POEMS.

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, 10You may break Lent with looking on her. 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. 20Old dormant windows must confess 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 (thank my charms!) I now impale her in mine arms; (Love's compasses confining you, 30Good angels, to a circle too.) 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? 40Now to the melting kiss that sips The jellied philtre of her lips; So sweet there is no tongue can praise 't Till transubstantiate with a taste. Inspired like Mahomet from above By th' billing of my heavenly dove, Love prints his signets in her smacks, Those ruddy drops of squeezing wax, Which, wheresoever she imparts, They're privy seals to take up hearts. 50Our mouths encountering at the sport, My slippery soul had quit the fort, But that she stopped the sally-port. Next to these sweets, her lips dispense (As twin conserves of eloquence) 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, 60But jewels are in ear-rings worn. 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. 70When bodies join and victory hovers 'Twixt the equal fluttering lovers, This is the game; make stakes, my dear! Hark, how the sprightly chanticleer (That Baron Tell-clock of the night) 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?

The lady prioress of the cloistered sky, &c.—

As 'twixt two equall Armies, Fate Suspends uncertaine victorie, Our soules (which to advance their state Were gone out,) hung 'twixt her, and mee.(13-16.)

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, 10Illustrated by nothing but herself. 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, 20Should there encounter a religious prayer 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 30Makes pearls and planets humble heraldry. 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 40The almanac's misshaped anatomy, 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, 50Unites all senses in each action. 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 60Which spares the body's sheath, and melts the steel? 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 70Voids nought but flowers, for thy Muse's hearse Fitter than Celia's looks, who in a trice Canst state the long disputed Paradise, And (what Divines hunt with so cold a scent) 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 80Interprets Heaven's physiognomy. 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! 90Hyperboles are here but sacrilege. 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, 100And makes the world but her periphrasis.

Or can the sight be deaf if she but speak, A well-tuned face, such moving rhetoric?

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? 10Are you Sir Thomas and Sir Martin too? 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. 20Hercules' labours were a baker's dozen, 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 30Subscribed two consuls with one Julius. 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!

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 10His death the ocean might turn Helicon. 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 (like the waves, their cause) 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 20The sea but shallow, and him bottomless. 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 (who in his life Had Nature as familiar as his wife) Bequeathed his widow to survive with thee, 30Queen Dowager of all philosophy. 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 40His shipwreck now more than his merchandise. 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 50In learning, as our sorrows overflow. 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.

Tell me no more of Stoics: canst thou tell Who 'twas that when the waves began to swell, The ship to sink, sad passengers to call 'Master, we perish'—slept secure of all? Remember this, and him that waking kept A mind as constant as he did that slept. Canst thou give credit to his zeal and love That went to Heaven, and to those flames above, Wrapt in a fiery chariot? Since I heard Who 'twas, that on his knees the vessel steered With hands bolt up to Heaven, since I see As yet no signs of his mortality,— Pardon me, Reader, if I say he's gone The self-same journey in a wat'ry one.

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, 10Had both sexes thus engrossed. 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 20In every limb a double kind. 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 nailèd barrel: But the other half so small, And so amorous withal, That Cupid thinks each hair doth grow 30A string for his invis'ble bow. 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 (I would not wrong 40Thy sweetness with a double tongue) 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 50Of Troy, brought thee his pedlar's pack, 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 60Changes gender but thy heart. 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.

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 10Slice one in two to keep her number just. 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 (and without more dispute), Who 'tis that fame doth superinstitute. The Theban wittol, when he once descries 20Jove is his rival, falls to sacrifice. 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; 30For, since the Muses left their former nest 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 Phœnix (as the double kind May seem to prove, being there's two combined) I would disclaim my right, and that it were 40The lawful issue of his ashes swear. 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, 50I' th' body joined, but parted in the head. 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 60O' th' weaker sex, a fancy feminine, We'll part the child, and yet commit no slaughter; So shall it be thy son, and yet my daughter.

Are you a Smock-Sinner, or so, Commute soundly, and you shall be let go. Fee Ogg the great Commissary before and behind, Then sin on, you know my mind.

Better to preserve the peace.

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 10You grow inspired by th' oracle of the glass; 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 20To feast the laughter of our enemies, 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 30Had entertainment in it, and drew love 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? (If you be sober) 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.

