University of Virginia Library

On Mr Will: Cartvvright's excellent Poems, Now collected and Published.

Is Wit condemn'd to dye, that now she sets
Her House in Order, and her Goods in gets?
That things which here and there did loosely lie
She does call home, and up in Bundles tie,
As if there were an Inventory mean't
T'annex to her last Will and Testament?
Or is She Dead? and of her Self bereft,
We seek all Fragments of her which are left,
And what we have, charily keep in store
Because we have no hope of having more?
So when Friends are Deceas'd, and Bodies Burn'd,
Their Scatter'd Ashes are rak't up and Urn'd.
Else why of late so many Poems? more
These last Sev'n years, than in three Sev'ns before?
Thus Suckling, Waller, the Dioscuri
Beaumont and Fletcher, Twins of Poësy:
Thus Thou, whose Clear Soul when it hence did move
Did new white-ore the Milky-way above;
Whose Lines, Clear as that Soul, oft blest a Hand
When in one Single Paper they did stand,
Bestow'st thy whole Self on us, and do'st give
More than is fit we should at once receive.
While thy Dis-joynted Limbs, knit one to one,
Anticipate a Resurrection,
And rise a Spirituall Body, full of Light
And Divine Heat; Agility and Might.
Or is't at last some pow'rfull Influence
Of Stars, or, what does guide Stars, Providence,
Sends Cartvvright now among us? when the Weeds
Of Barbarism do eat out richer Seeds,
This fatall Climacterick unto those
That durst own ought 'bove Ignorance and Prose:
To shame men into Sense, to teach them (what
They now learn to forget) to speak, so flat
Our sharp'st Expressions are, so rude even when
We attempt Eloquence! We speak to Men,
Nay speak to God, in Language will abide
The Iron Bracelets and the Horn by th' side.
This is Sad truth; And 'tis time to learn Wit,
When Men come from the Dead to teach us it.