Volume 1 — ABRAHAM COWLEY.

The 'melancholy' and musical Cowley was born in London in the year 1618. He was the posthumous son of a worthy grocer, who lived in Fleet Street, near the end of Chancery Lane, and who is supposed, from the omission of his name in the register of St Dunstan's parish, to have been a Dissenter. His mother was left poor, but had a strong desire for her son's education, and influence to get him admitted as a king's scholar into Westminster. His mind was almost preternaturally precocious, and received early a strong and peculiar stimulus. A copy of Spenser lay in the window of his mother's apartment, and in it he delighted to read, and became the devoted slave of poetry ever after. When only ten he wrote 'The Tragical History of Pyramus and Thisbe,' and at twelve 'Constantia and Philetus.' Pope wrote a lampoon about the same age as Cowley these romantic narratives; and we have seen a pretty good copy of verses on Napoleon, written at the age of seven, by one of the most distinguished rising poets of our own day. When fifteen (Johnson calls it thirteen, but he and some other biographers were misled by the portrait of the poet being, by mistake, marked thirteen) Cowley published some of his early effusions, under the title of 'Poetical Blossoms.' While at school he produced a comedy of a pastoral kind, entitled, 'Love's Riddle,' but it was not published till he went to Cambridge. To that university he proceeded in 1636, and two years after, there appeared the above-mentioned comedy, with a poetical dedication to Sir Kenelm Digby, one of the marvellous men of that age; and also 'Naufragium Joculare,' a comedy in Latin, inscribed to Dr Comber, master of the college. When the Prince of Wales afterwards visited Cambridge, the fertile Cowley got up the rough draft of another comedy, called 'The Guardian,' which was repeated to His Royal Highness by the scholars. This was afterwards, to the poet's great annoyance, printed during his absence from the country. In 1643 he took his degree of A.M., and was, the same year, through the prevailing influence of the Parliament, ejected, with many others, from Cambridge. He took refuge in St John's College, Oxford, where he published a satire, entitled 'The Puritan and Papist,' and where, by his loyalty and genius, he gained the favour of such distinguished courtiers as Lord Falkland. During this agitated period he resided a good deal in the family of the Lord St Albans; and when Oxford fell into the hands of the Parliament he followed the Queen to Paris, and there acted as Secretary to the same noble lord. He remained abroad about ten years, and during that period made various journeys in the furtherance of the Royal cause, visiting Flanders, Holland, Jersey, Scotland, &c. His chief employment, however, was carrying on a correspondence in cipher between the King and the Queen. Sprat says, 'he ciphered and deciphered with his own hand the greatest part of the letters that passed between their Majesties, and managed a vast intelligence in other parts, which, for some years together, took up all his days and two or three nights every week.' This does not seem employment very suitable to a man of genius. He seems, however, to have found time for more congenial avocations; and, in 1647, he published his 'Mistress,' a work which seems to glow with amorous fire, although Barnes relates of the author that he was never in love but once, and then had not resolution to reveal his passion. And yet he wrote 'The Chronicle,' from which we might infer that his heart was completely tinder, and that his series of love attachments had been an infinite one!

In 1556, being of no more use in Paris, Cowley was sent back to England, that 'under pretence of privacy and retirement he might take occasion of giving notice of the posture of things in this nation.' For some time he lay concealed in London, but was at length seized by mistake for another gentleman of the Royal party; and being thus discovered, he was continued in confinement, was several times examined, and ultimately succeeded, although with some difficulty, in obtaining his liberation, Dr Scarborough becoming his bail for a thousand pounds. In the same year he published a collection of his poems, with a querulous preface, in which he expresses a strong desire to 'retire to some of the American plantations, and to forsake the world for ever.' Meanwhile he gave himself out as a physician till the death of Cromwell, when he returned to France, resumed his former occupation, and remained till the Restoration. In 1657 he was created Doctor of Medicine at Oxford. Having studied botany to qualify himself for his physician's degree, he was induced to publish in Latin some books on plants, flowers, and trees.

