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42 FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES
What then his father was, that since is he,
Now with a little more to the degree ;
England's High Chancellor, the destin'd heir
In his soft cradle to his father's chair :
Whose even threads the Fates spun round and full
Out of their choicest and their whitest wool.
Tis a brave cause of joy, let it be known,
For 'twere a narrow gladness, kept thine own.
Give me a deep-bowl'd crown, that I may sing,
In raising him, the wisdom of my King.
Ben Jonson would sing the praises of the sixtyyear-old
Lord Chancellor, he would extol the man
whose birthday was to be celebrated, and he begins with
"
the words : Hail, happy genius of this ancient /*/*/"
And how antiquated, how far-fetched the word "pile"
for house, building, palace, even in those !
days
Ben Jonson such a clumsy poet ? Never ! but he chose
Was
that ambiguous word as being the one with which to
conclude the first line, rhyming with the following
one, and which conveys at once the idea of "house"
and "hurling-spear," i.e., a word which (like his
"Shake-lance") again means "Shakespeare."
in
"Pilum"
Latin, as "pile" in English, means "hurling-spear."
Muret's new and carefully compiled dictionary will
convince any one who might entertain a doubt. There
we find the original meaning of "pile." It is not
the Genius of the house in which Bacon was born
and in which he lived ;
it is above all his great fellowpoet
Shakespeare that Ben Jonson
opening line :
addresses in the
Hail, happy genius of the ancient Shakespeare !
Three lines further we read the words :
Thou stand'st as if a mystery thou didst !