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, 10Shaking his head like an empty bottle; 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, 20And why may not we in their imitation? 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.' 30Then falls he to use and application next; 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; 40If ever I have a man, Square-cap for me!' 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; 50For if ever I have a man, Square-cap for me!'

The Sattin and the Velvet hive Unto a Bishopric doth drive.

The sluggish morn as yet undressed, My Phillis brake from out her East, As if she'd made a match to run With Venus, usher to the sun. The trees, like yeomen of her guard, Serving more for pomp than ward, Ranked on each side, with loyal duty Weave branches to enclose her beauty. The plants, whose luxury was lopped, 10Or age with crutches underpropped, Whose wooden carcasses are grown To be but coffins of their own, Revive, and at her general dole Each receives his ancient soul. The winged choristers began To chirp their mattins, and the fan Of whistling winds like organs played, Until their voluntaries made The wakened Earth in odours rise 20To be her morning sacrifice. The flowers, called out of their beds, Start and raise up their drowsy heads; And he that for their colour seeks May find it vaulting in her cheeks, Where roses mix—no civil war Between her York and Lancaster. The marigold (whose courtier's face Echoes the sun and doth unlace Her at his rise—at his full stop 30Packs and shuts up her gaudy shop) Mistakes her cue and doth display: Thus Phillis antedates the day. These miracles had cramped the sun, Who, thinking that his kingdom 's won, Powders with light his frizzled locks To see what saint his lustre mocks. The trembling leaves through which he played, Dappling the walk with light and shade Like lattice-windows, give the spy 40Room but to peep with half an eye; Lest her full orb his sight should dim And bid us all good-night in him, Till she should spend a gentle ray To force us a new-fashioned day. But what religious palsy 's this Which makes the boughs divest their bliss, And, that they might her footsteps straw, Drop their leaves with shivering awe? Phillis perceived and (lest her stay 50Should wed October unto May, And, as her beauty caused a Spring, Devotion might an Autumn bring) Withdrew her beams, yet made no night, But left the sun her curate-light.

O daughter of the Rose whose cheeks unite The differing titles of the Red and White.

Nor 'scapes he so; our dinner was so good My liquorish Muse cannot but chew the cud, And what delight she took in th' invitation Strives to taste o'er again in this relation. After a tedious grace in Hopkins' rhyme, Not for devotion but to take up time, Marched the trained-band of dishes, ushered there To show their postures and then as they were. For he invites no teeth; perchance the eye 10He will afford the lover's gluttony. Thus is our feast a muster, not a fight, Our weapons not for service, but for sight. But are we tantalized? Is all this meat Cooked by a limner for to view, not eat? Th' astrologers keep such houses when they sup On joints of Taurus or their heavenly Tup. Whatever feasts be made are summed up here, His table vies not standing with his cheer. His churchings, christenings, in this meal are all, 20And not transcribed but in th' original. Christmas is no feast movable; for lo, The self-same dinner was ten years ago! 'Twill be immortal if it longer stay, The gods will eat it for ambrosia. But stay a while; unless my whinyard fail Or is enchanted, I'll cut off th' entail. Saint George for England then! have at the mutton When the first cut calls me bloodthirsty glutton. Stout Ajax, with his anger-coddled brain, 30Killing a sheep thought Agamemnon slain; The fiction's now proved true; wounding his roast I lamentably butcher up mine host. Such sympathy is with his meat, my weapon Makes him an eunuch when it carves his capon. Cut a goose leg and the poor soul for moan Turns cripple too, and after stands on one. Have you not heard the abominable sport A Lancaster grand-jury will report? The soldier with his Morglay watched the mill; 40The cats they came to feast, when lusty Will Whips off great puss's leg which (by some charm) Proves the next day such an old woman's arm. 'Tis so with him whose carcass never 'scapes, But still we slash him in a thousand shapes. Our serving-men (like spaniels) range to spring The fowl which he had clucked under his wing. Should he on widgeon or on woodcock feed It were, Thyestes like, on his own breed. To pork he pleads a superstition due, 50But we subscribe neither to Scot nor Jew. [No liquor stirs; call for a cup of wine. 'Tis blood we drink; we pledge thee, Catiline.] Sauces we should have none, had he his wish. The oranges i' th' margent of the dish He with such huckster's care tells o'er and o'er, The Hesperian dragon never watched them more. But being eaten now into despair (Having nought else to do) he falls to prayer. 'As thou didst once put on the form of bull 60And turned thine Io to a lovely mull, Defend my rump, great Jove, grant this poor beef May live to comfort me in all this grief.' But no Amen was said: see, see it comes! Draw, boys, let trumpets sound, and strike up drums. See how his blood doth with the gravy swim, And every trencher hath a limb of him. The venison's now in view, our hounds spend deeper. Strange deer, which in the pasty hath a keeper Stricter than in the park, making his guest, 70(As he had stoln't alive) to steal it drest! The scent was hot, and we, pursuing faster Than Ovid's pack of dogs e'er chased their master, A double prey at once may seize upon, Acteon, and his case of venison. Thus was he torn alive; to vex him worse Death serves him up now as a second course. Should we, like Thracians, our dead bodies eat, He would have lived only to save his meat. [Lastly; we did devour that corpse of his 80Throughout all Ovid's Metamorphoses.]