The Restoration brought him less advantage than he had anticipated. Probably he expected too much, and had expressed his sanguine hopes in a song of triumph on the occasion. He had been promised, both by Charles I. and Charles II., the Mastership of the Savoy, (a forgotten sinecure office;) but lost it, says Wood, 'by certain persons, enemies to the Muses.' He brought on the stage at this time his old comedy of 'The Guardian,' under the title of 'Cutter of Coleman Street;' but it was thought a satire on the debauchery of the King's party, and was received with coldness. Cowley, according to Dryden, 'received the news of his ill success not with so much firmness as might have been expected from so great a man.' There are few who, like Dr Johnson, have been able to declare, after the rejection of a play or poem, that they felt 'like the Monument.' Cowley not only entertained, but printed his dissatisfaction, in the form of a poem called 'The Complaint,' which, like all selfish complaints, attracted little sympathy or attention. In this he calls himself the 'melancholy Cowley,' an epithet which has stuck to his memory.

He had always, according to his own statement, loved retirement. When he was a young boy at school, instead of running about on holidays, and playing with his fellows, he was wont to steal from them, and walk into the fields alone with a book. This passion had been overlaid, but not extinguished, during his public life; and now, swelled by disgust, it came back upon him in great strength. He seems, too, if we can believe Sprat, to have had an extraordinary attachment to Nature, as it 'was God's;' to the whole 'compass of the creation, and all the wonderful effects of the Divine wisdom.' At all events, he retired first to Barn Elms, and then to Chertsey in Surrey. He had obtained, through Lord St Albans and the Duke of Buckingham, the lease of some lands belonging to the Queen, which brought him in an income of L300 a year. Here, then, having, at the age of forty-two, reached the peaceful hermitage,' he set himself with all his might to enjoy it. He cultivated his fields, and renewed his botanical studies in his woods and garden. He wrote letters to his friends, which are said to have been admirable, and might have ranked with those of Gray and Cowper, but unfortunately they have not been preserved. He renewed his intimacy with the Greek and Latin poets, and he set himself to retouch the 'Davideis,' which he had begun in early youth, but which he never lived to finish, and to compose his beautiful prose essays. But he soon found that Chertsey, no more than Paris, was Paradise. He had no wife nor children. He had sweet solitude, but no one near him to whom to whisper 'how sweet this solitude is!' The peasants were boors. His tenants would pay him no rent, and the cattle of his neighbours devoured his meadows. He was troubled with rheums and colds. He met a severe fall when he first came to Chertsey, of which he says, half in jest and half in earnest—'What this signifies, or may come to in time, God knows; if it be ominous, it can end in nothing less than hanging.' Robert Hall said of Bishop Watson that he seemed to have wedded political integrity in early life, and to have spent all the rest of his days in quarrelling with his wife. So Cowley wedded his long- sought-for bride, Solitude, and led a miserable life with her ever after. Fortunately for him, if not for the world, his career soon came to a close.

One hot day in summer, he stayed too long among his labourers in the meadows, and was seized with a cold, which, being neglected, carried him off on the 28th of July 1667. He was not forty-nine years old. He died at the Porch House, Chertsey, and his remains were buried with great pomp near Chaucer and Spenser; and King Charles, who had neglected him during life, pronounced his panegyric after death, declaring that 'Mr Cowley had not left behind him a better man in England.' It was in keeping with the character of Charles to make up for his deficiency in action, by his felicity of phrase.

