But you are lovely leaves, where we TO DAFFADILS. FAIRE daffadills, we weep to see Stay, stay, Untill the hast'ning day But to the even-song; We have short time to stay, as you; As quick a growth to meet decay, We die, As your hours doe; and drie Like to the summer's raine, CORINNA GOING A MAYING. GET up, get up for shame; the blooming morne Each flower has wept, and bow'd toward the east, And sung their thankfull hymnes; 'tis sin, When as a thousand virgins on this day, Rise, and put on your foliage, and be seene Besides, the childhood of the day has kept, Retires himselfe, or else stands still Till you come forth. Wash, dresse, be briefe in praying; Come, my Corinna, come; and, comming, marke Made green, and trimm'd with trees; see how Or branch; each porch, each doore, ere this Made up of whitethorn neatly interwove, Can such delights be in the street And sin no more, as we have done, by staying; There's not a budding boy or girle this day And some have wept, and woo'd, and plighted troth, This night, and locks pick't; yet w'are not a Maying! Come, let us goe, while we are in our prime, So when or you, or I, are made Lies drown'd with us in endlesse night. TO PRIMROSES, FILLED WITH MORNING DEW. WHY doe ye weep, sweet babes ? Can tears Alas! Speak griefe in you, Who were but borne Just as the modest morne Nor felt th' unkind Breath of a blasting wind; Who think it strange to see Such pretty flow'rs, (like to orphans young,) To speak by teares before ye have a tongue. Speak, whimp'ring younglings; and make known. Or, that Ye droop, and weep. Is it for want of sleep; ye have not seen as yet Or brought a kisse From that sweetheart to this? Wo'd have this lecture read, "That things of greatest, so of meanest worth, Conceiv'd with grief are, and with teares brought forth." SONG. GATHER ye rose-buds while ye may, And this same flower that smiles to-day, The glorious lamp of heav'n, the sun, The age is best which is the first, When youth and blood are warmer; Then be not coy, but use your time, CC FRANCIS QUARLES was born in 1592, at Stewards, near Romford, in Essex. His father was Clerk of the Green Cloth, and Purveyor of the Navy to Queen Elizabeth. He received his education at Christ's College, Cambridge, and was entered at Lincoln's Inn-having, according to his widow, "studied the laws of England mainly with a desire to compose suits and differences between his friends and neighbours." He was afterwards appointed cup-bearer to the Queen of Bohemia, daughter of James the First; whose service he quitted to become Secretary to the most learned Archbishop Usher. In 1639, he was retained as Chronologer to the City of London, with an annual fee of one hundred nobles. The duties of this office, which has been long abolished, consisted, chiefly, in providing, at stated periods, pageants for the Lord Mayor. During the civil wars between the King and the Parliament, Quarles suffered much in mind and body. The publication of a piece called "the Royal Convert," so annoyed the dominant party, that they took occasion to "hurt him as much as they could in his estates." Winstanley asserts that his most serious affliction was the plundering him of his books and some rare manuscripts he was preparing for the press. He died on the 8th of September, 1644, and was buried in the church of St. Vedast, Foster Lane. His character was that of a faithful and loving husband-"conscionably and orderly in his duties to God and man." "His person and mind," say his biographers, "were both lovely"-and the learned antiquary Aubrey emphatically describes him as "a very good man." As a poet he has been somewhat hardly dealt with; having been judged more by the evidence of his conceits, absurdities and false taste, than by his striking and original images, his noble and manly thoughts, and the exceeding fertility of his language. It is not surprising that posterity has failed to reverse the unjust judgment passed upon him by his contemporaries. He is described by one of them as "an old puritanical poet, the sometime darling of our plebeian judgments"-by another as "in wonderful veneration among the vulgar;" even when he received praise, it was faint praise; his master Archbishop Usher styles him "a man of some fame for his sacred poetry"-and the best compliment that Lloyd could afford him was "that he taught poetry to be witty without profaneness, wantonness, or being satyrical— that is, without the poet's abusing God himself or his neighbour." His principal poetical works are "Job Militant," "Sion's Elegies," the "History of Queen Esther," "Argalus and Parthenia," that which he calls his "Morning Muse," "The Feast for Worms, or the History of Jonah;" and the "Divine Emblems"-the last being the only production of Quarles that is now at all known or read. This has passed through several editions:-the latest, perhaps, is that which a presumptuous Editor describes as "properly modernized," which means, according to a better reading, utterly spoiled. Quarles was indebted for the idea of his Emblems to Herman Hugo. Of the poems we shall give a specimen-the prints we should not be so well disposed to copy. They are for the most part absurd in the extreme. Thus, the picture which accompanies the motto, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" represents a man standing within a skeleton. They are not all however of this class; for example, one consists of a helmet turned into a beehive, surrounded by its useful labourers-the motto, "Ex bello pax."-The faults of Quarles are large and numerous. He would have escaped this censure if he had himself followed the advice he gave to others :-"Clothe not thy language either with obscurity or affectation." No writer is either more affected or more obscure. It is only by raking that we can gather the gold; yet it is such as will reward the seeker who has courage to undertake the search. His sagacity and good sense are unquestionable, and occasionally there is a rich outbreak of fancy: while at times he startles us by compressing, as it were, a volume into a single line. But he is often bombastic, and not seldom flat and prosaic-evils that are not to be found in his prose writings. The sacredness of his object doubtless pushed him on to communicate his observations and reflections through the medium of verse - he sought "to mix the waters of Jordan and Helicon in the same cup"-to gather his laurels upon Mount Olivet-and the attempt was singularly unsuccessful, |