Stay, should I answer, Lady, then In vain would be your question: Should I be dumb, why then again Your asking me would be in vain. Silence nor speech, on neither hand, Can satisfy this strange demand. Yet, since your will throws me upon This wished contradiction, I'll tell you how I did become So strangely, as you hear me, dumb. 10 Ask but the chap-fallen Puritan; 'Tis zeal that tongue-ties that good man. (For heat of conscience all men hold Is th' only way to catch their cold.) How should Love's zealot then forbear To be your silenced minister? Nay, your Religion which doth grant A worship due to you, my Saint, Yet counts it that devotion wrong That does it in the Vulgar Tongue. 20 My ruder words would give offence To such an hallowed excellence, As th' English dialect would vary The goodness of an Ave Mary. How can I speak that twice am checked By this and that religious sect? Still dumb, and in your face I spy Still cause and still divinity. As soon as blest with your salute, My manners taught me to be mute. 30 For, lest they cancel all the bliss You signed with so divine a kiss, The lips you seal must needs consent Unto the tongue's imprisonment. My tongue in hold, my voice doth rise With a strange E-la to my eyes, Where it gets bail, and in that sense Begins a new-found eloquence. Oh listen with attentive sight To what my pratling eyes indite! 40 Or, lady, since 'tis in your choice To give or to suspend my voice, With the same key set ope the door Wherewith you locked it fast before. Kiss once again, and when you thus Have doubly been miraculous, My Muse shall write with handmaid's duty The Golden Legend of your beauty. He whom his dumbness now confines But means to speak the rest by signs. 50 _I. C._ [_To Mrs. K. T., &c._ (_1647_). To this title _1677_ and its followers add 'Written _calente calamo_'. The variant on _currente_ is of some interest, and the statement may have been made to excuse the bad opening rhyme.] [Line: 5 neither] either _1677_.] [Line: 14 'their cold' _1651_, _1653_: 'that cold' _1647_, _1677_.] [Line: 16 silenced] As some Puritans were before Cleveland wrote, and all, or almost all, Churchmen afterwards.] [Line: 31 _1677_ 'Lest I should cancel all the bliss'.] [Line: 37 bail] _1653_ &c. '_h_ail', which is doubtless a misprint.] [Line: 40 'prating' _1677_.] [Line: 47 'handmaid' _1677_.] [Line: 50 _1677_ '_Intends_ to speak'--an obvious correction of the 'red-hot pen'. But whether Cleveland's or his vindicators' who shall say?] [Line: 51 So _1647_, _1651_, _1653_. The couplet is meaningless without them.] A Fair Nymph scorning a Black Boy courting her.