O that I could but vote myself a poet, Or had the legislative knack to do it! Or, like the doctors militant, could get Dubbed at adventure Verser Banneret! Or had I Cacus' trick to make my rhymes Their own antipodes, and track the times! 'Faces about,' says the remonstrant spirit, 'Allegiance is malignant, treason merit.' Huntingdon colt, that posed the sage recorder, Might be a sturgeon now and pass by order. 10 Had I but Elsing's gift (that splay-mouthed brother That declares one way and yet means another), Could I thus write asquint, then, Sir, long since You had been sung a great and glorious Prince! I had observed the language of these days, Blasphemed you, and then periwigged the phrase With humble service and such other fustian, Bells which ring backward in this great combustion. I had reviled you, and without offence; The literal and equitable sense 20 Would make it good. When all fails, that will do 't; Sure that distinction cleft the Devil's foot! This were my dialect, would your Highness please To read me but with Hebrew spectacles; Interpret counter what is cross rehearsed; Libels are commendations when reversed. Just as an optic glass contracts the sight At one end, but when turned doth multiply 't. But you're enchanted, Sir, you're doubly free From the great guns and squibbing poetry, 30 Whom neither bilbo nor invention pierces, Proof even 'gainst th' artillery of verses. Strange that the Muses cannot wound your mail! If not their art, yet let their sex prevail. At that known leaguer, where the bonny Besses Supplied the bow-strings with their twisted tresses, Your spells could ne'er have fenced you, every arrow Had lanced your noble breast and drunk the marrow. For beauty, like white powder, makes no noise And yet the silent hypocrite destroys. 40 Then use the Nuns of Helicon with pity Lest Wharton tell his gossips of the City That you kill women too, nay maids, and such Their general wants militia to touch. Impotent Essex! Is it not a shame Our Commonwealth, like to a Turkish dame, Should have an eunuch guardian? May she be Ravished by Charles, rather than saved by thee! But why, my Muse, like a green-sickness girl, Feed'st thou on coals and dirt? A gelding earl 50 Gives no more relish to thy female palate Than to that ass did once the thistle sallet. Then quit the barren theme and all at once, Thou and thy sisters like bright Amazons, Give Rupert an alarum. Rupert! one Whose name is wit's superfetation, Makes fancy, like eternity's round womb, Unite all valour, present, past, to come! He who the old philosophy controls That voted down plurality of souls! 60 He breathes a Grand Committee; all that were The wonders of their age constellate here.