TO THE MOST HONOURABLE AND TRULY NOBLE HENRY, LORD MARQUIS AND EARL OF WORCESTER,&c. My Lord, Though dedications are now become a kind of tyranny over the peace and repose of great men; yet I have confidence I shall so manage the present address as to entertain your lordship without much disturbance; and because my purposes are governed by deep respect and veneration, I hope to find your Lordship more facile and accessible. And I am already absolved from a great part of that fulsome and designing guilt, being sufficiently removed from the causes of it: for I consider, my Lord, that you are already so well known to the world in your several characters and advantages of honour—it was yours by traduction, and the adjunct of your nativity; you were swaddled and rocked in't, bred up and grew in't, to your now wonderful height and eminence—that for me under pretence of the inscription, to give you the heraldry of your family, or to carry your person through the famed topics of mind, body, or estate, were all one as to persuade the world that fire and light were very bright bodies, or that the luminaries themselves had glory. In point of protection I beg to fall in with the common wont, and to be satisfied by the reasonableness of the thing, and abundant worthy precedents; and although I should have secret prophecy and assurance that the ensuing verse would live eternally, yet would I, as I now do, humbly crave it might be fortified with your patronage; for so the sextile aspects and influences are watched for, and applied to the actions of life, thereby to make the scheme and good auguries of the birth pass into Fate, and a success infallible. My Lord, by a happy obliging intercession, and your own consequent indulgence, I have now recourse to your Lordship, hoping I shall not much displease by putting these twin poets into your hands. The minion and vertical planet of the Roman lustre and bravery, was never better pleased than when he had a whole constellation about him: not his finishing five several wars to the promoting of his own interest, nor particularly the prodigious success at Actium where he held in chase the wealth, beauty and prowess of the East; not the triumphs and absolute dominions which followed: all this gave him not half that serene pride and satisfaction of spirit as when he retired himself to umpire the different excellencies of his insipid friends, and to distribute laurels among his poetic heroes. If now upon the authority of this and several such examples, I had the ability and opportunity of drawing the value and strange worth of a poet, and withal of applying some of the lineaments to the following pieces, I should then do myself a real service, and atone in a great measure for the present insolence. But best of all will it serve my defence and interest, to appeal to your Lordship's own conceptions and image of genuine verse; with which so just, so regular original, if these copies shall hold proportion and resemblance, then am I advanced very far in your Lordship's pardon: the rest will entirely be supplied me by your Lordship's goodness, and my own awful zeal of being, my Lord, Your Lordship's most obedient,
most humbly devoted servant,
J. W.
TO THE READER. The Nation of Poets above all Writers has ever challenged perpetuity of name, or as they please by their charter of liberty to call it, Immortality. Nor has the World much disputed their claim, either easily resigning a patrimony in itself not very substantial; or, it may be, out of despair to control the authority of inspiration and oracle. Howsoever the price as now quarrelled for among the poets themselves is no such rich bargain: it is only a vanishing interest in the lees and dregs of Time, in the rear of those Fathers and Worthies in the art, who if they know anything of the heats and fury of their successors, must extremely pity them. I am to assure, that the Author has no portion of that airy happiness to lose, by any injury or unkindness which may be done to his Verse: his reputation is better built in the sentiment of several judicious persons, who know him very well able to give himself a lasting monument, by undertaking any argument of note in the whole circle of learning. But even these his Diversions have been valuable with the matchless Orinda; and since they deserved her esteem and commendations, who so thinks them not worth the publishing, will put himself in the opposite scale, where his own arrogance will blow him up. I. W.
TO MR. HENRY VAUGHAN THE SILURIST: UPON THESE AND HIS FORMER POEMS.[58] Had I ador'd the multitude, and thence
Got an antipathy to wit and sense,
And hugg'd that fate, in hope the world would grant
'Twas good affection to be ignorant;[59]
Yet the least ray of thy bright fancy seen,
I had converted, or excuseless been.
For each birth of thy Muse to after-times
Shall expiate for all this Age's crimes.
First shines thy Amoret, twice crown'd by thee,
Once by thy love, next by thy poetry;
Where thou the best of unions dost dispense,
Truth cloth'd in wit, and Love in innocence;
So that the muddy lover may learn here,
No fountains can be sweet that are not clear.
There Juvenal, by thee reviv'd, declares
How flat man's joys are, and how mean his cares;
And wisely doth upbraid[60] the world, that they
Should such a value for their ruin pay.
But when thy sacred Muse diverts her quil
The landscape to design of Sion's hill,[61]
As nothing else was worthy her, or thee,
So we admire almost t' idolatry.
What savage breast would not be rapt to find
Such jewels in such cabinets enshrin'd?
Thou fill'd with joys—too great to see or count—
Descend'st from thence, like Moses from the Mount,
And with a candid, yet unquestion'd awe
Restor'st the Golden Age, when Verse was Law.
Instructing us, thou so secur'st[62] thy fame,
That nothing can disturb it but my name:
Nay, I have hopes that standing so near thine
'Twill lose its dross, and by degrees refine.
Live! till the disabusÈd world consent
All truths of use, of strength or ornament,
Are with such harmony by thee display'd
As the whole world was first by number made,
And from the charming rigour thy Muse brings
Learn, there's no pleasure but in serious things!
Orinda.
UPON THE INGENIOUS POEMS OF HIS LEARNED FRIEND, MR. HENRY VAUGHAN, THE SILURIST. Fairly design'd! to charm our civil rage
With verse, and plant bays in an iron age!
