notes

[l220] except against these clauses: To make objection; to object or take exception. From the use of Latin excipere (adversus aliquem) in Roman Law; the etymological notion being that of limiting the right alleged in an opponent's declaration by setting up a countervailing right in the defendant which excepts his case 1577   M. Hanmer tr. Socrates Scholasticus i. xxi, in Aunc. Eccl. Hist. 248   He excepteth against Eusebius and his adherents, as open enemyes

[l223]: I stayed, but by staying moved furthest away.

[l225] Daunger I shun'd, but to my sorer smart: I shunned danger but in so doing I suffered a more painful wound.

[l226] but deeper domage crost it: I gained nothing, but , on the contrary, suffered greater harm.

John & Peter. JJ Tissot. Brooklyn Museum.

[l229] John: John refers to himself in his gospel account as 'another disciple':

[15] And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple. And that disciple was known to the high priest, and went in with Jesus into the court of the high priest.[16] But Peter stood at the door without. The other disciple therefore, who was known to the high priest, went out, and spoke to the portress, and brought in Peter. [John 18]

[l235] president: precedent. The poet focuses in this and the following verse upon the evil of following a bad precedent or example, even if all around appear to be doing the same.

[13] Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. [14] How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!  [Matthew 7]

[l238] reedes: reads.

[l236]:woes: wooes.

[l239]: A man may hunger for what appear to be joys and pleasures but without being acquainted with their real nature

[l245] bin: been.

[l247] the weather: see Chapter 18 of Matthew's Gospel:

[18] Now the servants and ministers stood at a fire of coals, because it was cold, and warmed themselves. And with them was Peter also, standing, and warming himself. 

[l251] canded: Covered with anything crystalline or glistening, as hoar-frost.1600   E. Fairfax tr. Tasso Godfrey of Bulloigne vi. ciii. 114   The siluer moone..Spred frostie pearle on the canded ground. ysie: icy.