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POEMS IN 1677 BUT NOT IN 1653: Upon Princess Elizabeth, born the night before New Year's Day 85 The General Eclipse 85 Upon the King's Return from Scotland 86

POEMS CERTAINLY OR PROBABLY GENUINE, NOT IN 1653 OR 1677: An Elegy on Ben Jonson 87 News from Newcastle 88 An Elegy upon King Charles the First 92

To the Discerning Reader.

Newark. Nov. 21, 1658.

Yours in all virtuous endeavours, E. WILLIAMSON.

The Stationer to the Reader.

Courteous Reader, thy free Acceptance of the former edition, encouraged me so far as to use my best diligence to gain what still remained in the hands of the Author's friends. I acknowledge myself to be obliged to Mr. Williamson, whose worthy example Mr. Cleveland's other honourers have since pursued. I shall not trouble thee, Reader, with any further Apologies, but only subscribe Mr. W. W. his last Verses in his following Elegy on Mr. Cleveland.

That Plagiary that can filch but one Conceit from Him, and keep the Theft unknown, At Noon from Phoebus, may by the same sleight, Steal Beams, and make 'em pass for his own light.

To the Right Worshipful and Reverend Francis Turner, D.D., Master of St. John's College in Cambridge, and to the Worthy Fellows of the same College.

GENTLEMEN,

That we interrupt your more serious studies with the offer of this piece, the injury that hath been and is done to the deceased author's ashes not only pleadeth our excuse, but engageth you in the same quarrel with us.

Whilst Randolph and Cowley lie embalmed in their own native wax, how is the name and memory of Cleveland equally profaned by those that usurp, and those that blaspheme it?--by those that are ambitious to lay their cuckoo's eggs in his nest, and those that think to raise up Phnixes of wit by firing his spicy bed about him?

We know you have, not without passionate resentments, beheld the prostitution of his name in some late editions vended under it, wherein his orations are murthered over and over in barbarous Latin, and a more barbarous translation: and wherein is scarce one or other poem of his own to commute for all the rest. At least every Cuirassier of his hath a fulsome dragooner behind him, and Venus is again unequally yoked with a sooty anvil-beater. Cleveland thus revived dieth another death.

You cannot but have beheld with like zealous indignation how enviously our late mushroom-wits look up at him because he overdroppeth them, and snarl at his brightness as dogs at the Moon.

Some of these grand Sophys will not allow him the reputation of wit at all: yet how many such authors must be creamed and spirited to make up his Fuscara? And how many of their slight productions may be gigged out of one of his pregnant words? There perhaps you may find some leaf-gold, here massy wedges; there some scattered rays, here a galaxy; there some loose fancy frisking in the air, here Wit's Zodiac.

The quarrel in all this is upbraiding merit, and eminence his crime. His towering fancy scareth so high a pitch that they fly like shades below him. The torrent thereof drowneth their levels. Usurping upon the State Poetic of the time, he hath brought in such insolent measures of Wit and Language that, despairing to imitate, they must study to understand. That alone is Wit with them to which they are commensurate, and what exceedeth their scantling is monstrous.

Thus they deifie his Wit and Fancy as the clown the plump oyster when he could not crack it. And now instead of that strenuous masculine style which breatheth in this author, we have only an enervous effeminate froth offered, as if they had taken the salivating pill before they set pen to paper. You must hold your breath in the perusal lest the jest vanish by blowing on.

Another blemish in this monster of perfection is the exuberance of his fancy. His manna lieth so thick upon the ground they loathe it. When he should only fan, he with hurricanos of wit stormeth the sense, and doth not so much delight his reader, as oppress and overwhelm him.

To cure this excess, their frugal wit hath reduced the world to a Lessian Diet. If perhaps they entertain their reader with one good thought he may sit down and say Grace over it: the rest is words and nothing else.

We will leave them therefore to the most proper vengeance, to humour themselves with the perusal of their own poems: and leave the barber to rub their thick skulls with bran until they are fit for musk. Only we will leave this friendly advice with them; that they have one eye upon John Tradescant's executor, lest among his other Minims of Art and Nature he expose their slight conceits: and another upon the Royal Society, lest they make their poems the counterbalance when they intend to weigh air.

From these unequal censures we appeal to such competent judges as yourselves, in whose just value of him Cleveland shall live the wonder of his own, and the pattern of succeeding ages. And although we might bespeak your affections, yet we submit him to your severer judgements, and doubt not but he will find that patronage from you which is desired and expected by

Your humble Servants.

