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.