If we may differ from such a high authority as 'Old Rowley,' we would venture to doubt whether Cowley was the best—certainly he was not the greatest—man then in England. Milton was alive, and the 'Paradise Lost' appeared in the very year when the author of the 'Davideis' departed. Cowley gives us the impression of having been an amiable and blameless, rather than a good or great man. At all events, there was nothing active in his goodness, and his greatness could not be called magnanimity. He was a scholar and a poet misplaced during early life; and when he gained that retirement for which he sighed, he had, by his habits of life, lost his capacity of relishing it. 'He that would enjoy solitude,' it has been said, 'must either be a wild beast or a god;' and Cowley was neither. How different his grounds of dissatisfaction with the world from those of Milton! Cowley was wearied of ciphering, and his 'Cutter of Coleman Street' had been cut; that was nearly the whole matter of his complaint; while Milton had fallen from being the second man in England into poverty, blindness, contempt, danger, and the disappointment of the most glorious hopes which ever heaved the bosom of patriot or saint.

We find the want of greatness which marked the man characterising the poet. Infinite ingenuity, a charming flexibility and abundance of fancy, a perception of remote analogies almost unrivalled, great command of versification and language, learning without bounds, and an occasional gracefulness and sparkling ease (as in 'The Chronicle') superior to even Herrick or Suckling, are qualities that must be conceded to Cowley. But the most of his writings are cold and glittering as the sun-smitten glacier. He is seldom warm, except when he is proclaiming his own merits, or bewailing his own misfortunes. Hence his 'Wish,' and even his 'Complaint,' are very pleasing and natural specimens of poetry. But his 'Pindaric Odes,' his 'Hymn to Light,' and most of his 'Davideis,' while displaying great power, shew at least equal perversion, and are more memorable for their faults than for their beauties. In the 'Davideis,' he describes the attire of Gabriel in the spirit and language of a tailor; and there is no path so sacred or so lofty but he must sow it with conceits,—forced, false, and chilly. His 'Anacreontics,' on the other hand, are in general felicitous in style and aerial in motion. And in his Translations, although too free, he is uniformly graceful and spirited; and his vast command of language and imagery enables him often to improve his author—to gild the refined gold, to paint the lily, and to throw a new perfume on the violet, of the Grecian and Roman masters.

In prose, Cowley is uniformly excellent. The prefaces to his poems, especially his defence of sacred song in the prefix to the 'Davideis,' his short autobiography, the fragments of his letters which remain, and his posthumous essays, are all distinguished by a rich simplicity of style and by a copiousness of matter which excite in equal measure delight and surprise. He had written, it appears, three books on the Civil War, to the time of the battle of Newbury, which he destroyed. It is a pity, perhaps, that he had not preserved and completed the work. His intimacy with many of the leading characters and the secret springs of that remarkable period,—his clear and solid judgment, always so except when he was following the Daedalus Pindar upon waxen Icarian wings, or competing with Dr Donne in the number of conceits which he could stuff, like cloves, into his subject-matter,—and the bewitching ease and elegance of his prose style, would have combined to render it an important contribution to English history, and a worthy monument of its author's highly-accomplished and diversified powers.

THE CHRONICLE, A BALLAD.

1 Margarita first possess'd, If I remember well, my breast, Margarita first of all; But when a while the wanton maid With my restless heart had play'd, Martha took the flying ball.

2 Martha soon did it resign To the beauteous Catharine: Beauteous Catharine gave place (Though loth and angry she to part With the possession of my heart) To Eliza's conquering face.

3 Eliza till this hour might reign, Had she not evil counsels ta'en: Fundamental laws she broke And still new favourites she chose, Till up in arms my passions rose, And cast away her yoke.

4 Mary then, and gentle Anne, Both to reign at once began; Alternately they sway'd, And sometimes Mary was the fair, And sometimes Anne the crown did wear, And sometimes both I obey'd.

5 Another Mary then arose, And did rigorous laws impose; A mighty tyrant she! Long, alas! should I have been Under that iron-sceptred queen, Had not Rebecca set me free.

6 When fair Rebecca set me free, 'Twas then a golden time with me: But soon those pleasures fled; For the gracious princess died In her youth and beauty's pride, And Judith reign'd in her stead.

