LXXXVIII.

GEORGE HERBERT,

1593-1633.

S

VIRTUE.

WEET day, so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridal of the earth and sky,

The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;

For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,

Thy root is ever in its grave,

And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie,

My music shows ye have your closes,

And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,

Like seasoned timber, never gives;

But though the whole world turn to coal,

Then chiefly lives.

LXXXIX.

H

MAN'S MEDLEY.

ARK how the birds do sing,

And woods do ring:

All creatures have their joy, and man hath his.

Yet if we rightly measure,

Man's joy and pleasure

Rather hereafter than in present is.

To this life things of sense

Make their pretence;

In the other angels have a right by birth:

Man ties them both alone,

And makes them one,

With the one hand touching heaven, with the other earth.

In soul he mounts and flies,

In flesh he dies;

He wears a stuff whose thread is coarse and round,

But trimmed with curious lace,

And should take place

After the trimming, not the stuff and ground.

Not that he may not here

Taste of the cheer:

But as birds drink, and straight lift up their head,

So must he sip and think

Of better drink

He may attain to after he is dead.

But as his joys are double,

So is his trouble;

He hath two winters, other things but one:
Both frosts and thoughts do nip

And bite his lip;

And he of all things fears two deaths alone.

Yet even the greatest griefs

May be reliefs,

Could he but take them right and in their ways. Happy is he whose heart

Hath found the art

To turn his double pains to double praise.

XC.

A

BITTER-SWEET.

H! my dear angry Lord,

Since thou dost love, yet strike,

Cast down, yet help afford;

Sure I will do the like.

XCI.

I will complain, yet praise,
I will bewail, approve;
And all my sour-sweet days
I will lament, and love.

I

EASTER.

GOT me flowers to strew thy way,

I got me boughs off many a tree;

But thou wast up by break of day,

And brought'st thy sweets along with thee.

The sun arising in the east,

Though he give light, and the east perfume,

If they should offer to contest

With thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,

Though many suns to shine endeavour? We count three hundred, but we miss: There is but one, and that one ever.

XCII.

I

SERVANT'S SONG.

F Love his arrows shoot so fast,

JAMES SHIRLEY, 1594-1666.

Soon his feathered stock will waste;

But I mistake in thinking so,

Love's arrows in his quiver grow ;

How can he want artillery?

That appears too true in me :

Two shafts feed upon my breast,

Oh! make it quiver for the rest,

Kill me with love, thou angry son
Of Cytherea, or let one,

One sharp golden arrow fly,

To wound her heart for whom I die.
Cupid, if thou be'st a child,

Be no god, or be more mild.