John Cleveland ? Midsummer Moon 1688

“if a man be a tree invers’d, he’s beggar’s bush”

The usage is clearly literary, and consistent with standard literary usage. However, the form is unusual. The concept goes back to Aristotle History of Animals, “Man is an inverted tree, and a tree is an inverted man”. It may more directly be a comment on Andrew Marvell’s poem Upon Appleton House (1650-52) in which Marvell reflects and sympathises with Nature, saying:

“Thus I, easy philosopher,

Among the birds and trees confer,

And little now to make me wants,

Or of the fowls or of the plants:

Give me but wings as they, and I

Straight floating in the air shall fly;

Or turn me but, and you shall see

I was but an inverted tree.”

Text

This extract is quoted by Halliwell, J.E., (ed) (1850) Dictionary of Archaic Words, p.188. It is also referred to in Farmer, J.S. & Henley, W.E. (eds) (1890, rev. 1909) A Dictionary Historical and Comparative of the Heterodox Speech of all Classes of Society, probably taken from Halliwell.

Cleveland’s authorship is doubtful. The poem was included in a version of a collection, Cleveland Revived published in 1659. This poem was added to a later version published in 1688 which advertised itself as J. Cleavland revived : Poems, Orations, Epistles, and other of his genuine incomparable Pieces, &c. This fourth Edition, besides many other never before published, Additionally enriched with the Authors Midsummer Moon, or Lunacy rampant, &c- now at last published from his original Copies, by some of his intrusted Friends It is doubted whether they were by Cleveland, and the poem was dropped from later editions of his work.

Biography

John Cleveland, another Cambridge student, was a metaphysical poet, born in Loughborough. Cleveland’s original Poems was one of the most popular collections of mid-seventeenth century verse, with 17 editions in 18 years.