The Author's Hermaphrodite.
(Made after Mr. Randolph's death, yet inserted into his Poems.)
Problem of sexes! Must thou likewise be
As disputable in thy pedigree?
Thou twins in one, in whom Dame Nature tries
To throw less than aums ace upon two dice.
Wert thou served up two in one dish, the rather
To split thy sire into a double father?
True, the world's scales are even; what the main
In one place gets, another quits again.
Nature lost one by thee, and therefore must
10Slice one in two to keep her number just.
Plurality of livings is thy state,
And therefore mine must be impropriate.
For, since the child is mine and yet the claim
Is intercepted by another's name,
Never did steeple carry double truer;
His is the donative and mine the cure.
Then say, my Muse (and without more dispute),
Who 'tis that fame doth superinstitute.
The Theban wittol, when he once descries
20Jove is his rival, falls to sacrifice.
That name hath tipped his horns; see, on his knees!
A health to Hans-in-kelder Hercules!
Nay, sublunary cuckolds are content
To entertain their fate with compliment;
And shall not he be proud whom Randolph deigns
To quarter with his Muse both arms and brains?
Gramercy Gossip, I rejoice to see
She'th got a leap of such a barbary.
Talk not of horns, horns are the poet's crest;
30For, since the Muses left their former nest
To found a nunnery in Randolph's quill,
Cuckold Parnassus is a forked hill.
But stay, I've waked his dust, his marble stirs
And brings the worms for his compurgators.
Can ghost have natural sons? Say, Og, is't meet
Penance bear date after the winding sheet?
Were it a Phœnix (as the double kind
May seem to prove, being there's two combined)
I would disclaim my right, and that it were
40The lawful issue of his ashes swear.
But was he dead? Did not his soul translate
Herself into a shop of lesser rate;
Or break up house, like an expensive lord
That gives his purse a sob and lives at board?
Let old Pythagoras but play the pimp
And still there's hopes 't may prove his bastard imp.
But I'm profane; for, grant the world had one
With whom he might contract an union,
They two were one, yet like an eagle spread,
50I' th' body joined, but parted in the head.
For you, my brat, that pose the Porph'ry Chair,
Pope John, or Joan, or whatsoe'er you are,
You are a nephew; grieve not at your state,
For all the world is illegitimate.
Man cannot get a man, unless the sun
Club to the act of generation.
The sun and man get man, thus Tom and I
Are the joint fathers of my poetry.
For since, blest shade, thy verse is male, but mine
60O' th' weaker sex, a fancy feminine,
We'll part the child, and yet commit no slaughter;
So shall it be thy son, and yet my daughter.
The Author's Hermaphrodite.] (1647.) The note, which appears in all editions, seems evidently conclusive as to this poem. Moreover the quibbles are right Clevelandish.
7 'main' is a little ambiguous, or may appear so from the recent mention of dice. But that sense will hardly come in, and Cleveland was probably thinking of the famous passage in Spenser (Artegall's dispute with the giant, F. Q. v. ii) as to the washing away and washing up of the sea. Yet 'main' might mean 'stock'. The reading of 'gets place' in one edition (1662), rather notable for blunders, cannot be listened to.
15 steeple] By synecdoche for 'church' or 'parish'.
16 donative] A play on words, as also in 'cure'.
19 Theban wittol] Amphitryon.
22 Hans-in-kelder] = 'unborn'.
28 She'th] 1667 changes to 'Th'hast'. barbary] 'Barbs' or Spanish horses were imported for the stud as early as Anglo-Saxon times; but before Cleveland's day actual Arabs had been tried.
34 compurgators] persons who swear in a court of law to the innocence or the veracity of some other person.
