Safe in his care, he leaves betray'd
No friend engaged, no debt unpaid.
But, though the stars conspire to shower
Upon one head the united power
Of all their graces, if their dire
Aspects must other breasts inspire
With vicious thoughts, a murderer's knife
May cut (as here) their darling's life:
Who can be happy then, if Nature must,
To make one happy man, make all men just?

SONG.

Ask me no more, where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauties' orient deep,
These flow'rs, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more, whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For, in pure love, heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.
Ask me no more, whither doth haste
The nightingale, when May is past ;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters, and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more, where those stars light,
That downwards fall in dead of night;
For, in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixéd become, as in their sphere.

Ask me no more, if east or west,
The phenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.

FROM "COELUM BRITANNICUM."

MERCURY'S REPLY TO HEDONÉ.1

Bewitching siren gilded rottenness!
Thou hast with cunning artifice display'd
The enamell'd outside, and the honied verge
Of the fair cup where deadly poison lurks.
Within, a thousand sorrows dance the round;
And, like a shell, pain circles thee without.
Grief is the shadow waiting on thy steps,

Which, as thy joys 'gin towards their west decline,

1 Pleasure.

FROM BRITANNIA'S PASTORALS.

Doth to a giant's spreading form extend
Thy dwarfish stature. Thou thyself art pain,
Greedy intense desire; and the keen edge
Of thy fierce appetite oft strangles thee,

And cuts thy slender thread; but still the terror
And apprehension of thy hasty end

Mingles with gall thy most refined sweets.
Yet thy Circean charms transform the world.
Captains that have resisted war and death,
Nations that over Fortune have triumphed,
Are by thy magic made effeminate :
Empires, that knew no limits but the poles,
Have in thy wanton lap melted away.

*

*

*

To thy voluptuous den fly, witch, from hence;
There dwell, for ever drowned in the brutish sense.

169

WILLIAM BROWNE.

(1590-1645.)

Of the life of Browne little is known. He was descended of a "knightly family," and born at Tavistock in Devonshire. After a university education he entered the Inner Temple; but seems to have addicted himself more to poetry than to law. Spenser and Sidney were his models; and his young imagination seems to have been nursed by the scenery of his native county. His poems were written chiefly while he was very young. They have little vigour, but are often characterized by a delightful beauty of rural description. Milton, who was, as Hallam remarks, a great collector of sweets from the wild flowers of our early versifiers, was indebted to Browne, Fletcher, and Wither. "Lycidas has been traced to one of Browne's Eclogues; and Warton recognizes the scenery of "L'Allegro" in a passage in Britannia's Pastorals. Though thus alleged to have been the object of imitation by the greatest genius of poetry, and though commended and beloved by all the poets of his age, Browne very narrowly escaped oblivion. The want of interest and vigour in his writing will prevent him from being popular in an age which seeks excitement as the prime quality of poetry, but his elegance and tranquil grace will render the study of his works valuable to th literary student.

FROM BRITANNIA'S PASTORALS.

BOOK II. SONG I.

A NIGHT SCENE.

Now great Hyperion1 left his golden throne
That on the dancing waves in glory shone,
For whose declining on the western shore
The oriental hills black mantles wore,

1 The sun;-an appellation of Apollo, implying "the Heaven-walker."

And thence apace the gentle twilight fled,
That had from hideous caverns usheréd
All-drowsy night; who, in a car of jet,

By steeds of iron-gray (which mainly sweat
Moist drops on all the world) drawn through the sky,
The helps of darkness waited orderly.

First, thick clouds rose from all the liquid plains:
Then mists from marishes,1 and grounds whose veins
Were conduit pipes to many a crystal spring:
From standing pools and fens were following
Unhealthy fogs: each river, every rill

Sent up their vapours to attend her will.

These pitchy curtains drew 'twixt Earth and Heaven,
And as Night's chariot through the air was driven,
Clamour grew dumb, unheard was shepherd's song,
And silence girt the woods; no warbling tongue
Talk'd to the echo; satyrs broke their dance,
And all the upper world lay in a trance:
Only the curled streams soft chidings kept ;
And little gales, that from the green leaf swept
Dry summer's dust, in fearful whisp'rings stirr'd,
As loath to waken any singing bird.

ROBERT HERRICK.

(1591-1674.)

HERRICK was the son of a goldsmith of London. He was educated for the Church, and obtained from Charles I. the living of Dean Prior in Devonshire. From this he was ejected during the civil wars. For the time he laid down his divinity, which indeed he seems to have always worn very lightly; he was the companion of Ben Jonson's revels; and much of his poetry is very little in accordance with the clerical character. His works consist chiefly of religious and Anacreontic poems in strange association. His "vein of poetry," says Campbell, is very irregular; but where the ore is pure, it is of high value." He recovered his living at the Restoration. He was interred at Dean Prior, October 15th, 1674.

66

And, having prayed together, we
Will go with you along.

1 Marshes.

No Will-o'-the-wisp mislight thee,
Nor snake or slow-worm bite thee!
But on, on thy way,

Not making a stay,

Since ghost there is none to affright thee.

1 The use of ye as an objective case by the poets seems to denote earnestness and emotion.-See Shakespeare's Coriolanus, Act i. Sc. 1. "Hang ye !-Trust ye!"

Let not the dark thee cumber;
What though the moon does slumber?
The stars of the night

Will lend thee their light,

Like tapers clear without number.

Then Julia let me woo thee,
Thus, thus to come unto me;
And, when I shall meet
Thy silvery feet,

My soul I'll pour into thee.1

FRANCIS QUARLES.

(1592-1644.)

QUARLES was of an ancient family, nephew to Sir Robert Quarles, educated at Christ's College, Cambridge; studied in Lincoln's Inn; afterwards cup-bearer to the queen of Bohemia" (the Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of James I.), " secretary to the primate of Ireland" (Archbishop Usher), and chronologer to the city of London."-Ellis.

Quarles is the quaintest and most fantastic writer of the metaphysical school of Donne. His poetry, like that of most of his contemporaries of the middle of the seventeenth century, is strongly tinctured with religious feeling. This should have saved him from puritan persecution, but the royalist poet had his heart broken by the destruction of his property, and especially of his rare library. His formerly popular "Emblems" and other works sunk into oblivion during the licentious taste of the Restoration; and Pope, in the "Dunciad," satirizes him as dull but honest, "the pictures for the page atone." The native worth of his wit, amidst its profusion of affectation, has in modern times somewhat retrieved his fame. His " Enchiridion," in prose, is a collection of maxims, or, as he terms them, "Institutions, Divine and Moral.—

DELIGHT IN GOD ONLY.

I LOVE (and have some cause to love) the earth;
She is my Maker's creature, therefore good;

She is my mother, for she gave me birth;

She is my tender nurse, she gives me food.

But what's a creature, Lord, compared with thee?
Or what's my mother, or my nurse, to me?

I love the air; her dainty sweets refresh
My drooping soul, and to new sweets invite me ;
Her shrill-mouthed quire sustain me with their flesh,
And with their polyphonian notes delight.me :

But what's the air or all the sweets that she
Can bless my soul withal, compared to thee?
1 Compare Moore's "Young May Moon."