But so much her power may do
That she can dissolve them too.
If thy verse do bravely tower,
As she makes wing, she gets power!
Yet the higher she doth soar,
She's affronted still the more;
Till she to the high'st hath past,
Then she rests with Fame at last.
Let nought therefore thee affright,
But make forward in thy flight:
For if I could match thy rhyme,
To the very stars I'd climb;
There begin again, and fly
Till I reach'd eternity.
But, alas! my Muse is slow;
For thy pace she flags too low.
Yes, the more's her hapless fate,

Her short wings were clipp'd of late;
And poor I, her fortune ruing,
Am myself put up a muing.
But if I my cage can rid,
I'll fly, where I never did.

And though for her sake I'm crost,
Though my best hopes I have lost,
And knew she would make my trouble
Ten times more than ten times double;
I would love and keep her too,
Spite of all the world could do.

For though banish'd from my flocks,
And confined within these rocks,
Here I waste away the light,
And consume the sullen night;
She doth for my comfort stay,
And keeps many cares away.
Though I miss the flowery fields,
With those sweets the spring-tide yields;
Though I may not see those groves,
Where the shepherds chaunt their loves,
And the lasses more excel
Than the sweet-voiced Philomel;
Though of all those pleasures past,
Nothing now remains at last,

But remembrance, poor relief,

That more makes than mends my grief:
She's my mind's companion still,
Maugre Envy's evil will:

Whence she should be driven to,
Were't in mortals' power to do.
She doth tell me where to borrow
Comfort in the midst of sorrow;
Makes the desolatest place
To her presence be a grace,
And the blackest discontents
Be her fairest ornaments.
In my former days of bliss,
His divine skill taught me this,
That from every thing I saw,
I could some invention draw;
And raise pleasure to her height
Through the meanest object's sight:
By the murmur of a spring,
Or the least bough's rustling;
By a daisy, whose leaves spread,
Shut when Titan goes to bed;

Or a shady bush or tree,

She could more infuse in me,
Than all Nature's beauties can,
In some other wiser man.
By her help I also now
Make this churlish place allow
Some things that may sweeten gladness

In the very gall of sadness:

The dull loneness, the black shade
That these hanging vaults have made,
The strange music of the waves,
Beating on these hollow caves,

This black den, which rocks emboss,
Overgrown with eldest moss;
The rude portals, that give light
More to terror than delight,
This my chamber of neglect,
Wall'd about with disrespect,
From all these, and this dull air,
A fit object for despair,

She hath taught me by her might
To draw comfort and delight.

Therefore then, best earthly bliss,
I will cherish thee for this!
Poesy, thou sweet'st content
That e'er Heaven to mortals lent;
Though they as a trifle leave thee,
Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee,
Though thou be to them a scorn
That to naught but earth are born;
Let my life no longer be

Than I am in love with thee!

Though our wise ones call it madness,

Let me never taste of gladness

If I love not thy mad'st fits
Above all their greatest wits!

And though some, too seeming holy,
Do account thy raptures folly,

Thou dost teach me to contemn
What makes knaves and fools of them!*

THE SHEPHERD'S RESOLUTION.

SHALL I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman's fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care,
'Cause another's rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flow'ry meads in May;

If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?

Shall my foolish heart be pined,
'Cause I see a woman kind?
Or a well-disposed nature
Joined with a lovely feature?

[* The praises of poetry have been often sung in ancient and modern times; strange powers have been ascribed to it of influence over animate and inanimate auditors; its force over fascinated crowds has been acknowledged; but before Wither, no one had celebrated its power at home; the wealth and the strength which this divine gift confers upon its possessor.-LAMB.]

Be she meeker, kinder, than The turtle-dove or pelican;

If she be not so to me,
What care I how kind she be?
Shall a woman's virtues move
Me to perish for her love?
Or, her well-deservings known,
Make me quite forget mine own?
Be she with that goodness blest,
Which may merit name of Best;

If she be not such to me,
What care I how good she be?
'Cause her fortune seems too high,
Shall I play the fool and die?
Those that bear a noble mind,
Where they want of riches find,
Think what with them they would do,
That without them dare to woo;

And, unless that mind I see,
What care I how great she be?

Great or good, or kind or fair,
I will ne'er the more despair:
If she love me, this believe-
I will die ere she shall grieve.
If she slight me when I woo,
I can scorn and let her go:

If she be not fit for me,
What care I for whom she be?

[HENRY KING, D. D., was the eldest son of John King, Bishop of London, and was born in Warnoll, Buckinghamshire, and educated at Oxford. He became chaplain to James I., Archdeacon of Colchester, Dean of St. Paul's, and finally Bishop of Chichester. Besides his polemical works, he published "The Psalms of David

SIC VITA.

