All arm'd in brass the richest dress of war,
(A dismal glorious sight) he shone afar.
The sun himself started with sudden fright,
To see his beams return so dismal bright.

COWLEY.

An universal consternation:

His bloody eyes he hurls round, his sharp paws
Tear up the ground; then runs he wild about,
Lashing his
angry tail and roaring out.

Beasts creep into their dens, and tremble there;

Trees, though no wind is stirring, shake with fear; Silence and horror fill the place around:

Echo itself dares scarce repeat the sound.

COWLEY.

THEIR fictions were often violent and unnatural.

Of his mistress bathing:

The fish around her crowded, as they do
To the false light that treacherous fishers shew,
And all with as much ease might taken be,
As she at first took me :

For ne'er did light so clear

Among the waves appear,

Though every night the sun himself set there.

COWLEY.

The poetical effect of a lover's name upon glass:

My name engrav'd herein

Doth contribute my firmness to this glass;

Which, ever since that charm, hath been

As hard as that which grav'd it was.

DONNE.

Their conceits were sometimes slight and trifling.

On an inconstant woman :

He enjoys the calmy sunshine now,

And no breath stirring hears, In the clear heaven of thy brow,

No smallest cloud appears.

He sees thee gentle, fair and gay,

And trusts the faithless April of thy May.

COWLEY.

Upon a paper written with the juice of lemon, and read by the fire:

Nothing yet in thee is seen,

But when a genial heat warms thee within,

A new-born wood of various lines there grows;

Here buds an L, and there a B,

Here spouts a V, and there a T,

And all the flourishing letters stand in rows.

COWLEY.

As they sought only for novelty, they did not much inquire whether their allusions were to things high or low, elegant or gross; whether they compared the little to the great, or the great to the little.

Physick and chirurgery for a lover :

Gently, ah gently, madam, touch

The wound, which you yourself have made; That pain must needs be very much,

Which makes me of your hand afraid.

Cordials of pity give me now,

For I too weak of purgings grow.

The world and a clock :

Mahol th' inferior world's fantastic face

COWLEY.

Thro' all the turns of matter's maze did trace;
Great Nature's well-set clock in pieces took ;
On all the springs and smallest wheels did look
Of life and motion, and with equal art
Made up the whole again of every part.

COWLEY.

A coal-pit has not often found its poet; but that it may not want its due honour, Cleiveland has paralleled it with the sun :

The moderate value of our guiltless ore
Makes no man atheist, and no woman whore ;
Yet why should hallow'd vestal's sacred shrine
Deserve more honour than a flaming mine?
These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be,
Than a few embers, for a deity.

Had he our pits, the Persian would admire
No sun, but warm's devotion at our fire:
He'd leave the trotting whipster, and prefer
Our profound Vulcan 'bove that waggoner.
For wants he heat, or light? or would have store
Of both? 'tis here: and what can suns give more?
Nay, what's the sun but, in a different name,
A coal-pit rampant, or a mine on flame?
Then let this truth reciprocally run,

The sun's heaven's coalery, and coals our sun.

Death, a voyage:

No family

E'er rigg'd a soul for heaven's discovery,
With whom more venturers might boldly dare
Venture their stakes, with him in joy to share.

DONNE.

Their thoughts and expressions were sometimes grossly absurd, and such as no figures or licence can reconcile to the understanding.

A lover neither dead nor alive :

Then down I laid my head

Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead,
And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled:
Ah, sottish soul! said I,

When back to its cage again I saw it fly;

Fool, to resume her broken chain!

And row her galley here again!

Fool, to that body to return

Where it condemn'd and destin'd is to burn!

Once dead, how can it be,

Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee,

That thou shouldst come to live it o'er again in me?

A lover's heart, a hand grenado :

Wo to her stubborn heart, if once mine come

Into the self-same room,

"Twill tear and blow up all within,

Like a grenado shot into a magazin.

Then shall Love keep the ashes, and torn parts,

Of both our broken hearts:

Shall out of both one new one make :

From hers th' allay; from mine, the metal take.

COWLEY.