But when Isabella came, Gentle Henrietta then, And a third Mary, next began: But should I now to you relate The strength and riches of their state, If I should tell the politic arts But I will briefer with them be, In which all colours and all figures were And with loose pride it wanton'd in the air: She touched him with her harp and raised him from the ground; The shaken strings melodiously resound. But when I meant t' adopt thee for my son, All thy remaining life should sunshine be: Behold the public storm is spent at last, The sovereign is toss'd at sea no more, And thou with all the noble company, THE COMPLAINT.* In a deep vision's intellectual scene, Of the black yew's unlucky green, And, lo! a Muse appeared to his closed sight [ Written on the rigid censures passed upon his comedy called 'Cutter of Coleman-street.' "He published his pretensions and his discontent," says Johnson, "in an Ode called The Complaint;' in which he styles himself Art got at last to shore: But whilst thy fellow-voyagers I see, Such was the glorious entry of our king; One of old Gideon's miracles was shown, the melancholy Cowley. This met with the usual fortune of complaints, and seems to have excited more contempt than pity."] For ev'ry tree, and ev'ry hand around, The fruitful seed of heaven did brooding lie The Rachel, for which twice seven years and more, Of fairer and of richer wives before, Into the court's deceitful lottery: With the dull work of thy unwieldy plough, Thou! to whose share so little bread did fall Thus spake the Muse, and spake it with a smile, 66 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 ravish'd freedom to regain; Lo, still in verse, against thee I complain. Which if the earth but once it ever breeds, The foolish sports I did on thee bestow When my new mind had no infusion known, To wash away th' inherent dye: The tinkling strings of thy loose minstrelsy. As they who only heaven desire Do from the world retire. This was my error, this my gross mistake, Thus with Sapphira and her husband's fate, His long misfortune's fatal end; How cheerfully, and how exempt from fear, To wait on his, O thou fallacious Muse! [slow; Shouldst not reproach rewards for being small or Thou! who rewardest but with pop'lar breath, And that, too, after death!" FROM FRIENDSHIP IN ABSENCE. A THOUSAND pretty ways we'll think upon Alas! ten thousand will not do; But knocks against the breast to get away. And when no art affords me help or ease, I seek with verse my griefs t' appease: Just as a bird that flies about, It sits and sings, and so o'ercomes its rage. THE DESPAIR. 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; Long work, perhaps, may spoil thy colours quite, Ah, wretched youth! the fields and floods reply. 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. When thoughts of love I entertain, I meet no words but Never, and, In vain : Which fuels the infernal flame: In vain! torments the present and the past: In vain, in vain! said I, In vain, in vain! twice did I sadly cry; 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. Ah, sottish soul! said I, When back to its cage again I saw it fly: Where it condemn'd and destined is to burn! Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee, THE WAITING-MAID. THY maid! Ah! find some nobler theme The glories of thy face. Alas! she makes thee shine so fair, So exquisitely bright, That her dim lamp must disappear Three hours each morn in dressing thee Maliciously are spent, And make that beauty tyranny, That's else a civil government. Th' adorning thee with so much art "Tis like the pois'ning of a dart, HONOUR. SHE loves, and she confesses too; What is this, ye gods! what can it be? [This is Cowley's very fault: wit to an excess:"He more had pleased us had he pleased us less." He never knew when he had said enough, but ran him Bold Honour stands up in the gate, Noisy nothing! stalking shade! But I shall find out counter-charms Thy airy devilship to remove Sure I shall rid myself of thee Thou attempt'st not men t' affright, OF WIT. TELL me, O tell! what kind of thing is Wit, For the first matter loves variety less: For men, led by the colour and the shape And sometimes, if the object be too far, Hence 'tis a wit, that greatest word of fame, And wits by our creation they become, All ev'rywhere, like man's must be the soul, Yet 'tis not to adorn and gild each part; If there be nothing else between. self and his reader both out of breath. In a better age Cowley had been a great poet-he is now sunk from his first reputation: for, as Lord Rochester said, though somewhat profanely, Not being of God, he could not stand.] Men doubt, because they stand so thick i' th' sky, | Oh, Solitude! first state of humankind! If those be stars which paint the galaxy. "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 Such dross the fire must purge away; 'tis just "Tis not such lines as almost crack the stage, Nor a tall met'phor in the bombast way, And force some odd similitude. What is it then, which, like the Power Divine, In a true piece of wit all things must be, As in the ark, join'd without force or strife, (If we compare great things with small,) OF SOLITUDE. HAIL, old patrician trees, so great and good! And for their quiet nests and plenteous food 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. 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, Here let me, careless and unthoughtful lying, A silver stream shall roll his waters near, Ah! wretched, and too solitary he, Which bless'd remain'd till man did find As soon as two, alas! together join'd, Though God himself, through countless ages, thee Before the branchy head of number's tree Thou (though men think thine an unactive part) Thou the faint beams of reason's scatter'd light Dost, like a burning-glass, unite. Dost multiply the feeble heat, And fortify the strength, till thou dost bright Whilst this hard truth I teach, methinks I see I should at thee, too, foolish city! Let but thy wicked men from out thee go, THE SWALLOW. FOOLISH prater! what dost thou Thou dost all the winter rest, Though men say thou bring'st the spring. DAVENANT'S personal history is sufficiently curious without attaching importance to the insinuation of Wood, so gravely taken up by Mr. Malone, that he was the son of Shakspeare. He was the son of a vintner at Oxford, at whose house the immortal poet is said to have frequently lodged. Having risen to notice by his tragedy of Albovine, he wrote masques for the court of Charles I. and was made governor of the king and queen's company of actors in Drury-lane. In the civil wars we find the theatric manager quickly transmuted into a lieutenant-general of ordnance, knighted for his services at the siege of Gloucester, and afterwards negotiating between the king and his advisers at Paris. There he began his poem of Gondibert, which he laid aside for a time for the scheme of carrying a colony from France to Virginia; but his vessel was seized by one of the parliament ships, he was thrown into prison, and owed his life to friendly interference-it is said, to that of Milton, whose friendship he returned in kind. On being liberated, his ardent activity was shown in attempting to restore theatrical amusements in the very teeth of bigotry and puritanism, and he actually succeeded so far as to open a theatre in the Charterhouse Yard. At the Restoration he received the [ His life by his widow is one of the most agreeable additions to literary history made within the last five-andtwenty years.] patent of the Duke's Theatre in Lincoln's Inn, which he held till his death. Gondibert has divided the critics. It is undeniable, on the one hand, that he showed a high and independent conception of epic poetry, in wishing to emancipate it from the slavery of ancient authority and to establish its interest in the dignity of human nature, without incredible and stale machinery. His subject was well chosen from modern romantic story, and he strove to give it the close and compact symmetry of the drama. Ingenious and witty images and majestic sentiments are thickly scattered over the poem. But Gondibert, who is so formally described, has certainly more of the cold and abstract air of an historical, than of a poetical portrait, and, unfortunately, the beauties of the poem are those of elegy and epigram, more than of heroic fiction. It wants the charm of free and forcible narration; the life-pulse of interest is incessantly stopped by solemn pauses of reflection, and the story works its way through an intricacy of superfluous fancies, some beautiful and others conceited, but all as they are united, tending to divert the interest, like a multitude of weeds upon a stream, that entangle its course while they seem to adorn it. [† There is other testimony to what Malone took up too gravely besides Wood's insinuation-there is the Betterton belief, preserved in Spence from Pope's relation.] |