Sweet bird! that sing'st away the early hours, Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers: (Attired in sweetness) sweetly is not driven HABINGTON'S poem on The Firmament opens with these grand lines : When I survey the bright celestial sphere, So rich with jewels hung, that night My soul her wings doth spread, The Almighty's mysteries to read The grave and eccentric QUARLES has written some remarkable poems, equally quaint in conceit and curious in structure: for example: Behold How short a span Was long enough of old To measure out the life of man : In those well-tempered days, his time was then Surveyed, cast-up, and found—but threescore years and ten! How soon Our new-born light Attains to full-aged noon! And this-how soon to gray-haired night! We spring, we bud, we blossom, and we blast :- And what's a life? A weary pilgrimage, False world, thou ly'st thou canst not lend Thy favours cannot gain a friend, They are so slight! Thy morning's pleasures make an end To please at night: Poor are the wants that thou supply'st, thou vy'st And yet thou vaunt'st, and yet With heaven! Fond earth, thou boast'st-false world, thou ly'st! Here are some of his lines, gilded with a little more sunshine:— As when a lady, walking Flora's bower, WALLER, whose life has been thought to possess more romance than his poetry, is, however, the author of these striking stanzas, among the last he wrote: The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er ; So calm are we when passions are no more. The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light through chinks that time has made. Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become, As they draw near to their eternal home: Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view, That stand upon the threshold of the new. For harmony and elegance of fancy, these verses, by AYTON, have rarely been surpassed : I loved thee once, I'll love no more, What reason I should be the same? He that can love, unloved again, God send me love my Nothing could have my love o'erthrown Yea, if thou hadst remained thy own, I might, perchance, have yet been thine; And then, how could I but disdain A captive's captive to remain ? The "melancholy COWLEY," as that poet styles himself, was yet the writer of this paraphrastic version of one of Anacreon's sparkling lyrics : The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, And drinks, and gapes for drink again : The plants suck in the earth, and are, So filled that they o'erflow the cup. Cowley's deep love of rural retirement is exhibited in the subjoined lines: Hail, old patrician trees, so great and good! Where the poetic birds rejoice, And for their quiet nests and plenteous food If, in the verse of Chaucer, the muse lisped her early numbers with the artless simplicity and grace of infancy, she may be said to have attained to her full-voiced maturity and glory in the august and |