7 One month, three days, and half an hour, Judith held the sovereign power: Wondrous beautiful her face, But so weak and small her wit, That she to govern was unfit, And so Susanna took her place.

8 But when Isabella came, Arm'd with a resistless flame, And the artillery of her eye, Whilst she proudly march'd about, Greater conquests to find out, She beat out Susan by the bye.

9 But in her place I then obey'd Black-eyed Bess, her viceroy made, To whom ensued a vacancy. Thousand worst passions then possess'd The interregnum of my breast. Bless me from such an anarchy!

10 Gentle Henrietta then, And a third Mary, next began: Then Joan, and Jane, and Audria; And then a pretty Thomasine, And then another Catharine, And then a long et caetera.

11 But should I now to you relate The strength and riches of their state, The powder, patches, and the pins, The ribands, jewels, and the rings, The lace, the paint, and warlike things, That make up all their magazines:

12 If I should tell the politic arts To take and keep men's hearts, The letters, embassies, and spies, The frowns, the smiles, and flatteries, The quarrels, tears, and perjuries, Numberless, nameless mysteries!

13 And all the little lime-twigs laid By Mach'avel the waiting-maid; I more voluminous should grow (Chiefly if I like them should tell All change of weathers that befell) Than Holinshed or Stow.

14 But I will briefer with them be, Since few of them were long with me. An higher and a nobler strain My present Emperess does claim, Heleonora! first o' the name, Whom God grant long to reign.

THE COMPLAINT.

In a deep vision's intellectual scene, Beneath a bower for sorrow made, The uncomfortable shade Of the black yew's unlucky green, Mixed with the mourning willow's careful gray, Where rev'rend Cam cuts out his famous way, The melancholy Cowley lay; And, lo! a Muse appeared to his closed sight (The Muses oft in lands of vision play,) Bodied, arrayed, and seen by an internal light: A golden harp with silver strings she bore, A wondrous hieroglyphic robe she wore, In which all colours and all figures were That Nature or that Fancy can create. That Art can never imitate, And with loose pride it wantoned in the air, In such a dress, in such a well-clothed dream, She used of old near fair Ismenus' stream Pindar, her Theban favourite, to meet; A crown was on her head, and wings were on her feet.

She touched him with her harp and raised him from the ground; The shaken strings melodiously resound. 'Art thou returned at last,' said she, 'To this forsaken place and me? Thou prodigal! who didst so loosely waste Of all thy youthful years the good estate; Art thou returned here, to repent too late? And gather husks of learning up at last, Now the rich harvest-time of life is past, And winter marches on so fast? But when I meant to adopt thee for my son, And did as learned a portion assign As ever any of the mighty nine Had to their dearest children done; When I resolved to exalt thy anointed name Among the spiritual lords of peaceful fame; Thou changeling! thou, bewitch'd with noise and show, Wouldst into courts and cities from me go; Wouldst see the world abroad, and have a share In all the follies and the tumults there; Thou wouldst, forsooth, be something in a state, And business thou wouldst find, and wouldst create: Business! the frivolous pretence Of human lusts, to shake off innocence; Business! the grave impertinence; Business! the thing which I of all things hate; Business! the contradiction of thy fate.

'Go, renegado! cast up thy account, And see to what amount Thy foolish gains by quitting me: The sale of knowledge, fame, and liberty, The fruits of thy unlearned apostasy. Thou thoughtst, if once the public storm were past, All thy remaining life should sunshine be: Behold the public storm is spent at last, The sovereign is tossed at sea no more, And thou, with all the noble company, Art got at last to shore: But whilst thy fellow-voyagers I see, All marched up to possess the promised land, Thou still alone, alas! dost gaping stand, Upon the naked beach, upon the barren sand. As a fair morning of the blessed spring, After a tedious, stormy night, Such was the glorious entry of our king; Enriching moisture dropped on every thing: Plenty he sowed below, and cast about him light. But then, alas! to thee alone One of old Gideon's miracles was shown, For every tree, and every hand around, With pearly dew was crowned, And upon all the quickened ground The fruitful seed of heaven did brooding lie, And nothing but the Muse's fleece was dry. It did all other threats surpass, When God to his own people said, The men whom through long wanderings he had led, That he would give them even a heaven of brass: They looked up to that heaven in vain, That bounteous heaven! which God did not restrain Upon the most unjust to shine and rain.

