Tixall Poetry/To My Cosen Aston and His Lady, Excusing My Want of a Wedding Garment, at the Celebration of Their Marriage

by unknown author

To My Cosen Aston and His Lady,

Excusing My Want of a Wedding Garment, at the Celebration of Their Marriage.

 

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Though an unseemly guest to this bright day,
Where no one but the frolique or the gay
Ought to intrude, let not your joyes contemne
This sad one, since he best illustrates them.
The prince of light, in his most bright aspect,
Black spots (like other beautyes) doth affect;
So will your dazzling joyes no luster loose,
Whilst this dull shadow you vouchsafe to use:
No, 'twill increase their splendour, give the life
To the best picture of them, man and wife;
This then doth authorise my attendance here,
Makes me approach with confidence so nere;
Since I contribute what I want, I pay
The just expected tribute of the day.
Wishes as fervent as the gayest youth,
Whose gaudy outside vaporeth, that truth
The wiser brest doth hive, and not, like fire,
Fling his wild attomes till himselfe expire.
My first address of wishes for this payre
Is, may they only fix wher true joyes are;
She nere repent but her too slow beliefe
Of his establish't vertue; and our chiefe,
May he finde all the mirracles I lost;
Prodigious flames, with more prodigious frost,
Concenter'd in one bosome, thence improve
I' th' mistery of misteryes, good love.
May both (as in all else) chiefly combinde,
In the preserving of each other's minde
From all innate corruptions, and surprize
By assault of all extrinsicke enemyes.
May that blest peace begin and end their rayne,
Which cleares all tempests, and excludes all payne.
Thus he whose impotency doth permitt
Him send no present, offring vowes that fitt
The expansion of his heart, doth freely dare
Offer himselfe in sacrifice by prayer.

 

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Deare Cosen,

I cannot let my folly appeare to you without my apology. You shall receave my confession, and 1 doe pennance in the same place wher I comitt the fault; which I hope will procure pitty for offering to write to you of you, and upon this occasion. But I want not encouragement of an unqueslion'd wit, who sayth,

 

But wher the theame confounds us, 'tis a sort
Of glorious meritt proudly to fall short.

 

Indeed, when I considerd what a loss our family was now at, for want of those heads which are towring in another region, and, I hope, effecting foryou what we doe but bleate of here, I could not but take it to heart; and though lost as ever in the understanding them, willing by imitation to express they lived in my memory, and will. Truth herselfe often told me I made verses with my heart, not my head; which, as she did not, I hope you will not disapprove, because, though ther is nothing of ornament in them, ther can be nothing of stratagem, to which she had ever a strange antipathy, as the same author better expresseth than I ever could, who so much more loved it:

 

Those that best knew her, knew not whether were,
Her heart more single, or her head more cleare.

 

You will pardon, I hope, this digression, and any when she comes in my way, (and I am sure I am out of mine when she is not,) and I doubt you thinke I had need make an apology for having made this, being, as you may truly say, much adoe about nothing. I should thinke so too, did I not remember that good love was the best thing in heaven and earth, and all this was but to express it was not wanting to you in the else despicable heart of

Your affectionate Uncle and

Humble Servant,

Jan. I.Her. Aston.

 

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