Weigh me the fire; or canst thou find And taste thou them as saltless there, Tell me the people that do keep Tell me the motes, dusts, sands, and spears Cherry Ripe. Cherry ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry, Full and fair ones-come and buy; If so be you ask me where They do grow?-I answer: There, Get up, get up for shame, the blooming morn See how Aurora throws her fair Fresh-quilted colours through the air; Nay, not so much as out of bed; When all the birds have matins said, And sung their thankful hymns: 'tis sin, When as a thousand virgins on this day, Rise, and put on your foliage, and be seen Besides, the childhood of the day has kept, Come, and receive them while the light Retires himself, or else stands still Till you come forth. Wash, dress, be brief in praying; Come, my Corinna, come; and, coming, mark Or branch; each porch, each door, ere this, Made up of white thorn neatly interwove; A deal of youth, ere this, is come And some have wept, and wooed, and plighted troth, Many a green gown has been given; Many a kiss, both odd and even; Many a glance, too, has been sent From out the eye, love's firmament; Many a jest told of the key's betraying Our life is short, and our days run Lies drowned with us in endless night. RICHARD LOVELACE. Of the same class as Herrick, less buoyant or vigorous in natural power, and much less fortunate in his destiny, was RICHARD LOVELACE (1618-1658). This cavalier poet was well descended, being the son of Sir William Lovelace, knight. He was educated at Oxford, and afterwards presented at court. Anthony Wood describes him at the age of sixteen, 'as the most amiable and beautiful person that eye ever beheld; a person also of innate modesty, virtue, and courtly deportment, which made him then, but especially after, when he retired to the great city, much admired and adored by the female sex.' Thus personally distinguished, and a royalist in principle, Lovelace was chosen by the county of Kent to deliver a petition to the House of Commons, praying that the king might be restored to his rights, and the government settled. The Long Parliament was then in the ascendant, and Lovelace was thrown into prison for his boldness. He was liberated on heavy bail, but spent his fortune in fruitless efforts to succour the royal cause. He afterwards served in the French army, and was wounded at Dunkirk. Returning in 1648, he was again imprisoned. To beguile the time of his confinement, he collected his poems, and published them in 1649, under the title of Lucasta: Odes, Sonnets, Songs, &c., &c. The general title was given them on account of the 'lady of his love,' Miss Lucy Sacheverell, whom he usually called Lux Casta. This was an unfortunate attachment; for the lady, hearing that Lovelace died of his wounds at Dunkirk, married another person. From this time the course of the poet was downward. The ascendant party did, indeed, release his person, when the death of the king had left them the less to fear from their opponents; but Lovelace was now penniless, and the reputation of a broken cavalier was no passport to better circumstances. It appears that, oppressed with want and melancholy, the gallant Lovelace fell into a consumption. Wood relates that he became 'very poor in body and purse, was the object of charity, went in ragged clothes, and mostly lodged in obscure and dirty places,' in one of which, situated in a miserable alley near Shoe Lane, he died in 1658. What a contrast to the gay and splendid scenes of his youth! Aubrey confirms the statement of Wood as to the reverse of fortune; but recent inquiries have rather tended to throw discredit on those pictures of the extreme misery of the poet. Destitute, however, he no doubt was, 'fallen from his high estate,' though not perhaps so low as to die an example of abject poverty and This night, and locks picked; yet w' are not a Maying. misery. The poetry of Lovelace, like his life, was Come, let us go, while we are in our prime, We shall grow old apace, and die 1 Herrick here alludes to the multitudes which were to be seen roaming in the fields on May morning; he afterwards refers to the appearance of the towns and villages bedecked with evergreens. very unequal. There is a spirit and nobleness in some of his verses and sentiments that charm the reader, as much as his gallant bearing and fine person captivated the fair. In general, however, they are affected, obscure, and harsh. His taste was perverted by the fashion of the day-the affected wit, ridiculous gallantry, and boasted licentiousness of the cavaliers. That Lovelace knew how to appreciate true taste and nature, may be seen from his lines on Lely's portrait of Charles I. See, what an humble bravery doth shine, And grief triumphant breaking through each line, So sacred a contempt that others show To this-o' the height of all the wheel-below; Lord Byron has been censured for a line in his The mind, the music breathing from her face. The noble poet vindicates the expression on the broad ground of its truth and appositeness. He does not seem to have been aware-as was pointed out by Sir Egerton Brydges-that Lovelace first employed the same illustration, in a song of Orpheus, lamenting the death of his wife: Oh, could you view the melody Of every grace, And music of her face, You'd drop a tear; Seeing more harmony In her bright eye Than now you hear. Song. Why should you swear I am forsworn, Since thine I vowed to be? Lady, it is already morn, And 'twas last night I swore to thee Have I not loved thee much and long, I must all other beauties wrong, Not but all joy in thy brown hair Then, if when I have loved my round, With spoils of meaner beauties crowned, The Rose. Sweet, serene, sky-like flower, Vermilion ball that's given See! rosy is her bower, Song. Amarantha, sweet and fair, Oh, braid no more that shining hair! Let it fly, as unconfined, As its calm ravisher, the wind; Who hath left his darling, th' east, To wanton o'er that spicy nest. Do not, then, wind up that light But shake your head, and scatter day! To Lucasta, on going to the Wars. Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind, Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind, True, a new mistress now I chase, Yet this inconstancy is such, As you, too, shall adore; I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more. To Althea, from Prison. When love with unconfined wings Hovers within my gates, And my divine Althea brings To whisper at my grates; When I lie tangled in her hair, And fettered with her eye, The birds that wanton in the air Know no such liberty. When flowing cups run swiftly round When healths and draughts go free, When, linnet-like confined, I When I shall voice aloud how good Th' enlarged winds, that curl the flood, Stone walls do not a prison make, THOMAS RANDOLPII. THOMAS RANDOLPH (1605-1634) published a collection of miscellaneous poems, in addition to five dramatic pieces. He was born at Newnham, near Daventry, in Northamptonshire, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was early distinguished for his talents, which procured him the friendship of Ben Jonson and the other wits of the day. Ben enrolled him among his adopted sons; but Randolph fell into intemperate habits, and the What then you cannot love, let me, When age hath made me what I am not now, To a Lady admiring herself in a Looking-glass. SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT. SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT, whose life occupies an important space in the history of the stage, preceding and after the Restoration, wrote a heroic poem entitled Gondibert, and some copies of miscellaneous verses. Davenant was born in 1605, and was the son of a vintner at Oxford. There is a scandalous story, that he was the natural son of Shakspeare, who was in the habit of stopping at the Crown Tavern-kept by the elder Davenant-on his journeys between London and Stratford. This story was related to Pope by Betterton the player; but it seems to rest on no authority but idle tradition. and precocious admiration of Shakspeare; for, when Young Davenant must, however, have had a strong only ten years of age, he penned an ode, In Remembrance of Master William Shakspeare, which opens in the following strain: Beware, delighted poets, when you sing, It is to be regretted-for the sake of Davenant, as well as of the world-that the great dramatist did not live to guide the taste and foster the genius of his youthful admirer, whose life presented some strange adventures. About the year 1628, Davenant began to write for the stage; and in 1638, on the death of Ben Jonson, he was appointed laureate. He was afterwards manager of Drury Lane, but, entering into the commotions and intrigues of the civil war, he was apprehended and confined in the Tower. He afterwards escaped to France. When the queen sent over to the Earl of Newcastle a quantity of military stores, Davenant resolved to return to England, and he distinguished himself so much in the cause of the royalists, that he was knighted for his skill and bravery. On the decline of the king's affairs, he returned to France, and wrote part of his Gondibert. His next step was to sail for Virginia as a colonial projector; but the vessel was captured by one of the parliamentary ships-of-war, and Davenant was lodged in prison at Cowes, in the Isle of Wight. In 1650, he was removed to the Tower, preparatory to his being tried by the High Commission Court. His life was considered in danger, but he was released after two years' imprisonment. Milton is said to have interposed in his behalf; and as Davenant is reported to have interfered in favour of Milton when the royalists were again in the ascendant, after the Restoration, we would gladly believe the statement to be true. Such incidents give a peculiar grace and relief to the sternness and bitterness of party conflicts. At Talavera, the English and French troops for a moment suspended their conflict, to drink of a stream which flowed between them. The shells were passed across, from enemy to enemy, without apprehension or molestation. We, in the same manner, would rather assist political adversaries to drink of that fountain of intellectual pleasure, which should be the common refreshment of both parties, than disturb and pollute it with the havoc of unseasonable hostilities.'* Milton and Davenant must have felt in this manner when they waived their political differences in honour of genius and poesy. When the author of Gondibert obtained his enlargement, he set about establishing a theatre, and, to the surprise of all, succeeded in the attempt. After the Restoration, he again basked in royal favour, and continued to write and superintend the performance of plays till his death, April 7, 1668. The poem of Gondibert, though regarded by Davenant's friends and admirers-Cowley and Waller being of the number-as a great and durable monument of genius, is now almost utterly forgotten. The plot is romantic, but defective in interest; and its extreme length-about six thousand lines-and the description of versification in which it is written-the long four-lined stanza, with alternate rhymes, copied by Dryden in his Annus Mirabilis-render the poem languid and tedious. The critics have been strangely at variance with each other as to its merits, but to general readers the poem may be said to be unknown. Davenant prefixed a long and elaborate preface to his poem, which is highly creditable to him for judgment, taste, and feeling, and may be considered the precursor of Dryden's admirable critical introductions to his plays. His worship of Shakspeare continued unabated to the last, though he was mainly instrumental, by his masks and scenery, in driving the elder bard from the stage. Dryden, in his preface to the Tempest, states, that he did not set any value on what he had written in that play, but out of gratitude to the memory of Sir William Davenant, who,' he adds, 'did me the honour to join me with him in the alteration of it. It was originally Shakspeare's-a poet for whom he had particularly a high veneration, and whom he first taught me to admire.' To the Queen, Entertained at night by the Countess of Anglesey. In its first birth, when all the year was May; Dares praise, with such full art, what make you here? Song. The lark now leaves his watery nest, And to implore your light, he sings, Who look for day before his mistress wakes: Awake, awake, break through your veils of lawn! Then draw your curtains, and begin the dawn. *Macaulay's Essays. [Description of the Virgin Birtha.] [From Gondibert.] To Astragon, heaven for succession gave One only pledge, and Birtha was her name, Whose mother slept where flowers grew on her grave, And she succeeded her in face and fame. Her beauty princes durst not hope to use, Unless, like poets, for their morning theme; She ne'er saw courts, yet courts could have undone She never had in busy cities been, Her own free virtue silently employs, Gracious and free she breaks upon them all And droop like flowers when evening shuts her eyes. Beneath a myrtle covert she does spend, In maid's weak wishes, her whole stock of thought; Fond maids! who love with mind's fine stuff would mend, Which nature purposely of bodies wrought. She fashions him she loved of angels' kind; As eagles, then, when nearest heaven they fly, Soon her opinion of his hurtless heart, 'If I do love,' said she, 'that love, O Heaven! 'And you, my altered mother, grown above |