'The Rachel, for which twice seven years and more, Thou didst with faith and labour serve, And didst (if faith and labour can) deserve, Though she contracted was to thee, Given to another, thou didst see, who had store Of fairer and of richer wives before, And not a Loah left, thy recompense to be. Go on, twice seven years more, thy fortune try, Twice seven years more God in his bounty may Give thee to fling away Into the court's deceitful lottery: But think how likely 'tis that thou, With the dull work of thy unwieldy plough, Shouldst in a hard and barren season thrive, Shouldst even able be to live; Thou! to whose share so little bread did fall In the miraculous year, when manna rain'd on all.'

Thus spake the Muse, and spake it with a smile, That seemed at once to pity and revile: And to her thus, raising his thoughtful head, The melancholy Cowley said: 'Ah, wanton foe! dost thou upbraid The ills which thou thyself hast made? When in the cradle innocent I lay, Thou, wicked spirit, stolest me away, And my abused soul didst bear Into thy new-found worlds, I know not where, Thy golden Indies in the air; And ever since I strive in vain My ravished freedom to regain; Still I rebel, still thou dost reign; Lo, still in verse, against thee I complain. There is a sort of stubborn weeds, Which, if the earth but once it ever breeds, No wholesome herb can near them thrive, No useful plant can keep alive: The foolish sports I did on thee bestow Make all my art and labour fruitless now; Where once such fairies dance, no grass doth ever grow.

'When my new mind had no infusion known, Thou gavest so deep a tincture of thine own, That ever since I vainly try To wash away the inherent dye: Long work, perhaps, may spoil thy colours quite, But never will reduce the native white. To all the ports of honour and of gain I often steer my course in vain; Thy gale comes cross, and drives me back again, Thou slacken'st all my nerves of industry, By making them so oft to be The tinkling strings of thy loose minstrelsy. Whoever this world's happiness would see Must as entirely cast off thee, As they who only heaven desire Do from the world retire. This was my error, this my gross mistake, Myself a demi-votary to make. Thus with Sapphira and her husband's fate, (A fault which I, like them, am taught too late,) For all that I give up I nothing gain, And perish for the part which I retain. Teach me not then, O thou fallacious Muse! The court and better king t' accuse; The heaven under which I live is fair, The fertile soil will a full harvest bear: Thine, thine is all the barrenness, if thou Makest me sit still and sing when I should plough. When I but think how many a tedious year Our patient sovereign did attend His long misfortune's fatal end; How cheerfully, and how exempt from fear, On the Great Sovereign's will he did depend, I ought to be accursed if I refuse To wait on his, O thou fallacious Muse! Kings have long hands, they say, and though I be So distant, they may reach at length to me. However, of all princes thou Shouldst not reproach rewards for being small or slow; Thou! who rewardest but with popular breath, And that, too, after death!'

THE DESPAIR.

1 Beneath this gloomy shade, By Nature only for my sorrows made, I'll spend this voice in cries, In tears I'll waste these eyes, By love so vainly fed; So lust of old the deluge punished. Ah, wretched youth, said I; Ah, wretched youth! twice did I sadly cry; Ah, wretched youth! the fields and floods reply.

2 When thoughts of love I entertain, I meet no words but Never, and In vain: Never! alas! that dreadful name Which fuels the infernal flame: Never! my time to come must waste; In vain! torments the present and the past: In vain, in vain! said I, In vain, in vain! twice did I sadly cry; In vain, in vain! the fields and floods reply.

3 No more shall fields or floods do so, For I to shades more dark and silent go: All this world's noise appears to me A dull, ill-acted comedy: No comfort to my wounded sight, In the sun's busy and impert'nent light. Then down I laid my head, Down on cold earth, and for a while was dead, And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled.

4 Ah, sottish soul! said I, When back to its cage again I saw it fly: Fool! to resume her broken chain, And row her galley here again! Fool! to that body to return, Where it condemned and destined is to burn! Once dead, how can it be Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee, That thou shouldst come to live it o'er again in me?

OF WIT.

1 Tell me, O tell! what kind of thing is Wit, Thou who master art of it; For the first matter loves variety less; Less women love it, either in love or dress: A thousand different shapes it bears, Comely in thousand shapes appears: Yonder we saw it plain, and here 'tis now, Like spirits, in a place, we know not how.

2 London, that vends of false ware so much store, In no ware deceives us more: For men, led by the colour and the shape, Like Zeuxis' birds, fly to the painted grape. Some things do through our judgment pass, As through a multiplying-glass; And sometimes, if the object be too far, We take a falling meteor for a star.

3 Hence 'tis a wit, that greatest word of fame, Grows such a common name; And wits by our creation they become, Just so as tit'lar bishops made at Rome. 'Tis not a tale, 'tis not a jest, Admired with laughter at a feast, Nor florid talk, which can that title gain; The proofs of wit for ever must remain.

4 'Tis not to force some lifeless verses meet With their five gouty feet; All everywhere, like man's, must be the soul, And reason the inferior powers control. Such were the numbers which could call The stones into the Theban wall. Such miracles are ceased; and now we see No towns or houses raised by poetry.

5 Yet 'tis not to adorn and gild each part; That shows more cost than art. Jewels at nose and lips but ill appear; Rather than all things wit, let none be there. Several lights will not be seen, If there be nothing else between. Men doubt, because they stand so thick i' the sky, If those be stars which paint the galaxy.

6 'Tis not when two like words make up one noise, Jests for Dutch men and English boys; In which who finds out wit, the same may see In an'grams and acrostics poetry. Much less can that have any place At which a virgin hides her face; Such dross the fire must purge away; 'tis just The author blush there where the reader must.

7 'Tis not such lines as almost crack the stage, When Bajazet begins to rage: Nor a tall met'phor in the bombast way, Nor the dry chips of short-lunged Seneca: Nor upon all things to obtrude And force some old similitude. What is it then, which, like the Power Divine, We only can by negatives define?

8 In a true piece of wit all things must be, Yet all things there agree: As in the ark, joined without force or strife, All creatures dwelt, all creatures that had life. Or as the primitive forms of all, If we compare great things with small, Which without discord or confusion lie, In that strange mirror of the Deity.

OF SOLITUDE.

1 Hail, old patrician trees, so great and good! Hail, ye plebeian underwood! Where the poetic birds rejoice, And for their quiet nests and plenteous food Pay with their grateful voice.

2 Hail the poor Muse's richest manor-seat! Ye country houses and retreat, Which all the happy gods so love, That for you oft they quit their bright and great Metropolis above.

3 Here Nature does a house for me erect, Nature! the fairest architect, Who those fond artists does despise That can the fair and living trees neglect, Yet the dead timber prize.

4 Here let me, careless and unthoughtful lying, Hear the soft winds above me flying, With all their wanton boughs dispute, And the more tuneful birds to both replying, Nor be myself, too, mute.

5 A silver stream shall roll his waters near, Gilt with the sunbeams here and there, On whose enamelled bank I'll walk, And see how prettily they smile, And hear how prettily they talk.

6 Ah! wretched, and too solitary he, Who loves not his own company! He'll feel the weight of it many a day, Unless he calls in sin or vanity To help to bear it away.

7 O Solitude! first state of humankind! Which bless'd remained till man did find Even his own helper's company: As soon as two, alas! together joined, The serpent made up three.

8 Though God himself, through countless ages, thee His sole companion chose to be, Thee, sacred Solitude! alone, Before the branchy head of number's tree Sprang from the trunk of one;

9 Thou (though men think thine an unactive part) Dost break and tame the unruly heart, Which else would know no settled pace, Making it move, well managed by thy art, With swiftness and with grace.

10 Thou the faint beams of reason's scattered light Dost, like a burning glass, unite, Dost multiply the feeble heat, And fortify the strength, till thou dost bright And noble fires beget.

11 Whilst this hard truth I teach, methinks I see The monster London laugh at me; I should at thee, too, foolish city! If it were fit to laugh at misery; But thy estate I pity.

12 Let but thy wicked men from out thee go, And all the fools that crowd thee so, Even thou, who dost thy millions boast, A village less than Islington wilt grow, A solitude almost.

THE WISH.

I.

Lest the misjudging world should chance to say I durst not but in secret murmurs pray, To whisper in Jove's ear How much I wish that funeral, Or gape at such a great one's fall; This let all ages hear, And future times in my soul's picture see What I abhor, what I desire to be.

II.

I would not be a Puritan, though he Can preach two hours, and yet his sermon be But half a quarter long; Though from his old mechanic trade By vision he's a pastor made, His faith was grown so strong; Nay, though he think to gain salvation By calling the Pope the Whore of Babylon.

III.

I would not be a Schoolmaster, though to him His rods no less than Consuls' fasces seem; Though he in many a place, Turns Lily oftener than his gowns, Till at the last he makes the nouns Fight with the verbs apace; Nay, though he can, in a poetic heat, Figures, born since, out of poor Virgil beat.

IV.

I would not be a Justice of Peace, though he Can with equality divide the fee, And stakes with his clerk draw; Nay, though he sits upon the place Of judgment, with a learned face Intricate as the law; And whilst he mulcts enormities demurely, Breaks Priscian's head with sentences securely.

V.

I would not be a Courtier, though he Makes his whole life the truest comedy; Although he be a man In whom the tailor's forming art, And nimble barber, claim more part Than Nature herself can; Though, as he uses men, 'tis his intent To put off Death too with a compliment.

VI.

From Lawyers' tongues, though they can spin with ease The shortest cause into a paraphrase, From Usurers' conscience (For swallowing up young heirs so fast, Without all doubt they'll choke at last) Make me all innocence, Good Heaven! and from thy eyes, O Justice! keep; For though they be not blind, they're oft asleep.

VII.

From Singing-men's religion, who are Always at church, just like the crows, 'cause there They build themselves a nest; From too much poetry, which shines With gold in nothing but its lines, Free, O you Powers! my breast; And from astronomy, which in the skies Finds fish and bulls, yet doth but tantalise.

VIII.

From your Court-madam's beauty, which doth carry At morning May, at night a January; From the grave City-brow (For though it want an R, it has The letter of Pythagoras) Keep me, O Fortune! now, And chines of beef innumerable send me, Or from the stomach of the guard defend me.

IX.

This only grant me, that my means may lie Too low for envy, for contempt too high. Some honour I would have, Not from great deeds, but good alone: The unknown are better than ill known: Rumour can ope the grave. Acquaintance I would have, but when 't depends Not from the number, but the choice of friends.

X.

Books should, not business, entertain the light, And sleep, as undisturbed as death, the night. My house a cottage more Than palace, and should fitting be For all my use, not luxury; My garden, painted o'er With Nature's hand, not Art's, that pleasure yield Horace might envy in his Sabine field.

XI.

Thus would I double my life's fading space; For he that runs it well twice runs his race; And in this true delight, These unbought sports, and happy state, I would not fear, nor wish my fate, But boldly say each night, To-morrow let my sun his beams display, Or in clouds hide them, I have lived to-day.