allay my grief, O spare me this, this monumental beef.

Peace, Beldam Eve, surcease thy suit; There 's no temptation in such fruit; No rotten medlars, whilst there be Whole orchards in virginity. Thy stock is too much out of date For tender plants t' inoculate. A match with thee thy bridegroom fears Would be thought interest in his years, Which, when compared to thine, become 10Odd money to thy grandam sum. Can wedlock know so great a curse As putting husbands out to nurse? How Pond and Rivers would mistake And cry new almanacs for our sake. Time sure hath wheeled about his year, December meeting Janiveer. The Egyptian serpent figures Time, And stripped, returns unto his prime. If my affection thou wouldst win, 20First cast thy hieroglyphic skin. My modern lips know not, alack! The old religion of thy smack. I count that primitive embrace As out of fashion as thy face. And yet, so long 'tis since thy fall, Thy fornication 's classical. Our sports will differ; thou mayst play Lero, and I Alphonso way. I'm no translator, have no vein 30To turn a woman young again, Unless you'll grant the tailor's due, To see the fore-bodies be new. I love to wear clothes that are flush, Not prefacing old rags with plush, Like aldermen, or under-shrieves With canvass backs and velvet sleeves: And just such discord there would be Betwixt thy skeleton and me. Go study salve and treacle, ply 40Your tenant's leg or his sore eye. Thus matrons purchase credit, thank Six pennyworth of mountebank; Or chew thy cud on some delight That thou didst taste in 'eighty-eight; Or be but bed-rid once, and then Thou'lt dream thy youthful sins again. But if thou needs wilt be my spouse, First hearken and attend my vows. When Aetna's fires shall undergo 50The penance of the Alps in snow; When Sol at one blast of his horn Posts from the Crab to Capricorn; When th' heavens shuffle all in one The Torrid with the Frozen Zone; When all these contradictions meet, Then, Sibyl, thou and I will greet. For all these similes do hold In my young heat and thy dull cold. Then, if a fever be so good 60A pimp as to inflame thy blood, Hymen shall twist thee and thy page, The distinct tropics of man's age. Well, Madam Time, be ever bald. I'll not thy periwig be called. I'll never be 'stead of a lover, An aged chronicle's new cover.

Stay, should I answer, Lady, then In vain would be your question: Should I be dumb, why then again Your asking me would be in vain. Silence nor speech, on neither hand, Can satisfy this strange demand. Yet, since your will throws me upon This wished contradiction, I'll tell you how I did become 10So strangely, as you hear me, dumb. Ask but the chap-fallen Puritan; 'Tis zeal that tongue-ties that good man. (For heat of conscience all men hold Is th' only way to catch their cold.) How should Love's zealot then forbear To be your silenced minister? Nay, your Religion which doth grant A worship due to you, my Saint, Yet counts it that devotion wrong 20That does it in the Vulgar Tongue. My ruder words would give offence To such an hallowed excellence, As th' English dialect would vary The goodness of an Ave Mary. How can I speak that twice am checked By this and that religious sect? Still dumb, and in your face I spy Still cause and still divinity. As soon as blest with your salute, 30My manners taught me to be mute. For, lest they cancel all the bliss You signed with so divine a kiss, The lips you seal must needs consent Unto the tongue's imprisonment. My tongue in hold, my voice doth rise With a strange E-la to my eyes, Where it gets bail, and in that sense Begins a new-found eloquence. Oh listen with attentive sight 40To what my pratling eyes indite! Or, lady, since 'tis in your choice To give or to suspend my voice, With the same key set ope the door Wherewith you locked it fast before. Kiss once again, and when you thus Have doubly been miraculous, My Muse shall write with handmaid's duty The Golden Legend of your beauty. He whom his dumbness now confines 50But means to speak the rest by signs. I. C.