But hath steel'd Mars so ductible a soul,
That love and poesy may it control?
Yes! brave TyrtÆus, as we read of old,
The Grecian armies as he pleas'd could mould;
They march'd to his high numbers, and did fight
With that instinct and rage, which he did write.
When he fell lower, they would straight retreat,
Grow soft and calm, and temper their bold heat.
Such magic is in Virtue! See here a young
TyrtÆus too, whose sweet persuasive song
Can lead our spirits any way, and move
To all adventures, either war or love.
Then veil the bright Etesia, that choice she,
Lest Mars—Timander's friend—his rival be.
So fair a nymph, dress'd by a Muse so neat,
Might warm the North, and thaw the frozen Gete.
Tho. Powell, D.D.
TO THE INGENIOUS AUTHOR OF THALIA REDIVIVA. Ode I. Where reverend bards of old have sate
And sung the pleasant interludes of Fate,
Thou takest the hereditary shade
Which Nature's homely art had made,
And thence thou giv'st thy Muse her swing, and she
Advances to the galaxy;
There with the sparkling Cowley she above
Does hand in hand in graceful measures move.
We grovelling mortals gaze below,
And long in vain to know
Her wondrous paths, her wondrous flight:
In vain, alas! we grope,[63]
In vain we use our earthly telescope,
We're blinded by an intermedial night.
Thine eagle-Muse can only face
The fiery coursers in their race,
While with unequal paces we do try
To bear her train aloft, and keep her company.
II. The loud harmonious Mantuan
Once charm'd the world; and here's the Uscan swan
In his declining years does chime,
And challenges the last remains of Time.
Ages run on, and soon give o'er,
They have their graves as well as we;
Time swallows all that's past and more,
Yet time is swallow'd in eternity:
This is the only profits poets see.
There thy triumphant Muse shall ride in state
And lead in chains devouring Fate;
Claudian's bright Phoenix she shall bring
Thee an immortal offering;
Nor shall my humble tributary Muse
Her homage and attendance too refuse;
She thrusts herself among the crowd,
And joining in th' applause she strives to clap aloud
III. Tell me no more that Nature is severe,
Thou great philosopher!
Lo! she has laid her vast exchequer here.
Tell me no more that she has sent
So much already, she is spent;
Here is a vast America behind
Which none but the great Silurist could find.
Nature her last edition was the best,
As big, as rich as all the rest:
So will we here admit
Another world of wit.
No rude or savage fancy here shall stay
The travelling reader in his way,
But every coast is clear: go where he will,
Virtue's the road Thalia leads him still.
Long may she live, and wreath thy sacred head
For this her happy resurrection from the dead.
N. W., Jes. Coll., Oxon.
TO MY WORTHY FRIEND, MR. HENRY VAUGHAN THE SILURIST. See what thou wert! by what Platonic round
Art thou in thy first youth and glories found?
Or from thy Muse does this retrieve accrue?
Does she which once inspir'd thee, now renew,
Bringing thee back those golden years which Time
Smooth'd to thy lays, and polish'd with thy rhyme?
Nor is't to thee alone she does convey
Such happy change, but bountiful as day,
On whatsoever reader she does shine,
She makes him like thee, and for ever thine.
And first thy manual op'ning gives to see
Eclipse and suff'rings burnish majesty,
Where thou so artfully the draught hast made
That we best read the lustre in the shade,
And find our sov'reign greater in that shroud:
So lightning dazzles from its night and cloud,
So the First Light Himself has for His throne
Blackness, and darkness his pavilion.
Who can refuse thee company, or stay,
By thy next charming summons forc'd away,
If that be force which we can so resent,
That only in its joys 'tis violent:
Upward thy Eagle bears us ere aware,
Till above storms and all tempestuous air
We radiant worlds with their bright people meet,
Leaving this little all beneath our feet.
But now the pleasure is too great to tell,
Nor have we other bus'ness than to dwell,
As on the hallow'd Mount th' Apostles meant
To build and fix their glorious banishment.
Yet we must know and find thy skilful vein
Shall gently bear us to our homes again;
By which descent thy former flight's impli'd
To be thy ecstacy and not thy pride.
And here how well does the wise Muse demean
Herself, and fit her song to ev'ry scene!
Riot of courts, the bloody wreaths of war,
Cheats of the mart, and clamours of the bar,
Nay, life itself thou dost so well express,
Its hollow joys, and real emptiness,
That Dorian minstrel never did excite,
Or raise for dying so much appetite.
Nor does thy other softer magic move
Us less thy fam'd Etesia to love;
Where such a character thou giv'st, that shame
Nor envy dare approach the vestal dame:
So at bright prime ideas none repine,
They safely in th' eternal poet shine.
Gladly th' Assyrian phoenix now resumes
From thee this last reprisal of his plumes;
He seems another more miraculous thing,
Brighter of crest, and stronger of his wing,
Proof against Fate in spicy urns to come,
Immortal past all risk of martyrdom.
Nor be concern'd, nor fancy thou art rude
T' adventure from thy Cambrian solitude:
Best from those lofty cliffs thy Muse does spring
Upwards, and boldly spreads her cherub wing.
So when the sage of Memphis would converse
With boding skies, and th' azure universe,
He climbs his starry pyramid, and thence
Freely sucks clean prophetic influence,
And all serene, and rapt and gay he pries
Through the ethereal volume's mysteries,
Loth to come down, or ever to know more
The Nile's luxurious, but dull foggy shore.
I. W., A.M. Oxon.
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