Who would imagine it possible that in a very few lines so many remote ideas could be brought together? Since 'tis my doom, Love's undershrieve, Why this reprieve? Why doth my she advowson fly To sell thyself dost thou intend And hold the contrast thus in doubt, Think but how soon the market fails, The sober Julian were th' account of man, Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian. CLEIVELAND. Of enormous and disgusting hyperboles, these may be examples: By every wind, that comes this way, Send me at least a sigh or two, Such and so many I'll repay As shall themselves make winds to get to you. An universal consternation: His bloody eyes he hurls round, his sharp paws Beasts creep into their dens, and tremble there; Echo itself dares scarce repeat the sound. COWLEY. THEIR fictions were often violent and unnatural. Of his Mistress bathing. The fish around her crowded, as they do To the false light that treacherous fishers shew, And all with as much ease might taken be, As she at first took me; For ne'er did light so clear Among the waves appear, Though every night the sun himself set there. COWLEY. The poetical effect of a lover's name upon glass: He sees thee gentle, fair and gay, And trusts the faithless April of thy May. COWLEY. Upon a paper written with the juice of lemon, and read by the fire: Nothing yet in thee is seen, But when a genial heat warms thee within, A new-born wood of various lines there Here buds an L, and there a B, Here spouts a V, and there a T, grows: And all the flourishing letters stand in rows. COWLEY. As they sought only for novelty, they did not much enquire whether their allusions were to things decorum high or low, elegant or gross; whether they com pared the little to the great, or the great to the little. Physick and Chirurgery for a Lover. The wound, which you yourself have made; For I too weak for purgings grow. The World and a Clock. COWLEY. Mahol, th' inferior world's fantastic face, COWLEY. A coal-pit has not often found its poet; but, that it may not want its due honour, Cleiveland has paralleled it with the Sun: The moderate value of our guiltless ore Makes no man atheist, and no woman whore; Had he our pits, the Persian would admire The sun's heaven's coalery, and coals our sun. Death, a Voyage: No family E'er rigged a soul for Heaven's discovery, DONNE. THEIR thoughts and expressions were sometimes grossly absurd, and such as no figures or licence can reconcile to the understanding. A Lover neither dead nor alive: Then down I laid my head, Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead, And my Ah, sottish soul, said I, When back to its cage again I saw it fly: And row her galley here again! Where it condemn'd and destin'd is to burn! Once dead, how can it be, Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee, That thou should'st come to live it o'er again in me? A Lover's heart, a hand grenado : COWLEY. Wo to her stubborn heart, if once mine come Into the self-same room; "Twill tear and blow up all within, Like a grenado shot into a magazin. Then shall Love keep the ashes, and torn parts, Of both our broken hearts: Shall out of both one new one make: From her's th' allay, from mine the metal take. COWLEY. The poetical propagation of Light: The prince's favour is diffus'd o'er all, From which all fortunes, names, and natures fall: Then from those wombs of stars, the bride's bright eyes, At every glance a constellation flies, And sowes the court with stars, and doth prevent, In light and power, the all-ey'd firmament : First her eye kindles other ladies' eyes, Then from their beams their jewels' lustres rise: VOL. VI. D DONNE. |