“ In sudden raptures, fancies, judgement, phrase,
Invention, quickness, life, detraction, praise—
So that I favour'd their conceit which feign'd
The soul to be an harmony, and reign'd
Amongst the senses with accounts and measures,
All which thy lofty poesy entreasures,
That quaintest warblers cannot with delight
Outworth the poet in his lyric height.
As those which with quick eyes where judgement sits,
Thy vindication of poetic wits
Do read, may see, whose swelling metres teach
All aliens such high English that to reach
Is harder than to like or belch forth scandals. ”

“ Not ease myself, but trouble two,
'Tis better I alone possess
My treasure of unhappiness:
Engrossing that which is my own
No longer than it is unknown.
If silence be a kind of death,
20He kindles grief who gives it breath;
But let it rak'd in embers lie,
On thine own hearth 'twill quickly die:
And spite of fate, that very womb
Which carries it, shall prove its tomb.
Love's Harvest.
Fond Lunatic forbear, why dost thou sue
For thy affection's pay ere it is due?
Love's fruits are legal use; and therefore may
Be only taken on the marriage day. ”

“ Stanza I.
Unhappy Muse! employ'd so oft
On melancholy thoughts of Death,
What hast thou left so tender, and so soft
As thy poor master fain would breath
O'er this lamented hearse?
No usual flight of fancy can become
My sorrows o'er a brother's tomb.
O that I could be elegant in tears,
That with conceptions, not unworthy thee,
10Great as thy merit, vigorous as thy years,
I might convey thy elegy
To th' grief and envy of posterity!
A gentler youth ne'er crown'd his parents' cares,
Or added ampler joy to their grey hairs:
Kind to his friends, to his relations dear,
Easy to all.—Alas! ”

“ And all the lesser singing birds are starved i'th' cage.
II.
Nor was it well done to permit my bush,
My holly bush, to hang before thy wine,
For friends' applauses are not worth a rush,
And every fool can get a gilded sign.
In troth I have no faculty at praise;
My bush is very full of thorns, though it seems bays.
III.
When I would praise I cannot find a rhyme,
But if I have a just pretence to rail,
They come in numerous throngs at any time,
Their everlasting fountains never fail,
They come in troops and for employment pray;
If I have any wit, it lies only that way. ”

“ How many years pass'd betwixt King and King's reign,
To make an old woman ev'n twitter for joy
At an eighty-eight story, or the scuffle at Troy:
But where the good wine, and best fire is
When the cruel North-wind does blow,
And the trees do penance in snow;
Where the poet's delight and desire is,
Thou, pitiful book-worm, ne'er troublest thy brain.
II.
10Come, drawer, some claret, we'll drown this new Moon. ”

“ Sibylline oracles did speak in verse;
Their scattered leaves in measures did rehearse
The mysteries of man's redemption by
The incarnation of a deity.
Grave Maro, I remember, in an ode
300 (An eclogue) treads the same prophetic road.
Those famous Druides, renowned of late,
Treated at large o' th' soul's immortal state.
Man's spirit does not to the gloomy shade
Of Erebus, o'er black Cocytus, wade.
Death sets no period, is the lesser part
Of human life; for the same breath does dart
Vigour to every sinew in the bulk.
Man lives as freely in another hulk. ”

“ In thy long toil: ne'er master'd till thy death;
And then, despite of trains and cruel wit,
Thou didst at once subdue malice and it.
I dare not then so blast thy memory
10As say I do lament or pity thee.
Were I to choose a subject to bestow
My pity on, he should be one as low
In spirit as desert;—that durst not die,
But rather were content by slavery
To purchase life: or I would pity those,
Thy most industrious and friendly foes ”

