SAINT PETERS Complaynt - by Robert Southwell: 649 - 684/792

Shot, without noyse: wound, without present smart:
First, seeming light; proving in fyne a load; [650]
Entering with ease; not easily wonne to part,
Far in effects from that the showes abode;
Endorc'd with hope, subscribed with despaire:
Ugly in death, though life did faine it fair.

Oh! forfeiture of heaven! eternal debt, [655]
A moment's joy ending in endless fires;
Our nature's scum, the world's entangling net,
Night of our thoughts, death of all good desires.
Worse than all this, worse than all tongues can say,
Which man could owe, but only God defray. [660]

This fawning viper, dumb till he had wounded,
With many mouths doth now upbraid my harms;
My sight was veil'd till I myself confounded,
Then did I see the disenchanted charms:
Then could I cut the anatomy of sin, [665]
And search with lynxes' eyes what lay within.

Bewitching ill, that hides death in deceits,
Still borrowing lying shapes to mask thy face;
Now know I the deciphering of thy sleights;
A cunning dearly bought with loss of grace: [670]
Thy sugar'd poison now hath wrought so well,
That thou hast made me to myself a hell.

My eyes read mournful lessons to my heart,
My heart doth to my thought the grief expound;
My thought the same doth to my tongue impart, [675]
My tongue the message in the ears doth sound;
My ears back to my heart their sorrows send;
Thus circling griefs run round without an end.

My guilty eye still seems to see my sin,
All things are characters to spell my fall; [680]
What eye doth read without, heart rues within,
What heart doth rue, to pensive thought is gall,
Which when the thought would by the tongue digest,
The ear conveys it back into the breast.

Notes

[l650] in fyne: in fine - In the end; at last.c1540   R. Morice in H. Ellis Orig. Lett. Eminent Literary Men (1843) 24   In fyne he was perceyved to affixe one of the papers apon the dore.

[l651] wonne: conquered, overcome; no textual evidence to suggest 'one'.

[l652] that the showes abode: that which appearances suggested/predicted. to abode -  transitive. To presage, foretell (usually something bad). 1595   Shakespeare Henry VI, Pt. 3 v. vi. 45   The owle shrikt at thy birth, an euill signe, The night Crow cride, aboding lucklesse tune.

[l654] faine: feign - To fashion fictitiously or deceptively. To invent (a story, excuse, accusation); to forge (a document).

[l654] faire: pleasing to the eye, in contrast to 'Ugly'.

[l657] scumme: scum - any undesirable surface layer or deposit, usually but not necessarily on a liquid.

[l661] viper: the viper is associated in Scripture with deception and murder:

[1] Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth which the Lord God had made. [Genesis 3]
[7] And seeing many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he [John the Baptist] said to them: Ye brood of vipers...[Matthew 3]
[44] You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof. [John 8]

[l665] anotomy: A body or ‘subject’ for dissection. Obs.1545   T. Raynald tr. E. Roesslin Byrth of Mankynde Prol. sig. B.iii,   As thoughe ye were present at the cuttynge open of anathomye of a deed woman.

[l680]: All things are (like) characters (letters) that spell (spell out or declare) my fall.