Classic Poem

Be dumb you Beggars of the rhythming Trade,
Geld your loose wits, & let your Muse be spade.
Charge not the Parish with your bastard Phrase
Of Balm, Elixir, both the India's ,
Of Shrine, Saint, Sacrifice, and such as these,
Expressions common as your Mistresses.
Hence you Phantastick Postillers in Song,
My Text defeats your Art, ties Nature's tongue,
Scorns all her Tinsoyl'd Metaphors of Pelf,
Illustrated by nothing but her self.
As Spiders travel by their bowels spun
Into a Thread, and when the Race is run,
Wind up their Journey in a living Clew;
So is it with my Poetry and you.
From your own Essence must I first untwine,
Then twist again each Panegyrick Line.
Reach then a Soaring Quill that I may write,
As with a Jacob's Staff to take her height.
Suppose an Angel darting through the Air
Should their encounter a religious Prayer
Mounting to Heaven, that Intelligence
Would for a Sunday-Suit thy Breath condense
Into a Body. Let me crack a string,
And venture higher. Were the Note I sing
Above Heaven's Ela; should I then decline,
And with a deep-mouth'd Gammut sound the Line
From Pole to Pole, I could not reach her worth,
Nor find an Epithet to shadow't forth.
Metals may blazon common Beauties; she
Makes Pearls and Planets humble Heraldry.
As then a purer Substance is defin'd
But by an heap of Negatives combin'd,
Ask what a Spirit is, you'l hear them cry,
It hath no Matter, no Mortality:
So can I not describe how sweet, how fair,
Only I say, she's not as others are:
For what Perfection we to others grant,
It is her sole Perfection to want.
All other Forms seem in respect of thee
The Almanack's mishap'd Anatomy:
Where Aries head and face, Bull neck and throat,
The Scorpion give the Secrets, Knees the Goat;
A Brief of Limbs foul as those beasts, or are
Their name-sake Signs in their strange Character.
As your Philosophers to every Sense
Marry its Object, yet with some dispense,
And grant them a Polygamy with all,
And these their common Sensibles they call:
So is't with her, who stinted unto none,
Unites all Senses in each action.
The same Beam heats and lights, to see her well
Is both to hear and feel, and taste and smell:
For can you want a Palate in your Eyes,
When each of hers contains the beauteous prize,
Venus's Apple? Can your Eyes want Nose,
Seeing each Cheek buds forth a fragrant Rose?
Or can your Sight be deaf to such a quick
And well-tun'd Face, such moving Rhetorick?
Doth not each Look a Flash of Lightning feel,
Which spares the Bodie's sheath, yet melts the steel?
Thy Soul must needs confess, or grant thy Sense
Corrupted with the Object's Excellence.
Sweet Magick, which can make five Senses lie
Conjur'd within the Circle of an Eye!
In whom since all the five are intermixt,
Oh now that Scaliger would prove his sixt!
Thou Man of mouth that canst not name a she,
Unless all Nature pay a Subsidy,
Whose Language is a Tax, whose Musk-cat Verse
Voids nought but Flowers for thy Muses Herse,
Fitter than Celia's Looks, who in a trice
Canst state the long disputed Paradise,
And (what Divines hunt with so cold a scent)
Canst in her bosom find it resident;
Now come aloft, come now, and breath a Vein,
And give some vent unto thy daring strain.
Say the Astrologer who spells the Stars,
In that fair Alphabet reads Peace and Wars,
Mistakes his Globe, and in her brighter eye
Interprets Heaven's Physiognomy.
Call her the Metaphysicks of her Sex,
And say she tortures Wits, as Quartans vex
Physicians; call her the squar'd Circle; say
She is the very Rule of Algebra:
What e're thou understand'st not say't of her,
For that's the way to write her Character.
Say this and more, and when thou hop'st to raise
Thy phancy so as to inclose her praise,
Alas poor Gotham , with thy Cuckoe-hedge!
Hyperboles are here but Sacrilege.
Then roll up Muse what thou hast ravel'd out,
Some Comments clear not, but increase the doubt.
She that affords poor Mortals not a glance
Of Knowledge, but is known by Ignorance.
She that commits a Rape on every Sense,
Whose Breath can countermand a Pestilence.
She that can strike the best Invention dead,
Till baffled Poetry hangs down the head.
She, she it is that doth contain all Bliss,
And makes the World but her Periphrasis .