repose of great men; yet I have confidence I shall so manage the present
address as to entertain your lordship without much disturbance; and
because my purposes are governed by deep respect and veneration, I hope
to find your Lordship more facile and accessible. And I am already
absolved from a great part of that fulsome and designing guilt, being
sufficiently removed from the causes of it: for I consider, my Lord,
that you are already so well known to the world in your several
characters and advantages of honour--it was yours by traduction, and the
adjunct of your nativity; you were swaddled and rocked in't, bred up and
grew in't, to your now wonderful height and eminence--that for me under
pretence of the inscription, to give you the heraldry of your family, or
to carry your person through the famed topics of mind, body, or estate,
were all one as to persuade the world that fire and light were very
bright bodies, or that the luminaries themselves had glory. In point of
protection I beg to fall in with the common wont, and to be satisfied by
the reasonableness of the thing, and abundant worthy precedents; and
although I should have secret prophecy and assurance that the ensuing
verse would live eternally, yet would I, as I now do, humbly crave it
might be fortified with your patronage; for so the sextile aspects and
influences are watched for, and applied to the actions of life, thereby
to make the scheme and good auguries of the birth pass into Fate, and a
success infallible.
My Lord, by a happy obliging intercession, and your own consequent
indulgence, I have now recourse to your Lordship, hoping I shall not
much displease by putting these twin poets into your hands. The minion
and vertical planet of the Roman lustre and bravery, was never better
pleased than when he had a whole constellation about him: not his
finishing five several wars to the promoting of his own interest, nor
particularly the prodigious success at Actium where he held in chase the
wealth, beauty and prowess of the East; not the triumphs and absolute
dominions which followed: all this gave him not half that serene pride
and satisfaction of spirit as when he retired himself to umpire the
different excellencies of his insipid friends, and to distribute laurels
among his poetic heroes. If now upon the authority of this and several
such examples, I had the ability and opportunity of drawing the value
and strange worth of a poet, and withal of applying some of the
lineaments to the following pieces, I should then do myself a real
service, and atone in a great measure for the present insolence. But
best of all will it serve my defence and interest, to appeal to your
Lordship's own conceptions and image of genuine verse; with which so
just, so regular original, if these copies shall hold proportion and
resemblance, then am I advanced very far in your Lordship's pardon: the
rest will entirely be supplied me by your Lordship's goodness, and my
own awful zeal of being, my Lord,
Your Lordship's most obedient,
most humbly devoted servant,
J. W.
TO THE READER.
The Nation of Poets above all Writers has ever challenged perpetuity of
name, or as they please by their charter of liberty to call it,
Immortality. Nor has the World much disputed their claim, either easily
resigning a patrimony in itself not very substantial; or, it may be, out
of despair to control the authority of inspiration and oracle. Howsoever
the price as now quarrelled for among the poets themselves is no such
rich bargain: it is only a vanishing interest in the lees and dregs of
Time, in the rear of those Fathers and Worthies in the art, who if they
know anything of the heats and fury of their successors, must extremely
pity them.
I am to assure, that the Author has no portion of that airy happiness to
lose, by any injury or unkindness which may be done to his Verse: his
reputation is better built in the sentiment of several judicious
persons, who know him very well able to give himself a lasting monument,
by undertaking any argument of note in the whole circle of learning.
But even these his Diversions have been valuable with the matchless
Orinda; and since they deserved her esteem and commendations, who so
thinks them not worth the publishing, will put himself in the opposite
scale, where his own arrogance will blow him up.
I. W.
TO MR. HENRY VAUGHAN THE SILURIST: UPON THESE AND HIS FORMER POEMS.[58]
Had I ador'd the multitude, and thence
Got an antipathy to wit and sense,
And hugg'd that fate, in hope the world would grant
'Twas good affection to be ignorant;[59]
Yet the least ray of thy bright fancy seen,
I had converted, or excuseless been.
For each birth of thy Muse to after-times
Shall expiate for all this Age's crimes.
