SONG. Blow, blow, thou winter wind, As man's ingratitude! Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude. Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly, Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly. Then heigh, ho, the holly! This life is most jolly. Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, As friend remember'd not. SERENADE TO SYLVIA. Who is Sylvia, what is she, That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she; The heavens such grace did lend her, Is she kind as she is fair, For beauty lives with kindness? Love doth to her eyes repair, To help him of his blindness; And being helped, inhabits there. Then to Sylvia let us sing, FAIRY SONG. Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire, I do wander every where, GILES FLETCHER. GILES FLETCHER was a cousin of Fletcher the dramatist. He was educated at Cambridge, and afterwards became a clergyman. Little is known of his life. He died at his living of Alderston, in Suffolk, A.D. 1623. His poem entitled the Temptation and Victory of Christ deserves a high place in the religious poetry of England. In its imaginative and allegorical vein it resembles Spenser. The diction of it possesses a remarkable affluence, vigour, and expressiveness. CHRIST'S VICTORY IN HEAVEN. The birth of Him that no beginning knew, That shot from Heav'n, and back to Heav'n return, How worthily He died, that died unworthily; How God and man did both embrace each other, To clothe Himself in naked misery, Sailing at length to Heav'n, in Earth, triumphantly,- Is the first flame, wherewith my whiter Muse And taught'st this breast, but late the grave of Hell, Wherein a blind and dead heart liv'd, to swell With better thoughts, send down those lights that lend Knowledge, how to begin, and how to end The love, that never was, nor ever can be penn❜d. DESCRIPTION OF JUSTICE. She was a virgin of austere regard: Not as the world esteems her, deaf and blind; Her eye with Heav'n's, so, and more brightly shin'd The silence of the thought loud speaking hears, Within her breast, but a still apathy Sending his eyes to heav'n swimming in tears, The winged lightning is her Mercury, And round about her mighty thunders sound: Pale Sickness, with her kercher'd head up wound, And airy mountains shake, and frighted shadows howl. Grief's company, a dull, and raw-bon'd spright, Before this cursed throng goes Ignorance, Whose ragged flesh and clothes did well agree: And underneath, Hell's hungry throat still yawning lies. Upon two stony tables, spread before her, Where good, and bad, and life, and death, were painted : Was never heart of mortal so untainted, But when that scroll was read with thousand terrors fainted. Witness the thunder that Mount Sinai heard, All Heav'n to hear her speech did into silence draw. DESCRIPTION OF MERCY. How may a worm, that crawls along the dust, His unsmooth tongue, and his deprostrate style? One look would polish my affected verse; One thought would steal my soul from her thick lome, There to importune, and to beg apace One happy favour of thy sacred grace, To see (what though it lose her eyes?) to see thy face. If any ask why roses please the sight? Because their leaves upon thy cheek do bow'r; Because their blossoms in thy hand do flow'r : Or why sweet plants so grateful odours show'r? Or why the orient Sun so bright we see? What reason can we give, but from thine eyes, and thee? Ros'd all in lively crimson are thy cheeks, Ten thousand Graces sit, and when they move They fly from Heav'n, and on their wings convey thy love. And of discolour'd plumes their wings are made, That whensoever they cut the airy glade, The wind into their hollow pipes is caught: As seems, the spheres with them they down have brought: Like to the seven-fold reed of Arcady, Which Pan of Syrinx made, when she did fly To Ladon sands, and at his sighs sung merrily. * Her upper garment was a silken lawn, Which she herself with her own hand had drawn, With threads so fresh and lively coloured, That seem'd the world she new created there; The silken trees did grow, and the beasts living were. Low at her feet the Earth was cast alone What it might be, was of so various hue; For to itself it oft so diverse grew, That still it seem'd the same, and still it seem'd anew. And here and there few men she scattered, |