Nymph. Stand off, and let me take the air; Why should the smoke pursue the fair? Boy. My face is smoke, thence may be guessed What flames within have scorched my breast. Nymph. The flame of love I cannot view For the dark lantern of thy hue. Boy. And yet this lantern keeps Love's taper Surer than yours, that's of white paper. Whatever midnight hath been here, 10The moonshine of your light can clear. Nymph. My moon of an eclipse is 'fraid, If thou shouldst interpose thy shade. Boy. Yet one thing, Sweetheart, I will ask; Take me for a new-fashioned mask. Nymph. Yes, but my bargain shall be this, I'll throw my mask off when I kiss. Boy. Our curled embraces shall delight To checker limbs with black and white. Nymph. Thy ink, my paper, make me guess 20Our nuptial bed will prove a press, And in our sports, if any came, They'll read a wanton epigram. Boy. Why should my black thy love impair? Let the dark shop commend the ware; Or, if thy love from black forbears, I'll strive to wash it off with tears. Nymph. Spare fruitless tears, since thou must needs Still wear about thee mourning weeds. Tears can no more affection win 30Than wash thy Ethiopian skin.

Sir Roger, from a zealous piece of frieze Raised to a vicar of the children's threes; Whose yearly audit may by strict account To twenty nobles and his vails amount; Fed on the common of the female charity Until the Scots can bring about their parity; So shotten that his soul, like to himself, Walks but in cuerpo; this same clergy-elf, Encountering with a brother of the cloth, 10Fell presently to cudgels with the Oath. The quarrel was a strange misshapen monster, &c., (God bless us) which they conster The brand upon the buttock of the Beast, The Dragon's tail tied on a knot, a nest Of young Apocryphas, the fashion Of a new mental Reservation. While Roger thus divides the text, the other Winks and expounds, saying, 'My pious brother, Hearken with reverence, for the point is nice. 20I never read on 't, but I fasted twice, And so by revelation know it better Than all the learn'd idolaters o'th' letter.' With that he swelled, and fell upon the theme Like great Goliah with his weaver's beam. 'I say to thee, &c., thou li'st! Thou art the curléd lock of Antichrist; Rubbish of Babel; for who will not say Tongues were confounded in &c.? Who swears &c., swears more oaths at once 30Than Cerberus out of his triple sconce. Who views it well, with the same eye beholds The old half Serpent in his numerous folds. Accurst &c. thou, for now I scent What lately the prodigious oysters meant! Oh Booker! Booker! How camest thou to lack This sign in thy prophetic almanac? It 's the dark vault wherein th' infernal plot Of powder 'gainst the State was first begot. Peruse the Oath and you shall soon descry it 40By all the Father Garnets that stand by it; 'Gainst whom the Church, (whereof I am a member,) Shall keep another Fifth Day of November. Yet here's not all; I cannot half untruss &c.—it's so abhominous! The Trojan nag was not so fully lined; Unrip &c., and you shall find Og the great commissary, and (which is worse) The apparitor upon his skew-bald horse. Then finally, my babe of grace, forbear, 50&c. will be too far to swear, For 'tis (to speak in a familiar style) A Yorkshire wee bit longer than a mile.' Here Roger was inspired, and by God's diggers He'll swear in words at large but not in figures. Now by this drink, which he takes off, as loath To leave &c. in his liquid oath. His brother pledged him, and that bloody wine He swears shall seal the Synod's Catiline. So they drunk on, not offering to part 60'Till they had quite sworn out th' eleventh quart, While all that saw and heard them jointly pray They and their tribe were all &c.

