William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Restoration Verse. 1910.
To Julia to Expedite Her PromiseJohn Cleveland (16131658)
S
Why this reprieve?
Why doth she my advowson fly
Incumbency?
Panting expectance makes us prove
The antics of benighted love,
And withered mates when wedlock joins,
They’re Hymen’s monkeys, which he ties by the loins
To play alas! but at rebated foins.
By candle’s end,
And hold the contract thus in doubt
Life’s taper out?
Think but how soon the market fails;
Your sex lives faster than the males;
As if, to measure age’s span,
The sober Julian were the account of man
Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian.
Live double for it.
How can thy fortress ever stand
If it be not manned?
The seige so gains upon the place
Thou’lt find the trenches in thy face.
Pity thyself then if not me,
And hold not out, lest like Ostend thou be,
Nothing but rubbish at delivery.
Must plead grey hair,
And use the simony of a cough
To help them off.
But when I woo thus old and spent
I’ll wed by will and testament.
No, let us love while crisped and curled;
The greatest honours, on the aged hurled,
Are but furlows for another world.
Is legacy.
Not one of all those ravenous hours
But thee devours.
And though thou still requited be,
Like Pelops, with soft ivory,
Though thou consume but to renew,
Yet Love as lord doth claim a Heriot due;
That’s the best quick thing I can find of you.
By that soft gripe,
And those regealing crystal spheres.
I hold thy tears
Pledges of more distilling sweets
Than the bath that ushers in the sheets.
Else pious Julia, angel-wise,
Moves the Bethesda of her trickling eyes
To cure the spittle world of maladies.