35 I was unable to say why the King of Bashan comes in here, except that the comparison of the Dialogue on the &c., 'Og the great commissary', and the put case about 'penance', suggest some church lawyer of portly presence. But Mr. Simpson and Mr. Thorn-Drury have traced the thing from this point as follows:
Cf. A Dialogue upon the &c., l. 47 'Og the great commissary', where the copy in Rawlinson MS. Poet. 26, fol. 94 b, has a marginal note 'Roan'. This was Dr. William Roan, of whom an account is given in the Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, Division 1, 'Political and Personal Satires', p. 156: 'Dr. Roane was one of the most eminent doctors who acted in Laud's Ecclesiastical Courts; he fled from the indignation of the House of Commons, and is frequently alluded to in pamphlets and broadsides of the time (see Times Alteration, Jan. 8, 1641,... Old News newly Revived, Dec. 21, 1640,...and The Spirituall Courts Epitomised, June 26, 1641).' The pamphlet illustrated in this note is A Letter front Rhoan in France Written by Doctor Roane one of the Doctors of the late Sicke Commons, to his Fellow Doctor of the Civill Law. Dated 28, of Iune last past. With an Ellegy written by his oune hand upon the death and buriall of the said Doctors Commons. Printed in this happy yeare, 1641. (Thomason's copy dated June 28.)
Mr. Thorn-Drury supplies the following references bearing directly on the nickname, and not noticed in the B.M. Catalogue: Foure fugitives meeting Or, The Discourse amongst my Lord Finch, Sir Frances Windebank, Sir John Sucklin, and Doctor Roane, as they accidentally met in France, with a detection of their severall pranks in England. Printed In the Yeare, 1641. 4o.
Suckling says to Roane, 'Hold there good Doctor Roane, and take me with you, you are to be blamed too, for not bidding farewell to Sir Paul Pinder, (at whose beauteous house, you have devoured the carkasse of many a cram'd Capon) before you fled, but I wonder more, why you came hither so unprovided; methinks some English dyet would have bin good for a weake stomack: the Church-Wardens of Northhamptonshire promised to give you a good fee, if you will goe to 'em, and resolve 'em whether they may lawfully take the oath &c. or no.
'Wind. That may very well be, for they have given him a great Addition, they stile him, Og the great Commissary, they say he was as briske in discharging the new Canons, as he that made them.'
Suckling addresses Roane as 'Immense Doctor Roane': so it is possible that it was his personal appearance which suggested the name of Og.
Cf. also Canidia. The Third Part, p. 150 (1683):
Are you a Smock-Sinner, or so,
Commute soundly, and you shall be let go.
Fee Ogg the great Commissary before and behind,
Then sin on, you know my mind.
39 1647, 1651, 1653, &c. 'It would', which can hardly be right.
44 'sob' 1647, 1651: 1653 clearly 'fob': 'Sob' 1677. Cf. Comedy of Errors (iv. iii. 22) 'gives a sob'. 'Sob' is literally 'an act on the part of a horse of recovering its wind after exertion'—hence 'respite' (N.E.D.).
51 Porph'ry Chair] The Pope's throne, the myths of which, as well as of Pope Joan herself, are vulgate. 'Nephew' carries out the allusion: Popes' sons being called so
Better to preserve the peace.
59 thy] this 1651, 1653.
62 The merit of the style for burlesque use could hardly be better brought out.
*To the Hectors, upon the unfortunate death of H. Compton.
You Hectors! tame professors of the sword,
Who in the chair state duels, whose black word
Bewitches courage, and like Devils too,
Leaves the bewitch'd when 't comes to fight and do.
Who on your errand our best spirits send,
Not to kill swine or cows, but man and friend;
Who are a whole court-martial in your drink,
And dispute honour, when you cannot think,
Not orderly, but prate out valour as
10You grow inspired by th' oracle of the glass;
Then, like our zeal-drunk presbyters, cry down
All law of Kings and God, but what's their own.
Then y' have the gift of fighting, can discern
Spirits, who 's fit to act, and who to learn,
Who shall be baffled next, who must be beat,
Who killed—that you may drink, and swear, and eat.
Whilst you applaud those murders which you teach
And live upon the wounds your riots preach.
