Classic and Contemporary Poetry
AN ELEGY UPON THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, by JOHN CLEVELAND Poem Explanation Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: I need no muse to give my passion vent Last Line: Tis height makes grantham steeple stand awry. | ||||||||
I NEED no Muse to give my passion vent, He brews his tears that studies to lament. Verse chemically weeps; that pious rain Distilled with art is but the sweat o' th' brain. Whoever sobbed in numbers? Can a groan Be quavered out by soft division? 'Tis true for common formal elegies Not Bushel's Wells can match a poet's eyes In wanton water-works; he'll tune his tears From a Geneva jig up to the spheres. But then he mourns at distance, weeps aloof. Now that the conduit head is our own roof, Now that the fate is public, we may call It Britain's vespers, England's funeral. Who hath a pencil to express the Saint But he hath eyes too, washing off the paint? There is no learning but what tears surround, Like to Seth's pillars in the Deluge drowned. There is no Church; Religion is grown So much of late that she's increased to none, Like an hydropic body, full of rheums, First swells into a bubble, then consumes. The Law is dead or cast into a trance, -- And by a law dough-baked, an Ordinance! The Liturgy, whose doom was voted next, Died as a comment upon him the text. There's nothing lives; life is, since he is gone, But a nocturnal lucubration. Thus you have seen death's inventory read In the sum total, -- Canterbury's dead; A sight would make a Pagan to baptize Himself a convert in his bleeding eyes; Would thaw the rabble, that fierce beast of ours, (That which hyena-like weeps and devours) Tears that flow brackish from their souls within, Not to repent, but pickle up their sin. Meantime no squalid grief his look defiles. He gilds his sadder fate with nobler smiles. Thus the world's eye, with reconciled streams, Shines in his showers as if he wept his beams. How could success such villanies applaud? The State in Strafford fell, the Church in Laud; The twins of public rage, adjudged to die For treasons they should act, by prophecy; The facts were done before the laws were made; The trump turned up after the game was played. Be dull, great spirits, and forbear to climb, For worth is sin and eminence a crime. No churchman can be innocent and high. 'Tis height makes Grantham steeple stand awry. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO THE MEMORY OF BEN JONSON by JOHN CLEVELAND A DIALOGUE BETWEEN TWO ZEALOTS UPON THE &C. IN THE OATH by JOHN CLEVELAND A FAIR NYMPH SCORNING A BLACK BOY COURTING HER by JOHN CLEVELAND A SONG OF SACK, SELECTION by JOHN CLEVELAND A YOUNG MAN TO AN OLD WOMAN COURTING HIM by JOHN CLEVELAND AN ELEGY ON BEN JONSON by JOHN CLEVELAND ELEGY UPON DOCTOR CHADDERTON, THE FIRST MASTER OF EMANUEL COLLEGE by JOHN CLEVELAND ELEGY UPON KING CHARLES THE FIRST, MURDERED PUBLICLY BY HIS SUBJECTS by JOHN CLEVELAND EPITAPH ON THE EARL OF STRAFFORD by JOHN CLEVELAND |
|