Poems by J.C. ; with additions.

On the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I Need no Muse to give my passion vent, He brews his tears that studies to lament. Verse chymically weeps, that pious rain Distill'd with Art, is but the sweat o'th' brain. Who ever sob'd in numbers? can a groan Be quaver'd out by soft division? 'Tis true, for common formall Elegies, Not Bushells Wells can match a Poets eyes In wanton water-works: hee'l tune his tears From a Geneva Jig up to the Sphears. But when he mourns at distance, weeps aloof, Now that the Conduit head is our own roof, Now that the Fare is publique, we may call It Britains Vespers, Englands Funerall. Who hath a Pensill to expresse the Saint, But he hath eyes too, washing off the paint? There is no learning but what tears surround Like to Seths Pillars in the Deluge drown'd. There is no Church, Religion is grown From much of late, that shee's increast to none; Like an Hydropick body ful of Rhewms, First swells into a bubble, then consumes. The Law is dead, or cast into a trance, And by a Law dough-bak't, an Ordinance.

The Lyturgy, 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 Nocturnall Lucubration. Thus you have seen deaths inventory read In the sum totall—Canterburie'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 Agena-like weeps and devours) Tears that flow brackish from their souls within, Not to repent, but pickle up their sin. Mean time no squalid grief his look defiles, He guilds his sadder fate with noble smiles. Thus the worlds eye with reconciled streams Shines in his showers as if he wept his beams. How could successe such villanies applaud? The state in Strafford fell, the Church in Laud: The twins of publike rage, adjudg'd to die, For Treasons they should act, by Prophecy. The facts were done before the Laws were made, The trump turn'd up after the game was plai'd. Be dull great spirits, and forbear to climbe, For worth is sin, and eminence a crime. No Church-man can be innocent and high, 'Tis height makes Grantham steeple stand awry.