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For whose declining on the western shore
The oriental hills black mantles wore,
And thence apace the gentle twilight fled,
That had from hideous caverns usheréd
All-drowsy night; who, in a car of jet,
By steeds of iron-gray (which mainly sweat
Moist drops on all the world) drawn through the sky,
The helps of darkness waited orderly.

First, thick clouds rose from all the liquid plains:
Then mists from marishes,1 and grounds whose veins
Were conduit pipes to many a crystal spring:
From standing pools and fens were following
Unhealthy fogs: each river, every rill
Sent up their vapours to attend her will.

These pitchy curtains drew 'twixt Earth and Heaven,
And as Night's chariot through the air was driven,
Clamour grew dumb, unheard was shepherd's song,
And silence girt the woods; no warbling tongue
Talk'd to the echo; satyrs broke their dance,
And all the upper world lay in a trance:
Only the curled streams soft chidings kept;
And little gales, that from the green leaf swept
Dry summer's dust, in fearful whisp'rings stirr'd,
As loath to waken any singing bird.

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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;
As yet the early rising sun
Has not attained his noon.

1 Marshes.

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NIGHT-PIECE TO JULIA.

Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee,
The shooting stars attend 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,
Nor snake or slow-worm bite thee!
But on, on thy way,

Not making a stay,

Since ghost there is none to affright thee.

Let not the dark thee cumber;

What though the moon does slumber?
The stars of the night

Will lend thee their light,

Like tapers clear without number.

Then Julia let me woo thee,
Thus, thus to come unto me;
And, when I shall meet
Thy silvery feet,

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;
She is my Maker's creature, therefore good;
She is my mother, for she gave me birth;
She is my tender nurse, she gives me food.

1 Compare Moore's "Young May Moon."

But what's a creature, Lord, compared with thee?
Or what's my mother, or my nurse, to me?

I love the air; her dainty sweets refresh
My drooping soul, and to new sweets invite me;
Her shrill-mouthed quire sustain me with their flesh,
And with their polyphonian notes delight me :

But what's the air or all the sweets that she
Can bless my soul withal, compared to thee?

To heaven's high city I direct my journey,
Whose spangled suburbs entertain mine eye;
Mine eye, by contemplation's great attorney,
Transcends the crystal pavement of the sky.

But what is heaven, great God, compared to thee?
Without thy presence, heaven's no heaven to me.

Without thy presence, earth gives no refection;
Without thy presence, sea affords no treasure;
Without thy presence, air's a rank infection;
Without thy presence, heaven itself no pleasure.
If not possessed, if not enjoyed in thee,
What's earth, or sea, or air, or heaven to me?

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,
The bridal of the earth and sky,

Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to night,
For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave,
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,

Thy root is ever in its grave,

And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie,
My music1 shows you have your closes,
And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,

Like seasoned timber, never gives;
But when the whole world turns to coal,
Then chiefly lives.

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.

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"IN PRAISE OF LESSIUS HIS RULE OF LIFE."

*

Hark hither, reader; wilt thou see
Nature her own physician be?
Wilt see a man all his own wealth,
His own physic, his own health?
A man whose sober soul can tell
How to wear her garments well?
Her garments that upon her sit
As garments should do, close and fit?
A well-clothed soul; that's not oppress'd,
Nor chok'd with what she should be dress'd?
A soul sheathed in a crystal shrine,
Through which all her bright features shine?

1 Herbert was accustomed to sing his own hymns to music.

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