Upon Princess Elizabeth, born the night before New Year's Day.
Astrologers say Venus, the self-same star,
Is both our Hesperus and Lucifer;
The antitype, this Venus, makes it true;
She shuts the old year and begins the new.
Her brother with a star at noon was born;
She, like a star both of the eve and morn.
Count o'er the stars, fair Queen, in babes, and vie
With every year a new Epiphany.
Upon Princess Elizabeth. Not before 1677. This slight thing is inaccurately entitled, for the Princess was born on December 26, 1638.
1 The rhyme of 'star' and 'Lucifer', which occurs (with 'traveller') in Dryden, is—like all Cleveland's rhymes, I think without exception—perfectly sound on the general principle then observed, and observed partly at all times, that a vowel may, for rhyming purposes, take the sound that it has in a similar connexion but in another word.
5 brother] Charles II.
The General Eclipse.
Ladies that gild the glittering noon,
And by reflection mend his ray,
Whose beauty makes the sprightly sun
To dance as upon Easter-day,
What are you now the Queen 's away?
Courageous Eagles, who have whet
Your eyes upon majestic light,
And thence derived such martial heat
That still your looks maintain the fight,
10What are you since the King's good-night?
Cavalier-buds, whom Nature teems
As a reserve for England's throne,
Spirits whose double edge redeems
The last Age and adorns your own,
What are you now the Prince is gone?
As an obstructed fountain's head
Cuts the entail off from the streams,
And brooks are disinherited,
Honour and Beauty are mere dreams
20Since Charles and Mary lost their beams!
Criminal Valours, who commit
Your gallantry, whose paean brings
A psalm of mercy after it,
In this sad solstice of the King's,
Your victory hath mewed her wings!
See, how your soldier wears his cage
Of iron like the captive Turk,
And as the guerdon of his rage!
See, how your glimmering Peers do lurk,
30Or at the best, work journey-work!
Thus 'tis a general eclipse,
And the whole world is al-a-mort;
Only the House of Commons trips
The stage in a triumphant sort.
Now e'en John Lilburn take 'em for't!
The General Eclipse. The poem is of course a sort of variation or scherzo on 'You meaner beauties of the night'.
20 We are so accustomed to the double name 'Henrietta Maria' that the simple 'Queen Mary' may seem strange. But it was the Cavalier word at Naseby.
32 al-a-mort] Formerly quite naturalized, especially in the form all-amort. See N.E.D., s.v. 'Alamort'.
Upon the King's Return from Scotland.
Returned, I'll ne'er believe 't; first prove him hence;
Kings travel by their beams and influence.
Who says the soul gives out her gests, or goes
A flitting progress 'twixt the head and toes?
She rules by omnipresence, and shall we
Deny a prince the same ubiquity?
Or grant he went, and, 'cause the knot was slack,
Girt both the nations with his zodiac,
Yet as the tree at once both upward shoots,
10And just as much grows downward to the roots,
So at the same time that he posted thither
By counter-stages he rebounded hither.
Hither and hence at once; thus every sphere
Doth by a double motion interfere;
And when his native form inclines him east,
By the first mover he is ravished west.
Have you not seen how the divided dam
Runs to the summons of her hungry lamb;
But when the twin cries halves, she quits the first?
20Nature's commendam must be likewise nursed.
So were his journeys like the spider spun
Out of his bowels of compassion.
Two realms, like Cacus, so his steps transpose,
His feet still contradict him as he goes.
England 's returned that was a banished soil.
The bullet flying makes the gun recoil.
Death 's but a separation, though endorsed
With spade and javelin; we were thus divorced.
Our soul hath taken wing while we express
30The corpse, returning to our principles.
But the Crab-tropic must not now prevail;
Islands go back but when you're under sail.
So his retreat hath rectified that wrong;
Backward is forward in the Hebrew tongue.
Now the Church Militant in plenty rests,
Nor fears, like th' Amazon, to lose her breasts.
Her means are safe; not squeezed until the blood
Mix with the milk and choke the tender brood.
She, that hath been the floating ark, is that
40She that 's now seated on Mount Ararat.
Quits Charles; our souls did guard him northward thus
Now he the counterpart comes south to us.
Upon the King's Return, &c. In 1641—an ill-omened and unsuccessful journey, which lasted from August to November. The piece is one of the very few of those in Cleaveland Revived acknowledged and admitted by Clievelandi Vindiciae.
3 1659 'ghests'; 1662, 1668 'guests'; 1677 'gests'. See N.E.D., s.v. 'gest' sb.4. which defines it as 'the various stages of a journey, especially of a royal progress; the route followed or planned'.
20 commendam] (misprinted '-dum' from 1659 to 1677). A benefice held with another; something additional.
21: 'spider' 1677; 'spider's' 1659, 1662, 1668.
25 'banished' 1677: 'barren' 1659, 1662, 1668.
30 In this very obscure and ultra-Clevelandian line 1677 reads 'their'. I think 'our'—the reading of Cleaveland Revived, followed by 1662 and 1668—is better. But the whole poem (one of Cleveland's earliest political attempts) is weak and pithless.
33 'that' 1687: 'the' 1659, 1662, 1668.
42 'counterpart' 1677: 'counterpane' 1659, 1662, 1668.