“ His watchword is honour, his pay is renown,—
God strike with the Gallant that strikes for the Crown!
They may boast of their Fairfax, their Waller, and all
The roundheaded rebels of Westminster Hall;
But tell these bold traitors of London’s proud town, 15
That the spears of the North have encircled the Crown.
There’s Derby and Cavendish, dread of their foes;
There’s Erin’s high Ormond and Scotland’s Montrose!
Would you match the base Skippon, and Massey, and Brown,
With the Barons of England, that fight for the Crown? 20
Now joy to the crest of the brave Cavalier! ”

“ There selfish faction rules the day, 35
And pride and avarice throng the way;
Diseases taint the murky air,
And midnight conflagrations glare;
Loose revelry, and riot bold,
In frighted streets their orgies hold; 40
Or, where in silence all is drowned,
Fell murder walks his lonely round;
No room for peace, no room for you;
Adieu, celestial Nymph, adieu!
Shakspeare no more, thy sylvan son, 45
Nor all the art of Addison,
Pope’s heaven-strung lyre, nor Waller’s ease,
Nor Milton’s mighty self, must please:
Instead of these a formal band,
In furs and coifs, around me stand ”

“ It would be truer to say of a poem which in motive, in form, in diction, in melody, in unity of plan,{ix} satisfies all conditions, that it is ‘a joy for ever.’ It is impossible so to draw out the sweetness of it that it shall not still have as much to yield us, or it maybe more than it had at the beginning. How many another book, once read, can yield no more pleasure or profit to us—but poems of the highest order are in their very essence sources of a delight which is inexhaustible. ”

“ SONNET.
Sweet spring, thou turn’st with all thy goodly train,
Thy head with flames, thy mantle bright with flowers;
The zephyrs curl the green locks of the plain,
The clouds for joy in pearls weep down their showers,
Thou turn’st, sweet youth; but ah! my pleasant hours 5
And happy days with thee come not again;
The sad memorials only of my pain
Do with thee come, which turn my sweets to sours.
Thou art the same which still thou wast before,
Delicious, lusty, amiable, fair; 10
But she, whose breath embalmed thy wholesome air,
Is gone; nor gold nor gems her can restore. ”

“ And noisy fame is proud to win them;
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!
Nay, grieve not for the dead alone,
Whose song has told their hearts’ sad story: 10
Weep for the voiceless, who have known
The cross without the crown of glory!
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep
O’er Sappho’s memory-haunted billow,
But where the glistening night-dews weep 15
On nameless sorrow’s churchyard pillow.{383}
O hearts that break, and give no sign,
Save whitening lip and fading tresses,
Till Death pours out his cordial wine,
Slow-dropped from misery’s crushing presses! ”

“ The poet’s star-tuned harp to sweep,
The patriot’s voice to teach and rouse, 10
The monarch’s crown to light the brows?—
He giveth his belovèd, sleep.{324}
What do we give to our beloved?
A little faith all undisproved,
A little dust to overweep, 15
And bitter memories to make
The whole earth blasted for our sake:
He giveth his belovèd, sleep.
‘Sleep soft, beloved!’ we sometimes say,
Who have no tune to charm away 20
Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep:
But never doleful dream again
Shall break the happy slumber, when
He giveth his belovèd, sleep. ”

“ Fooled by these rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease, 5
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess.
Eat up thy charge? is this thy body’s end?
Then, Soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store; 10
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more:—
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men;
And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.
William Shakespeare. ”

“ If hence thy silence be,
As ’tis too just a cause,
Let this thought quicken thee: 15
Minds that are great and free,
Should not on Fortune pause;
’Tis crown enough to Virtue still, her own applause.
What though the greedy fry
Be taken with false baits 20
Of worded balladry,
And think it poesy?
They die with their conceits,
And only piteous scorn upon their folly waits.{40}
Then take in hand thy lyre, 25
Strike in thy proper strain,
With Japhet’s line, aspire
Sol’s chariot for new fire,
To give the world again:
Who aided him, will thee, the issue of Jove’s brain. ”

