This is he, in whose rare frame Nature labour'd for a name,

And meant to leave his precious feature,
The pattern of a perfect creature.
Joy of goodness, love of art,
Vertue wears him next her heart :
Him the Muses love to follow,
Him they call their Vice-Apollo.
Apollo, golden though thou be,
Th' art not fairer than is he.
Nor more lovely lift'st thy head,
Blushing from thine eastern bed,
The glories of thy youth ne'er knew
Brighter hopes than he can shew;
Why then should it e'er be seen,

That his should fade while thine is green?
And wilt thou (O cruel boast!)
Put poor Nature to such cost?
O'twill undo our common mother,
To be at charge of such another.
What! think we to no other end,
Gracious Heavens do use to send
Earth her best perfection,
But to vanish and be gone?
Therefore only give to day,
To morrow to be snatch'd away?
I've seen indeed the hopeful bud
Of a ruddy rose, that stood
Blushing to behold the ray
Of the new saluted day,
(His tender top not fully spread)
The sweet dash of a shower now shed,
Invited him no more to hide
Within himself the purple pride
Of his forward flower, when, lo!
While he sweetly 'gan to show

His swelling glories, Auster spied him,
Cruel Auster thither hy'd him,
And with the rush of one rude blast,
Sham'd not spitefully to waste
All his leaves, so fresh, so sweet,
And lay them trembling at his feet.
I've seen the morning's lovely ray
Hover o'er the new-born day,
With rosy wings so richly bright,
As if he scorn'd to think of night,
When a ruddy storm, whose scoul
Made Heaven's radiant face look foul;
Call'd for an untimely night,
To blot the newly blossom'd light.
But were the rose's blush so rare,
Were the morning's smile so fair,
As is he, nor cloud nor wind

But would be courteous, would be kind.
Spare him, Death! O spare him then,
Spare the sweetest among men !
Let not Pity, with her tears,
Keep such distance from thine ears;

But O! thou wilt not, can'st not spare,
Haste hath never time to hear;
Therefore if he needs must go,
And the Fates will have it so,
Softly may he be possest
Of his monumental rest.

Safe, thou dark home of the dead,
Safe, O! hide his loved head.
For pity's sake, O hide him quite
From his mother Nature's sight!
Lest, for the grief his loss may move,
All her births abortive prove.

ANOTHER.

I ever Pity were acquainted
With stern Death, if e'er he fainted,
Or forgot the cruell vigour
Of an adamantine rigour,

Here, O here we should have known it,
Here, or no where, he'd have shown it.
For he whose precious memory
Bathes in tears of every eye:
He to whom our sorrow brings
All the streams of all her springs,
Was so rich in grace and nature,
In all the gifts that bless a creature,
The fresh hopes of his lovely youth
Flourish'd in so fair a growth.

So sweet the temple was, that shrin'd
The sacred sweetness of his mind.
That could the Fates know to relent,
Could they know what mercy meant ;
Or had ever learn'd to bear

The soft tincture of a tear:
Tears would now have flow'd so deef,
As might have taught Grief how to weep:
Now all their steely operation

Would quite have lost the cruel fashion:
Sickness would have gladly been
Sick himself to have sav'd him:
And his fever wish'd to prove
Burning only in his love;
Him when Wrath it self had seen,
Wrath its self had lost his spleen;
Grim Destruction, here amaz'd,
Instead of striking, would have gaz'd;
Even the iron-pointed pen,

That notes the tragic dooms of men,
Wet with tears still'd from the eyes
Of the flinty Destinies,

Would have learn'd a softer style,
And have been asham'd to spoile
His live's sweet story, by the haste
Of a cruel stop ill plac'd

In the dark volume of our fate,
Whence each leaf of life hath date,
Where, in sad particulars,
The total sum of man appears;
And the short clause of mortal breath
Bound in the period of death:

In all the book, if any where

Such a term as this, "Spare here,"

Could have been found, 'twould have been read,
Writ in white letters o'er his bead:

Or close unto his name annex'd,
The fair gloss of a fairer text.
In brief, if any one were free,
He was that one, and only he.

