Aldobrandino, a Fat Cardinal
Never was humane soule so overgrown,
With an unreasonable Cargazon
Of flesh, as Aldobrandine, whom to pack,
No girdle serv’d lesse than the zodiack:
So thick a Giant, that he now was come
To be accounted an eighth hill in Rome,
And as the learn’d Tostatus kept his age,
Writing for every day he liv’d a page;
So he no lesse voluminous then that
Added each day a leaf, but ’twas of fat.
The choicest beauty that had been devis’d
By Nature, was by her parents sacrific’d
Up to this Monster, upon whom to try,
If as increase, he could, too, multiply.
Oh how I tremble lest the tender maid
Should dye like a young infant over-laid!
For when this Chaos would pretend to move
And arch his back for the strong act of Love,
He fals as soon orethrown with his own weight,
And with his ruines doth the Princesse fright.
She lovely Martyr there lyes stew’d and prest,
Like flesh under the tarr’d saddle drest,
And seemes to those that look on them in bed,
Larded with him, rather than married.
Oft did he cry, but still in vain[,] to force
His fatnesse[,] powerfuller then a divorce:
No herbs, no midwives profit here, nor can
Of his great belly free the teeming man.
What though he drink the vinegars most fine,
They do not wast his fleshy Apennine;
His paunch like some huge Istmos runs between
The amarous Seas, and lets them not be seen;
Yet a new Dedalus invented how
This Bull with his Pasiphae might plow.
Have you those artificial torments known,
With which long sunken Galeos are thrown
Again on Sea, or the dead Galia
Was rais’d that once behinde St. Peters lay:
By the same rules he this same engine made,
With silken cords in nimble pullies laid;
And when his Genius prompteth his slow part
To works of Nature, which he helps with Art:
First he intangles in those woven bands,
His groveling weight, and ready to commands,
The sworn Prinadas of his bed, the Aids
Of Loves Camp, necessary Chambermaids;
Each runs to her known tackling, hasts to hoyse,
And in just distance of the urging voyce,
Exhorts the labour till he smiling rise
To the beds roof, and wonders how he flies.
Thence as the eager Falcon having spy’d
Fowl at the brook, or by the Rivers side,
Hangs in the middle Region of the aire,
So hovers he, and plains above his faire:
Blest Icarus first melted at those beames,
That he might after fall into those streames,
And there allaying his delicious flame,
In that sweet Ocean propogate his name.
Unable longer to delay, he calls
To be let down, and in short measure falls
Toward his Mistresse, that without her smock
Lies naked as Andromeda at the Rock,
And through the Skies see her wing’d Perseus strike
Though for his bulk, more that sea-monster like.
Mean time the Nurse, who as the most discreet,
Stood governing the motions at the feet,
And ballanc’d his descent, lest that amisse
He fell too fast, or that way more than this;
Steeres the Prow of the pensile Gallease,
Right on Loves Harbour the Nymph lets him pass
Over the Chains, & ’tween the double Fort
Of her incastled knees, which guard the Port.
The Burs as she had learnt still diligent,
Now girt him backwards, now him forwards bent;
Like those that levell’d in tough Cordage, teach
The mural Ram, and guide it to the Breach.