AN ELEGY upon the Death of the most Excellent Poet MR IOHN CLEAVELAND.
Glow-Wormes may peep, when sable night
Hoodwinks the Sun's triumphant light,
Why may not I (although I 'nere,
But as a starre shone in Witt's Spheare)
Borrow some lustre from our dying Sun,
And from his fall have resurrection?
IMmortall CLEAVELAND! my pen's at a stand,
And wonder strikes a palsey 'nto my hand.
Immortall CLEAVELAND'S dead! oh let my eyes.
Weep faster, then my pen can Elegies!
Dear Soule, since [...] with Ebon night
My tootoo spongious Verse will strive to light
Thee to the grave; though with a twinckling ray,
Snatch'd from the former lustre of thy Day.
Doth thy verse, with thy glasse then cease to run?
Doe the fates cut the line the Muses spun?
Have the three Sisters then more power then Nine?
Hath covetuous Aeacus rob'd thee of that Mine,
That sparkled in each Diamond word, each Line
Richer in Golden sense, then th' King of Spain,
Alluring more then Danae's golden rain?
When in our blockish age Witt was at fall,
And to write verse was thought Apocriphall:
Thou didst it raise to th' Elah of perfection,
Thy lines were Searcloths against the infection
Of Sore-back'd Time, and thy ingenious Muse
Maugre all malice, lofty strains did use.
Noe Doubt, the future ages will admire,
How well in frosty ignorance, thy fire
(Hotter then any, Zealots) in a time
When 'twas called sin to read or writ a rime:
Could' flame so bright, and how thou could'st fit
Th' unbiass'd time with thy well biass'd witt.
Tho all our Mango Poets thee upbraid,
(Whose Drabs are Muses, Poetry their Trade.)
Tho Sacrilegious Elves pollute thy fame
With their unhallowed lips, yet shall thy name
Out live their Spurious bratts, thy golden strain
(The Geniall Son of thy great teeming brain.)
Shall be held sacred by posterity
As the Idaea of true Poetry.
And like Mahumetans we hence will write
From thy Hegira, from thy speedy flight
From us to heaven, where thy Muse doth sing
Sweet-breathing Cantoes to th' Immortall King.
Unto Apollo's Shrine we will noe more
Goe Pilgrims, but thy reliques wee'l adore:
And to thy Sacred Poems, we will loe!
As zealous Turks unto Medina goe,
Where they, like th' Pythian Oracle, dispense
To Poets laws, fraught with more Eloquence.
VVhen thy terse Muse in Cataracts did fall,
It made not Deafe, but it did Silence all
Those Sectaries, that dwell't too near the wave
Of Nile-like swelling Shism, yea and did lave
The putrefacted Humours of our times,
The Pestilence of our age, its damned crimes,
(Whether Jack Presbyter thou didst discribe
Or Adoniram, or that black-mouth'd tribe.
Must I here stay? noe, noe, my tears supply
Mine Ink, although my Standish sayes 'tis dry.
Dear soule farwell, our pur-blind eys noe more
Can view thy Westerne Sun, yet we adore,
Like the Enthusiastique Preist, the West,
Hoping thy rise farr brighter from the East.
Epigraphe.
Defessus totìes humilis serpendo Poëta
Noster humi, summum respicit ille polum.
Viderat ut coelum pleno stupefactus hiatu,
Fac Deus, & propriùs videro; dixit, obit.
Haec inter suspiria & lachrymas Scripsit Philomusus Philoponus.