Actions of the last age are like almanacs of the last year. The Sophy. A Tragedy.

But whither am I strayed? I need not raise
Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise;
Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built;
Nor needs thy juster title the foul guilt

Of Eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,

Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred slain.1
On Mr. John Fletcher's Works.

And when it comes, say, Welcome, friend!

Ibid.

2 Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit (The modest Nymph saw the god, and blushed). - Epigrammationa Sacra. Aquæ in vinum, versæ, p. 299.

Sydneian showers

Of sweet discourse, whose powers

Can crown old Winter's head with flowers.

When flowing cups pass swiftly round

With no allaying Thames.2

To Althea from Prison, ii.

Fishes that tipple in the deep,

Know no such liberty.

1 See Browne, page 218.

Ibid.

The mind, the music breathing from her face. - BYRON: Bride of Aby

dos, canto i. stanza 6.

2 See Shakespeare, page 103.

We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine,
But search of deep philosophy,

Wit, eloquence, and poetry;

Arts which I lov'd, for they, my friend, were thine.

On the Death of Mr. William Harvey.

His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might
Be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right.1
On the Death of Crashaw.

The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
And drinks, and gapes for drink again;
The plants suck in the earth, and are
With constant drinking fresh and fair.

From Anacreon, ü. Drinking.

Fill all the glasses there, for why
Should every creature drink but I?
Why, man of morals, tell me why?

1 For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight,
He can't be wrong whose life is in the right.

Ibid.

POPE: Essay on Man, epilogue iii, line 303.

A mighty pain to love it is,

And 't is a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pains, the greatest pain
It is to love, but love in vain.

Hope, of all ills that men endure,
The only cheap and universal cure.
Th' adorning thee with so much art
Is but a barb'rous skill;

"T is like the pois'ning of a dart,
Too apt before to kill.

From Anacreon, vii. Gold.

The Mistress. For Hope.

The Waiting Maid.

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,
But an eternal now does always last.1

When Israel was from bondage led,
Led by the Almighty's hand
From out of foreign land,

The great sea beheld and fled.

Davideis. Book i. Line 25.

An harmless flaming meteor shone for hair,
And fell adown his shoulders with loose care.2

The monster London laugh at me.

Let but thy wicked men from out thee go,
And all the fools that crowd thee so,
Even thou, who dost thy millions boast,
A village less than Islington wilt grow,
A solitude almost.

The fairest garden in her looks,
And in her mind the wisest books.

Line 41.

Book ii. Line 95.

Of Solitude, xi.

Ibid. vii.

The Garden, i.

God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.

1 One of our poets (which is it?) speaks of an everlasting now. The Doctor, chap. xxv. p. 1.

2 Loose his beard and hoary hair

Stream'd like a meteor to the troubled air.

8 See Bacon, page 167.

GRAY: The Bard, i. 2.

Hence, ye profane! I hate ye all,

Both the great vulgar and the small.

Horace. Book iii. Ode 1.

Charm'd with the foolish whistling of a name.1

Virgil, Georgics. Book ii. Line 72.

Words that weep and tears that speak.2

The Prophet.

We griev'd, we sigh'd, we wept; we never blush'd before.
Discourse concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell.

Thus would I double my life's fading space;
For he that runs it well, runs twice his race.3

Discourse xi. Of Myself. St. xi.

RALPH VENNING.

1620(?)-1673.

All the beauty of the world, 't is but skin deep.4

Orthodoxe Paradoxes. (Third edition, 1650.) The Triumph of
Assurance, p. 41.

They spare the rod, and spoyle the child."

Mysteries and Revelations, p. 5. (1649.)

ANDREW MARVELL. 1620-1678.

Orange bright,

Like golden lamps in a green night.

And all the way, to guide their chime,

Bermudas.

With falling oars they kept the time.

Ibid.

1 Ravish'd with the whistling of a name. — POPE: Essay on Man, epistle iv. line 281.

2 Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. - GRAY: Progress of Poesy, iii. 3, 4.

8 For he lives twice who can at once employ

The present well, and ev'n the past enjoy.

POPE: Imitation of Martial.

4 Many a dangerous temptation comes to us in fine gay colours that are but skin-deep. - HENRY: Commentaries. Genesis iii.

5 See Skelton, page 8.