Smectymnuus! The goblin makes me start! I' th' name of Rabbi Abraham, what art? Syriac? or Arabic? or Welsh? what skill't? Ap all the bricklayers that Babel built, Some conjurer translate and let me know it; Till then 'tis fit for a West Saxon poet. But do the brotherhood then play their prizes Like mummers in religion with disguises, Out-brave us with a name in rank and file? 10A name, which, if 'twere trained, would spread a mile! The saints' monopoly, the zealous cluster Which like a porcupine presents a muster And shoots his quills at bishops and their sees, A devout litter of young Maccabees! Thus Jack-of-all-trades hath devoutly shown The Twelve Apostles on a cherry-stone; Thus faction 's à la mode in treason's fashion, Now we have heresy by complication. Like to Don Quixote's rosary of slaves 20Strung on a chain; a murnival of knaves Packed in a trick, like gipsies when they ride, Or like colleagues which sit all of a side. So the vain satyrists stand all a row As hollow teeth upon a lute-string show. Th' Italian monster pregnant with his brother, Nature's diæresis, half one another, He, with his little sides-man Lazarus, Must both give way unto Smectymnuus. Next Sturbridge Fair is Smec's; for, lo! his side 30Into a five-fold lazar's multiplied. Under each arm there 's tucked a double gizzard; Five faces lurk under one single vizard. The Whore of Babylon left these brats behind, Heirs of confusion by gavelkind. I think Pythagoras' soul is rambled hither With all the change of raiment on together. Smec is her general wardrobe; she'll not dare To think of him as of a thoroughfare. He stops the gossiping dame; alone he is 40The purlieu of a metempsychosis; Like a Scotch mark, where the more modest sense Checks the loud phrase, and shrinks to thirteen pence: Like to an ignis fatuus whose flame, Though sometimes tripartite, joins in the same; Like to nine tailors, who, if rightly spelled, Into one man are monosyllabled. Short-handed zeal in one hath cramped many Like to the Decalogue in a single penny. See, see how close the curs hunt under sheet 50As if they spent in quire and scanned their feet. One cure and five incumbents leap a truss; The title sure must be litigious. The Sadducees would raise a question Who must be Smec at th' Resurrection. Who cooped them up together were to blame. Had they but wire-drawn and spun out their name, 'Twould make another Prentices' Petition Against the bishops and their superstition. Robson and French (that count from five to five, 60As far as nature fingers did contrive— She saw they would be 'sessors, that 's the cause She cleft their hoof into so many claws) May tire their carrot-bunch, yet ne'er agree To rate Smectymnuus for poll-money. Caligula—whose pride was mankind's bail, As who disdained to murder by retail, Wishing the world had but one general neck,— His glutton blade might have found game in Smec. No echo can improve the author more 70Whose lungs pay use on use to half a score. No felon is more lettered, though the brand Both superscribes his shoulder and his hand. Some Welshman was his godfather, for he Wears in his name his genealogy. The banns are asked, would but the times give way, Betwixt Smectymnuus and Et Caetera. The guests, invited by a friendly summons, Should be the Convocation and the Commons. The priest to tie the foxes' tails together 80Mosely, or Sancta Clara, choose you whether. See what an offspring every one expects, What strange pluralities of men and sects! One says he'll get a vestry, but another Is for a synod; Bet upon the mother. Faith, cry St. George! Let them go to 't and stickle Whether a conclave or a conventicle. Thus might religions caterwaul, and spite Which uses to divorce, might once unite. But their cross fortunes interdict their trade; 90The groom is rampant but the bride displayed. My task is done, all my he goats are milked. So many cards i' th' stock, and yet be bilked? I could by letters now untwist the rabble, Whip Smec from constable to constable; But there I leave you to another dressing; Only kneel down and take your father's blessing. May the Queen Mother justify your fears And stretch her patent to your leather ears!

How many Queere-religions? clear your throat, May a man have a penyworth? four a groat? Or do the Iuncto leap at truss a fayle? Three tenents clap while five hang on the tayle?