Mere booty-souls! Who bid us fight a prize
20To feast the laughter of our enemies,
Who shout and clap at wounds, count it pure gain,
Mere Providence to hear a Compton 's slain.
A name they dearly hate, and justly; should
They love 't 'twere worse, their love would taint the blood.
Blood always true, true as their swords and cause,
And never vainly lost, till your wild laws
Scandalled their actions in this person, who
Truly durst more than you dare think to do.
A man made up of graces—every move
30Had entertainment in it, and drew love
From all but him who killed him, who seeks a grave
And fears a death more shameful than he gave.
Now you dread Hectors! you whom tyrant drink
Drags thrice about the town, what do you think?
(If you be sober) Is it valour, say,
To overcome, and then to run away?
Fie! Fie! your lusts and duels both are one;
Both are repented of as soon as done.
To the Hectors (1653) is struck out in 1677 and Mr. Berdan does not give it. I asterisk it in text; but as it might be Cleveland's (though I do not think it is) I do not exclude it. The Comptons were a good Royalist family in those days. This Henry (not the Bishop) was killed in 1652 in a duel by George Brydges, Lord Chandos, who died three years later (see Professor Firth's House of Lords during the Civil War, p. 223). The fame of the Hectors as predecessors of the Mohocks and possible objects of Milton's objurgation 'flown with insolence and wine', &c., is sufficient. But they seem to have been more methodical maniacs and ruffians than their successors, and even to have had something of the superior quality of Sir Lucius O'Trigger and Captain McTurk about them, as professors and painful preachers of the necessity and etiquette of the duel.
2 state duels] Arrange them like the said Captain McTurk in St. Ronan's Well? word] 1653 (wrongly for rhyme, though not necessarily for concord) 'words'.
19 booty-souls] Apparently 'souls interested in nothing but booty'. The piece would seem to have been addressed to Hectors in the actual Cavalier camp, or at least party. The 'enemies' are of course the Roundheads, and it will soon be noticed that there is no apodosis or consequence to all these 'who's', &c. It is literally an 'Address' and no more.
25 their] = 'the Comptons'—nothing to do with 'their' and 'they' in the preceding lines.
31 Does not run very smoothly: the second 'him' may be a foist.
Square-Cap.
Come hither, Apollo's bouncing girl,
And in a whole Hippocrene of sherry
Let 's drink a round till our brains do whirl,
Tuning our pipes to make ourselves merry.
A Cambridge lass, Venus-like, born of the froth
Of an old half-filled jug of barley-broth,
She, she is my mistress, her suitors are many,
But she'll have a Square-cap if e'er she have any.
And first, for the plush-sake, the Monmouth-cap comes,
10Shaking his head like an empty bottle;
With his new-fangled oath by Jupiter's thumbs,
That to her health he'll begin a pottle.
He tells her that, after the death of his grannam,
He shall have God knows what per annum.
But still she replied, 'Good Sir, la-bee;
If ever I have a man, Square-cap for me!'
Then Calot Leather-cap strongly pleads,
And fain would derive the pedigree of fashion.
The antipodes wear their shoes on their heads,
20And why may not we in their imitation?
Oh, how this football noddle would please,
If it were but well tossed on S. Thomas his leas!
But still she replied, 'Good sir, la-bee;
If ever I have a man, Square-cap for me!'
Next comes the Puritan in a wrought-cap,
With a long-waisted conscience towards a sister.
And, making a chapel of ease of her lap,
First he said grace and then he kissed her.
'Beloved,' quoth he, 'thou art my text.'
30Then falls he to use and application next;
But then she replied, 'Your text, sir, I'll be;
For then I'm sure you'll ne'er handle me.'
But see where Satin-cap scouts about,
And fain would this wench in his fellowship marry.
He told her how such a man was not put out
Because his wedding he closely did carry.
He'll purchase induction by simony,
And offers her money her incumbent to be;
But still she replied, 'Good sir, la-bee;
40If ever I have a man, Square-cap for me!'