“ Entomb great states, and commons overthrow.
Thou Love (what should I call thee?) dost entice,
Nay check'st rebellion in the awful gods;
Women thy weapons are, of such high price,
That beat with them they humbly kiss the rods.
1690No life, no joy, no sweet, without a lass;
And yet no sweet nor joy since woman was.
Our eyes do ne'er mistake the day for night,
Nor can the pale-hewed pinks for roses pass,
But when on women's colours they do light.
Then (bribed) they look as through a painted glass,
So that what women are we never see
But what we wish and fancy them to be. ”

“ Stamp'd with thy verse he knows th' are sacred then,
He knows them by that character to be
Predestinate and set apart for immortality.
IV.
If native lustre in thy themes appear,
Improv'd by thee it shines more clear:
Or if thy subject's void of native light,
Thy Fancy need but dart a beam
To gild thy theme,
50And make the rude mass beautiful and bright.
Thou vary'st oft thy strains, but still
Success attends each strain:
Thy verse is always lofty as the hill,
Or pleasant as the plain.
How well thy Muse the Pastoral Song improves! ”

“ And th' embryo-words dost to perfection bring;
By us the Muse conceives, but when that's done,
Thy midwif'ry makes fit to see the Sun;
Our naked lines, drest and adorn'd by thee,
Assume a beauty, pomp, and bravery;
So awful and majestic they appear,
They need not blush to reach a Prince's ear.
Princes, tho' to poor poets seldom kind,
20Their numbers turn'd to air with pleasure mind
Studied and labour'd tho' our poems be,
Alas! they die unheeded without thee,
Whose art can make our breathless labours live,
Spirit and everlasting vigour give. ”

“ As one in metre. Th' art is in excess;
But yet thy ingenuity makes it less.
With pen and pencil thou dost all outshine,
In speaking picture, Poesy divine.
Poets, creators are! You made us know
Those are above, and dread those are below;
30But 'tis no wonder you such things can dare,
That painter, poet, and a prophet are.
The stars themselves think it no scorn to be
Plac'd, and directed in their way by thee. ”

“ An Elegy on the Earl of Sandwich.
If there were aught in Verse at once could raise
Or tender pity or immortal praise,
Thine obsequies, brave Sandwich, would require
Whatever would our nobler thoughts inspire;
But since thou find'st by thy unhappy fate,
What 'tis to be unfortunately great,
And purchase Honour at too dear a rate:
The Muse's best attempt, howe'er design'd,
Cannot but prove impertinently kind,
10Thy glorious valour is a theme too high
For all the humble arts of Poesy.
To side with chance and kingdoms overrun
Are little things ambitious men have done ”

“ Made myself no self to entitle you?
And, after this sad purgatory, must
My hopes be laid i' th' dust for want of dust?
Then know, Bellama, since thou aim'st at wealth
Where Fortune has bestowed her largest dealth,
That wealth may puff a clod of earth like leaven,
But virtuous want alone ensouleth heaven.
Know more, I scorned thy fortune: 'twas thyself
I courted, not thy slight-adored pelf,
1870And had not mortals' curse blessed thee, and I
Had swelled with honour and nobility,
My love, once fixed on virtue, parents' hate
In both might shake, but ne'er evert love's state. ”

“ Thy fever yet was kind; which the ninth day
For thy misfortunes made an easy way.
When th' other barbarous and hectic fit,
In nineteen winters did not intermit.
[page 214]
I therefore vainly now not ask thee why
10Thou didst so soon in thy youth's mid-way die:
But in my sense the greater wonder make,
Thy long oppressed heart no sooner brake.
Of force must the neglected blossom fall,
When the tough root becomes unnatural,
And to his branches doth that sap deny,
Which them with life and verdure should supply. ”

“ Verse V.
Thou by a span measur'st these days of mine,
Eternity's the spacious bound of thine:
Who shall compare his little span with thee,
With thine Incomprehensibility.
Man born to trouble leaves this world with pain,
10His best estate is altogether vain.
[pg 318]
Hymn for the Morning.
Awake, my soul! Awake, mine eyes!
Awake, my drowsy faculties;
Awake, and see the new-born light
Spring from the darksome womb of Night!
Look up and see th' unwearied Sun,
Already hath his race begun:
The pretty lark is mounted high,
And sings her matins in the sky.
Arise, my soul! ”