Flea-Bitten synod, an assembly brewed Of clerks and elders ana, like the rude Chaos of Presbyt'ry, where laymen guide With the tame woolpack clergy by their side. Who asked the banns 'twixt these discoloured mates? A strange grotesco this; the Church and states, Most divine tick-tack, in a piebald crew, To serve as table-men of divers hue! She, that conceived an Ethiopian heir 10By picture, when the parents both were fair, At sight of you had born a dappled son, You checkering her imagination. Had Jacob's flock but seen you sit, the dams Had brought forth speckled and ring-streakéd lambs. Like an impropriator's motley kind Whose scarlet coat is with a cassock lined; Like the lay-thief in a canonic weed, Sure of his clergy ere he did the deed; Like Royston crows, who are (as I may say) 20Friars of both the Orders, Black and Gray; So mixed they are, one knows not whether 's thicker, A layer of burgess, or a layer of vicar. Have they usurped what Royal Judah had, And now must Levi too part stakes with Gad? The sceptre and the crosier are the crutches, Which, if not trusted in their pious clutches, Will fail the cripple State. And were 't not pity But both should serve the yardwand of the City? That Isaac might stroke his beard and sit 30Judge of εἰς Ἅιδον and elegerit? Oh that they were in chalk and charcoal drawn! The miscellany-satyr and the faun And all th' adulteries of twisted nature But faintly represent this riddling feature; Whose members being not tallies, they'll not own Their fellows at the Resurrection. Strange scarlet doctors these! They'll pass in story For sinners half refined in Purgatory, Or parboiled lobsters, where there jointly rules 40The fading sables and the coming gules. The flea that Falstaff damned thus lewdly shows Tormented in the flames of Bardolph's nose. Like him that wore the dialogue of cloaks This shoulder John-a-Stiles, that John-a-Nokes; Like Jews and Christians in a ship together With an old neck-verse to distinguish either; Like their intended discipline to boot, Or whatsoe'er hath neither head nor foot; Such may their stript-stuff-hangings seem to be, 50Sacrilege matched with codpiece simony. Be sick and dream a little, you may then Fancy these linsey-woolsey vestry-men. Forbear, good Pembroke, be not over-daring. Such company may chance to spoil thy swearing, And thy drum-major oaths, of bulk unruly, May dwindle to a feeble 'By my truly'! He that the noble Percy's blood inherits, Will he strike up a Hotspur of the spirits? He'll fright the Obadiahs out of tune 60With his uncircumciséd Algernoon; A name so stubborn, 'tis not to be scanned By him in Gath with the six-fingered hand. See, they obey the magic of my words! Presto! they're gone, and now the House of Lords Looks like the withered face of an old hag, But with three teeth like to a triple gag. A jig! a jig! and in this antic dance Fielding and Doxie Marshall first advance. Twisse blows the Scotch-pipes, and the loving brace 70Puts on the traces and treads cinque-a-pace. Then Saye and Sele must his old hamstrings supple, And he and rumpled Palmer make a couple. Palmer 's a fruitful girl if he'll unfold her; The midwife may find work about her shoulder. Kimbolton, that rebellious Boanerges, Must be content to saddle Dr. Burges. If Burges get a clap, 'tis ne'er the worse, But the fifth time of his compurgators. Noll Bowles is coy; good sadness, cannot dance 80But in obedience to the ordinance. Here Wharton wheels about till mumping Lidy, Like the full moon, hath made his lordship giddy. Pym and the members must their giblets levy T' encounter Madam Smec, that single bevy. If they two truck together, 'twill not be A child-birth, but a gaol-delivery. Thus every Ghibelline hath got his Guelph But Selden,—he 's a galliard by himself; And well may be; there 's more divines in him 90Than in all this, their Jewish Sanhedrim: Whose canons in the forge shall then bear date When mules their cousin-germans generate. Thus Moses' law is violated now; The ox and ass go yoked in the same plough. Resign thy coach-box, Twisse; Brooke's preacher he Would sort the beasts with more conformity. Water and earth make but one globe; a Roundhead Is clergy-lay, party-per-pale compounded.

Like my Lord Brooke's Coachman Preaching out of a tub.

