You divine wits of elder days, from whom
The deep invention of rare works hath come,—
Took you not pattern of your chiefest tools
Out of the lap of Thetis,—lakes and pools
Which partly in the waves, part on the edges
Of craggy rocks, among the ragged sedges,
Bring forth abundance of pins, pincers, spokes,
Pikes, piercers, needles, mallets, pipes and yokes,
Oars, sails and swords, saws, wedges, razors, rammers,
Plumbs, cornets, knives, wheels, vises, horns and hammers?

never more than in this encyclopedic verse was Dryden’s commonsense observation substantiated, that one need not write all one CAN. even after four hundred years, these two fellas Du Bartas and Sylvester are rather *entertainingly* offensive in their "tasteless taste" (a phrase from Sylvester; he commonly bloats his lines with such empty constructions, including painless pain, weightless weights, and senseless senses).

if you don't know: something like Marino i guess, Du Bartas was a highly influential 16th c. french poet who has since fallen out of favor, and the same goes for his translator Sylvester. Du Bartas' Divine Weeks is in two parts, the first describing the week god spent building the world, and the second describing the rest of Genesis. Sylvester was as liberal with his source material as Du Bartas was with his, and there are many interpolations about the beauty of the Thames and whatnot. thankfully i read an abridged edition,

but that did nothing to detract from that simple lack of taste, of the "everything but the kitchen sink" variety. no scruples are had about a topic's suitability for poetry, and we get a few digressions as homely as "children are rude to animals at the zoo" and "don't you hate it when your servant is bringing you a drink and he drops it on the dirty floor." on the other end of the spectrum, at every opportunity for high-flown euphony, Sylvester doesn't hesitate to glut himself.

T’ inflame the flamen of Jove Ammon so
With heathen-holy fury fits to know
Future events. . .
is this excessive, is the sublimity lost..? Thy huffed, puffed, painted, curled, pearled, wanton pride. . . who cares, go for it!

and sometimes, if there's no suitable rhyme for the previous line, he likes to make up words. for example, "kindled" and, "blindled."

but that's all to say, there are many types of bad poetry, and this is the type which should perhaps be preserved. it influenced a teenaged Milton, like Arnaut Daniel influenced a young Dante. the gaudy often has as prominent a place in literary (and art) history as the majestic, whether you like it or not. luckily i do, in this case. ( )