 | Poems (1657) |  |
9
THE HECATOMB TO HIS MISTRESSE.
Be dumb ye beggers of the rhiming Trade,Geld the loose wits, and let the Muse be splaid.
Charge not the parish with the bastard phrase
Of Balm, Elixar, both the Indias,
Of shrine, saint, sacriledge, and such as these
Expressions common as their Mistresses.
Hence ve fantastick Postillers in song,
My text defeats your art, ties Natures tongue,
Scorns all his tinsil'd Metaphors of pelf,
Illustrated by nothing but his self.
As Spiders travell by their bowels spun
Into a thred, 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 againe each Panegerick line.
Reach then a soaring quill, that I may write,
As with a Jacobs staffe to take the height.
Suppose an Angel darting through the air,
Should their encounter a religious prayer
Mounting to heaven, that inelligence
Should for a Sunday-suit thy breath condense
10
In venturing higher; were the note I sing,
Above heavens Ela, should I undecline,
And with a deep-mouth'd Gammut sound again
From pole to pole, I could not reach her worth.
Nor finde an Epithite to set it forth.
Mettals may blazon common beauties; She
Makes pearl and planets humble herauldry.
As then a purer substance is defin'd,
But by a heap of Negatives combind;
Ask what a spirit is, you'l hear them cry
It hath no matter, no mortality:
So can I not define how sweet, how fair,
Onely I say she's not as others are:
For what perfection we to others grant,
It is her sole perfection to want.
All other formes seem in respect of thee
The Almanacks mishap'd 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 name-sak'd signes in their strange character.
As the Philosophers to every sence
Marry it's object, yet with some dispence.
And grant them a Poligamy withall,
And these their common sensibles they call:
So is't with her, who stinted unto none,
Unites all Sences in each action.
The same beam heats and lights; to see her well,
Is both to hear and feel, to taste and smel.
11
When each of his contains a double prize,
Uenus his apple? can the eyes want nose,
When from each cheeks buds forth a fragrant rose?
Or can the sight be deaf if she but speak,
A well tun'd face such moving Rhetorick?
Doth not each look a flash of lightning feel,
Which spares the bodies sheath, and melts the steal?
Thy soul must needs confesse, or grant thy sence
Corrupted with the objects excellence,
Sweet Magick, which can make five sences lie
Conjur'd within the circle of an eye.
In whom, since all the five are intermixt,
Oh now that Scaliges would prove his fixt!
Thou man of mouth, that canst not name a She
Unlesse all nature pay a Subsidie,
Whose language is a Tax, whose Musk-cat verse
Voides nought but flowers from thy Muses herse,
Fitter than Celia's looks, who in a trice
Canst state the long disputed Paradise:
And with divines hunt with so cold a scent,
Can in her bosome finde it resident.
Now come aloft, come come and breath a vein,
And give some vent unto thy daring strain.
Say the Astrologer, who spels the stars,
In that faire Alphabet reads peace and wars,
Mistakes his Globe and in her brighter eye
Interpets heavens Physiognomy.
Call her the Metaphysicks of her Sex,
And say she tortures wits, as Quartans vex.
12
She is the very rule of Algebra:
What e're you undertake not, say't of her,
For that's the way to write her Character.
Say this and more, and when thou hop'st to raise
Thy fancie so as to inclose her praise,
Alas poore Gotham with thy Coocko hedge,
Hyperbolies are here but sacriledge.
Then rouze up Muse, what thou hast reveal'd 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 sence,
Whose breath can countermand a pestilence;
She that can strike the best invention dead,
Till bafled Poetry hangs down her head:
She, she it is, she that contains all blisse,
And makes the world but her Periphrasis.
| Poems (1657) | |