“ Many a man’s embodiment of himself in his writings is below himself; some men’s, strange to say, is above them, or at all events represents most transient moments of their lives. But I should be disposed to question Mr. Hallam’s assertion, judging Cowley merely by what he has left behind him. With a poem like this before us, so full of thought, so full of imagination, containing so accurate and so masterly a sketch of the past history of natural philosophy, we may well hesitate about jumping to the conclusion that his contemporaries were altogether wrong, rating him so highly as they did. ”

“ Praised be the dews, wherewith she moists the ground:
Praised be her beams, the glory of the night,
Praised be her power, by which all powers abound.
Praised be her nymphs, with whom she decks the woods,
Praised be her knights, in whom true honour lives: 6
Praised be that force by which she moves the floods,
Let that Diana shine which all these gives.
In heaven Queen she is among the spheres,
She, mistress-like, makes all things to be pure; 10
Eternity in her oft change she bears,
She beauty is, by her the fair endure. ”

“ All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.
What thou art we know not; 31
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. 35
Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: 40
Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: 45 ”

“ Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? 85
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:{291}
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Yet if we could scorn 91
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. 95
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! ”

“ Fledge the wild-ridgèd mountains steep by steep; 55
And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,
The moss-lain Dryads shall be lulled to sleep;
And in the midst of this wide quietness
A rosy sanctuary will I dress
With the wreathed trellis of a working brain, 60
With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,
With all the gardener Fancy e’er could feign,
Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:
And there shall be for thee all soft delight
That shadowy thought can win, 65
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
To let the warm Love in! ”

“ When the brave on Marengo lay slaughtered in vain,
And beholding broad Europe bowed down by her foemen,
Pitt closed in his anguish the map of her reign!
Not the fate of broad Europe could bend his brave spirit 5
To take for his country the safety of shame;
O then in her triumph remember his merit,
And hallow the goblet that flows to his name.
Round the husbandman’s head, while he traces the furrow,
The mists of the winter may mingle with rain, 10
He may plough it with labour, and sow it in sorrow,
And sigh while he fears he has sowed it in vain ”

“ Have taught the numbers of thy native tongue.
But satire needs not those, and wit will shine 15
Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.
A noble error, and but seldom made,
When poets are by too much force betrayed;
Thy generous fruits, though gathered ere their prime,
Still showed a quickness; and maturing time 20
But mellows what we write, to the dull sweets of rhyme.
Once more, hail, and farewell; farewell, thou young,
But, ah too short, Marcellus of our tongue!
Thy brows with ivy and with laurels bound;
But fate and gloomy night encompass thee around. 25
John Dryden. ”

“ And weep afresh love’s long-since-cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight.
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er 10
The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before:—
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored, and sorrows end.
William Shakespeare. XXIX
SONNET.
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him. ”

“ Thus learning is but learned by halves,
And joy enjoyed no while;
That serves to show thee what thou want’st,
This helps thee to beguile.
But after death is perfect skill, 25
And joy without decay;
When sin is gone, that blinds our eyes,
And steals our joys away;
No crowing cock shall raise us up,
To spend the day in vain; 30
No weary labour shall us drive
To go to bed again.
But for we feel not what we want,
Nor know not what we have;
We love to keep the body’s life, 35
We loath the soul to save. ”

“ Excess of ill-got, ill-kept, pelf
Does only death and danger breed;
Whilst one rich worldling starves himself 35
With what would thousand others feed.
By which we see that wealth and power,
Although they make men rich and great,
The sweets of life do often sour,
And gull ambition with a cheat. 40{94}
Nor is he happier than these,
Who in a moderate estate,
Where he might safely live at ease,
Has lusts that are immoderate.
For he, by those desires misled, 45
Quits his own vine’s securing shade,
To’ expose his naked, empty head
To all the storms man’s peace invade. ”

“ And with thee fade away into the forest dim: 20
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, 25
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. 30
Away! ”

