But so much her power may do That she can dissolve them too. If thy verse do bravely tower, As she makes wing, she gets power! Yet the higher she doth soar, She's affronted still the more; Till she to the high'st hath past, Then she rests with Fame at last. Let nought therefore thee affright, But make forward in thy flight: For if I could match thy rhyme, To the very stars I'd climb; There begin again, and fly Till I reach'd eternity. But, alas! my Muse is slow; For thy pace she flags too low. Yes, the more's her hapless fate,
Her short wings were clipp'd of late; And poor I, her fortune ruing, Am myself put up a muing. But if I my cage can rid, I'll fly, where I never did.
And though for her sake I'm crost, Though my best hopes I have lost, And knew she would make my trouble Ten times more than ten times double; I would love and keep her too, Spite of all the world could do.
For though banish'd from my flocks, And confined within these rocks, Here I waste away the light, And consume the sullen night; She doth for my comfort stay, And keeps many cares away. Though I miss the flowery fields, With those sweets the spring-tide yields; Though I may not see those groves, Where the shepherds chaunt their loves, And the lasses more excel Than the sweet-voiced Philomel; Though of all those pleasures past, Nothing now remains at last,
But remembrance, poor relief,
That more makes than mends my grief: She's my mind's companion still, Maugre Envy's evil will:
Whence she should be driven to, Were't in mortals' power to do. She doth tell me where to borrow Comfort in the midst of sorrow; Makes the desolatest place To her presence be a grace, And the blackest discontents Be her fairest ornaments. In my former days of bliss, His divine skill taught me this, That from every thing I saw, I could some invention draw; And raise pleasure to her height Through the meanest object's sight: By the murmur of a spring, Or the least bough's rustling; By a daisy, whose leaves spread, Shut when Titan goes to bed;
Or a shady bush or tree,
She could more infuse in me, Than all Nature's beauties can, In some other wiser man. By her help I also now Make this churlish place allow Some things that may sweeten gladness
In the very gall of sadness:
The dull loneness, the black shade That these hanging vaults have made, The strange music of the waves, Beating on these hollow caves,
This black den, which rocks emboss, Overgrown with eldest moss; The rude portals, that give light More to terror than delight, This my chamber of neglect, Wall'd about with disrespect, From all these, and this dull air, A fit object for despair,
She hath taught me by her might To draw comfort and delight.
Therefore then, best earthly bliss, I will cherish thee for this! Poesy, thou sweet'st content That e'er Heaven to mortals lent; Though they as a trifle leave thee, Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee, Though thou be to them a scorn That to naught but earth are born; Let my life no longer be
Than I am in love with thee!
Though our wise ones call it madness,
Let me never taste of gladness
If I love not thy mad'st fits Above all their greatest wits!
And though some, too seeming holy, Do account thy raptures folly,
Thou dost teach me to contemn What makes knaves and fools of them!*
THE SHEPHERD'S RESOLUTION.
SHALL I, wasting in despair, Die because a woman's fair? Or make pale my cheeks with care, 'Cause another's rosy are? Be she fairer than the day, Or the flow'ry meads in May;
If she be not so to me, What care I how fair she be?
Shall my foolish heart be pined, 'Cause I see a woman kind? Or a well-disposed nature Joined with a lovely feature?
[* The praises of poetry have been often sung in ancient and modern times; strange powers have been ascribed to it of influence over animate and inanimate auditors; its force over fascinated crowds has been acknowledged; but before Wither, no one had celebrated its power at home; the wealth and the strength which this divine gift confers upon its possessor.-LAMB.]
Be she meeker, kinder, than The turtle-dove or pelican;
If she be not so to me, What care I how kind she be? Shall a woman's virtues move Me to perish for her love? Or, her well-deservings known, Make me quite forget mine own? Be she with that goodness blest, Which may merit name of Best;
If she be not such to me, What care I how good she be? 'Cause her fortune seems too high, Shall I play the fool and die? Those that bear a noble mind, Where they want of riches find, Think what with them they would do, That without them dare to woo;
And, unless that mind I see, What care I how great she be?
Great or good, or kind or fair, I will ne'er the more despair: If she love me, this believe- I will die ere she shall grieve. If she slight me when I woo, I can scorn and let her go:
If she be not fit for me, What care I for whom she be?
DR. HENRY KING.
