EnglandsHelicon2 H6r | Verse Miscellanies Online

[H6r]

A worme did lie, wrapt in a smoakie sweate: And yet twas strange, It carelesse lay, and shrunk not at the heate. 

 I stoode amaz’d, and wondring at the sight, while that a dame, That shone like to the heauens rich sparkling light, Discourst the same, And said, My friend, this worme within the fire:  Which lyes content, Is  Venus  worme, and represents desire. 

A Salamander is this princely beast, Deck’d with a Crowne,  Giuen him by  Cupid  as a gorgeous creast, Gainst Fortunes frowne. Content he lyes, and bathes him in the flame, And goes not foorth,  For why, he cannot liue without the same. +The salamander was thought to be able to withstand and put out fire,                         see Pliny,  Natural History , X.188, ‘sicut salamandrae, animal lacertae figura,                         … huic tantus rigor ut ignem tactu restinguat non alio modo quam glacies’, ‘for instance salamanders, a creature shaped like a lizard,…                          It is so chilly that it puts out fire by its contact, in the same way as ice does’.  For other uses of this figure see  Handful :                         ‘A proper sonnet, entitled: I smile to see how you devise’, 17: ‘Salamander’ * ;  Tottel :                         ‘The lover for want of his desire, showeth his death at hand’, 9: ‘Salamandra … fire’ *;  Poetical Rhapsody ,                         ‘Ode IX’, 8. ‘The Salamander … abiding’. *

As he, so Louers liue within the fire Of feruent loue: And shrinke not from the flame of hote desire, Nor will not moue  From any heate that  Venus  force imparts: But lie content, Within a fire, and waste away their harts. 