First shines thy Amoret, twice crown'd by thee,
Once by thy love, next by thy poetry;
Where thou the best of unions dost dispense,
Truth cloth'd in wit, and Love in innocence;
So that the muddy lover may learn here,
No fountains can be sweet that are not clear.
There Juvenal, by thee reviv'd, declares
How flat man's joys are, and how mean his cares;
And wisely doth upbraid[60] the world, that they
Should such a value for their ruin pay.
But when thy sacred Muse diverts her quil
The landscape to design of Sion's hill,[61]
As nothing else was worthy her, or thee,
So we admire almost t' idolatry.
What savage breast would not be rapt to find
Such jewels in such cabinets enshrin'd?
Thou fill'd with joys--too great to see or count--
Descend'st from thence, like Moses from the Mount,
And with a candid, yet unquestion'd awe
Restor'st the Golden Age, when Verse was Law.
Instructing us, thou so secur'st[62] thy fame,
That nothing can disturb it but my name:
Nay, I have hopes that standing so near thine
'Twill lose its dross, and by degrees refine.
Live! till the disabused world consent
All truths of use, of strength or ornament,
Are with such harmony by thee display'd
As the whole world was first by number made,
And from the charming rigour thy Muse brings
Learn, there's no pleasure but in serious things!
Orinda.
FOOTNOTES:
[58] 1664-1667 have To _Mr. Henry Vaughan, Silurist, on his Poems_.
[59] So 1664-1667. _Thalia Rediviva_ has _the ignorant_.
[60] 1664 has _generally upbraids_; 1667, _generously upbraids_
[61] 1664-1667 have _Leon's hill_.
[62] 1664 has _thou who securest_.
UPON THE INGENIOUS POEMS OF HIS LEARNED FRIEND, MR. HENRY VAUGHAN, THE
SILURIST.
Fairly design'd! to charm our civil rage
With verse, and plant bays in an iron age!
But hath steel'd Mars so ductible a soul,
That love and poesy may it control?
Yes! brave Tyrtaeus, as we read of old,
The Grecian armies as he pleas'd could mould;
They march'd to his high numbers, and did fight
With that instinct and rage, which he did write.
When he fell lower, they would straight retreat,
Grow soft and calm, and temper their bold heat.
Such magic is in Virtue! See here a young
Tyrtaeus too, whose sweet persuasive song
Can lead our spirits any way, and move
To all adventures, either war or love.
Then veil the bright Etesia, that choice she,
Lest Mars--Timander's friend--his rival be.
So fair a nymph, dress'd by a Muse so neat,
Might warm the North, and thaw the frozen Gete.
Tho. Powell, D.D.
TO THE INGENIOUS AUTHOR OF THALIA REDIVIVA.
ODE I.
Where reverend bards of old have sate
And sung the pleasant interludes of Fate,
Thou takest the hereditary shade
Which Nature's homely art had made,
And thence thou giv'st thy Muse her swing, and she
Advances to the galaxy;
There with the sparkling Cowley she above
Does hand in hand in graceful measures move.
We grovelling mortals gaze below,
And long in vain to know
Her wondrous paths, her wondrous flight:
In vain, alas! we grope,[63]
In vain we use our earthly telescope,
We're blinded by an intermedial night.
Thine eagle-Muse can only face
The fiery coursers in their race,
While with unequal paces we do try
To bear her train aloft, and keep her company.
II.
The loud harmonious Mantuan
Once charm'd the world; and here's the Uscan swan
In his declining years does chime,
And challenges the last remains of Time.
Ages run on, and soon give o'er,
They have their graves as well as we;
Time swallows all that's past and more,
Yet time is swallow'd in eternity:
This is the only profits poets see.
There thy triumphant Muse shall ride in state
And lead in chains devouring Fate;
Claudian's bright Ph[oe]nix she shall bring
Thee an immortal offering;
Nor shall my humble tributary Muse
Her homage and attendance too refuse;
She thrusts herself among the crowd,
And joining in th' applause she strives to clap aloud
III.
