cubilia silvae
Nympha volas, lucoque loquax spatiaris in alto,
Annosi numen nemoris, saltusque verendi
Effatum, cui sola placent postrema relatus!
Te per Narcissi morientis verba, precesque
Per pueri lassatam animam, et conamina vitae
Ultima, palantisque precor suspiria linguae.
Da quo secretae haec incaedua devia silvae,
Anfractusque loci dubios, et lustra repandam.
Sic tibi perpetua--meritoque--haec regna juventa
Luxurient, dabiturque tuis, sine fine, viretis
Intactas lunae lachrymas, et lambere rorem
Virgineum, c[oe]lique animas haurire tepentis.
Nec cedant aevo stellis, sed lucida semper
Et satiata sacro aeterni medicamine veris
Ostendant longe vegetos, ut sidera, vultus!
Sic spiret muscata comas, et cinnama passim!
Diffundat levis umbra, in funere qualia spargit
Ph[oe]nicis rogus aut Pancheae nubila flammae!

THALIA REDIVIVA.

1678.

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 s