And why a tenant to this vile disguise Which who but sees, blasphemes thee with his eyes? My twins of light within their penthouse shrink, And hold it their allegiance now to wink. O, for a state-distinction to arraign Charles of high treason 'gainst my Sovereign! What an usurper to his prince is wont, Cloister and shave him, he himself hath don' 't. His muffled feature speaks him a recluse— 10His ruins prove him a religious house! The sun hath mewed his beams from off his lamp And majesty defaced the royal stamp. Is 't not enough thy dignity 's in thrall, But thou'lt transmute it in thy shape and all, As if thy blacks were of too faint a dye Without the tincture of tautology? Flay an Egyptian for his cassock skin, Spun of his country's darkness, line 't within With Presbyterian budge, that drowsy trance, 20The Synod's sable, foggy Ignorance; Nor bodily nor ghostly negro could Roughcast thy figure in a sadder mould. This privy-chamber of thy shape would be But the close mourner of thy Royalty. Then, break the circle of thy tailor's spell, A pearl within a rugged oyster's shell. Heaven, which the minster of thy person owns, Will fine thee for dilapidations. Like to a martyred abbey's coarser doom, 30Devoutly altered to a pigeon-room; Or like a college by the changeling rabble, Manchester's elves, transformed into a stable; Or if there be a profanation higher; Such is the sacrilege of thine attire, By which thou'rt half deposed.—Thou look'st like one Whose looks are under sequestration; Whose renegado form at the first glance Shows like the Self-denying Ordinance; Angel of light, and darkness too, (I doubt) 40Inspired within and yet possessed without; Majestic twilight in the state of grace, Yet with an excommunicated face. Charles and his mask are of a different mint; A psalm of mercy in a miscreant print. The sun wears midnight, day is beetle-browed, And lightning is in kelder of a cloud. O the accursed stenography of fate! The princely eagle shrunk into a bat! What charm, what magic vapour can it be 50That checks his rays to this apostasy? It is no subtile film of tiffany air, No cobweb vizard such as ladies wear, When they are veiled on purpose to be seen, Doubling their lustre by their vanquished screen. No, the false scabbard of a prince is tough And three-piled darkness, like the smoky slough Of an imprisoned flame; 'tis Faux in grain; Dark lantern to our bright meridian. Hell belched the damp; the Warwick Castle vote 60Rang Britain's curfew, so our light went out. [A black offender, should he wear his sin For penance, could not have a darker skin.] His visage is not legible; the letters Like a lord's name writ in fantastic fetters; Clothes where a Switzer might be buried quick; Sure they would fit the body politic; False beard enough to fit a stage's plot (For that 's the ambush of their wit, God wot), Nay, all his properties so strange appear, 70Y' are not i' th' presence though the King be there. A libel is his dress, a garb uncouth, Such as the Hue and Cry once purged at mouth. Scribbling assassinate! Thy lines attest An earmark due, Cub of the Blatant Beast; Whose breath, before 'tis syllabled for worse, Is blasphemy unfledged, a callow curse. The Laplanders, when they would sell a wind Wafting to hell, bag up thy phrase and bind It to the bark, which at the voyage end 80Shifts poop and breeds the colic in the Fiend. But I'll not dub thee with a glorious scar Nor sink thy sculler with a man-of-war. The black-mouthed Si quis and this slandering suit Both do alike in picture execute. But since w' are all called Papists, why not date Devotion to the rags thus consecrate? As temples use to have their porches wrought With sphinxes, creatures of an antic draught, And puzzling portraitures to show that there 90Riddles inhabited; the like is here. But pardon, Sir, since I presume to be Clerk of this closet to your Majesty. Methinks in this your dark mysterious dress I see the Gospel couched in parables. At my next view my purblind fancy ripes And shows Religion in its dusky types; Such a text royal, so obscure a shade Was Solomon in Proverbs all arrayed. Come, all the brats of this expounding age 100To whom the spirit is in pupilage, You that damn more than ever Samson slew, And with his engine, the same jaw-bone too! How is 't he 'scapes your inquisition free Since bound up in the Bible's livery? Hence, Cabinet-intruders! Pick-locks, hence! You, that dim jewels with your Bristol sense: And characters, like witches, so torment Till they confess a guilt though innocent! Keys for this coffer you can never get; 110None but St. Peter's opes this cabinet, This cabinet, whose aspect would benight Critic spectators with redundant light. A Prince most seen is least. What Scriptures call The Revelation, is most mystical. Mount then, thou Shadow Royal, and with haste Advance thy morning-star, Charles, overcast. May thy strange journey contradictions twist And force fair weather from a Scottish mist. Heaven's confessors are posed, those star-eyed sages, 120T' interpret an eclipse thus riding stages. Thus Israel-like he travels with a cloud, Both as a conduct to him and a shroud. But oh, he goes to Gibeon and renews A league with mouldy bread and clouted shoes!