A darned pretty thing...

Mentioning John Cleveland brings me to the poet himself:

Mark Antony

Whenas the nightingale chanted her vespers,
And the wild forester couched on the ground,
Venus invited me in th' evening whispers
Unto a fragrant field with roses crowned,
Where she before had sent
My wishes' complement;
Unto my heart's content
Played with me on the green.
Never Mark Antony
Dallied more wantonly
With the fair Egyptian Queen.

First on her cherry cheeks I mine eyes feasted,
Thence fear surfeiting made me retire;
Next on her warmer lips, which when I tasted
My duller spirits made active as fire.
Then we began to dart
Each at another's heart,
Arrows that knew no smart,
Sweet lips and smiles between.
Never Mark Antony
Dallied more wantonly
With the fair Egyptian Queen.

Wanting a glass to plait her amber tresses,
Which like a bracelet rich decked mine arm,
Gaudier than Juno wears whenas she graces
Jove with embraces more stately than warm;
Then did she peep in mine
Eyes' humor crystalline;
I in her eyes was seen,
As if we one had been.
Never Mark Antony
Dallied more wantonly
With the fair Egyptian Queen.

Mystical grammar of amorous glances;
Feeling of pulses, the physic of love;
Rhetorical courtings and musical dances;
Numb'ring of kisses arithmetic prove;
Eyes like astronomy;
Straight-limbed geometry;
In her art's ingeny
Our wits were sharp and keen.
Never Mark Antony
Dallied more wantonly
With the fair Egyptian Queen.

What a darling delight, the poet is! Hard to resist lines like:

I am no poet here; my pen's the spout
Where the rain-water of my eyes runs out,
In pity of that name, whose fate we see
Thus copied out in grief's hydrography.

Now come, come sir! Cease thy copious weeping and spouting! This is In Memory of Edward King, as also lamented by Milton with his own grander, more formal hydrography. Or...

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...
- Upon Phyllis Walking in A Morning before Sun-rising

Sir, I have ever admired her Yorke and Lancaster. And Mr Cleveland also, upon the Scots:

What, shall our nation be in bondage thus
Unto a land that truckles under us?
Ring the bells backward! I am all on fire.
Not all the buckets in a country quire
Shall quench my rage. A poet should be feared
When angry, like a comet's flaming beard.

This from The Rebel Scot. Sir, there is no greater deprivation than to be in bondage to a people in bondage to us! A fearsome poet indeed, with a comet's flaming beard. Hey, Nobodaddy! My beard's on fire!