J. L. S. D.

POEMS.

To the State of Love. Or the Senses' Festival.

I saw a vision yesternight, Enough to sate a Seeker's sight; I wished myself a Shaker there, And her quick pants my trembling sphere. It was a she so glittering bright, You'd think her soul an Adamite; A person of so rare a frame, Her body might be lined with' same. Beauty's chiefest maid of honour, You may break Lent with looking on her. 10 Not the fair Abbess of the skies, With all her nunnery of eyes, Can show me such a glorious prize!

And yet, because 'tis more renown To make a shadow shine, she's brown; A brown for which Heaven would disband The galaxy, and stars be tanned; Brown by reflection as her eye Deals out the summer's livery. Old dormant windows must confess 20 Her beams; their glimmering spectacles, Struck with the splendour of her face, Do th' office of a burning-glass. Now where such radiant lights have shown, No wonder if her cheeks be grown Sunburned, with lustre of her own.

My sight took pay, but I now impale her in mine arms; 30 Is not the universe strait-laced When I can clasp it in the waist? My amorous folds about thee hurled, With Drake I girdle in the world; I hoop the firmament, and make This, my embrace, the zodiac. How would thy centre take my sense When admiration doth commence At the extreme circumference?

Next to these sweets, her lips dispense The sweet perfume her breath affords, Incorporating with her words. No rosary this vot'ress needs-- Her very syllables are beads; No sooner 'twixt those rubies born, But jewels are in ear-rings worn. 60 With what delight her speech doth enter; It is a kiss o' th' second venter. And I dissolve at what I hear, As if another Rosamond were Couched in the labyrinth of my ear.

Yet that 's but a preludious bliss, Two souls pickeering in a kiss. Embraces do but draw the line, 'Tis storming that must take her in. When bodies join and victory hovers 70 'Twixt the equal fluttering lovers, This is the game; make stakes, my dear! Hark, how the sprightly chanticleer Sounds boutesel to Cupid's knight. Then have at all, the pass is got, For coming off, oh, name it not! Who would not die upon the spot?

As 'twixt two equall Armies, Fate Suspends uncertaine victorie, Our soules hung 'twixt her, and mee.

The Hecatomb to his Mistress.

Be dumb, you beggars of the rhyming trade, Geld your loose wits and let your Muse be spayed. Charge not the parish with the bastard phrase Of balm, elixir, both the Indias, Of shrine, saint, sacrilege, and such as these Expressions common as your mistresses. Hence, you fantastic postillers in song. My text defeats your art, ties Nature's tongue, Scorns all her tinselled metaphors of pelf, Illustrated by nothing but herself. 10 As spiders travel by their bowels spun Into a thread, and, when the race is run, Wind up their journey in a living clew, So is it with my poetry and you. From your own essence must I first untwine, Then twist again each panegyric line. Reach then a soaring quill that I may write, As with a Jacob's staff, to take her height. Suppose an angel, darting through the air, Should there encounter a religious prayer 20 Mounting to Heaven, that Intelligence Should for a Sunday-suit thy breath condense Into a body.--Let me crack a string In venturing higher; were the note I sing Above Heaven's Ela, should I then decline, And with a deep-mouthed gamut sound the line From pole to pole, I could not reach her worth, Nor find an epithet to set it forth. Metals may blazon common beauties; she Makes pearls and planets humble heraldry. 30 As, then, a purer substance is defined But by a heap of negatives combined, Ask what a spirit is, you'll hear them cry It hath no matter, no mortality: So can I not define how sweet, how fair; Only I say she 's not as others are. For what perfections we to others grant, It is her sole perfection to want. All other forms seem in respect of thee The almanac's misshaped anatomy, 40 Where Aries head and face, Bull neck and throat, The Scorpion gives the secrets, knees the Goat; A brief of limbs foul as those beasts, or are Their namesake signs in their strange character. As the philosophers to every sense Marry its object, yet with some dispense, And grant them a polygamy with all, And these their common sensibles they call: So is 't with her who, stinted unto none, Unites all senses in each action. 50 The same beam heats and lights; to see her well Is both to hear and feel, to taste and smell. For, can you want a palate in your eyes, When each of hers contains a double prize, Venus's apple? Can your eyes want nose When from each cheek buds forth a fragrant rose? Or can your sight be deaf to such a quick And well-tuned face, such moving rhetoric? Doth not each look a flash of lightning feel Which spares the body's sheath, and melts the steel? 60 Thy soul must needs confess, or grant thy sense Corrupted with the object's excellence. Sweet magic, which can make five senses lie Conjured within the circle of an eye! In whom, since all the five are intermixed, Oh now that Scaliger would prove his sixt! Thou man of mouth, that canst not name a she Unless all Nature pay a subsidy, Whose language is a tax, whose musk-cat verse Voids nought but flowers, for thy Muse's hearse 70 Fitter than Celia's looks, who in a trice Canst state the long disputed Paradise, And Canst in her bosom find it resident; Now come aloft, come now, and breathe a vein, And give some vent unto thy daring strain. Say the astrologer who spells the stars, In that fair alphabet reads peace and wars, Mistakes his globe and in her brighter eye Interprets Heaven's physiognomy. 80 Call her the Metaphysics of her sex, And say she tortures wits as quartans vex Physicians; call her the square circle; say She is the very rule of Algebra. What e'er thou understand'st not, say 't of her, For that 's the way to write her character. Say this and more, and when thou hopest to raise Thy fancy so as to inclose her praise-- Alas poor Gotham, with thy cuckoo-hedge! Hyperboles are here but sacrilege. 90 Then roll up, Muse, what thou hast ravelled out, Some comments clear not, but increase the doubt. She that affords poor mortals not a glance Of knowledge, but is known by ignorance; She that commits a rape on every sense, Whose breath can countermand a pestilence; She that can strike the best invention dead Till baffled poetry hangs down the head-- She, she it is that doth contain all bliss, And makes the world but her periphrasis. 100