Tell me no more that Nature is severe,
Thou great philosopher!
Lo! she has laid her vast exchequer here.
Tell me no more that she has sent
So much already, she is spent;
Here is a vast America behind
Which none but the great Silurist could find.
Nature her last edition was the best,
As big, as rich as all the rest:
So will we here admit
Another world of wit.
No rude or savage fancy here shall stay
The travelling reader in his way,
But every coast is clear: go where he will,
Virtue's the road Thalia leads him still.
Long may she live, and wreath thy sacred head
For this her happy resurrection from the dead.
N. W., Jes. Coll., Oxon.
FOOTNOTES:
[63] The original has _flight In raine; alas! we grope_.
TO MY WORTHY FRIEND, MR. HENRY VAUGHAN THE SILURIST.
See what thou wert! by what Platonic round
Art thou in thy first youth and glories found?
Or from thy Muse does this retrieve accrue?
Does she which once inspir'd thee, now renew,
Bringing thee back those golden years which Time
Smooth'd to thy lays, and polish'd with thy rhyme?
Nor is't to thee alone she does convey
Such happy change, but bountiful as day,
On whatsoever reader she does shine,
She makes him like thee, and for ever thine.
And first thy manual op'ning gives to see
Eclipse and suff'rings burnish majesty,
Where thou so artfully the draught hast made
That we best read the lustre in the shade,
And find our sov'reign greater in that shroud:
So lightning dazzles from its night and cloud,
So the First Light Himself has for His throne
Blackness, and darkness his pavilion.
Who can refuse thee company, or stay,
By thy next charming summons forc'd away,
If that be force which we can so resent,
That only in its joys 'tis violent:
Upward thy Eagle bears us ere aware,
Till above storms and all tempestuous air
We radiant worlds with their bright people meet,
Leaving this little all beneath our feet.
But now the pleasure is too great to tell,
Nor have we other bus'ness than to dwell,
As on the hallow'd Mount th' Apostles meant
To build and fix their glorious banishment.
Yet we must know and find thy skilful vein
Shall gently bear us to our homes again;
By which descent thy former flight's impli'd
To be thy ecstacy and not thy pride.
And here how well does the wise Muse demean
Herself, and fit her song to ev'ry scene!
Riot of courts, the bloody wreaths of war,
Cheats of the mart, and clamours of the bar,
Nay, life itself thou dost so well express,
Its hollow joys, and real emptiness,
That Dorian minstrel never did excite,
Or raise for dying so much appetite.
Nor does thy other softer magic move
Us less thy fam'd Etesia to love;
Where such a character thou giv'st, that shame
Nor envy dare approach the vestal dame:
So at bright prime ideas none repine,
They safely in th' eternal poet shine.
Gladly th' Assyrian ph[oe]nix now resumes
From thee this last reprisal of his plumes;
He seems another more miraculous thing,
Brighter of crest, and stronger of his wing,
Proof against Fate in spicy urns to come,
Immortal past all risk of martyrdom.
Nor be concern'd, nor fancy thou art rude
T' adventure from thy Cambrian solitude:
Best from those lofty cliffs thy Muse does spring
Upwards, and boldly spreads her cherub wing.
So when the sage of Memphis would converse
With boding skies, and th' azure universe,
He climbs his starry pyramid, and thence
Freely sucks clean prophetic influence,
And all serene, and rapt and gay he pries
Through the ethereal volume's mysteries,
Loth to come down, or ever to know more
The Nile's luxurious, but dull foggy shore.
I. W., A.M. Oxon.
CHOICE POEMS ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS.
TO HIS LEARNED FRIEND AND LOYAL FELLOW-PRISONER, THOMAS POWEL OF
CANT[REFF], DOCTOR OF DIVINITY.
If sever'd friends by sympathy can join,
And absent kings be honour'd in their coin;
May they do both, who are so curb'd? but we
Whom no such abstracts torture, that can see
And pay each other a full self-return,
May laugh, though all such metaphysics burn.
