From others he shall stand in need of nothing,
Yet on his Brothers shall depend for clothing.
To find a foe it shall not be his hap,

And peace shall lull him in her flowery lap;
Yet shall he live in strife, and at his door
Devouring war shall never cease to roar;
Yea, it shall be his natural property

To harbour those that are at enmity."

What power, what force, what mighty spell, if not

Your learned hands, can loose this Gordian knot?

The next, QUANTITY and QUALITY, spake in prose: then RELATION was called by his name.

Rivers, arise: whether thou be the son

Of utmost Tweed, or Ouse, or gulfy Dun,

Or Trent, who, like some earth-born Giant, spreads

His thirty arms along the indented meads,
Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath,
Or Sevren swift, guilty of maiden's death,
Or rocky Avon, or of sedgy Lea,

Or coaly Tyne, or ancient hallowed Dee,
Or Humber loud, that keeps the Scythian's name,
Or Medway smooth, or royal-towered Thame.

The rest was prose.

THE PASSION

(1630)

I

EREWHILE of music, and ethereal mirth,
Wherewith the stage of Air and Earth did ring,
And joyous news of heavenly Infant's birth,
My muse with Angels did divide to sing;

But headlong joy is ever on the wing,

In wintry solstice like the shortened light

Soon swallowed up in dark and long outliving night.

II

For now to sorrow must I tune my song,
And set my Harp to notes of saddest woe,

Which on our dearest Lord did seize ere long, Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse than so, Which he for us did freely undergo:

Most perfect Hero, tried in heaviest plight

Of labours huge and hard, too hard for human wight!

III

He, sovran Priest, stooping his regal head,
That dropt with odorous oil down his fair eyes,
Poor fleshly Tabernacle entered,

His starry front low-roofed beneath the skies:
Oh, what a mask was there, what a disguise!

Yet more: the stroke of death he must abide; Then lies him meekly down fast by his Brethren's side.

IV

These latest scenes confine my roving verse;
To this horizon is my Phœbus bound.
His godlike acts, and his temptations fierce,
And former sufferings, otherwhere are found;
Loud o'er the rest Cremona's trump doth sound:
Me softer airs befit, and softer strings

Of lute, or viol still, more apt for mournful things.

Befriend me, Night, best Patroness of grief!
Over the pole thy thickest mantle throw,
And work my flattered fancy to belief
That Heaven and Earth are coloured with my woe;
My sorrows are too dark for day to know:

The leaves should all be black whereon I write, And letters, where my tears have washed, a wannish white.

VI

See, see the chariot, and those rushing wheels,
That whirled the prophet up at Chebar flood;
My spirit some transporting Cherub feels

To bear me where the Towers of Salem stood,
Once glorious towers, now sunk in guiltless blood.
There doth my soul in holy vision sit,

In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatic fit.

VII

Mine eye hath found that sad sepulchral rock
That was the casket of Heaven's richest store,
And here, though grief my feeble hands up-lock,
Yet on the softened quarry would I score
My plaining verse as lively as before;

For sure so well instructed are my tears
That they would fitly fall in ordered characters.

VIII

Or, should I thence, hurried on viewless wing,
Take up a weeping on the mountains wild,
The gentle neighbourhood of grove and spring
Would soon unbosom all their Echoes mild;
And I (for grief is easily beguiled)

Might think the infection of my sorrows loud

Had got a race of mourners on some pregnant cloud.

This Subject the Author finding to be above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinished.

ON SHAKESPEARE
(1630)

WHAT needs my Shakespeare, for his honoured bones,

The labour of an age in pilèd stones?

Or that his hollowed relics should be hid

Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame,

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?

Thou, in our wonder and astonishment,

Hast built thyself a livelong monument.

For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath, from the leaves of thy unvalued book,

Those Delphic lines with deep impression took;
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,

Dost make us marble, with too much conceiving;
And, so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

ON THE UNIVERSITY CARRIER

Who sickened in the time of his Vacancy, being forbid to go to London by reason of the Plague.

(1631)

HERE lies old Hobson. Death hath broke his girt,
And here, alas! hath laid him in the dirt;
Or else, the ways being foul, twenty to one
He's here stuck in a slough, and overthrown.
'T was such a shifter that, if truth were known,
Death was half glad when he had got him down;
For he had any time this ten years full

Dodged with him betwixt Cambridge and The Bull.
And surely Death could never have prevailed,

Had not his weekly course of carriage failed;

But lately, finding him so long at home,

And thinking now his journey's end was come,
And that he had ta'en up his latest Inn,

In the kind office of a Chamberlin

Showed him his room where he must lodge that night,
Pulled off his boots, and took away the light.

If any ask for him, it shall be said,

"Hobson has supped, and 's newly gone to bed."

ANOTHER ON THE SAME

HERE lieth one who did most truly prove
That he could never die while he could move;

So hung his destiny, never to rot

While he might still jog on and keep his trot;
Made of sphere-metal, never to decay

Until his revolution was at stay.

Time numbers Motion, yet (without a crime
'Gainst old truth) Motion numbered out his time;

And, like an engine moved with wheel and weight,

His principles being ceased, he ended straight.

Rest, that gives all men life, gave him his death,
And too much breathing put him out of breath;
Nor were it contradiction to affirm

Too long vacation hastened on his term.
Merely to drive the time away he sickened,
Fainted, and died, nor would with ale be quickened.
"Nay," quoth he, on his swooning bed outstretched,
"If I may n't carry, sure I'll ne'er be fetched,

But vow, though the cross Doctors all stood hearers,
For one carrier put down to make six bearers."
Ease was his chief disease; and, to judge right,
He died for heaviness that his cart went light.
His leisure told him that his time was come,
And lack of load made his life burdensome,
That even to his last breath (there be that say 't),
As he were pressed to death, he cried, "More weight!"
But, had his doings lasted as they were,

He had been an immortal Carrier.
Obedient to the moon he spent his date
In course reciprocal, and had his fate
Linked to the mutual flowing of the seas;

Yet (strange to think) his wain was his increase.
His letters are delivered all and gone;

Only remains this superscription.

AN EPITAPH ON THE MARCHIONESS
OF WINCHESTER

THIS rich marble doth inter

The honoured wife of Winchester,

A viscount's daughter, an earl's heir,
Besides what her virtues fair

Added to her noble birth,

More than she could own from earth.
Summers three times eight save one
She had told; alas! too soon,

After so short time of breath,

To house with darkness and with death!

Yet, had the number of her days

Been as complete as was her praise,