The Glory of the SUN-Tavern Behind the EXCHANGE.
BEhind? I'll ne'er believe 't; you may as soon
Persuade me that the SUN
stands behind noon;
We should be then more than
Cymmerian blind,
If the worlds Eye (the SUN) should stand
behind.
Nay, rather than
Heav'ns lamp should so estrange
His proper site, the
Change it self must change;
Gresham must face about, under the Rose,
The
Kings themselves must go as the SUN goes.
Yet, notwithstanding what is here confest,
I am a
Brownist, as to
East and
West▪
What time the Peers did the Suns rising stay,
He found it first look'd the contrary way.
Cornhill may in the Southside still take pride;
But where the SUN is, there's the warmer side.
Yet some Astrologers (they say) maintain,
Three
Suns late set will never rise again;
Three
Meteors rather: if they were three
Suns,
Suns guided, sure, by Giddy
Phaëtons.
But, Noble
Wadlow, thine a Palace is,
A Superstructure on a Base of Bliss;
When thy transcendent
Arch I'm passing through
Me-thinks in triumph I to
Tavern go;
To
Tavern said I? out upon it, no,
Me-thinks I rather to a
Temple go;
Where the Great Room (and who would judg it less?)
A
Church is, and the rest
Chappels of Ease:
At least a Presence, fit to entertain
(As once thy Predecessor) Kings again.
So pompous, so pyramidal, as if
It would on tiptoes checkmate
Tenariff:
Such are the all-magnificent Contrives,
Wolsey can ne'er be dead whilst
Wadlow lives.
The Turky-work about the Dining-Room,
Wou'd make a Sultan think himself at home.
The Chimney piece does modern art surpass,
No hand could do the like but
Phydias.
Pictures so quaint, so to the life excell,
You wou'd not think 'em
hang'd, they
look so well.
Cathedral windows carry there the Bay,
Where many Quarrels are, but not a Fray:
I need no story of the Hangings tell,
Arras it self's sufficient Chronicle.
There every Chamber has an Aquaeduct,
As if the Sun had
Fire for
Water truckt:
Water as 't were exhal'd up to heav'ns shrouds,
To cool your Cups and Glasses in the Clouds;
Which having done, from your Celestial towers
Like
Jove himself, you send it down in showers.
For Gold and Silver, Pewter, Brass and Iron,
A Mine of such seems the whole house t'environ;
Lattin and Lead, and what not? all agree
Here the seven Planets keep their Heptarchy.
But to the Cellar now, that happy Port,
VVhere
Bacchus in the Arches keeps his Court.
No more of the
Exchange let people talk;
Here's your
high German, French & Spanish walk:
In this Low Countrey is
High Countrey Wine,
Here's your old mellow
Malaga, Muscadine,
Canary, Florence and
Medera's here,
Or in a word,
Here is Wine with one Ear.
VVhat shall I say? in vain I further write;
Here's all that's Rare, that's Racy, Rich and Right:
Such choice of choices, none amiss can call;
'Twould almost fuddle me to name them all.
But that's a task no Poet can fulfill,
Except he write with a Canary Quill.
And thus the SUN, as with invisible Ropes,
Draws all the
Change, and makes 'em
Heliotropes;
You'd think, to see the Crouds that thither run,
A Man in
Pauls is but a
Moat i'th' SUN.
Regia SOLIS
erat sublimibus alta columnis
Clara micante auro—
London, Printed for J. Lutton Bookseller in the Poultrey, 1672.