'Tis a kind soul in magnets, that atones
Such two hard things as iron are and stones,
And in their dumb compliance we learn more
Of love, than ever books could speak before.
For though attraction hath got all the name,
As if that power but from one side came,
Which both unites; yet, where there is no sense
There is no passion, nor intelligence:
And so by consequence we cannot state
A commerce, unless both we animate.
For senseless things, though ne'er so called upon,
Are deaf, and feel no invitation,
But such as at the last day shall be shed
By the great Lord of life into the dead.
'Tis then no heresy to end the strife
With such rare doctrine as gives iron life.
For were it otherwise--which cannot be,
And do thou judge my bold philosophy--
Then it would follow that if I were dead,
Thy love, as now in life, would in that bed
Of earth and darkness warm me, and dispense
Effectual informing influence.
Since then 'tis clear, that friendship is nought else
But a joint, kind propension, and excess
In none, but such whose equal, easy hearts
Comply and meet both in their whole and parts,
And when they cannot meet, do not forget
To mingle souls, but secretly reflect
And some third place their centre make, where they
Silently mix, and make an unseen stay:
Let me not say--though poets may be bold--
Thou art more hard than steel, than stones more cold,
But as the marigold in feasts of dew
And early sunbeams, though but thin and few,
Unfolds itself, then from the Earth's cold breast
Heaves gently, and salutes the hopeful East:
So from thy quiet cell, the retir'd throne
Of thy fair thoughts, which silently bemoan
Our sad distractions, come! and richly dress'd
With reverend mirth and manners, check the rest
Of loose, loath'd men! Why should I longer be
Rack'd 'twixt two evils? I see and cannot see.
THE KING DISGUISED.
_Written about the same time that Mr. John Cleveland wrote his._
A king and no king! Is he gone from us,
And stoln alive into his coffin thus?
This was to ravish death, and so prevent
The rebels' treason and their punishment.
He would not have them damn'd, and therefore he
Himself deposed his own majesty.
Wolves did pursue him, and to fly the ill
He wanders--royal saint!--in sheepskin still.
Poor, obscure shelter, if that shelter be
Obscure, which harbours so much majesty.
Hence, profane eyes! the mystery's so deep,
Like Esdras books, the vulgar must not see't.
Thou flying roll, written with tears and woe,
Not for thy royal self, but for thy foe!
Thy grief is prophecy, and doth portend,
Like sad Ezekiel's sighs, the rebel's end.
Thy robes forc'd off, like Samuel's when rent,
Do figure out another's punishment.
Nor grieve thou hast put off thyself awhile,
To serve as prophet to this sinful isle;
These are our days of Purim, which oppress
The Church, and force thee to the wilderness.
But all these clouds cannot thy light confine,
The sun in storms and after them, will shine.
Thy day of life cannot be yet complete,
'Tis early, sure, thy shadow is so great.
But I am vex'd, that we at all can guess
This change, and trust great Charles to such a dress.
When he was first obscur'd with this coarse thing,
He grac'd plebeians, but profan'd the king:
Like some fair church, which zeal to charcoals burn'd,
Or his own court now to an alehouse turn'd.
But full as well may we blame night, and chide
His wisdom, Who doth light with darkness hide,
Or deny curtains to thy royal bed,
As take this sacred cov'ring from thy head.
Secrets of State are points we must not know;
This vizard is thy privy-council now,
Thou royal riddle, and in everything
The true white prince, our hieroglyphic king!
Ride safely in His shade, Who gives thee light,
And can with blindness thy pursuers smite.
O! may they wander all from thee as far
As they from peace are, and thyself from war!
And wheresoe'er thou dost design to be
With thy--now spotted--spotless majesty,
Be sure to look no sanctuary there,
Nor hope for safety in a temple, where
Buyers and sellers trade: O! strengthen not
With too much trust the treason of a Scot!
THE EAGLE.
Tis madness sure; and I am in the fit,
To dare an eagle with my unfledg'd wit.
For what did ever Rome or Athens sing
In all their lines, as lofty as his wing?
He that an eagle's powers would rehearse
Should with his plumes first feather all his verse.
I know not, when into thee I would pry,
Which to admire, thy wing first, or thine eye;
Or whether Nature at thy birth design'd
More of her fire for thee, or of her wind.
When thou in the clear heights and upmost air
Dost face the sun and his dispersed hair,
Ev'n from that distance thou the sea dost spy
And sporting in its deep, wide lap, the fry.
Not the least minnow there but thou canst see:
Whole seas are narrow spectacles to thee.
Nor is this element of water here
Below of all thy miracles the sphere.
If poets ought may add unto thy store,
Thou hast in heav'n of wonders many more.
For when just Jove to earth his thunder bends,
And from that bright, eternal fortress sends
His louder volleys, straight this bird doth fly
To Aetna, where his magazine doth lie,
And in his active talons brings him more
Of ammunition, and recruits his store.
Nor is't a low or easy lift. He soars
'Bove wind and fire; gets to the moon, and pores
With scorn upon her duller face; for she
Gives him but shadows and obscurity.
Here much displeas'd, that anything like night
Should meet him in his proud and lofty flight,
That such dull tinctures should advance so far,
And rival in the glories of a star,
Resolv'd he is a nobler course to try,
And measures out his voyage with his eye.
Then with such fury he begins his flight,
As if his wings contended with his sight.
Leaving the moon, whose humble light doth trade
With spots, and deals most in the dark and shade,
To the day's royal planet he doth pass
With daring eyes, and makes the sun his glass.
Here doth he plume and dress himself, the beams
Rushing upon him like so many streams;
While with direct looks he doth entertain
The thronging flames, and shoots them back again.
And thus from star to star he doth repair,
And wantons in that pure and peaceful air.
Sometimes he frights the starry swan, and now
Orion's fearful hare, and then the crow.
Then with the orb itself he moves, to see
Which is more swift, th' intelligence or he.
Thus with his wings his body he hath brought
Where man can travel only in a thought.
I will not seek, rare bird, what spirit 'tis
That mounts thee thus; I'll be content with this,
To think that Nature made thee to express
Our soul's bold heights in a material dress.
TO MR. M. L. UPON HIS REDUCTION OF THE PSALMS INTO METHOD.
Sir,
You have oblig'd the patriarch, and 'tis known
He is your debtor now, though for his own.
What he wrote is a medley: we can see
Confusion trespass on his piety.
Misfortunes did not only strike at him,
They charged further, and oppress'd his pen;
For he wrote as his crosses came, and went
By no safe rule, but by his punishment.
His quill mov'd by the rod; his wits and he
Did know no method, but their misery.
You brought his Psalms now into tune. Nay all
His measures thus are more than musical;
Your method and his airs are justly sweet,
And--what's church music right--like anthems meet.
You did so much in this, that I believe
He gave the matter, you the form did give.
And yet I wish you were not understood,
For now 'tis a misfortune to be good!
Why then you'll say, all I would have, is this:
None must be good, because the time's amiss.
For since wise Nature did ordain the night,
I would not have the sun to give us light.
Whereas this doth not take the use away,
But urgeth the necessity of day.
Proceed to make your pious work as free,
Stop not your seasonable charity.
Good works despis'd or censur'd by bad times
Should be sent out to aggravate their crimes.
They should first share and then reject our store,
Abuse our good, to make their guilt the more.
'Tis war strikes at our sins, but it must be
A persecution wounds our piety.
TO THE PIOUS MEMORY OF C[HARLES] W[ALBEOFFE] ESQUIRE, WHO FINISHED HIS
COURSE HERE, AND MADE HIS ENTRANCE INTO IMMORTALITY UPON THE 13 OF
SEPTEMBER, IN THE YEAR OF REDEMPTION, 1653.