[Born, 1592. Died, 1669.1
[HENRY KING, D. D., was the eldest son of John King, Bishop of London, and was born in Warnoll, Buckinghamshire, and educated at Oxford. He became chaplain to James I., Archdeacon of Colchester, Dean of St. Paul's, and finally Bishop of Chichester. Besides his polemical works, he published "The Psalms of David
LIKE to the falling of a star, Or as the flights of eagles are; Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue, Or silver drops of morning dew; Or like a wind that chafes the flood, Or bubbles which on water stood: Even such is man, whose borrow'd light Is straight call'd in, and paid to-night. The wind blows out, the bubble dies; The spring entomb'd in autumn lies; The dew dries up, the star is shot : The flight is past-and man forgot.
WHAT is the existence of man's life But open war or slumber'd strife! Where sickness to his sense presents The combat of the elements, And never feels a perfect peace
Till death's cold hand signs his release.
It is a storm-where the hot blood Outvies in rage the boiling flood: And each loud passion of the mind Is like a furious gust of wind, Which beats the bark with many a wave, Till he casts anchor in the grave.
It is a flower-which buds and grows, And withers as the leaves disclose; Whose spring and fall faint seasons keep, Like fits of waking before sleep, Then shrinks into that fatal mould Where its first being was enroll'd. It is a dream-whose seeming truth; Is moralized in age and youth; Where all the comforts he can share As wand'ring as his fancies are, Till in a mist of dark decay The dreamers vanish quite away. It is a dial-which points out The sunset as it moves about; And shadows out in lines of night The subtle stages of Time's flight,
turned into Metre," "Poems, Elegies, Paradoxes, and Sonnets," and "Various Latin and Greek Poems." An edition of his "Poems and Psalms" was published in London in 1843, with a memoir by the Rev. J. Hannah, B. A. Some of his pieces are remarkable for tenderness and elegance.-G.]
Till all-obscuring earth had laid His body in perpetual shade.
It is a weary interlude
Which doth short joys, long woes include: The world the stage, the prologue tears; The acts vain hopes and varied fears; The scene shuts up with loss of breath, And leaves no epilogue but Death!
So soon grown old! hast thou been six years dead?
Poor earth, once by my love inhabited! And must I live to calculate the time To which thy blooming youth could never climb, But fell in the ascent! yet have not I Studied enough thy losses' history.
How happy were mankind, if Death's strict laws
Consumed our lamentations like the cause! Or that our grief, turning to dust, might end With the dissolved body of a friend!
But sacred Heaven! O, how just thou art In stamping death's impression on that heart, Which through thy favors would grow insolent Were it not physick'd by sharp discontent. If, then, it stand resolved in thy decree, That still I must doom'd to a desert be, Sprung out of my lone thoughts, which know no path
But what my own misfortune beaten hath :- If thou wilt bind me living to a corse, And I must slowly waste; I then of force Stoop to thy great appointment, and obey That will which naught avails me to gainsay. For whilst in sorrow's maze I wander on,
I do but follow life's vocation.
Sure we were made to grieve: at our first birth, With cries we took possession of the earth; And though the lucky man reputed be Fortune's adopted son, yet only he
Is nature's true-born child, who sums his years (Like me) with no arithmetic but tears.
A COMPLAINT OF A LEARNED DIVINE IN PURITAN TIMES.
IN a melancholy study, None but myself,
Methought my Muse grew muddy; After seven years' reading,
And costly breeding,
I felt, but could find no pelf. Into learned rags
I have rent my plush and satin, And now am fit to beg
In Hebrew, Greek, and Latin: Instead of Aristotle,
Would I had got a patten.
Alas, poor scholar, whither wilt thou go.
I have bow'd, I have bended,
And all in hope
One day to be befriended;
I have preach'd, I have printed, Whate'er I hinted,
To please our English Pope: I worshipp'd toward the East But the sun doth now forsake me; I find that I am falling,
The northern winds do shake me. Would I had been upright, For bowing now will break me. Alas, poor, &c.
At great preferment I aim'd,
Witness my silk,
But now my hopes are maim'd.
To live most stately,
And have a dairy of bell-rope's milk;
But now, alas!
Myself I must flatter,
Bigamy of steeples is a laughing matter; Each man must have but one,
And curates will grow fatter.
Alas, poor, &c.
Into some country village Now I must go,
Where neither tithe nor tillage The greedy patron, And parched matron,
Swear to the church they owe;
author of a poem, entitled "Iter Boreale," and "The Benefice," a comedy.
Yet if I can preach
And pray too on a sudden, And confute the Pope
At adventure without studying, Then ten pounds a year, Besides a Sunday pudding. Alas, poor, &c.
All the arts I have skill in, Divine and human,
Yet all's not worth a shilling. When the women hear me They do but jeer me, And say I am profane. Once I remember
I preached with a weaver;
I quoted Austin,
He quoted Dod and Clever:
I nothing got,
He got a cloak and beaver.
Alas, poor, &c.
Ships, ships, ships I discover, Crossing the main;
Shall I in and go over, Turn Jew or Atheist, Turk or Papist,
To Geneva or Amsterdam? Bishoprics are void
In Scotland, shall I thither? Or follow Windebank
And Finch, to see if either Do want a priest to shrieve them? O no, 'tis blustering weather.
Alas, poor, &c.
Ho, ho, ho, I have hit it: Peace, Goodman fool! Thou hast a trade will fit it; Draw thy indenture,
Be bound at a venture An apprentice to a free-school; There thou may'st command, By William Lilly's charter; There thou may'st whip, strip, And hang, and draw, and quarter, And commit to the red rod Both Will, and Tom, and Arthur.
Ay, ay, 'tis hither, hither will I go.
SIR JOHN MENNIS AND JAMES SMITH.
[Born, 1598. Born, 1604.]
SIR JOHN MENNIS was born in 1598. He was successively a military and naval commander; a vice-admiral in the latter service, governor of Dover Castle, and chief comptroller of the navy.
He composed the well-known ballad on Sir John Suckling's defeat.-SMITH was born about 1604: was a military and naval chaplain, canon of Exeter cathedral, and doctor in divinity.
UPON LUTE-STRINGS CAT-EATEN.
FROM MUSARUM DELICIE, OR THE MUSES' RECREATION."
ARE these the strings that poets feign Have clear'd the air and calm'd the main? Charm'd wolves, and from the mountain crests Made forests dance, with all their beasts? Could these neglected shreds you see Inspire a lute of ivory,
And make it speak? oh then think what Hath been committed by my cat!
Who, in the silence of the night,
Hath gnawn these cords, and marr'd them quite, Leaving such relics as may be
For frets, not for my lute, but me.
Puss, I will curse thee! may'st thou dwell With some dry hermit in a cell,
Where rat ne'er peep'd, where mouse ne'er fed, And flies go supperless to bed;
Or with some close-pared brother, where Thou'lt fast each Sabbath in the year; Or else, profane, be hang'd on Monday, For butchering a mouse on Sunday. Or may'st thou tumble from some tower, And miss to light on all-four, Taking a fall that may untie Eight of nine lives, and let them fly. Or may the midnight embers singe Thy dainty coat, or Jane beswinge. What, was there ne'er a rat nor mouse, Nor buttery ope; naught in the house But harmless lute-strings, could suffice Thy paunch, and draw thy glaring eyes? Did not thy conscious stomach find Nature profaned, that kind with kind Should stanch his hunger? think on that, Thou cannibal and cyclops cat! For know, thou wretch, that every string Is a cat's gut which art doth bring Into a thread; and now suppose Dunstan, that snuff'd the devil's nose, Should bid these strings revive, as once
He did the calf from naked bones; Or I, to plague thee for thy sin, Should draw a circle, and begin To conjure, for I am, look to 't, An Oxford scholar, and can do 't. Then with three sets of mops and mows, Seven of odd words, and motley shows, A thousand tricks that may be taken From Faustus, Lambe, or Friar Bacon; I should begin to call my strings My catlings, and my minikins; And they re-catted, straight should fall To mew, to purr, to caterwaul; From puss's belly, sure as death, Puss should be an engastrumeth. Puss should be sent for to the king, For a strange bird or some rare thing. Puss should be sought to far and near, As she some cunning woman were. Puss should be carried up and down, From shire to shire, from town to town, Like to the camel lean as hag,
The elephant, or apish nag,
For a strange sight; puss should be sung
In lousy ballads 'midst the throng, At markets, with as good a grace As Agincourt, or Chevy Chace. The Troy-sprung Briton would forego His pedigree, he chanteth so, And sing that Merlin (long deceased) Return'd is in a nine-lived beast.
Thus, puss, thou see'st what might betide thee; But I forbear to hurt or chide thee. For't may be puss was melancholy, And so to make her blithe aud jolly, Finding these strings, she'd have a fit Of mirth; nay, puss, if that were it, Thus I revenge me, that as thou Hast play'd on them, I on thee now; And as thy touch was nothing fine, So I've but scratch'd these notes of mine.
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