The lawyer's a sophister by his round-cap,
Nor in their fallacies are they divided,
The one milks the pocket, the other the tap;
And yet this wench he fain would have brided.
'Come, leave these thread-bare scholars,' quoth he,
'And give me livery and seisin of thee.'
'But peace, John-a-Nokes, and leave your oration,
For I never will be your impropriation;
I pray you therefore, good sir, la-bee;
50For if ever I have a man, Square-cap for me!'
Square-Cap (1647) is one of the pleasantest of all Cleveland's poems. Its prosodic puzzle and profit have been indicated in the Introduction, and it might sometimes run more easily. But the thorough good-fellowship and esprit de corps carry it off more than sufficiently. It would be pleasant to think that Mr. Samuel Pepys sang it on the famous occasion when he was 'scandalously over-served with drink' as an undergraduate. It had been printed only three years when he went up, though no doubt written earlier.
2 Cleveland has got the fount right here.
7 she is] she's 1653.
9 Monmouth-cap] A soldier.
13, 14 A most singular blunder in 1677 (and the editions that follow it) shows that Cleveland's 'Vindicators' were by no means always attentive to his sense. It reads 'her grannam' and 'She shall have'—the exact effect of which, as an inducement to marry him, one would like to hear.
15 la-bee] = 'let-a-be', 'let me alone'.
17 One or two editions (but not very good ones) 'Thin Calot'. Calot of course = 'calotte', the lawyer's cap or coif.
18 This is a signal instance of the way in which these early anapaestic lines break down into heroics. 1677 and others read 'his pedigree'—not so well.
22 S. Thomas his leas] A decree of Oct. 29, 1632, ordains that scholars and students of Corpus and Pembroke shall play football only 'upon St. Thomas Layes', the site of Downing College later. This decree and the 'S.' of 1651, 1653, would seem to show that 1677 is wrong in expanding to 'Sir', though two Cambridge editors ought to have known the right name. It was also called 'Swinecroft'. (Information obtained from the late Mr. J. W. Clark's Memories and Customs, Cambridge, 1909, through the kindness of Mr. A. J. Bartholomew.)
33 Satin-cap] Clerical: cf. Strode's poem on The Caps (Works, ed. Dobell, p. 106):
The Sattin and the Velvet hive
Unto a Bishopric doth drive.
36 closely ... carry] = 'disguise', 'conceal'.
Upon Phillis walking in a morning
before sun-rising.
The sluggish morn as yet undressed,
My Phillis brake from out her East,
As if she'd made a match to run
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.
The flowers, called out of their beds,
Start and raise up their drowsy heads;
And he that for their colour seeks
May find it vaulting in her cheeks,
Where roses mix—no civil war
Between her York and Lancaster.
The marigold (whose courtier's face
Echoes the sun and doth unlace
Her at his rise—at his full stop
30Packs and shuts up her gaudy shop)
Mistakes her cue and doth display:
Thus Phillis antedates the day.
These miracles had cramped the sun,
Who, thinking that his kingdom 's won,
Powders with light his frizzled locks
To see what saint his lustre mocks.
The trembling leaves through which he played,
Dappling the walk with light and shade
Like lattice-windows, give the spy
40Room but to peep with half an eye;
Lest her full orb his sight should dim
And bid us all good-night in him,
Till she should spend a gentle ray
To force us a new-fashioned day.
But what religious palsy 's this
Which makes the boughs divest their bliss,
And, that they might her footsteps straw,
Drop their leaves with shivering awe?
Phillis perceived and (lest her stay
50Should wed October unto May,
And, as her beauty caused a Spring,
Devotion might an Autumn bring)
Withdrew her beams, yet made no night,
But left the sun her curate-light.
Upon Phillis, &c. (1647.) This is perhaps the prettiest, as The Senses' Festival is the most vigorous and Fuscara the most laboured, of Cleveland's Clevelandisms.
6 1677 &c. insert 'her' between 'serving' and 'more'—doubtless on the principle, noticed before, of patching lines to supposed 'regularity'.