But be, alas! even he is dead
And our hopes' fair harvest spread
In the dust! Pity, now spend
All the tears that grief can lend :
Sad Mortality may hide,

In his ashes, all her pride,

With this inscription o'er his head:
"All hope of never dying here lies dead.”

HIS EPITAPH

PASSENGER, who e'er thou art, Stay a while, and let thy heart Take acquaintance of this stone, Before thou passest further on:

This stone will tell thee, that beneath
Is entomb'd the crime of Death;
The ripe endowments of whose mind
Left his years so much behind,
That numbring of his virtues' praise,
Death lost the reckoning of his days;
And believing what they told,
Imagin'd him exceeding old:
In him perfection did set forth
The strength of her united worth;
Him, his wisdom's pregnant growth
Made so reverend, even in youth,
That in the centre of his breast
(Sweet as is the phoenix' nest)
Every reconciled grace

Had their general meeting place;
In him goodness joy'd to see
Learning learn humility:

The splendour of his birth and blood
Was but the gloss of his own good;
The flourish of his sober youth
Was the pride of naked truth:
In composure of his face

Liv'd a fair, but manly grace;
His mouth was rhetoric's best mold,

His tongue the touchstone of her gold;
What word so e'r his breath kept warm,
Was no word now, but a charm:
For all persuasive graces thence
Suck'd their sweetest influence;
His virtue that within had root,
Could not choose but shine without;
And th' heart-bred lustre of his worth,
At each corner peeping forth,
Pointed him out in all his ways,
Circled round in his own rays:
That to his sweetness all men's eyes
Were vow'd love's flaming sacrifice.

Him while fresh and fragrant Time
Cherish'd in his golden prime;
Ere Hebe's hand had overlaid

His smooth cheeks with a downy shade;
The rush of Death's unruly wave
Swept him off into his grave.

Enough now, (if thou can'st) pass on,
For now (alas!) not in this stone
(Passenger, who e'er thou art)

Is he entomb'd, but in thy heart.

AN EPITAPH UPON DOCTOR BROOK.
A BROOK whose stream so great, so good,
Was lov'd, was honour'd, as a flood,
Whose banks the Muses dwelt upon,
More than their own Helicon,
Here at length hath gladly found

A quiet passage under ground:
Mean while his loved banks, now dry,
The Muses with their tears supply.

UPON MR. STANINOUGH'S DEATH. DEAR relics of a dislodg'd soul, whose lack Makes many a mourning paper put on black; O stay a while, ere thou draw in thy head, And wind thy self up close in thy cold bed! Stay but a little while, until I call

A suminons, worthy of thy funeral.

[powers,

Come then, youth, beauty, and blood, all ye soft Whose silken flatteries swell a few fond hours Into a false eternity; come, man,

(Hyperbolized nothing!) know thy span;

Take thine own measure here, down, down, and bow
Before thy self in thy idea, thou

Huge emptiness, contract thy bulk, and shrink
All thy wild circle to a point! O sink
Lower, and lower yet; till thy small size

Call Heaven to look on thee with narrow eyes:
Lesser and lesser yet, till thou begin

To show a face fit to confess thy kin,

Thy neighbour-hood to nothing! here put on
Thy self in this unfeign'd reflection;

Here, gallant ladies, this impartial glass

(Thro' all your painting) shows you your own face.
These death-seal'd lips are they dare give the lie
To the proud hopes of poor mortality.
These curtain'd windows, this self-prison'd eye,
Out-stares the lids of large-look'd tyranny:
This posture is the brave one; this that lies
Thus low, stands up (me thinks) thus, and defies
The world-All daring dust and ashes, only you
Of all interpreters read Nature true.