“ 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 Phœnixes of wit by firing his spicy bed about him? ”

“ Piercing wit and murd'ring eloquence,
Noble conceit and manly sense,
Charming numbers let 'em shine
And dazzle dead in ev'ry line
The most malicious of thy foes,
Though Hell itself should offer to oppose;
I (thy decrepit subject) only can resign
The little life of art is left, to ransom thine:
40Fumbling's as bad in poetry,
And as ridiculous, as 'tis in gallantry:
But if a dart I may prevent,
Which at my friend's repute was meant,
Let them then direct at me ”

“ But with lip-love, which to the heart ne'er sinks,
And paper-vows which take their birth from inks.
2740But stay: does greatness use to be denied?
Beauty and bravery command a grant.
Yet might my looks and carriage plumed with pride
His humble and untow'ring spirit daunt.
Daunt? no: his soul's a temper most divine,
Dares soar aloft to kiss the sun's near shine.
Then love he does: but must this action, woo,
Be tied by patent only unto men? ”

“ Every one suffers from Cleveland's adoption of the same method which he used in his purely metaphysical poems, that of stringing together and heaping up images and observations, instead of organizing and incorporating them. Every one is a tangled tissue of temporary allusion, needing endless scholiastry to unravel and elucidate it. It has been said, and it is true, that we find not a few reminiscences of Cleveland in Dryden. There is even in the couplet of the older and smaller poet something of the weight, the impetus, the animosity of that of the younger and greater. ”

“ Writ on my heart, "Albino is approv'd";
1670Whensoe'er my eyes unto thy feature went,
And met with thine, they brought me word "You lov'd",
Then can Bellama not Bellama be?
She may Bellama be, but not to me.
Blest heavens! how have men deserved your ire,
That made you frame this curse, this thing called Woman,
So comely and so useful, giving fire
To sear us men and yet disdain to know man? ”

“ For such excesses find no epitaph.
At common graves, we have poetic eyes,
Can melt themselves in easy elegies;
Each quill can drop his tributary verse,
And pin it, with the hatchments, to the hearse:
But at thine, poem or inscription
10 (Rich soul of wit and language!) we have none ”

“ Th' obedience of a bashful Muse,
Who, bowing to your strict command,
Trusts her own errors to your hand,
Hasty abortives, which, laid by,
She meant, ere they were born should die:
But since the soft power of your breath
10Hath call'd them back again from Death,
To your sharp judgement now made known,
She dares for hers no longer own;
The worst she must not, these resign'd
She hath to th' fire, and where you find
Those your kind Charity admir'd,
She writ but what your eyes inspir'd. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But all must enter th' adamantine gate:
Sooner or later must we come
To Nature's dark retiring room:
And yet 'tis pity, is it not?
The learned, as the fool should die,
One, full as low, as t'other lie,
30Together blended in the general lot!
Distinguish'd only from the common crowd
By an hing'd coffin or an holland shroud,
Though Fame and Honour speak them ne'er so loud.
Alas, Orinda! even thou,
Whose happy verse made others live,
And certain immortality could give ”

“ No verse,
10No epicedium bring,
Nor peaceful requiem sing,
To charm the terrors of my hearse;
No profane numbers must flow near
The sacred silence that dwells here.
Vast griefs are dumb; softly, oh! softly mourn,
Lest you disturb the peace attends my urn.
[page 140]
Yet strew
Upon my dismal grave
Such offerings as you have,
20Forsaken cypress and sad yew;
For kinder flowers can take no birth,
Or growth, from such unhappy earth.
Weep only o'er my dust, and say, Here lies
To Love and Fate an equal sacrifice.
The Exequies.] A very good stanza, the rhythm rising and swelling admirably. ”