ABRAHAM COWLEY. 1618-1667.

What shall I do to be for ever known,
And make the age to come my own?

His time is for ever, everywhere his place.

The Motto.

Friendship in Absence.

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

Wit, eloquence, and poetry;

Arts which I loved, 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.

We grieved, we sighed, we wept: we never blushed before.

Discourse concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell.

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. Drinking. Why

Should every creature drink but I?
Why, man of morals, tell me why?
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.

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

Ibid.

Gold.

Pope, Essay on Man, Ep. iii. Line 306.

Hope, of all ills that men endure,
The only cheap and universal cure..

The adorning thee with so much art
Is but a barbarous skill;
"T is like the poisoning of a dart,
Too apt before to kill.

For Hope.

The Waiting Maid.

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

Davideis. Book i. Line 361.

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

The monster London

Book ii. Line 102.

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.

Of Solitude.

God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.3

Hence, ye profane, I hate ye all,
Both the great vulgar and the small.

The Garden. Essay v.

Charmed with the foolish whistling of a name.

Horace. Book iii. Ode 1.

Virgil, Georgics.

Book ii. Line 72.

The Prophet.

Words that weep and tears that speak.5

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

2 Compare Gray, The Bard. Page 327.
3 Compare Bacon, Of Gardens. Page 138.
4 Ravished with the whistling of a name.

Pope, Essay on Man, Ep. iv. Line 283.

5 Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.

Gray, Progress of Poesy, iii. 3, 4.

EDMUND WALLER. 1605-1687.

The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made.1
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become,

As they draw near to their eternal home.

Verses upon his Divine Poesy.

Under the tropic is our language spoke,
And part of Flanders hath received our yoke.

Upon the Death of the Lord Protector.

A narrow compass! and yet there

Dwelt all that's good, and all that's fair:

Give me but what this riband bound,
Take all the rest the sun goes round.

And keeps that palace of the soul.2

Go, lovely rose!

Tell her that wastes her time and me
That now she knows,

When I resemble her to thee,

On a Girdle.

Of Tea.

How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Go, lovely Rose.

How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!

Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse,
And every conqueror creates a muse.

Ibid.

Panegyric on Cromwell.

1 Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as harbingers to heaven; and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness through the chinks of her sickness-broken body.-Fuller, Holy and Profane State, Book i. Ch. 2.

To vanish in the chinks that Time has made. - Rogers, Pastum. 2 The dome of thought, the palace of the soul.

Byron, Childe Harold, Canto ii. St. 6.

Poets lose half the praise they should have got,
Could it be known what they discreetly biot.

Upon Roscommon's Trans. of Horace, De Arte Poetica.

Could we forbear dispute, and practise love,
We should agree as angels do above.

Divine Love. Canto iii.

That eagle's fate and mine are one,
Which, on the shaft that made him die,
Espied a feather of his own,

Wherewith he wont to soar so high.1

To a Lady singing a Song of his Composing.

The yielding marble of her snowy breast.

For all we know

On a Lady passing through a Crowd of People.

Of what the blessed do above

Is, that they sing, and that they love.

So in the Libyan fable it is told

While I listen to thy Voice.

That once an eagle, stricken with a dart,
Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft,
"With our own feathers, not by other's hands,
Are we now smitten."

Eschylus, Fragm. 123, Plumptre's Translation.

So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain,

No more through rolling clouds to soar again,

Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart,

And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart.

Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Line 826.

Like a young eagle, who has lent his plume

To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom,

See their own feathers plucked, to wing the dart
Which rank corruption destines for their heart.

Thomas Moore, Corruption.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 1605-1682.

Too rashly charged the troops of error, and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth.

There is music in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument.

Sleep is a death; O make me try
By sleeping what it is to die,

And as gently lay my head
On my grave as now my bed!

Ruat cœlum, fiat voluntas tua.*

Part ii. Sec. ix.

Part ii. Sec. xii.

Ibid.

Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave. Urn Burial, Ch. v.

Quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests.

Ibid.

Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it.5

Ibid.

What song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women.

1 Rich with the spoils of time. - Gray, Elegy, St. 13.

2 The course of nature is the art of God.

Ibid.

Young, Night Thoughts, ix. Line 1267.

3 Compare Lovelace. Page 172.
4 Compare Herbert. Page 161.
5 Compare Cibber. Page 247.