UPON THE SHORTNESS OF MAN'S LIFE.

1 Mark that swift arrow, how it cuts the air, How it outruns thy following eye! Use all persuasions now, and try If thou canst call it back, or stay it there. That way it went, but thou shalt find No track is left behind.

2 Fool! 'tis thy life, and the fond archer thou. Of all the time thou'st shot away, I'll bid thee fetch but yesterday, And it shall be too hard a task to do. Besides repentance, what canst find That it hath left behind?

3 Our life is carried with too strong a tide, A doubtful cloud our substance bears, And is the horse of all our years: Each day doth on a winged whirlwind ride. We and our glass run out, and must Both render up our dust.

4 But his past life who without grief can see, Who never thinks his end too near, But says to Fame, Thou art mine heir; That man extends life's natural brevity— This is, this is the only way To outlive Nestor in a day.

ON THE PRAISE OF POETRY.

'Tis not a pyramid of marble stone, Though high as our ambition; 'Tis not a tomb cut out in brass, which can Give life to the ashes of a man, But verses only; they shall fresh appear, Whilst there are men to read or hear, When time shall make the lasting brass decay, And eat the pyramid away, Turning that monument wherein men trust Their names, to what it keeps, poor dust; Then shall the epitaph remain, and be New graven in eternity. Poets by death are conquered, but the wit Of poets triumph over it. What cannot verse? When Thracian Orpheus took His lyre, and gently on it strook, The learned stones came dancing all along, And kept time to the charming song. With artificial pace the warlike pine, The elm and his wife, the ivy-twine, With all the better trees which erst had stood Unmoved, forsook their native wood. The laurel to the poet's hand did bow, Craving the honour of his brow; And every loving arm embraced, and made With their officious leaves a shade. The beasts, too, strove his auditors to be, Forgetting their old tyranny. The fearful hart next to the lion came, And wolf was shepherd to the lamb. Nightingales, harmless Syrens of the air, And Muses of the place, were there; Who, when their little windpipes they had found Unequal to so strange a sound, O'ercome by art and grief, they did expire, And fell upon the conquering lyre. Happy, oh happy they! whose tomb might be, Mausolus! envied by thee!

THE MOTTO.

TENTANDA VIA EST, ETC.

What shall I do to be for ever known, And make the age to come my own? I shall like beasts or common people die, Unless you write my elegy; Whilst others great by being born are grown, Their mother's labour, not their own. In this scale gold, in the other fame does lie; The weight of that mounts this so high. These men are Fortune's jewels, moulded bright, Brought forth with their own fire and light. If I, her vulgar stone, for either look, Out of myself it must be strook. Yet I must on: What sound is't strikes mine ear? Sure I Fame's trumpet hear: It sounds like the last trumpet, for it can Raise up the buried man. Unpass'd Alps stop me, but I'll cut through all, And march, the Muse's Hannibal. Hence, all the flattering vanities that lay Nets of roses in the way; Hence, the desire of honours or estate, And all that is not above Fate; Hence, Love himself, that tyrant of my days, Which intercepts my coming praise. Come, my best friends! my books! and lead me on, 'Tis time that I were gone. Welcome, great Stagyrite! and teach me now All I was born to know: Thy scholar's victories thou dost far outdo; He conquered th' earth, the whole world you, Welcome, learn'd Cicero! whose bless'd tongue and wit Preserves Rome's greatness yet; Thou art the first of orators; only he Who best can praise thee next must be. Welcome the Mantuan swan! Virgil the wise, Whose verse walks highest, but not flies; Who brought green Poesy to her perfect age, And made that art which was a rage. Tell me, ye mighty Three! what shall I do To be like one of you? But you have climb'd the mountain's top, there sit On the calm flourishing head of it, And whilst, with wearied steps, we upward go, See us and clouds below.

DAVIDEIS.