LIKE to the falling of a star,
Or as the flights of eagles are;
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue,
Or silver drops of morning dew;
Or like a wind that chafes the flood,
Or bubbles which on water stood:
Even such is man, whose borrow'd light
Is straight call'd in, and paid to-night.
The wind blows out, the bubble dies;
The spring entomb'd in autumn lies;
The dew dries up, the star is shot :
The flight is past-and man forgot.

LIFE.

WHAT is the existence of man's life
But open war or slumber'd strife!
Where sickness to his sense presents
The combat of the elements,
And never feels a perfect peace

Till death's cold hand signs his release.

It is a storm-where the hot blood
Outvies in rage the boiling flood:
And each loud passion of the mind
Is like a furious gust of wind,
Which beats the bark with many a wave,
Till he casts anchor in the grave.

It is a flower-which buds and grows,
And withers as the leaves disclose;
Whose spring and fall faint seasons keep,
Like fits of waking before sleep,
Then shrinks into that fatal mould
Where its first being was enroll'd.
It is a dream-whose seeming truth;
Is moralized in age and youth;
Where all the comforts he can share
As wand'ring as his fancies are,
Till in a mist of dark decay
The dreamers vanish quite away.
It is a dial-which points out
The sunset as it moves about;
And shadows out in lines of night
The subtle stages of Time's flight,

turned into Metre," "Poems, Elegies, Paradoxes, and Sonnets," and "Various Latin and Greek Poems." An edition of his "Poems and Psalms" was published in London in 1843, with a memoir by the Rev. J. Hannah, B. A. Some of his pieces are remarkable for tenderness and elegance.-G.]

Till all-obscuring earth had laid
His body in perpetual shade.

It is a weary interlude

Which doth short joys, long woes include: The world the stage, the prologue tears; The acts vain hopes and varied fears; The scene shuts up with loss of breath, And leaves no epilogue but Death!

THE ANNIVERSARY.

AN ELEGY.

So soon grown old! hast thou been six years
dead?

Poor earth, once by my love inhabited!
And must I live to calculate the time
To which thy blooming youth could never climb,
But fell in the ascent! yet have not I
Studied enough thy losses' history.

How happy were mankind, if Death's strict
laws

Consumed our lamentations like the cause!
Or that our grief, turning to dust, might end
With the dissolved body of a friend!

But sacred Heaven! O, how just thou art
In stamping death's impression on that heart,
Which through thy favors would grow insolent
Were it not physick'd by sharp discontent.
If, then, it stand resolved in thy decree,
That still I must doom'd to a desert be,
Sprung out of my lone thoughts, which know no
path

But what my own misfortune beaten hath :-
If thou wilt bind me living to a corse,
And I must slowly waste; I then of force
Stoop to thy great appointment, and obey
That will which naught avails me to gainsay.
For whilst in sorrow's maze I wander on,

I do but follow life's vocation.

Sure we were made to grieve: at our first birth, With cries we took possession of the earth; And though the lucky man reputed be Fortune's adopted son, yet only he

Is nature's true-born child, who sums his years (Like me) with no arithmetic but tears.

A COMPLAINT OF A LEARNED DIVINE IN
PURITAN TIMES.

IN a melancholy study,
None but myself,

Methought my Muse grew muddy;
After seven years' reading,

And costly breeding,

I felt, but could find no pelf.
Into learned rags

I have rent my plush and satin,
And now am fit to beg

In Hebrew, Greek, and Latin:
Instead of Aristotle,

Would I had got a patten.

Alas, poor scholar, whither wilt thou go.

I have bow'd, I have bended,

And all in hope

One day to be befriended;

I have preach'd, I have printed,
Whate'er I hinted,

To please our English Pope:
I worshipp'd toward the East
But the sun doth now forsake me;
I find that I am falling,

The northern winds do shake me.
Would I had been upright,
For bowing now will break me.
Alas, poor, &c.

At great preferment I aim'd,

Witness my silk,

But now my hopes are maim'd.

I looked lately

To live most stately,

And have a dairy of bell-rope's milk;

But now, alas!

Myself I must flatter,

Bigamy of steeples is a laughing matter; Each man must have but one,

And curates will grow fatter.

Alas, poor, &c.

Into some country village
Now I must go,

Where neither tithe nor tillage
The greedy patron,
And parched matron,

Swear to the church they owe;

author of a poem, entitled "Iter Boreale," and "The Benefice," a comedy.

Yet if I can preach

And pray too on a sudden,
And confute the Pope

At adventure without studying,
Then ten pounds a year,
Besides a Sunday pudding.
Alas, poor, &c.

