Shall I presume, Without perfume, My Christ to meet That is all sweet? No! I'll make most pleasant posies, Catch the breath of new-blown roses, Top the pretty merry flowers, Which laugh in the fairest bowers, Whose sweetness Heaven likes so well, It stoops each morn to take a smell. 10 Then I'll fetch from the Ph[oe]nix' nest The richest spices and the best, Precious ointments I will make; Holy Myrrh and aloes take, Yea, costly Spikenard in whose smell The sweetness of all odours dwell. I'll get a box to keep it in, Pure as his alabaster skin: And then to him I'll nimbly fly Before one sickly minute die. 20 This box I'll break, and on his head This precious ointment will I spread, Till ev'ry lock and ev'ry hair For sweetness with his breath compare: But sure the odour of his skin Smells sweeter than the spice I bring. Then with bended knee I'll greet His holy and belovéd feet; I'll wash them with a weeping eye, And then my lips shall kiss them dry; 30 Or for a towel he shall have My hair--such flax as nature gave. But if my wanton locks be bold, And on Thy sacred feet take hold, And curl themselves about, as though They were loath to let thee go, O chide them not, and bid away, For then for grief they will grow grey. [_Mary's Spikenard_ (_1652_) of course suggests Crashaw; and yet when one reads it the thought must surely occur, 'How differently Crashaw would have done it!' I do not think either is Cleveland's, though the odd string of unrelated conceits in the Chadderton piece is not unlike him. In the other there is nothing like his usual style; but it is very pretty, and I will not say he could not have done it as an exception. But in that case it is a pity he did not make it a rule.] To Julia to expedite her Promise. Since 'tis my doom, Love's undershrieve, Why this reprieve? Why doth my she-advowson fly Incumbency? Panting expectance makes us prove The antics of benighted love, And withered mates when wedlock joins, They're Hymen's monkeys, which he ties by th' loins To play, alas! but at rebated foins. To sell thyself dost thou intend 10 By candle end, And hold the contract thus in doubt, Life's taper out? Think but how soon the market fails; Your sex lives faster than the males; As if, to measure age's span, The sober Julian were th' account of man, Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian.