TREVERE,
Did on the shore himself lavere:
Yet the authentick do beleeve,
Who keep their judgement in their sleeve,
That he is his own double man,
And sick still carries his sedan:
Or that like dames i'th land of Luyck,
He wears his everlasting huyck.<84.1>
But banisht, I admire his fate,
Since neither ostracisme of state,
Nor a perpetual exile,
Can force this virtue, change his soyl:
For, wheresoever he doth go,
He wanders with his country too.
<84.1> i.q. HUKE. "Huke," says Minshen, "is a mantle such as
women use in Spaine, Germanie, and the Low Countries, when they
goe abroad." Lovelace clearly adopts the word for the sake of
the metre; otherwise he might have chosen a better one.
THE TRIUMPHS OF PHILAMORE AND AMORET.
TO THE NOBLEST OF OUR YOUTH AND BEST OF FRIENDS,
CHARLES COTTON, Esquire.<85.l>
BEING AT BERISFORD, AT HIS HOUSE IN STAFFORDSHIRE.
FROM LONDON.
A POEM.
Sir, your sad absence I complain, as earth
Her long-hid spring, that gave her verdures birth,
Who now her cheerful aromatick head
Shrinks in her cold and dismal widow'd bed;
Whilst the false sun her lover doth him move
Below, and to th' antipodes make love.
What fate was mine, when in mine obscure cave
(Shut up almost close prisoner in a grave)
Your beams could reach me through this vault of night,
And canton the dark dungeon with light!
Whence me (as gen'rous Spahys) you unbound,
Whilst I now know my self both free and crown'd.
But as at Meccha's tombe, the devout blind
Pilgrim (great husband of his sight and mind)
Pays to no other object this chast prise,
Then with hot earth anoynts out both his eyes:
So having seen your dazling glories store,
It is enough, and sin for to see more.
Or, do you thus those pretious rayes withdraw
To whet my dull beams, keep my bold in aw?
Or, are you gentle and compassionate,
You will not reach me Regulus his fate?
Brave prince! who, eagle-ey'd of eagle kind,
Wert blindly damn'd to look thine own self blind!
But oh, return those fires, too cruel-nice!
For whilst you fear me cindars, see, I'm ice!
A nummed speaking clod and mine own show,<85.2>
My self congeal'd, a man cut out in snow:
Return those living fires. Thou, who that vast
Double advantage from one-ey'd Heav'n hast,
Look with one sun, though 't but obliquely be,
And if not shine, vouchsafe to wink on me.
Perceive you not a gentle, gliding heat,
And qu
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