On down and floods then, swan-like, I
Will stretch my limbs, and singing die.

'Tis wine and love, and love in wine,
Inspires our youth with flames divine.

To Clarastella saying she would commit herself to a Nunnery.

[From 9 stanzas.]

STAY, Clarastella, prithee stay!
Recall those frantic vows again!
Wilt thou thus cast thyself away,
As well as me, in fond disdain ?

Wilt thou be cruel to thyself? chastise

Thy harmless body, 'cause your powerful eyes Have charm'd my senses by a strange surprize?

Is it a sin to be belov'd?

If but the cause you could remove,
Soon the effect would be remov'd;
Where beauty is, there will be love.
Nature, that wisely nothing made in vain,
Did make you lovely to be lov'd again,

And, when such beauty tempts, can love refrain?

When Heaven was prodigal to you,
And you with beauty's glory stor'd,
He made you, like himself, for view,

To be beheld and then ador'd.

Why should the gold then fear to see that sun
That form'd it pure? why should you live a nun,
And hide those rays Heaven
gave to you alone?

Thyself a holy temple art,

Where Love shall teach us both to pray;

I'll make an altar of my heart,

And incense on thy lips will lay.

Thy mouth shall be my oracle, and then

For beads we'll tell our kisses o'er again,

Till they, breath'd from our souls, shall cry, Amen.

S. SHEPPARD

Was son of Dr. Harman Sheppard, a physician, and is said by Oldys to have been imprisoned for writing the Mercurius Elencticus. His Six books of Epigrams, Latin and English, The Socratick Session (a dramatic satire on Julius Scaliger), and A Mausolean Monument over his deceased parents, with three Pastorals, were published in a 12mo. volume, 1651.

The same name occurs in the title of "The Committee Man "curried," 1647, 4to. a sort of political drama in two parts, more remarkable, we are told, for its plagiarism than its poetry. In 1652 appeared "Discoveries. Or an Exploration "and Explication of some Ænigmatical Verities," 12mo. by S. Sheppard, in prose, a strange medley; which, the preface informs us, was undertaken in consequence of his friends having been pleased to tax his studies (referring to somewhat he lately divulged) as incompatible with his profession. In all probability, therefore, he was a clergyman, as well as responsible for the above-mentioned productions. What follows, "He that thinks worse of those "rimes than myself, I scorn him, for he cannot: he that "thinks better is a fool," must be supposed to apply to the drama, not the epigrams, otherwise he very ungratefully leaves his numerous friends in the lurch, whose warm encomiums introduce the volume. Vide Langbaine and the Biographia Dramatica.

The following specimen, not unfavourable to his abilities, is taken from the collection of 1651.

In memory of our famous Shakespeare.
SACRED spirit! whiles thy lyre

Echo'd o'er th' Arcadian plains,

E'en Apollo did admire,

Orpheus wonder'd at thy strains.

Plautus sigh'd, Sophocles wept

Tears of anger, for to hear (After they so long had slept)

So bright a genius should appear;

Who wrote his lines with a sun-beam,
More durable than time or fate!
Others boldly do blaspheme,

Like those that seem to preach, but prate.

Thou wert truly priest elect,

Chosen darling to the Nine,

Such a trophy to erect

By thy wit and skill divine,

That, were all their other glories (Thine excepted) torn away,

By thy admirable stories

Their garments ever shall be gay.

Where thy honour'd bones do lie, (As Statius once to Maro's urn) Thither every year will I

Slowly tread, and sadly mourn.

JOHN HALL

Was author of a small volume of "Poems" printed at Cambridge, 1646, and dedicated to "his truly noble, and worthily "honoured friend,Thomas Stanley, esq." Wood tells us he was born in Durham, of genteel parents, 1627. Being kept from the University by the civil war, he studied at home till 1646, when he entered a commoner at St. John's College, Cambridge, and, after a year's residence, removed in high credit to Lincoln's Inn. He published in favour of the Commonwealth, and was about 1650 called to the bar, and sometimes pleaded. In 1655 he left London in a bad state of health, and died at Durham 1656, in his 29th year. As to his character for abilities, Phillips says that "besides his "juvenile poems, memorable only for their airy and youth"ful wit, he improved afterwards to a more substantial

reputation for what he wrote as well in verse as prose ; "but a poem he began, of great and general expectation

among his friends, had he lived to complete it, would "doubtless have very much advanced and completed his "fame." And Hobbes observes, that "had not his de"bauches and intemperance diverted him from the more "serious studies, he had made an extraordinary person : "for no man had ever done so great things at his age.” For a list of his works vide Wood's Athenæ, I. 534, 5.