38 REIGN OF JAMES I. "And shall our love, so far beyond That low and dying appetite, And which so chaste desires unite, Not hold in an eternal bond? "O no, beloved! I am most sure "Else should our souls in vain elect; And vainer yet were heaven's laws, When to an everlasting cause They gave a perishing effect, "Nor here on earth then, nor above, "These eyes again thine eyes shall see, And hands again these hands infold; Shall with us everlasting be. "For if no use of sense remain When bodies once this life forsake, Or they could no delight partake, Why should they ever rise again? "Let then no doubt, Celinda, touch, The following Epitaph on himself (which is not noticed in Walpole's Life of Lord Herbert) is too characteristic of the writer not to deserve insertion. THE monument which thou beholdest here Presents EDWARD LORD HERBERT to thy sight; A man who was so free from either hope or fear To have or lose this ordinary light, That, when to elements his body turned were, With his Creator, peace, joy, truth, and love. DABRIDGCOURT BELCHIER, THE eldest son of William Belchier, of Gillesborough, in Northamptonshire, Esq., born about 1581, entered at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 1597, and afterwards at Christ-Church, Oxford, where he took the degree of B.A. in 1600. Some time after this he went to Utrecht, where he wrote a comedy called "Hans Beer Pot his Invisible Comedy of See me and See me not, acted in the Low Countries by an honest Company of Health Drinkers," 1618, 4to, a work which has little to recommend it except its rarity. But the following song, if it be (like the rest of the comedy) translated from the Dutch, may possibly be thought worth preserving, as a specimen of Batavian fancy. Belchier died in the Low Countries, 1621, having, according to Wood," wrote several poems, and made other translations." those banks, WALKING in a shadowy grove, A beauteous lovely creature ; Her looks did so astonish me, And set my heart a quaking; Like stag that gaz'd, was I amaz'd, And in a stranger taking ; Yet rous'd myself to see this elf, And, lo, a tree did hide me; Where I, unseen, beheld this queen Awhile, ere she espied me. Her voice was sweet, melodiously She sung in perfect measure, And thus she said, with trickling tears: Alas, my joy and treasure, I'll be thy wife, or lose my life, There's no man else shall have me : If God say so, I will say no; Although a thousand crave me. "Oh stay not long, but come, my dear, * |