UPON THE DUKE OF YORK'S BIRTH.

A FANEGYRICK.

BRITAIN, the mighty Ocean's lovely bride,

WHO DIED AND WERE BURIED TOGETHER.

To these, whom Death again did wed,
This grave's the second marriage-bed.
For though the hand of Fate could force
'Twixt soul and body a divorce:
It could not sever man and wife,
Because they both liv'd but one life.
Peace, good reader, do not weep;
Peace, the lovers are asleep!
They (sweet turtles) folded lie,
In the last knot that love could tie.
Let them sleep, let them sleep on,
Till this stormy night be gone,
And the eternal morrow dawn;
Then the curtains will be drawn,
And they wake into a light,
Whose day shall never die in night.

Thy bosom, and make room; thou art opprest
With thine own glories: and art strangely blest
Beyond thy self: for, lo! the gods, the gods
Come fast upon thee, and those glorious odds.
Swell thy full glories to a pitch so high,
As sits above thy best capacity.

Are they not odds? and glorious? that to thee
Those mighty genii throng, which well might be
Each one an age's labour, that thy days
Are guilded with the union of those rays,
Whose each divided beam would be a sun,
To glad the sphere of any nation.

O! if for these thou mean'st to find a seat,
Th' hast need, O Britain! to be truly great.
And so thou art, their presence makes thee so,
They are thy greatness: gods, where e'er they go,
Bring their Heaven with them, their great foot-
An everlasting smile upon the face [steps place

[day,

Of the glad Earth they tread on, while with thee
Those beams that ampliate mortality,
And teach it to expatiate, and swell
To majesty and fulness deign to dwell;
Thou by thy self may'st sit, (blest isle) and see
How thy great mother, Nature, doats on thee:
Thee therefore from the rest apart she hurl'd,
And seem'd to make an isle, but made a world.
Great Charles! thou sweet dawn of a glorious
Centre of those thy grandsires, shall I say,
Henry and James, or Mars and Phoebus rather?
If this were Wisdom's god, that War's stern father,
'Tis but the same is said, Henry and James
Are Mars and Phoebus under divers names,
O thou full mixture of those mighty souls,
Whose vast intelligences tun'd the poles
Of peace and war; thou for whose manly brow
Both laurels twine into one wreath, and woo
To be thy garland; see, (sweet prince) O see
Thou, and the lovely hopes that smile in thee,
Are ta'en out, and transcrib'd by thy great mother.
See, see thy real shadow, see thy brother,
Thy little self in less, read in these eyne

The beams that dance in those full stars of thine.
From the same snowy alabaster rock
These hands and thine were hewn, these cherries
The coral of thy lips. Thou art of all
This well-wrought copy the fair principal.

[mock

Justly, great Nature, may'st thou brag and tell How ev'n th' hast drawn this faithful parallel, And match'd thy master-peece! O then, go on! Make such another sweet comparison. See'st thou that Mary there? O teach her mother To show her to her self in such another : Fellow this wonder too, nor let her shine Alone, light such another star, and twine Their rosy beams, so that the morn for one Venus may have a constellation.

So have I seen (to dress their mistress May)
Two silken sister flowers consult, and lay
Their bashful cheeks together, newly they
Peep'd from their buds, show'd like the garden's eyes
Scarce wak'd like was the crimson of their joys,
Like were the pearls they wept, so like, that one
Seem'd but the other's kind reflection. [the day?
But stay, what glimpse was that? Why blush'd
Why ran the started air trembling away?
Who's this that comes circled in rays that scorn
Acquaintance with the Sun? What second morn
At mid-day opes a presence which Heaven's eye
Stands off and points at? Is 't some deity,
Stept from her throne of stars, deigns to be seen?
Is it some deity? or is't our queen?
"Tis she, 'tis she! her awful beauties chase
The day's abashed glories, and in faee
Of noon wear their own sunshine! O thou bright
Mistress of wonders! Cynthia's is the night,
But thou at noon dost shine, and art all day
(Nor does the Sun deny 't) our Cynthia.
Illustrious sweetness! it thy faithful womb,
That nest of heroes, all our hopes find room;
Thou art the mother phoenix, and thy breast
Chaste as that virgin honour of the East,
But much more fruitful is; nor does, as she,
Deny to mighty love a deity;