7 'Ranked' 1647, 1677: 'Banked' 1651, 1653. As it happens either will do; and at the same time either, if original, is likely to have been mistaken for the other.
8 'Weave' 1647: 'Wave' 1651, 1653: 'Weav'd' 1677 (the printer unconsciously assimilating it to the 'Ranked' of l. 8). The same remark applies as to the preceding line.
11 are] were 1677, 1687.
18 1654 'Unto'.
19 1677 &c. 'weaken'd': putide.
20 A meeting-point of many pious poems.
24 1677 'vaulting to'—hardly an improvement.
26 Dryden may have had Cleveland in mind (as he pretty often, and most naturally had, seeing that the poems must have 'spent their youth with him') when he wrote some of the latest and most beautiful of his own lines to the Duchess of Ormond (Lady Mary Somerset):
O daughter of the Rose whose cheeks unite
The differing titles of the Red and White.
1677 'Divides her York and Lancaster'—pretty palpable emendation to supply the apparent lack of a verb.
27-30 It has been suggested to me that the sense wants mechanical aid to clear it up; and I have therefore made a visible parenthesis of 'whose ... shop', following 1677.
34 thinking] fearing 1677.
36 1653 &c. 'saints'—a misprint, as 1647, 1651 have the singular.
38 Here, for once, Cleveland achieves the really poetical conceit.
42 1647, 1651, 1653, &c. 'bids'—again a mere misprint.
43 1647, 1651, 1653 'would'.
47 straw] For 'strew', as in the A. V.
49 1649, 1651, 1653, 'perceives' (an unconscious echo of 'leaves' in l. 48).
Upon a Miser that made a great feast,
and the next day died for grief.
Nor 'scapes he so; our dinner was so good
My liquorish Muse cannot but chew the cud,
And what delight she took in th' invitation
Strives to taste o'er again in this relation.
After a tedious grace in Hopkins' rhyme,
Not for devotion but to take up time,
Marched the trained-band of dishes, ushered there
To show their postures and then as they were.
For he invites no teeth; perchance the eye
10He will afford the lover's gluttony.
Thus is our feast a muster, not a fight,
Our weapons not for service, but for sight.
But are we tantalized? Is all this meat
Cooked by a limner for to view, not eat?
Th' astrologers keep such houses when they sup
On joints of Taurus or their heavenly Tup.
Whatever feasts be made are summed up here,
His table vies not standing with his cheer.
His churchings, christenings, in this meal are all,
20And not transcribed but in th' original.
Christmas is no feast movable; for lo,
The self-same dinner was ten years ago!
'Twill be immortal if it longer stay,
The gods will eat it for ambrosia.
But stay a while; unless my whinyard fail
Or is enchanted, I'll cut off th' entail.
Saint George for England then! have at the mutton
When the first cut calls me bloodthirsty glutton.
Stout Ajax, with his anger-coddled brain,
30Killing a sheep thought Agamemnon slain;
The fiction's now proved true; wounding his roast
I lamentably butcher up mine host.
Such sympathy is with his meat, my weapon
Makes him an eunuch when it carves his capon.
Cut a goose leg and the poor soul for moan
Turns cripple too, and after stands on one.
Have you not heard the abominable sport
A Lancaster grand-jury will report?
The soldier with his Morglay watched the mill;
40The cats they came to feast, when lusty Will
Whips off great puss's leg which (by some charm)
Proves the next day such an old woman's arm.
'Tis so with him whose carcass never 'scapes,
But still we slash him in a thousand shapes.
Our serving-men (like spaniels) range to spring
The fowl which he had clucked under his wing.
Should he on widgeon or on woodcock feed
It were, Thyestes like, on his own breed.
To pork he pleads a superstition due,
50But we subscribe neither to Scot nor Jew.
[No liquor stirs; call for a cup of wine.
'Tis blood we drink; we pledge thee, Catiline.]
Sauces we should have none, had he his wish.
