O worthless herbs, and weaker arts

To change their limbs, but not their hearts! Man's life and vigor keep within,

Lodg'd in the center, not the skin.

Those piercing charms and poysons, which

His inward parts taint and bewitch,
More fatal are, than such, which can

Outwardly only spoile the man.

Those change his shape and make it foul,
But these deform and kill his soul.

METRUM 6. LIB. 3.

LL sorts of men, who live on Earth, Have one beginning and one birth. For all things there is one Father, Who lays out all, and all doth gather. He the warm sun with rays adorns, And fils with brightness the moon's horns. The azur'd heav'ns with stars He burnish'd And the round world with creatures furnish'd.

But men-made to inherit all,—

His own sons He was pleas'd to call,

And that they might be so indeed,
He gave them souls of divine seed.
A noble ofspring surely then
Without distinction, are all men.

O why so vainly do some boast
Their birth and blood and a great hoste
Of ancestors, whose coats and crests

Are some rav'nous birds or beasts!

If extraction they look for

And God, the great Progenitor :

No man, though of the meanest state

Is base, or can degenerate :

Unless, to vice and lewdness bent,

He leaves and taints his true descent.

THE OLD MAN OF VERONA OUT OF
CLAUDIAN.

Falix, qui propriis ævum transegit in arvis,
Una domus puerum &c.

M

OST happy man! who in his own sweet

fields

Spent all his time; to whom his cottage
yields

In age and youth a lodging: who grown old,
Walks with his staff on the same soil and mold
Where he did creep an infant, and can tell

Many fair years spent in one quiet cell!

1 Cf. Sir John Beaumont's version: our edition of his

Poems pp 259-61. Claudian flourished 404. G.

No toils of fate made him from home far known,
Nor foreign waters drank, driv'n from his own.
No loss by Sea, no wild Land's wastful war
Vex'd him; not the brib'd coil of gowns' at bar.
Exempt from cares, in cities never seen

The fresh field-air he loves, and rural green.
The year's set turns by fruits, not consuls knows;
Autumn by apples: May by blossom'd boughs.
Within one hedg his sun doth set and rise,
The world's wide day his short demesnes comprise.
Where he observes some known, concrescent twig
Now grown an oak, and old, like him, and big.
Verona he doth for the Indies take,

And as the Red Sea counts Benacus' Lake.
Yet are his limbs and strength untir'd, and he
A lusty grandsire three descents doth see.
Travel and sail who will, search sea or shore;
This man hath liv'd, and that hath wander'd more.

THE SPHERE OF ARCHIMIDES OUT
OF CLAUDIAN.

Iupiter in parvo cum cerneret æthera vitro
Risit, et ad superos, &c.

HEN Iove a heav'n of small glass did
behold,

He smil'd, and to the gods these words

he told.

Comes then the power of man's art to this?
In a frail orbe my work new acted is,

The poles decrees, the fate of things, God's laws,
Down by his art old Archimides draws.
Spirits inclos'd, the sev'ral stars attend,

And orderly the living work they bend.

A feigned Zodiac measures out the year,
Ev'ry new month a false moon doth appear.

And now bold industry is proud, it can

Wheel round its world, and rule the stars by

man.

Why at Salmoneus' thunder do I stand?

Nature is rivall'd by a single hand.

THE PHOENIX OUT OF CLAUDIAN.

Oceani summo circumfluus æquore lucus

Trans Indos, Eurumque viret, &c.

GROVE there grows, round with the sea confin'd,

Beyond the Indies and the Eastern

wind.

Which, as the sun breaks forth in his first beam, Salutes his steeds, and hears him whip his team. When with his dewy coach the Eastern bay Crackles, whence blusheth the approaching Day; And blasted with his burnish'd wheels the Night In a pale dress doth vanish from the light.

This the blest phoenix' empire is, here he
Alone exempted from mortality,

Enjoys a land, where no diseases raign,—
And ne'r afflicted, like our world with pain.
A bird most equal to the gods, which vies
For length of life and durance with the skyes,
And with renewed limbs tires ev'ry age;

Is appetite he never doth asswage

With common food. Nor doth he use to drink
When thirsty, on some river's muddy brink.
A purer, vital heat shot from the sun

Doth nourish him, and airy sweets that come