AN ELEGY upon the Death of the most Excellent Poet MR John CLEAVELAND.  

glow-worms may peep, when sable night  
Hoodwinks the Sun's triumphant light,  
Why may not I (although I' Ne'er,  
But as a star shone in wit's sphere)  
Borrow some lustre from our dying Sun,  
And from his fall have resurrection?   

immortal CLEAVELAND! my pen's at a stand,  
And wonder strikes a palsy' Unto my hand.  
immortal CLEAVELAND'S dead! oh let my eyes.  
Weep faster, than my pen can Elegies!  
Dear soul, since 〈…〉 with Ebon night  
My too-too spongious Verse will strive to light  
Thee to the grave; though with a twinkling ray,  
Snatched from the former lustre of thy Day.  
Doth thy verse, with thy glass then cease to run?  
Do the fates cut the line the Muses spun?  
Have the three Sisters then more power than Nine?  
Hath covetous Aeacus robbed thee of that Mine,  
That sparkled in each Diamond word, each Line  
Richer in Golden sense, than th' King of Spain,  
Alluring more than Danae's golden rain?  
When in our blockish age Witt was at fall,  
And to write verse was thought apocryphal:  
Thou didst it raise to th' Elah of perfection,  
Thy lines were cerecloths against the infection  
Of sore-backed Time, and thy ingenious Muse  
Maugre all malice, lofty strains did use.  
No Doubt, the future ages will admire,  
How well in frosty ignorance, thy fire  
(Hotter than any, Zealots) in a time  
When 'twas called sin to read or writ a rhyme:  
Could' flame so bright, and how thou couldst fit  
Th' unbiass'd time with thy well biased wit.  
Tho all our Mango Poets thee upbraid,  
(Whose Drabs are Muses, Poetry their Trade.)  
Tho Sacrilegious Elves pollute thy fame  
With their unhallowed lips, yet shall thy name  
Out live their Spurious bats, thy golden strain  
(The genial Son of thy great teeming brain.)  
Shall be held sacred by posterity  
As the idea of true Poetry.  
And like Mahometans we hence will write  
From thy Hegira, from thy speedy flight  
From us to heaven, where thy Muse doth sing  
Sweet-breathing Cantoes to th' immortal King.  
Unto Apollo's Shrine we will no more  
Go Pilgrims, but thy relics we'll adore:  
And to thy Sacred Poems, we will lo!  
As zealous Turks unto Medina go,  
Where they, like th' Pythian Oracle, dispense  
To poets' laws, fraught with more Eloquence.   

When thy terse Muse in Cataracts did fall,  
It made not deaf, but it did Silence all  
Those Sectaries, that dwelled too near the wave  
Of Nile-like swelling schism, yea and did lave  
The putrefacted Humours of our times,  
The Pestilence of our age, its damned crimes,  
(Whether Jack Presbyter thou didst describe  
Or Adoniram, or that black-mouthed tribe.  
Must I here stay? no, Noah, my tears supply  
Mine Ink, although my Standish says 'tis dry.  
Dear soul farewell, our purblind eyes no more  
Can view thy Western Sun, yet we adore,  
Like the enthusiastic priest, the West,  
Hoping thy rise far brighter from the East.   

Epigraphe.  
Defessus totìes humilis serpendo Poëta  
Noster humi, summum respicit ille polum.  
Viderat ut coelum pleno stupefactus hiatu,  
Fac Deus, & propriùs videro; dixit, obit.   
Haec inter suspiria & lachrymas Scripsit Philomusus Philoponus.