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The following impassioned and beautiful lines are the commencement of a poem, entitled The Exequy, written by DR. KING :

Accept, thou shrine of my dead saint,

Instead of dirges, this complaint;

And for sweet flowers to crown thy hearse,

Receive a strew of weeping verse,

From thy grieved friend, whom thou might'st see

Quite melted into tears for thee!

Dear loss! since thy untimely fate,

My task hath been to meditate

On thee, on thee; thou art the book,

The library whereon I look,

Though almost blind; for thee (loved clay)

I languish out, not live, the day,

Using no other exercise

But what I practise with mine eyes:
By which wet glasses I find out
How lazily Time creeps about
To one that mourns: this, only this,
My exercise and business is:
So I compute the weary hours
With sighs dissolved into showers.

His terse lines on Life are more familiar :

Like to the falling of a star,

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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-
E'en such is man, whose borrowed light
Is straight called in and paid to-night:
The wind blows out, the bubble dies,
The Spring entombed in Autumn lies;
The dew dries up, the star is shot,

The flight is past-and man forgot

SIR H. WOTTON's admired lines, entitled The Happy Life, are well worthy of a place among the most perfect passages of our English poetry :

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WOTTON is also justly celebrated for his brilliant stanzas addressed to the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I. :

You meaner beauties of the night,
That poorly satisfy our eyes

More by your numbers than your light,-
You common people of the skies,
What are you when the moon shall rise?

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Ye violets, that first appear,

By your pure, purple mantles known,-
Like the proud virgins of the year,

As if the Spring were all your own,—
What are you when the rose is blown?

Ye curious chanters of the wood,

That warble forth dame Nature's lays,
Thinking your passions understood

By your weak accents; what's your praise
When Philomel her voice shall raise?

So, when my mistress shall be seen,

In sweetness of her looks and mind;
By virtue first, then choice, a queen—
Tell me, if she was not designed

Th' eclipse and glory of her kind?

Another of those courtly minstrels was SIR JOHN SUCKLING; and here, with some of his graceful contributions to our poetic anthology, we conclude the first of our evening studies :—

Why so pale and wan, fond lover?

Pr'ythee, why so pale?

Will, when looking well can't move her,

Looking ill prevail?

Pr'ythee, why so pale?

Why so pale and mute, young sinner?
Pr'ythee, why so mute?

Will, when speaking well can't move her,
Saying nothing do't?

Pr'ythee, why so mute?

Quit, quit, for shame; this will not move,

This cannot take her;

If of herself she will not love,

Nothing can make her;

The devil take her!

His most celebrated piece is The Wedding, written in honour of the beautiful daughter of the Earl of Suffolk. Here are a few of the sparkling stanzas :—

Her finger was so small, the ring

Would not stay on which they did bring,

It was too wide a peck:

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