Upon Sir Thomas Martin,

Who subscribed a Warrant thus: 'We the Knights and Gentlemen of the Committee,' &c. when there was no Knight but himself.

Hang out a flag and gather pence--A piece Which Afric never bred nor swelling Greece With stories' tympany, a beast so rare No lecturer's wrought cap, nor Bartholomew Fair Can match him; nature's whimsey, that outvies Tradescant and his ark of novelties; The Gog and Magog of prodigious sights, With reverence to your eyes, Sir Thomas Knights. But is this bigamy of titles due? Are you Sir Thomas and Sir Martin too? 10 Issachar couchant 'twixt a brace of sirs, Thou knighthood in a pair of panniers; Thou, that look'st, wrapped up in thy warlike leather, Like Valentine and Orson bound together; Spurs' representative! thou, that art able To be a voider to King Arthur's table; Who, in this sacrilegious mass of all, It seems has swallowed Windsor's Hospital; Pair-royal-headed Cerberus's cousin. Hercules' labours were a baker's dozen, 20 Had he but trumped on thee, whose forked neck Might well have answered at the font for Smec. But can a knighthood on a knighthood lie? Metal on metal is ill armory; And yet the known Godfrey of Bouillon's coat Shines in exception to the herald's vote. Great spirits move not by pedantic laws; Their actions, though eccentric, state the cause, And Priscian bleeds with honour. Caesar thus Subscribed two consuls with one Julius. 30 Tom, never oaded squire, scarce yeoman-high, Is Tom twice dipped, knight of a double dye! Fond man, whose fate is in his name betrayed! It is the setting sun doubles his shade. But it 's no matter, for amphibious he May have a knight hanged, yet Sir Tom go free!

On the memory of Mr. Edward King, drowned in the Irish Seas.

I like not tears in tune, nor do I prize His artificial grief who scans his eyes. Mine weep down pious beads, but why should I Confine them to the Muse's rosary? I am no poet here; my pen 's the spout Where the rain-water of mine eyes run out In pity of that name, whose fate we see Thus copied out in grief's hydrography. The Muses are not mermaids, though upon His death the ocean might turn Helicon. 10 The sea's too rough for verse; who rhymes upon 't With Xerxes strives to fetter th' Hellespont. My tears will keep no channel, know no laws To guide their streams, but Run with disturbance, till they swallow me As a description of his misery. But can his spacious virtue find a grave Within th' imposthumed bubble of a wave? Whose learning if we sound, we must confess The sea but shallow, and him bottomless. 20 Could not the winds to countermand thy death With their whole card of lungs redeem thy breath? Or some new island in thy rescue peep To heave thy resurrection from the deep, That so the world might see thy safety wrought With no less wonder than thyself was thought? The famous Stagirite Bequeathed his widow to survive with thee, Queen Dowager of all philosophy. 30 An ominous legacy, that did portend Thy fate and predecessor's second end. Some have affirmed that what on earth we find, The sea can parallel in shape and kind. Books, arts, and tongues were wanting, but in thee Neptune hath got an university. We'll dive no more for pearls; the hope to see Thy sacred reliques of mortality Shall welcome storms, and make the seamen prize His shipwreck now more than his merchandise. 40 He shall embrace the waves, and to thy tomb As to a Royaller Exchange shall come. What can we now expect? Water and fire, Both elements our ruin do conspire. And that dissolves us which doth us compound: One Vatican was burnt, another drowned. We of the gown our libraries must toss To understand the greatness of our loss; Be pupils to our grief, and so much grow In learning, as our sorrows overflow. 50 When we have filled the rundlets of our eyes We'll issue 't forth and vent such elegies As that our tears shall seem the Irish Seas, We floating islands, living Hebrides.