The oranges i' th' margent of the dish
He with such huckster's care tells o'er and o'er,
The Hesperian dragon never watched them more.
But being eaten now into despair
(Having nought else to do) he falls to prayer.
'As thou didst once put on the form of bull
60And turned thine Io to a lovely mull,
Defend my rump, great Jove, grant this poor beef
May live to comfort me in all this grief.'
But no Amen was said: see, see it comes!
Draw, boys, let trumpets sound, and strike up drums.
See how his blood doth with the gravy swim,
And every trencher hath a limb of him.
The venison's now in view, our hounds spend deeper.
Strange deer, which in the pasty hath a keeper
Stricter than in the park, making his guest,
70(As he had stoln't alive) to steal it drest!
The scent was hot, and we, pursuing faster
Than Ovid's pack of dogs e'er chased their master,
A double prey at once may seize upon,
Acteon, and his case of venison.
Thus was he torn alive; to vex him worse
Death serves him up now as a second course.
Should we, like Thracians, our dead bodies eat,
He would have lived only to save his meat.
[Lastly; we did devour that corpse of his
80Throughout all Ovid's Metamorphoses.]
Upon a Miser, &c. (1647.) This juxtaposition of the serious-sentimental-fanciful with the burlesque-satiric may not please some readers. But the older editions which give it seem to me better to represent the ideas of the time than the later siftings and reclassifications of the age of prose and sense. And this is one reason why I follow the order of 1653 rather than that of 1677.
2 'Cud' is spelt in 1647 here and elsewhere in Cleveland 'cood'.
3 In some copies 'imitation', of course wrongly.
4 taste] cast 1653.
5 Cleveland gibed at Sternhold and Hopkins in prose (The Character of a London Diurnall) as well as verse. 1647, 1651 misprint 'rhythm'.
11 The text, from 1677, is a clear improvement at first sight on the earlier 'This is a feast': though I would not be too sure that Cleveland did not write it thus.
16 1677 'the heavenly'.
17 1677 'he made'.
18 Meaning, apparently, that, as was the custom, the table between these sham feast-days was moved off its trestles and cleared away; but the feast was a 'standing' one, kept to reappear.
20 in th'] i' th' 1647, 1651.
26 is] it 1647, 1651.
28 1677 'Where'.
29 Stout] What 1651, 1653.
31 1677 'the roast'.
34 carves] One edition, of no value (1665), 'serves'.
35 soul] fool 1677.
38 Lancaster, because of the Lancashire witches. See Heywood, Lancashire Witches, Act V.
39 Morglay] The sword of Bevis.
43 'Tis] It's 1677.
44 'him' 1647: 'them' 1651, 1653.
46 These lines appear with some variants and are not clear in any text: 'which he had cluck'd under his wing' 1677, for the earlier 'when he hath clock't under her wing' 1647, 1651, 1653. Professor Case suggests 'cloakt' (i.e. 'hidden') for 'clock't'.
50 Mr. Berdan says, 'Englishmen supposed that the Scotch did not eat pork'. But, until quite recently, it was a fact; and even now there is much less eaten north than south of the Tweed. As for Cleveland's day, James the First's aversion to it was well known and had been celebrated by Ben Jonson. In 1647, 1651, 1653 'But not a mouth is muzzled by the Jew'.
51-2 Not in earlier editions. Added in 1677.
54 1677 'margin of his dish'.
55 1647, 1651, 1653, &c. omit 'care' and read 'tells them'.
59 1677 'Thou that didst'.
60 'turned thine' 1677, 1687: 'turn'st thy' 1647, 1651, 1653, &c. mull] Dialectic for 'cow', especially as a call-name. It seems to be connected with the sense of the word for 'lips', especially large loose ones.
61 1677
allay my grief,
O spare me this, this monumental beef.
66 'hath' 1677, 1687: 'has' 1651, 1653 and its group.
73 'may' 1651, 1653, &c.: 'we' 1677.
79, 80 Added in 1677 &c., with very doubtful advantage.
