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The boundless Godhead; she did well-disdain
That her eternal verse employed should be
On a less subject than eternity,

And for a sacred mistress scorned to take

But her whom God himself scorned not his spouse to make.
It, in a kind, her miracle did do:

A fruitful mother was, and virgin too.

How well, blest swan, did fate contrive thy death,
And made thee render up thy tuneful breath
In thy great mistress' arms, thou most divine
And richest off'ring of Loretto's shrine!
Where like some holy sacrifice t' expire,
A fever burns thee, and love lights the fire.
Angels, they say, brought the famed chapel there,
And bore the sacred load in triumph through the air;
'Tis surer much they brought thee there, and they
And thou, their charge, went singing all the way.
Pardon, my mother church, if I consent

That angels led him when from thee he went,
For even in error sure no danger is

When joined with so much piety as his.

Ah, mighty God! (with shame I speak 't, and grief),
Ah, that our greatest faults were in belief!
And our weak reason were ev'n weaker yet,
Rather than thus, our wills too strong for it.
His faith perhaps in some nice tenents might
Be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right.
And I myself a Catholic will be,

So far at least, great saint, to pray to thee.

Hail, bard triumphant! and some care bestow
On us, the poets militant below,

Opposed by our old en'my, adverse chance,
Attacked by envy and by ignorance,
Enchained by beauty, tortured by desires,

Exposed by tyrant love to savage beasts and fires.
Thou from low earth in nobler flames didst rise,
And like Elijah mount alive the skies.
Elisha-like (but with a wish much less,
More fit thy greatness and my littleness),

Lo, here I beg (I whom thou once didst prove
So humble to esteem, so good to love)

Not that thy spirit might on me doubled be,

I ask but half thy mighty spirit for me;

And when my muse soars with so strong a wing,

'Twill learn of things divine, and first of thee to sing.

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The spring

Though you be absent here, I needs must say
The trees as beauteous are, and flowers as gay

As ever they were wont to be;
Nay, the birds' rural music too
Is as melodious and free

As if they sung to pleasure you;

I saw a rosebud ope this morn-I'll swear
The blushing morning opened not more fair.

How could it be so fair and you away?

How could the trees be beauteous, flowers so gay?

Could they remember but last year

How you did them, they you delight,

The sprouting leaves which saw you here
And called their fellows to the sight,

Would, looking round for the same sight in vain,
Creep back into their silent barks again.

Where'er you walked, trees were as reverend made
As when of old gods dwelt in every shade.
Is 't possible they should not know
What loss of honor they sustain,
That thus they smile and flourish now,
And still their former pride retain?
Dull creatures! 'tis not without cause that she
Who fled the god of wit was made a tree.

In ancient times sure they much wiser were,
When they rejoiced the Thracian verse to hear;
In vain did nature bid them stay
When Orpheus had his song begun;
They called their wond'ring roots away,
And bade them silent to him run.

How would those learned trees have followed you!
You would have drawn them and their poet too.

But who can blame them now? for since you're gone
They're here the only fair, and shine alone.
You did their natural rights invade:

Wherever you did walk or sit,

The thickest boughs could make no shade,
Although the sun had granted it;

The fairest flowers could please no more, near you,
Than painted flowers, set next to them, could do.

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Whene'er then you come hither, that shall be
The time, which this to others is, to me.

The little joys which here are now,
The name of punishments do bear
When by their sight they let us know
How we deprived of greater are.

'Tis you the best of seasons with you bring;
This is for beasts, and that for men the spring.

[Awake, awake, my lyre]

Awake, awake, my lyre,

And tell thy silent master's humble tale

In sounds that may prevail,

Sounds that gentle thoughts inspire,
Though so exalted she

And I so lowly be,

Tell her such different notes make all thy harmony.

Hark how the strings awake,

And though the moving hand approach not near,
Themselves with awful fear

A kind of numerous trembling make.

Now all thy forces try,

Now all thy charms apply,

Revenge upon her ear the conquests of her eye.

Weak lyre! thy virtue sure

Is useless here, since thou art only found

To cure but not to wound,

And she to wound but not to cure.

Too weak, too, wilt thou prove

My passion to remove;

Physic to other ills, thou'rt nourishment to love.

Sleep, sleep again, my lyre,

For thou canst never tell my humble tale

In sounds that will prevail,

Nor gentle thoughts in her inspire;

All thy vain mirth lay by,

Bid thy strings silent lie;

Sleep, sleep again, my lyre, and let thy master die.

From Davideis, Book 3

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JOHN CLEVELAND

The Introduction and Notes are at page 1031
FROM Jonsonus Virbius, 1638

An elegy on Ben Jonson

Who first reformed our stage with justest laws,
And was the first best judge in his own cause;
Who, when his actors trembled for applause,

Could with a noble confidence prefer
His own, by right, to a whole theater,
From principles which he knew could not err;

Who to his fable did his persons fit
With all the properties of art and wit,
And above all that could be acted, writ;

Who public follies did to covert drive,
Which he again could cunningly retrieve,
Leaving them no ground to rest on and thrive:

Here Jonson lies, whom had I named before,
In that one word alone I had paid more
Than can be now, when plenty makes me poor.

FROM Poems, 1653

Epitaph on the Earl of Straf

ford

Here lies wise and valiant dust
Huddled up 'twixt fit and just,
Strafford, who was hurried hence
'Twixt treason and convenience.
He spent his time here in a mist,
A Papist, yet a Calvinist;

FROM Clievelandi Vindiciæ; or
Fuscara, or the bee errant

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One in extremes loved and ab-
horred.

Riddles lie here, or in a word-
Here lies blood; and let it lie
Speechless still and never cry.

Clieveland's Genuine Poems, 1677
The still of his refining mold
Minting the garden into gold),
Having rifled all the fields

Nature's confectioner, the bee
(Whose suckets are moist al- Of what dainties Flora yields,
chemy,

Ambitious now to take excise

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His ravenous kiss had made it Crawl like a bracelet 'bout her

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Here did he sit and essence quaff Thus when the hovering publiTill her coy pulse had beat him

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Ravaillac to my Queen of

That quivers at her fingers' ends, That runs division on the tree

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Like a thick-branching pedigree.

The King of Bees now jealous

grown

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