All the arts I have skill in,
Divine and human,

Yet all's not worth a shilling.
When the women hear me
They do but jeer me,
And say I am profane.
Once I remember

I preached with a weaver;

I quoted Austin,

He quoted Dod and Clever:

I nothing got,

He got a cloak and beaver.

Alas, poor, &c.

Ships, ships, ships I discover,
Crossing the main;

Shall I in and go over,
Turn Jew or Atheist,
Turk or Papist,

To Geneva or Amsterdam?
Bishoprics are void

In Scotland, shall I thither?
Or follow Windebank

And Finch, to see if either
Do want a priest to shrieve them?
O no, 'tis blustering weather.

Alas, poor, &c.

Ho, ho, ho, I have hit it:
Peace, Goodman fool!
Thou hast a trade will fit it;
Draw thy indenture,

Be bound at a venture
An apprentice to a free-school;
There thou may'st command,
By William Lilly's charter;
There thou may'st whip, strip,
And hang, and draw, and quarter,
And commit to the red rod
Both Will, and Tom, and Arthur.

Ay, ay, 'tis hither, hither will I go.

SIR JOHN MENNIS was born in 1598. He was successively a military and naval commander; a vice-admiral in the latter service, governor of Dover Castle, and chief comptroller of the navy.

He composed the well-known ballad on Sir John Suckling's defeat.-SMITH was born about 1604: was a military and naval chaplain, canon of Exeter cathedral, and doctor in divinity.

UPON LUTE-STRINGS CAT-EATEN.

FROM MUSARUM DELICIE, OR THE MUSES' RECREATION."

ARE these the strings that poets feign
Have clear'd the air and calm'd the main?
Charm'd wolves, and from the mountain crests
Made forests dance, with all their beasts?
Could these neglected shreds you see
Inspire a lute of ivory,

And make it speak? oh then think what
Hath been committed by my cat!

Who, in the silence of the night,

Hath gnawn these cords, and marr'd them quite, Leaving such relics as may be

For frets, not for my lute, but me.

Puss, I will curse thee! may'st thou dwell
With some dry hermit in a cell,

Where rat ne'er peep'd, where mouse ne'er fed,
And flies go supperless to bed;

....

Or with some close-pared brother, where
Thou'lt fast each Sabbath in the year;
Or else, profane, be hang'd on Monday,
For butchering a mouse on Sunday.
Or may'st thou tumble from some tower,
And miss to light on all-four,
Taking a fall that may untie
Eight of nine lives, and let them fly.
Or may the midnight embers singe
Thy dainty coat, or Jane beswinge.
What, was there ne'er a rat nor mouse,
Nor buttery ope; naught in the house
But harmless lute-strings, could suffice
Thy paunch, and draw thy glaring eyes?
Did not thy conscious stomach find
Nature profaned, that kind with kind
Should stanch his hunger? think on that,
Thou cannibal and cyclops cat!
For know, thou wretch, that every string
Is a cat's gut which art doth bring
Into a thread; and now suppose
Dunstan, that snuff'd the devil's nose,
Should bid these strings revive, as once

He did the calf from naked bones;
Or I, to plague thee for thy sin,
Should draw a circle, and begin
To conjure, for I am, look to 't,
An Oxford scholar, and can do 't.
Then with three sets of mops and mows,
Seven of odd words, and motley shows,
A thousand tricks that may be taken
From Faustus, Lambe, or Friar Bacon;
I should begin to call my strings
My catlings, and my minikins;
And they re-catted, straight should fall
To mew, to purr, to caterwaul;
From puss's belly, sure as death,
Puss should be an engastrumeth.
Puss should be sent for to the king,
For a strange bird or some rare thing.
Puss should be sought to far and near,
As she some cunning woman were.
Puss should be carried up and down,
From shire to shire, from town to town,
Like to the camel lean as hag,

The elephant, or apish nag,

For a strange sight; puss should be sung

In lousy ballads 'midst the throng,
At markets, with as good a grace
As Agincourt, or Chevy Chace.
The Troy-sprung Briton would forego
His pedigree, he chanteth so,
And sing that Merlin (long deceased)
Return'd is in a nine-lived beast.

Thus, puss, thou see'st what might betide thee;
But I forbear to hurt or chide thee.
For't may be puss was melancholy,
And so to make her blithe aud jolly,
Finding these strings, she'd have a fit
Of mirth; nay, puss, if that were it,
Thus I revenge me, that as thou
Hast play'd on them, I on thee now;
And as thy touch was nothing fine,
So I've but scratch'd these notes of mine.

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