From Comus:

How charming is divine philosophy!

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose;
But musical as is Apollo's lute,

And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns.

From L'Allegro :

Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse,

Such as the meeting soul may pierce

In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out.

From Lycidas:

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)

To scorn delights, and live laborious days;

But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,

And think to burst out into sudden blaze,

Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life.

How much the world is indebted to the "blind old master of English song," it would be impossible to compute; for not only has he enriched our literature with the vast resources of a mind pre-eminently endowed, but he was among the foremost of the pioneers of civil and religious liberty. His able and authoritative pen served as efficiently in that noble emprise, as legions of armed soldiers in the field. As the champion of human freedom, he was necessarily obnoxious to the opposing party; accordingly, on the accession of Charles II., Milton became the object of bitter hostility to such an extent, indeed, that in order to save his valuable

It

life, his very existence had for a time to be kept secret. It is said that his friends spread a report that he was dead, and, assembling a mournful procession, followed his pretended remains to the grave. The king, some time afterwards discovering the trick, commended his policy "in escaping death by a seasonable show of dying." is related of the Duke of York, that when, on one occasion, he visited Milton, and he was asked whether he did not regard the loss of his eyesight as a judgment inflicted on him for what he had written against the late king? he replied, "If your highness thinks that the calamities which befall us here are indications of the wrath of Heaven, in what manner are we to account for the fate of the late king, your father? the displeasure of Heaven must, upon this supposition, have been much greater upon him than upon me, for I have only lost my eyes, but he has lost his head!" Despised and persecuted as this illustrious man was for his political faith, he stood calmly and grandly forth, in the majesty and integrity of truth, amidst all; and his posterity has not forgotten his noble service. John Milton's great spirit left the world on Sunday, the eighth of November, 1674; and his sacred dust reposes near the chancel of St. Giles's, Cripplegate;—a shrine, whither tend many pilgrim feet from all parts of the civilized world. It is a note-worthy fact, that while the greatest of English poets (the bard of Avon alone excepted) received only the trifling sum of five pounds for the first edition of his great epic, one of his editors, Newton, received six hundred guineas for his annotations upon it.

The following vigorous and impressive stanzas are by BYRD :—

My mind to me a kingdom is;

Such perfect joy therein I find,

As far exceeds all earthly bliss

That God or nature hath assigned.

Though much I want, that most would have,

Yet still my mind forbids to crave.

Some have too much, yet still they crave;
I little have, yet seek no more;
They are but poor, though much they have,
And I am rich with little store.

They poor, I rich; they beg, I give ;
They lack, I lend; they pine, I live.

*

My wealth is health and perfect ease;

My conscience clear, my chief defence;

I never seek by bribes to please,

Nor by desert to give offence.
This is my choice; for why? I find
No wealth is like a quiet mind.

CHAMBERLAYNE, a poet but little known, but of evident genius, is the author of this beautiful description of a summer morning :

The morning hath not lost her virgin blush,

Nor

step, but mine, soiled the earth's tinselled robe. How full of heaven this solitude appears,

This healthful comfort of the happy swain;

Who from his hard but peaceful bed roused up,

In's morning exercise saluted is

By a full quire of feathered choristers,

Wedding their notes to the enamoured air!

Here Nature, in her unaffected dress,

Plaited with valleys, and embossed with hills

Enchased with silver streams, and fringed with woods,
Sits lovely in her native russet.

Who is not charmed with the rich quaintness of worthy GEORGE HERBERT? Here is his fine piece, entitled Virtue :

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridal of the earth and sky!
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;
For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave,
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye!
Thy root is ever in its grave-

Sweet Spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie!
My music shows ye have your closes,

And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,

Like seasoned timber, never gives;

But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.

These are the opening stanzas of his Man's Medley :

Hark! how the birds do sing,

And woods do ring:

All creatures have their joy, and man hath his :
Yet if we rightly measure,

Man's joy and pleasure

Rather hereafter, than in present, is.

To this life things of sense

Make their pretence;

In th' other angels have a right by birth;

Man ties them both alone,

And makes them one,

With th' one touching heaven-with th' other, earth.

There is a charm about Herbert's poetry, notwithstanding the strange conceits with which it abounds; as in the following lines, entitled Life:

I made a posie, while the day ran by:

Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie

My life within this band.

But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they
By noon most cunningly did steal away,

And wither'd in my hand.