A Young Man to an Old Woman courting him.
Peace, Beldam Eve, surcease thy suit;
There 's no temptation in such fruit;
No rotten medlars, whilst there be
Whole orchards in virginity.
Thy stock is too much out of date
For tender plants t' inoculate.
A match with thee thy bridegroom fears
Would be thought interest in his years,
Which, when compared to thine, become
10Odd money to thy grandam sum.
Can wedlock know so great a curse
As putting husbands out to nurse?
How Pond and Rivers would mistake
And cry new almanacs for our sake.
Time sure hath wheeled about his year,
December meeting Janiveer.
The Egyptian serpent figures Time,
And stripped, returns unto his prime.
If my affection thou wouldst win,
20First cast thy hieroglyphic skin.
My modern lips know not, alack!
The old religion of thy smack.
I count that primitive embrace
As out of fashion as thy face.
And yet, so long 'tis since thy fall,
Thy fornication 's classical.
Our sports will differ; thou mayst play
Lero, and I Alphonso way.
I'm no translator, have no vein
30To turn a woman young again,
Unless you'll grant the tailor's due,
To see the fore-bodies be new.
I love to wear clothes that are flush,
Not prefacing old rags with plush,
Like aldermen, or under-shrieves
With canvass backs and velvet sleeves:
And just such discord there would be
Betwixt thy skeleton and me.
Go study salve and treacle, ply
40Your tenant's leg or his sore eye.
Thus matrons purchase credit, thank
Six pennyworth of mountebank;
Or chew thy cud on some delight
That thou didst taste in 'eighty-eight;
Or be but bed-rid once, and then
Thou'lt dream thy youthful sins again.
But if thou needs wilt be my spouse,
First hearken and attend my vows.
When Aetna's fires shall undergo
50The penance of the Alps in snow;
When Sol at one blast of his horn
Posts from the Crab to Capricorn;
When th' heavens shuffle all in one
The Torrid with the Frozen Zone;
When all these contradictions meet,
Then, Sibyl, thou and I will greet.
For all these similes do hold
In my young heat and thy dull cold.
Then, if a fever be so good
60A pimp as to inflame thy blood,
Hymen shall twist thee and thy page,
The distinct tropics of man's age.
Well, Madam Time, be ever bald.
I'll not thy periwig be called.
I'll never be 'stead of a lover,
An aged chronicle's new cover.
A Young Man, &c. (1647.)
8 1677, &c. have 'incest', which is rather tempting, but considering the 'odd money' which follows, not, I think, absolutely certain.
13 Edward Pond died in 1629; but the almanac, published by him first in 1601, lasted till 1709. Rivers was probably Peregrine Rivers, 'Student in Mathematics', writer of one of the numerous almanacs of the period. There are in the Bodleian copies of his almanacs for 1629, 1630, 1638, all printed at Cambridge. (Information supplied to me from Oxford.)
15 Some copies 'this'.
22 Rather a good line.
27 1651, 1653, &c. 'mayst': 1647, 1677, &c. 'must'.
35 1647 'Monster Shrieves', 1653 'Monster-Sheriffs', which can hardly be right.
44 'eighty-eight] The Armada year, often taken as a standard of remoteness not too remote. This, which is the later reading, of 1677 sqq., seems better than 'Thou takest in thy Eighty Eight' (1647, 1651, 1653, &c.).
49-62 The italics of 1653, though discarded in 1677, seem worth keeping, because of the solemn call of attention to the particulars of the 'Vow'; they extend in the 1653 text to l. 60. But 1647 and 1651, prefix inverted commas to ll. 49-56, which seems a more effective ending to the 'Vow'.
53 Some inferior editions put in 'shall'. 1647, 1651, 1653, and 1677 exclude it.
61 twist] In the sense of 'twine', 'unite'. 'page' = 'boy'.
62 1647, 1651 'Tropicks': 1653 'Tropick'; but both Cancer and Capricorn are wanted.