If any part of either we expect,
This may our judgment in the search direct;
God the first garden made, and the first city
Cain.

O blessed shades! O gentle cool retreat
From all th' immoderate heat,

When Venus would her dear Ascanius keep
A prisoner in the downy bands of sleep,
The odorous herbs and flowers beneath him
spread,

As the most soft and sweetest bed;
Not her own lap would mere have charr ed
his head.

In which the frantic world does burn and Who, that has reason and his smell,

sweat!

This does the Lion-star, ambition's rage;
This avarice, the Dog-star's thirst, assuage;
Every where else their fatal power we see;
They make and rule man's wretched destiny:
They neither set, nor disappear,
But tyrannize o'er all the year;

Whilst we ne'er feel their flame or influence
here.

The birds that dance from bough to bough,
And sing above in every tree,

Are not from fears and cares more free
Than we, who lie, or sit, or walk, below,
And should by right be singers too.

What prince's choir of music can excel

That, which within this shade does dwell?

To which we nothing pay or give;

They, like all other poets, live

Whoever a true epicure would be,
May there find cheap and virtuous luxury.

Without reward, or thanks for their obliging Vitellius's table, which did hold

pains;

'T is well if they become not prey. The whistling winds add their less artful strains,

And a grave bass the murmuring fountains play;

Nature does all this harmony bestow,

But to our plants, art's music too,
The pipe, theorbo, and guitar, we owe;
The lute itself, which once was green and
mute,

When Orpheus strook th' inspired lute,
The trees danced round, and understood
By sympathy the voice of wood.

These are the spells, that to kind sleep invite,
And nothing does within resistance make,
Which yet we moderately take;
Who would not choose to be awake,
While he's encompast round with such de-
light,

To th' ear, the nose, the touch, the taste. and
sight?

As many creatures as the ark of old;
That fiscal table, to which every day
All countries did a constant tribute pay,
Could nothing more delicious afford

Than Nature's liberality,

Helped with a little art and industry,
Allows the meanest gardener's board.
The wanton taste no fish or fowl can choose,
For which the grape or melon she would
lose;

Though all th' inhabitants of sea and air
Be listed in the glutton's bill of fare,

Yet still the fruits of earth we see
Placed the third story high in all her luxury

But with no sense the garden does comply,
None courts, or flatters, as it does, the eye.
When the great Hebrew king did almost
strain

The wondrous treasures of his wealth, and

brain,

His royal southern guest to entertain:

THE GARDEN.

Though she on silver floors did tread,
With bright Assyrian carpets on them spread,
To hide the metal's poverty;
Though she looked up to roofs of gold,
And nought around her could behold
But silk, and rich embroidery,
And Babylonish tapestry,
And wealthy Hiram's princely dye;

Though Ophir's starry stones met every

where her eye;

61

Where does the wisdom and the power divine
In a more bright and sweet reflection shine?
Where do we finer strokes and colors see
Of the Creator's real poetry,

Than when we with attention look
Upon the third day's volume of the book?
If we could open and intend our eye,
We all, like Moses, should espy
Even in a bush the radiant Deity.
But we despise these, his inferior ways,

Though she herself and Ler gay host were (Though no less full of miracle and praise.)

drest

With all the shining glories of the East;
When lavish Art her costly work had done,
The honor and the prize of bravery
Was by the garden from the palace won
And every rose and lily there did stand

Better attired by Nature's hand.
The case thus judged against the king we see.
By one, that would not be so rich, though
wiser far than he.

Nor does this happy place only dispense
Such various pleasures to the sense;
Here health itself does live,

That salt of life which does to all a relish give,
its standing pleasure and intrinsic wealth,
The body's virtue and the soul's good-for-
tune, health.

The tree of life, when it in Eden stood,
Did its immortal head to Heaven rear;
It lasted a tall cedar, till the flood;
Now a small thorny shrub it does appear;
Nor will it thrive too every where:
It always here is freshest seen

'Tis only here an evergreen.

Upon the flowers of Heaven we gaze;
The stars of Earth no wonder in us raise;
Though these perhaps do, more than they
The life of mankind sway.

Although no part of mighty Nature be
More stored with beauty, power and mystery;
Yet, to encourage human industry,
God has so ordered, that no other part
Such space and such dominion leaves for Art.

We nowhere Art do so triumphant see,

As when it grafts or buds the tree.
In other things we count it to excel,
If it a docile scholar can appear
To Nature, and but imitate her well;
It over-rules and is her master, here.
It imitates her Maker's power divine,
And changes her sometinies, and sometime
does refine.

It does, like grace, the fallen tree restore
To its blest state of Paradise before.
Who would not joy to see his conquering land
O'er all the vegetable world command?
And the wild giants of the wood receive
What law he's pleased to give?

If, through the strong and beauteous fence He bids th' ill-natured crab produce

Of temperance and innocence,

And wholesome labors, and a quiet mind,

Any diseases passage find,

They must not think here to assail

A land unarmed or without a guard;

They must fight for it, and dispute it hard,
Before they can prevail :

Scarce any plant is growing here,

Which against death some weapon does not

bear.

Let cities boast that they provide
For life the ornaments of pride;
But 'tis the country and the field,
That furnish it with staff and shield.

The gentle apple's winy juice,

The golden fruit that worthy is
Of Galatea's purple kiss.

He does the savage hawthorn teach
To bear the medlar and the pear;
He bids the rustic plum to rear
A noble trunk, and be a peach.
Ev'n Daphne's coyness he does mock,
And weds the cherry to her stock,
Though she refused Apollo's suit;
Even she, that chaste and virgin tree,
Now wonders at herself, to see

That she's a mother made, and blushes in her

fruit.

And, pleasing a man's self, none other to dis- What an over-happy one