For whose declining on the western shore First, thick clouds rose from all the liquid plains: These pitchy curtains drew 'twixt Earth and Heaven, HERRICK was the son of a goldsmith of London. He was educated for the Church, and obtained from Charles I. the living of Dean Prior in Devonshire. From this he was ejected during the civil wars. For the time he laid down his divinity, which indeed he seems to have always worn very lightly; he was the companion of Ben Jonson's revels; and much of his poetry is very little in accordance with the clerical character. His works consist chiefly of religious and Anacreontic poems in strange association. His vein of poetry," says Campbell," is very irregular; but where the ore is pure, it is of high value." He recovered his living at the Restoration. The time of his death is not certainly known. TO DAFFODILS. Fair daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon; 1 Marshes. NIGHT-PIECE TO JULIA. Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee, And the elves also, Whose little eyes glow Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee! 1 The use of ye as an objective case by the poets seems to denote earnestness and emotion. -See Shakespeare's Coriolanus, Act i. Sc. 1. "Hang ye !-Trust ye?" No Will-o'-the-wisp mislight thee, Not making a stay, Since ghost there is none to affright thee. Let not the dark thee cumber; What though the moon does slumber? Will lend thee their light, Like tapers clear without number. Then Julia let me woo thee, My soul I'll pour into thee.1 FRANCIS QUARLES. (1592-1644.) "QUARLES was of an ancient family, nephew to Sir Robert Quarles ; educated at Christ's College, Cambridge; studied in Lincoln's Inn; afterwards cup-bearer to the queen of Bohemia " (the Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of James I.), "secretary to the primate of Ireland” (Archbishop Usher), "and chronologer to the city of London."-Ellis. Quarles is the quaintest and most fantastic writer of the metaphysical school of Donne. His poetry, like that of most of his cotemporaries of the middle of the seventeenth century, is strongly tinctured with religious feeling. This should have saved him from puritan persecution, but the royalist poet had his heart broken by the destruction of his property, and especially of his rare library. His formerly popular "Emblems" and other works sunk into oblivion during the licentious taste of the Restoration; and Pope, in the "Dunciad," placed on him an authoritative extinguisher. The native worth of his wit, amidst its profusion of affectation, has in modern times somewhat retrieved his fame. His "Enchiridion," in prose, is a collection of maxims, or, as he terms them, "Institutions, Divine and Moral."-See Retrospective Review, vol. v. p. 180. DELIGHT IN GOD ONLY. I love (and have some cause to love) the earth; 1 Compare Moore's "Young May Moon." But what's a creature, Lord, compared with thee? I love the air; her dainty sweets refresh But what's the air or all the sweets that she To heaven's high city I direct my journey, But what is heaven, great God, compared to thee? Without thy presence, earth gives no refection; GEORGE HERBERT. (1593-1632.) HERBERT was the brother of the "celebrated" Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Disappointed in court advancement by the death of James I., he took holy orders, and earned the appellation of " Holy" by his exemplary discharge of his sacred office. His style, like that of so many of his brother poets, is founded on the manner of his friend Donne. The volume of his poems is entitled "The Temple." VIRTUE. Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to night, Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave, Thy root is ever in its grave, And thou must die. Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, Only a sweet and virtuous soul, Like seasoned timber, never gives; RICHARD CRASHAW. ( -1650.) CRASHAW's father was a preacher at the Temple Church in London. The time of the poet's birth is uncertain. In 1644 he is found in possession of a fellowship in Cambridge, from which he was ejected by the Parliamentary army for non-compliance with the covenant. He went to France, and became a Roman Catholic. By the patronage of the exiled English queen, Henrietta Maria, he obtained an ecclesiastical situation in Italy, and became a canon of the Church of Loretto, where he died. Crashaw's poetry is of a fervid religious character. He "formed his style on the most quaint and conceited school of Italian poetry, that of Marino" (Campbell), whose "Sospetto d'Herode" he partly translated. It is chiefly in translation that the strength of Crashaw is visible. His pieces are never tedious, but full of the strained and exaggerated conceits of the school of Donne they rise, however, greatly above the ever-recurring bathos of Quarles. The Roman Catholic cast of his religious poetry may have contributed to its neglect in this country. "IN PRAISE OF LESSIUS HIS RULE OF LIFE." * Hark hither, reader; wilt thou see 1 Herbert was accustomed to sing his own hymns to music. |