“ The last that dare to struggle with the foe.
’Tis well! from this day forward we shall know 5
That in ourselves our safety must be sought;
That by our own right hands it must be wrought;
That we must stand unpropped, or be laid low.
O dastard whom such foretaste doth not cheer!
We shall exult, if they who rule the land 10
Be men who hold its many blessings dear,
Wise, upright, valiant; not a servile band,
Who are to judge of danger which they fear,
And honour which they do not understand.
William Wordsworth. ”

“ Thomas Gray. CLVIII
SONNET.
When I behold thee, blameless Williamson,
Wrecked like an infant on a savage shore,
While others round on borrowed pinions soar,
My busy fancy calls thy thread misspun;
Till Faith instructs me the deceit to shun, 5
While thus she speaks,—‘Those wings that from the store
Of virtue were not lent, howe’er they bore
In this gross air, will melt when near the sun.
The truly’ ambitious wait for nature’s time,
Content by certain, though by slow, degrees 10
To mount above the reach of vulgar flight ”

“ When I behold thee, though my light be dim, 15
Distant and low, I can in thine see Him,
Who looks upon thee from his glorious throne,
And minds the covenant betwixt all and One.
Henry Vaughan. LXXXV
L’ALLEGRO.
Hence, loathèd Melancholy,
Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,
In Stygian cave forlorn,
’Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy!
Find out some uncouth cell, 5
Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-raven sings;
There under ebon shades, and low-browed rocks,
As ragged as thy locks,
In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. ”

“ When that shall vade, by verse distils your truth.
William Shakespeare. XXXI
SONNET.
A good that never satisfies the mind,
A beauty fading like the April flowers,
A sweet with floods of gall that runs combined,
A pleasure passing ere in thought made ours,
A honour that more fickle is than wind, 5
A glory at opinion’s frown that lowers,
A treasury which bankrupt time devours,
A knowledge than grave ignorance more blind,
A vain delight our equals to command,
A style of greatness, in effect a dream, 10
A swelling thought of holding sea and land,
A servile lot, decked with a pompous name ”

“ The thing which I do most in her admire,
Is of the world unworthy most envíed;
For in those lofty looks is close implied 5
Scorn of base things and sdeign of foul dishonour,
Threatening rash eyes which gaze on her so wide,
That loosely they ne dare to look upon her.
Such pride is praise, such portliness is honour;
That boldness innocence bears in her eyes; 10
And her fair countenance, like a goodly banner,
Spreads in defiance of all enemies.
Was never in this world ought worthy tried,
Without some spark of such self-pleasing pride.{21}
Edmund Spenser. XVII
SONNET. ”

“ Which is still diligent lest others see;
Except our loves at this noon stay,
We shall new shadows make the other way. 15
As the first were made to blind
Others, these which come behind
Will work upon ourselves, and blind our eyes,
If our loves faint, and westwardly decline,
To me thou falsely thine, 20
And I to thee mine actions shall disguise.
The morning shadows wear away,
But these grow longer all the day;
But, oh! love’s day is short, if love decay.
Love is a growing or full constant light, 25
And his short minute, after noon, is night.{60}
John Donne. ”

“ William Cowper. CLXII
TO THE EARL OF WARWICK, ON THE DEATH OF ADDISON.
If, dumb too long, the drooping Muse hath stayed,
And left her debt to Addison unpaid,
Blame not her silence, Warwick, but bemoan,
And judge, oh judge, my bosom by your own.
What mourner ever felt poetic fires! 5
Slow comes the verse that real woe inspires:
Grief unaffected suits but ill with art,
Or flowing numbers with a bleeding heart. ”

“ Profane that holy place,
Where Thou hast chose to set thy face. 15
And then if our stiff tongues shall be
Mute in the praises of thy Deity,
The stones out of the temple wall
Shall cry aloud, and call
Hosanna! and thy glorious footsteps greet. 20
Jeremy Taylor. CXXXIV
BEYOND THE VEIL.
They are all gone into the world of light,
And I alone sit lingering here;
Their very memory is fair and bright,
And my sad thoughts doth clear.
It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast, 5
Like stars upon some gloomy grove,
Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest,
After the sun’s remove.{159} ”