Upon Phillis Walking In A Morning Before Sun-rising
by John Cleveland (1613-1658
The sluggish morne as yet undrest,
My Phillis brake from out her East;
As if shee’d made a match to run
With Venus, Usher to the sun.
The Trees like yeomen of her guard,
Serving more for pomp then ward,
Rankt on each side with loyall duty,
Weave branches to enclose her beauty.
The Plants whose luxury was lopt,
Or age with crutches underpropt;
Whose wooden carkases are growne
To be but coffins of their owne;
Revive, and at her generall dole
Each receives his ancient soule:
The winged Choristers began
To chirp their Mattins: and the Fan
Of whistling winds like Organs plai’d,
Untill their Voluntaries made
The wakened earth in Odours rise
To be her morning Sacrifice.
The flowers, call’d out of their beds,
Start, and raise up their drowsie heads;
And he that for their colour seekes,
May find it vaulting in her cheekes,
Where Roses mixe: no Civil War
Betweene her Yorke and Lancaster.
The Marigold whose Courtiers face
Ecchoes the Sun, and doth unlace
Her at his rise, at his full stop
Packs and shuts up her gaudy shop,
Mistakes her cue, and doth display:
Thus Philis antedates the day.
These miracles had cramp’t the Sunne,
Who thinking that his kingdom ’s wonne,
Powders with light his freezled lockes,
To see what Saint his lustre mocks.
The trembling leaves through which he plai’d,
Dapling the walke with light and shade,
Like Lattice-windowes, give the spie
Roome but to peep with halfe an eye;
Lest her full Orb his sight should dim,
And bid us all good-night in him,
Till she would spend a gentle ray
To force us a new fashion’d day.
But what religious Paulsie ’s this
Which makes the boughs divest their bliss?
And that they might her foot-steps strawe,
Drop their leaves with shivering awe?
Phillis perceives, and (least her stay
Should wed October unto May;
And as her beauty caus’d a Spring,
Devotion might an Autumne bring)
With-drew her beames, yet made no night,
But left the Sun her Curate-light.
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