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“On Fran. Ld. Verulam Keeper of greate seale”

Stand fast thou shaking quaking Keeper

A tent1 thou must endure,

For feare in time thy wounds grow deeper,

And so become past cure.

Into thy past life see thou looke,

5

For if thy faults grow common,

Thou soone wilt find a nimble Cooke2

Slice rathers3 from thy gammon.

Patient hee is like Job, I wis

And poore, you need not doubt him,

10

Butt most of all like Job in this

Hee hath such scabbs about him.4

Meazly Bacon is quite forsaken

And none thats heere care for it,

The Parliament with one consent

15

I oft have heard it spoke

Hath made a law to singe it with straw

And hange it up in smoake.

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Source. BL Add. MS 22118, fol. 42v

Other known sources. Trevelyan Papers 3.163; BL Add. MS 61481, fol. 99r; TCD MS 806, fol. 577r;Beinecke MS Osborn b.197, p. 182

Mii2

Quick links to other poems within this section

Select page here M0. Introduction Mi1. You Justices & men Mi2. The tottering state Mi3. Pervertinge of the lawes Mi4. Fly not Momperson Mi5. Oyes Mii1. The measled Boare Mii2. Stand fast thou shaking Mii3. Great Verulam is very lame Mii4. Why shoulde poore Mii5. The greate assemblie Mii6. Heer is Francis Verulam Mii7. Within this sty heer Mii8. When you awake Mii9. What hatfull fury Mii10. Blame not the Poet Miii1. One worthy Chancellour Miii2. When Charles, hath got Miii3. Thy followers in hope Miii4. Anagram on John Williams Miii5. The Kinge & the court

¹   tent: surgical probe. <back>

²   Cooke: i.e. Sir Edward Coke, a leading figure in the Commons and long-time rival of Bacon. <back>

³   rathers: i.e. “rashers”. <back>

⁴   like Job...about him: “So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown” (Job 2.7). The line probably refers to Bacon’s struggles with gout and other illnesses, which he used to delay proceedings and again to defer his imprisonment; however, it is also possible that Bacon’s “scabbs” are metaphorical (i.e. scurvy fellows, rascals). Bacon compared himself to Job more favourably in his speech to the House of Lords on 22 April 1621, stating: “I hope I may say and justify with Job in these words: I have not hid my sin as did Adam, nor concealed my faults in my bosom” (Works 14.243; cf. Job 31.33). <back>