Upon an Hermaphrodite.

Sir, or Madam, choose you whether! Nature twists you both together And makes thy soul two garbs confess, Both petticoat and breeches dress. Thus we chastise the God of Wine With water that is feminine, Until the cooler nymph abate His wrath, and so concorporate. Adam, till his rib was lost, Had both sexes thus engrossed. 10 When Providence our Sire did cleave, And out of Adam carved Eve, Then did man 'bout wedlock treat, To make his body up complete. Thus matrimony speaks but thee In a grave solemnity. For man and wife make but one right Canonical hermaphrodite. Ravel thy body, and I find In every limb a double kind. 20 Who would not think that head a pair That breeds such factions in the hair? One half so churlish in the touch That, rather than endure so much I would my tender limbs apparel In Regulus's nail?d barrel: But the other half so small, And so amorous withal, That Cupid thinks each hair doth grow A string for his invis'ble bow. 30 When I look babies in thine eyes Here Venus, there Adonis, lies. And though thy beauty be high noon Thy orb contains both sun and moon. How many melting kisses skip 'Twixt thy male and female lip-- Twixt thy upper brush of hair And thy nether beard's despair? When thou speak'st 40 But in every single sound A perfect dialogue is found. Thy breasts distinguish one another, This the sister, that the brother. When thou join'st hands my ear still fancies The nuptial sound, 'I, John, take Frances.' Feel but the difference soft and rough; This is a gauntlet, that a muff. Had sly Ulysses, at the sack Of Troy, brought thee his pedlar's pack, 50 And weapons too, to know Achilles From King Lycomedes' Phillis, His plot had failed; this hand would feel The needle, that the warlike steel. When music doth thy pace advance, Thy right leg takes the left to dance. Nor is 't a galliard danced by one, But a mixed dance, though alone. Thus every heteroclite part Changes gender but thy heart. 60 Nay those, which modesty can mean But dare not speak, are epicene. That gamester needs must overcome That can play both Tib and Tom. Thus did Nature's mintage vary, Coining thee a Philip and Mary.

The Author's Hermaphrodite.

Problem of sexes! Must thou likewise be As disputable in thy pedigree? Thou twins in one, in whom Dame Nature tries To throw less than aums ace upon two dice. Wert thou served up two in one dish, the rather To split thy sire into a double father? True, the world's scales are even; what the main In one place gets, another quits again. Nature lost one by thee, and therefore must Slice one in two to keep her number just. 10 Plurality of livings is thy state, And therefore mine must be impropriate. For, since the child is mine and yet the claim Is intercepted by another's name, Never did steeple carry double truer; His is the donative and mine the cure. Then say, my Muse , Who 'tis that fame doth superinstitute. The Theban wittol, when he once descries Jove is his rival, falls to sacrifice. 20 That name hath tipped his horns; see, on his knees! A health to Hans-in-kelder Hercules! Nay, sublunary cuckolds are content To entertain their fate with compliment; And shall not he be proud whom Randolph deigns To quarter with his Muse both arms and brains? Gramercy Gossip, I rejoice to see She'th got a leap of such a barbary. Talk not of horns, horns are the poet's crest; For, since the Muses left their former nest 30 To found a nunnery in Randolph's quill, Cuckold Parnassus is a forked hill. But stay, I've waked his dust, his marble stirs And brings the worms for his compurgators. Can ghost have natural sons? Say, Og, is't meet Penance bear date after the winding sheet? Were it a Phnix I would disclaim my right, and that it were The lawful issue of his ashes swear. 40 But was he dead? Did not his soul translate Herself into a shop of lesser rate; Or break up house, like an expensive lord That gives his purse a sob and lives at board? Let old Pythagoras but play the pimp And still there's hopes 't may prove his bastard imp. But I'm profane; for, grant the world had one With whom he might contract an union, They two were one, yet like an eagle spread, I' th' body joined, but parted in the head. 50 For you, my brat, that pose the Porph'ry Chair, Pope John, or Joan, or whatsoe'er you are, You are a nephew; grieve not at your state, For all the world is illegitimate. Man cannot get a man, unless the sun Club to the act of generation. The sun and man get man, thus Tom and I Are the joint fathers of my poetry. For since, blest shade, thy verse is male, but mine O' th' weaker sex, a fancy feminine, 60 We'll part the child, and yet commit no slaughter; So shall it be thy son, and yet my daughter.