Then let the eastern world brag and be proud
Of one coy phoenix, while we have a brood,
A brood of phoenixes, and still the mother:
And may we long; long may'st thou live, t'increase
The house and family of phoenixes.

Nor may the light, that gives their eye-lids light,
E'er prove the dismal morning of thy night:
Ne'er, may a birth of thine be bought so dear,
To make his costly cradle of thy bier.

O may'st thou thus make all the year thine own,
And see such names of joy sit white upon
The brow of every month; and when that's done,
Mayest in a son of his find every son
Repeated, and that son still in another,
And so in each child often prove a mother.
Long may'st thou, laden with such clusters, lean
Upon thy royal elm, (fair vine!) and when
The Heavens will stay no longer, may thy glory
And name dwell sweet in some eternal story.
Pardon (bright excellence!) an untun'd string,
That in thy ears thus keeps a murmuring ;
O! speak a lowly Muse's pardon; speak
Her pardon or her sentence; only break
Thy silence; speak; and she shall take from thence
Numbers, and sweetness, and an influence,
Confessing thee; or (if too long I stay)
O speak thou, and my pipe hath nought to say:
For see Apollo all this while stands mute,
Expecting by thy voice to tune his lute.
But gods are gracious: and their altars make
Precious their offerings that their altars take;
Give them this rural wreath, fire from thine eyes.
This rural wreath dares be thy sacrifice.

VPON FORD'S TWO TRAGEDIES.

LOVE'S SACRIFICE AND THE BROKEN HEART. THOU cheat'st us, Ford, mak'st one seem two by art, What is Love's sacrifice, but the Broken Heart?

ON A FOUL MORNING,

BEING THEN TO TAKE A JOURNEY.

WHERE art thou, Sol, while thus the blindfold day
Staggers out of the East, loses her way,
Stumbling on night? Rouse thee, illustrious youth,
And let no dull mists choke the light's fair growth.
Point here thy beams, O glance on yonder flocks,
And make their fleeces golden as thy locks!
Unfold thy fair front, and there shall appere
Full glory, flaming in her own free sphere.
Gladness shall clothe the Earth, we will enstile
The face of things, an universal smile:
Say to the sullen Morn, thou com'st to court her;
And wilt demand proud Zephirus to sport her
With wanton gales; his balmy breath shall lick
The tender drops which tremble on her cheek;
Which rarified, and in a gentle rain
On those delicious banks distill'd again,
Shall rise in a sweet harvest, which discloses
To every blushing bed of new-born roses.
He'll fan her bright locks, teaching them to flow,
And frisk in-curl'd meanders: he will throw
A fragrant breath, suck'd from the spicy nest
O' th' precious phoenix, warm upon her breast:
He, with a dainty and soft hand, will trim
And brush her azure mantle, which shall swim
In silken volumes; wheresoe'er she'll tread,
Eright clouds like golden fleeces shall be spread.

Rise, then, (fair blew-ey'd maid) rise, and disThy silver brow, and meet thy golden lover, [cover

UPON THE FAIR

ETHIOPIAN SENT TO A GENTLEWOMAN. Lo! here the fair Chariclia! in whom strove So false a fortune, and so true a love. Now, after all her toils by sea and land,

O may she but arrive at your white hand! Her hopes are crown'd, only she fears that then She shall appear true Ethiopian.

