In action, winged as the wind,
In rest, like spirits left behind
Upon a bank, or field of flowers,
Begotten by that wind and showers.
In thee, fair mansion, let it rest,
Yet know with what thou art possessed;
Thou entertaining in thy breast
But such a mind, makest God thy guest.
THE GOOD LIFE, LONG LIFE.
Ir is not growing like a tree
In bulk doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere;
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.
This poet was born about 1577. He received his education at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where his genius and abilities early attracted notice. He was introduced to court, probably by his brother, and appointed Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and sewer in ordinary to King Charles the First; which posts he retained till his death, in 1639. Carew was the author of miscellaneous poems, not, unfortunately, all of a religious nature; but those that are so, have great beauty and simplicity.
BEWITCHING Syren! golden rottenness!
Thou hast with cunning artifice displayed
Th' enamelled outside, and the honeyed verge
Of the fair cup, where deadly poison lurks.
Within, a thousand sorrows dance the round;
And, like a shell, pain circles thee without.
Grief is the shadow waiting on thy steps,
Which, as thy joys 'gin towards their west decline,
Doth to a giant's spreading form extend
Thy dwarfish stature. Thou thyself art pain,
Greedy, intense desire; and the keen edge
Of thy fierce appetite oft strangles thee,
And cuts thy slender thread; but still the terror
And apprehension of thy hasty end
Mingles with gall thy most refined sweets.
Yet thy Circean charms transform the world.
Captains that have resisted war and death,
Nations that over fortune have triumphed,
Are by thy magic made effeminate;
Empires, that know no limits but the poles,
Have in thy wanton lap melted away.
Thou wert the author of the first excess
That drew this reformation on the gods;
Canst thou, then, dream those powers that from heaven
Banished the effect, will there enthrone the cause?
To thy voluptuous den fly, witch, from hence;
There dwell, forever drowned in brutish sense.
THIS poet was the seventh son of Edwin Sandys, archbishop of York, and was born at Bishopsthorp in 1577. He was matriculated at Oxford in his eleventh year, but Wood supposes he did not take a degree. In 1610, he set out on his travels, during which he visited the most interesting cities of Europe, and went to Egypt and the Holy Land. He was afterwards treasurer of the English Company in Virginia, but it is not known how long he remained in this country. He published an account of his travels, in London, in 1615, and from this time, except during his residence in America, he passed most of his time with his sister, Lady Wenman, in Oxfordshire. In 1636, he published his translation of the Psalms, which the editor of the "Gems of British Sacred Poetry" thinks "incomparably the most poetical in the English language," though at the present day scarcely known. Two years after he published his Paraphrase of Job and Ecclesiastes, a metrical version of the Song of Solomon, and a translation of a Latin tragedy of Grotius--the Passion of Christ. Sandys died in March, 1643.
WRITTEN ON REVIEW OF GOD'S MERCIES TO THE AUTHOR IN HIS TRAVELS.
O THOU who all things hast of nothing made,
Whose hand the radiant firmament displayed,
With such an undiscerned swiftness hurled
About the steadfast centre of the world;
Against whose rapid course the restless sun
And wandering flames in varied motions run ;
Which heat, light, life infuse; time, night, and day
Distinguish; in our human bodies sway :
That hungest the solid earth in fleeting air,
Veined with clear springs which ambient seas repair:
In clouds the mountains wrap their heavy heads;
Luxurious valleys clothed with flowery meads:
Her trees yield fruit and shade; with liberal breasts
All creatures she (their common mother) feasts.
Then man thy image hadst; in dignity,
In knowledge, and in beauty, like to Thee:
Placed in a heaven on earth without his toil
The ever-flourishing and fruitful soil
Unpurchased food produced; all creatures were
His subjects, serving more for love than fear.
He knew no lord but Thee. But when he fell
From his obedience, all at once rebel,
And in his ruin exercise their might:
Concurring elements against him fight:
Troops of unknown diseases; sorrow, age,
And death, assail him with successive rage.
Hell let forth all her furies; none so great
As man to man. Ambition, pride, deceit,
Wrong armed with power, lust, rapine, slaughter reigned,
And flattered Vice the home of Virtue gained.
The hills beneath the swelling waters stood,
And all the globe of earth was but one flood;
Yet could not cleanse their guilt: the following race
Worse than their fathers, and their sons more base:
Their godlike beauty lost-sin's wretched thrall
No spark of their Divine original
Left unextinguished; all enveloped
With darkness; in their bold transgressions dead;
When Thou didst from the earth a light display,
Which rendered to the world a clearer day,
Whose precepts from hell's jaws our steps withdraw,
And whose example was a living law;
Who purged us with his blood, the way prepared
To heaven, and those long chained-up doors unbarred.
How infinite thy mercy! which exceeds
The world thou mad'st, as well as our misdeeds:
Which greater reverence than thy justice wins,
And still augments thy honor by our sins.
Oh! who hath tasted of thy clemency
In greater measure or more oft than I!
My grateful verse thy goodness shall display,
O Thou who went'st along in all my way,
To where the morning with perfumed wings
From the high mountains of Panchæa' springs,
To that new-found-out world, where sober night
Takes from th' antipodes her silent flight,
To those dark seas where horrid winter reigns,
And binds the stubborn floods in icy chains,
To Libyan wastes, whose thirst no showers assuage,
And where swoln Nilus cools the lion's rage.
Thy wonders in the deep have I beheld;
Yet all by those on Judah's hills excelled:
There where the virgin's Son his doctrine taught,
His miracles and our redemption wrought!
Where I, by Thee inspired, his praises sung,
And on his sepulchre my offering hung.
Which way soe'er I turn my face or feet,
I see thy glory and thy mercy meet-
Met on the Thracian shores, when in the strife
Of frantic Simooms Thou preservedst my life;
So when Arabian thieves belayed us round,
And when by all abandoned, Thee I found.
That false Sidonian wolf, whose craft put on
A sheep's soft fleece, and me Bellerophon
To ruin by his cruel letter sent,
Thou didst by thy protecting hand prevent.
Thou savedst me from the bloody massacres
Of faithless Indians, from their treacherous wars,
From raging fevers, from the sultry breath
Of tainted air, which cloyed the jaws of death;
Preserved from swallowing seas, when towering waves
Mixed with the clouds and opened their deep graves;
From barbarous pirates ransomed, by those taught,
Successfully with Salian Moors we fought.
Then broughtest me home in safety, that this earth
Might bury me, which fed me from my birth.
'A fabulous country of antiquity whence frankincense was said to be procured. It here signifies Arabia.
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