The Pope's throne, the myths of which, as well as of Pope Joan herself, are vulgate. 'Nephew' carries out the allusion: Popes' sons being called so

You Hectors! tame professors of the sword, Who in the chair state duels, whose black word Bewitches courage, and like Devils too, Leaves the bewitch'd when 't comes to fight and do. Who on your errand our best spirits send, Not to kill swine or cows, but man and friend; Who are a whole court-martial in your drink, And dispute honour, when you cannot think, Not orderly, but prate out valour as You grow inspired by th' oracle of the glass; 10 Then, like our zeal-drunk presbyters, cry down All law of Kings and God, but what's their own. Then y' have the gift of fighting, can discern Spirits, who 's fit to act, and who to learn, Who shall be baffled next, who must be beat, Who killed--that you may drink, and swear, and eat. Whilst you applaud those murders which you teach And live upon the wounds your riots preach. Mere booty-souls! Who bid us fight a prize To feast the laughter of our enemies, 20 Who shout and clap at wounds, count it pure gain, Mere Providence to hear a Compton 's slain. A name they dearly hate, and justly; should They love 't 'twere worse, their love would taint the blood. Blood always true, true as their swords and cause, And never vainly lost, till your wild laws Scandalled their actions in this person, who Truly durst more than you dare think to do. A man made up of graces--every move Had entertainment in it, and drew love 30 From all but him who killed him, who seeks a grave And fears a death more shameful than he gave. Now you dread Hectors! you whom tyrant drink Drags thrice about the town, what do you think? Is it valour, say, To overcome, and then to run away? Fie! Fie! your lusts and duels both are one; Both are repented of as soon as done.

Square-Cap.

Come hither, Apollo's bouncing girl, And in a whole Hippocrene of sherry Let 's drink a round till our brains do whirl, Tuning our pipes to make ourselves merry. A Cambridge lass, Venus-like, born of the froth Of an old half-filled jug of barley-broth, She, she is my mistress, her suitors are many, But she'll have a Square-cap if e'er she have any.

And first, for the plush-sake, the Monmouth-cap comes, Shaking his head like an empty bottle; 10 With his new-fangled oath by Jupiter's thumbs, That to her health he'll begin a pottle. He tells her that, after the death of his grannam, He shall have God knows what per annum. But still she replied, 'Good Sir, la-bee; If ever I have a man, Square-cap for me!'

Then Calot Leather-cap strongly pleads, And fain would derive the pedigree of fashion. The antipodes wear their shoes on their heads, And why may not we in their imitation? 20 Oh, how this football noddle would please, If it were but well tossed on S. Thomas his leas! But still she replied, 'Good sir, la-bee; If ever I have a man, Square-cap for me!'

Next comes the Puritan in a wrought-cap, With a long-waisted conscience towards a sister. And, making a chapel of ease of her lap, First he said grace and then he kissed her. 'Beloved,' quoth he, 'thou art my text.' Then falls he to use and application next; 30 But then she replied, 'Your text, sir, I'll be; For then I'm sure you'll ne'er handle me.'

But see where Satin-cap scouts about, And fain would this wench in his fellowship marry. He told her how such a man was not put out Because his wedding he closely did carry. He'll purchase induction by simony, And offers her money her incumbent to be; But still she replied, 'Good sir, la-bee; If ever I have a man, Square-cap for me!' 40

The lawyer's a sophister by his round-cap, Nor in their fallacies are they divided, The one milks the pocket, the other the tap; And yet this wench he fain would have brided. 'Come, leave these thread-bare scholars,' quoth he, 'And give me livery and seisin of thee.' 'But peace, John-a-Nokes, and leave your oration, For I never will be your impropriation; I pray you therefore, good sir, la-bee; For if ever I have a man, Square-cap for me!' 50

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