And stroke his radiant cheeks! one timely kiss
Will kill his anger, and revive my bliss.
So to the treasure of thy pearly dew,
Thrice will I pay three tears, to show how true
My grief is; so my wakeful lay shall knock
At th' oriental gates, and duely mock
The early lark's shrill orizons, to be
An anthem at the Day's nativity.
And the same rosy-finger'd hand of thine,
That shuts Night's dying eyes, shall open mine.
But thou, faint god of sleep, forget that I
Was ever known to be thy votary.
No more my pillow shall thine altar be,
Nor will I offer any more to thee

My self a melting sacrifice: I'm born
Again a fresh child of the buxom Morn.

Heir of the Sun's first beams, why threat'st thou so?
Why dost thou shake thy leaden sceptre ? Go,
Bestow thy poppy upon wakeful Woe,
Sickness and Sorrow, whose pale lids ne'er know
Thy downy finger; dwell upon their eyes,
Shut in their tears; shut out their miseries.

ON MARRIAGE.

I WOULD be married, but I'd have no wife, I would be married to a single life.

TO THE MORNING.

SATISFACTION FOR SLEEP.

WHAT SUCCOur can I hope the Muse will send
Whose drowsiness hath wrong'd the Muse's friend?
What hope, Aurora, to propitiate thee,
Unless the Muse sing my apology?

O in that morning of my shame! when I
Lay folded up in Sleep's captivity;

How at the sight didst thou draw back thine eyes Into thy modest veil? How didst thou rise Twice dy'd in thine own blushes, and did'st run To draw the curtains, and awake the Sun? Who, rousing his illustrious tresses, came, And seeing the loath'd object, hid for shame His head in thy fair bosom, and still hides Me from his patronage: I pray, he chides: And pointing to dull Morpheus, bids me take My own Apollo, try if I can make His Lethe be my Helicon: and see If Morpheus have a Muse to wait on me. Hence 'tis my humble fancy finds no wings, No nimble rapture starts to Heaven, and brings Enthusiastic flames, such as can give Marrow to my plump genius, make it live Drest in the glorious madness of a Muse, Whose feet can walk the milky way, and choose Her starry throne; whose holy heats can warm The grave and hold up an exalted arm To lift me from my lazy urn, and clinb Upon the stopped shoulders of old Time; And trace eternity- -But all is dead, All these delicious hopes are buried In the deep wrinkles of is angry brow, Where mercy cannot find them: but, O thou Bright lady of the morn! pity doth lie So warm in thy soft breast, it cannot die: Have mercy, then, and when he next shall rise, O meet the angry god, invade his eyes, VOL. VI.

LOVE'S HOROSCOPE.

LOVE, brave Vertue's younger brother,
Erst hath made my heart a mother;
She consults the conscious spheres,
To calculate her young son's years.
She asks, if sad or saving pow'rs
Gave omen to his infant hours;

She asks each star that then stood by,
If poor Love shall live or die.

Ah! my heart, is that the way?

Are these the beams that rule thy day?
Thou know'st a face, in whose each look
Beauty lays ope Love's fortune-book,
On whose fair revolutions wait
The obsequious motions of Love's fate.
Ah! my heart, her eyes and she
Have taught thee new astrology.
How e'er Love's native hours were set,
What ever starry synod met,
"Tis in the mercy of her eye,
If poor Love shall live or die.

If those sharp rays putting on

Points of death bid Love begone,
(Though the Heavens in council sate,
To crown an uncontroled fate,
Though their best aspects twin'd upon
The kindest constellation,

Cast amorous glances on his birth,
And whisper'd the confederate Earth.
To pave his paths with all the good
That warms the bed of youth and blood)
Love has no plea against her eye,
Beauty frowns, and Love must dye.
But if her milder influence move,
And gild the hopes of humble Love:
Though Heaven's inauspicious eye
Lay black on Love's nativity;
Though every diamond in Jove's crown
Fixt his forehead to a frown)

Her eye a strong appeal can give,
Beauty smiles, and Love shall live.

PP