may beget such a gravity as diverts the music of verse." Davenant died A.D. 1668. FROM GONDIBERT. The king (who never time nor power misspent "If to thy fame, brave youth, I could add wings, Proclaim the cause why thou art now my choice. For she is yours, as your adoption free; And in that gift my remnant life I give; And own thee, through her virgin-curtain, shame." Through publish'd love, with so much bashfulness, As young kings show, when by surprise o'erheard Moaning to fav'rite ears a deep distress. For love is a distress, and would be hid Like monarch's griefs, by which they bashful grow; And in that shame beholders they forbid; Since those blush most who most their blushes show. And Gondibert, with dying eyes, did grieve At her vail'd love (a wound he cannot heal), As great minds mourn, who cannot then relieve The virtuous, when through shame they want conceal. And now cold Birtha's rosy looks decay; Who in fear's frost had like her beauty died, But that attendant hope persuades her stay Awhile, to hear her duke; who thus replied: "Victorious king! abroad your subjects are Like legates, safe; at home like altars free: Even by your fame they conquer, as by war; And by your laws safe from each other be. п A king you are o'er subjects so, as wise And brag to strangers of their happy lives. And by this fair pretence, whilst on the king Who thus her sorrows to his bosom sends : "Why should my storm your life's calm voyage vex. Destroying wholly virtue's race in one? So by the first to my unlucky sex All in a single ruin were undone. Make heav'nly Rhodalind your bride; whilst I, Your once-loved maid, excuse you, since I know That virtuous men forsake so willingly Long-cherish'd life, because to heav'n they go. Let me her servant be: a dignity Which if your pity in my fall procures, I still shall value the advancement high, Ere this high sorrow up to dying grew, The duke the casket open'd, and from thence (Form'd like a heart) a cheerful em'rald drew; Cheerful, as if the lively stone had sense. The thirtieth carract it had doubled twice; Nor yet of those which make the Ethiop proud; Nor taken from those rocks where Bactrians climb: But from the Scythian, and without a cloud; Then thus he spake: "This, Birtha, from my male On whose kind heart they did in love prevail, Seven centuries have pass'd, since it from bride Though much renown'd because it chastens loves, By faintness and a pale decay of life; Though em ralds serve as spies to jealous brides,— With this take Orgo, as a better spy, Who may in all your kinder fears be sent To watch at court, if I deserve to die, By making this to fade, and you lament." Had now an artful pencil Birtha drawn, With grief all dark, then straight with joy all light, He must have fancied first, in early dawn, A sudden break of beauty out of night. Or first he must have mark'd what paleness fear, COWLEY. ABRAHAM COWLEY, the son of a grocer in London, was born A.D. 1618, and educated partly at Westminster School, and partly at Cambridge. From the University he was ejected during the great Rebellion; and following the queen to France, he devoted himself with persevering zeal to the royal cause. On his return to England he was imprisoned, and afterwards set free on bail. Till the Restoration he continued to live in England, without offering any further what must have proved an ineffectual opposition to the government. In consequence of this quiescence his former services and sacrifices met, on the accession of Charles the Second, no other return than that of neglect and contumely. Near the end of his life Cowley obtained a small competence, through the influence of Buckingham; and settling at Chertsey, on the Thames, enjoyed for a short time what he had pronounced to be the best human happiness-" a small house in a large garden." Cowley was one of the most learned among poets, as well as one of the most simple-hearted and amiable of men. In spite of quaint conceits, and a versification often immelodious, his poetry has qualities both of thought and imagination which won for it the applause of Milton. THE COMPLAINT. In a deep vision's intellectual scene, Of the black yew's unlucky green, Mix'd with the mourning willow's careful gray, And, lo! a Muse appear'd to his closed sight And with loose pride it wanton'd in the air. Pindar, her Theban favourite, to meet; A crown was on her head, and wings were on her feet. She touch'd him with her harp and rais'd him from the ground; The shaken strings melodiously resound. "Art thou return'd at last," said she, "To this forsaken place and me? Thou prodigal! who didst so loosely waste But when I meant t' adopt thee for my son, As ever any of the mighty nine Had to their dearest children done; When I resolved t' exalt thy anointed name Thou changeling! thou, bewitch'd with noise and show, Wouldst see the world abroad, and have a share In all the follies and the tumults there; Thou wouldst, forsooth, be something in a State, Of human lusts to shake off innocence; Business! the thing which I of all things hate; Thus spake the Muse, and spake it with a smile "Ah, wanton foe! dost thou upbraid The ills which thou thyself hast made? Thou, wicked spirit! stolest me away, And my abused soul didst bear Into thy new-found worlds, I know not where, Lo, still in verse against thee I complain. Which, if the earth but once it ever breeds, The foolish sports I did on thee bestow Make all my heart and labour fruitless now; Where once such fairies dance, no grass doth ever grow." 66 SPECIMEN STANZAS FROM THE HYMN TO LIGHT." Say, from what golden quivers of the sky Do all thy winged arrows fly? Swiftness and Power by birth are thine: From thy great sire they came-thy sire, the Word Divine. Thou in the Moon's bright chariot, proud and gay, And all the year dost with thee bring Of thousand flowery lights thine own nocturnal spring. |