Ben. Johnson's POEMS, ELEGIES, PARADOXES, AND SONNETS.  
LONDON, Printed, and Sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster, 17●●   

THE PUBLISHERS TO THE AUTHOR.  
Sir,  
IT is the common fashion to make some address to the Readers, but we are bold to direct ours to you, who will look on this publication with Anger which others must welcome into the world with Joy.  
The Lord Verulam comparing ingenious Authors to those who had Orchards ill neighboured, advised them to publish their own labours, lest others might steal the fruit: Had you followed his example, or liked the advice, we had not thus trespassed against your consent, or been forced to an Apology, which cannot but imply a faul● committed. The best we can say fo● ourselves is, that if we have injured you it is merely in your own defence preventing the present attempts of others, who to their theft would (by their false copies of these Poems) have added violence, and some way have wounded your reputation.  
Having been long engaged on better contemplations, you may perhaps look down on these Juvenilia (most of them the issues of your youthful Muse) with some disdain; and yet the Courteous Reader may tell you with thanks, that they are not to be despised, being far from Abortive, nor to be disowned, because they are both Modest and Legitimate. And thus if we have offered you a view of your younger face, our hope is you will behold it with an unwrinkled brow, though we have presented the Mirror against your will.  
We confess our design hath been set forward by friends that honour you, who lest the ill publishing might disfigure these things from whence you never expected addition to your credit (sundry times endeavoured and by them defeated) furnished us with some papers which they thought Authentic; we may not turn their favour into an accusation, and therefore give no intimation of their names, but wholly take the blame of this hasty and immethodical impression upon ourselves, being persons at a distance, whe● are fit to bear it then those who are nearer related. In hope of your pardon we remain  
Your most devoted servants, 

Rich: Marriot.  
Hen: Herringman.     

POEMS.  

SONNET. The Double Rock.  

SInce thou hast viewed some Gorgon, and art grown  
A solid stone:  
To bring again to softness thy hard heart  
Is passed my art.  
Ice may relent to water in a thaw;  
But stone made flesh Loves Chymistey ne'er saw.   

Therefore by thinking on thy hardness, I  
Will petrify;  
And so within our double Quarries Womb,  
Dig our Love's Tomb.  
Thus strangely will our difference agree;  
And, with ourselves, amaze the world, to see  
How both Revenge and Sympathy consent  
To make two Rocks each others Monument.    

The Vow-Breaker.  

When first the Magic of thine eye,  
Usurped upon my liberty,  
Triumphing in my hearts spoil, thou  
Didst lock up thine in such a vow;  
When I prove false, may the bright day  
Be governed by the Moons pale ray!  
(As I too well remember) This  
Thou saidst, and seald'st it with a kiss.   

O Heavens! and could so soon that Tie  
Relent in slack Apostasy?  
Can all thy Oaths, and mortgaged trust,  
Vanish? like letters formed in dust  
Which the next wind scatters. Take heed,  
Take heed Revolter; know this deed  
Hath wronged the world, which will far worse  
By thy Example then thy Curse.   

Hid that false Brow in mists. Thy shame  
ne'er see light more, but the dim flame  
Of funeral Lamps. Thus sit and moan,  
And learn to keep thy guilt at home.  
Give it no vent; for if again  
Thy Love or Vows betray more men,  
At length (I fear) thy perjured breath  
Will blow out day, and waken Death.    

Upon a Table-Book presented to a Lady.  
When your fair hand receives this little book  
You must not there for prose or verses look  
Those empty regions which within you see,  
May by yourself planted and peopled be:  
And though we scarce allow your sex to prove  
Writers (unless the Argument be Love);  
Yet without crime or envy you have room  
Here, both the Scribe and Author to become.   

To the same Lady upon Mr▪ Burtons' Melancholy.  

IF in this Glass of Humours you do find  
The Passions or diseases of your mind,  
Here without pain, you safely may endure,  
Though not to suffer, yet to read your cure.  
But if you nothing meet you can apply,  
Then ere you need, you have a remedy.   

And I do wish you never may have cause  
To be adjudged by these fantastic Laws;  
But that this books example may be known,  
By others Melancholy, not your own.    

The Farewell. Splendidis longùm valedico nugis.  

FArewell fond Love, under whose childish whip,  
I have served out a weary Prenticeship;  
Thou that hast made me thy scorned property,  
To door on Rocks, but yielding Loves to fly:  
Go bane of my dear quiet and content,  
Now practise on some other Patient.   

Farewell false Hope that fanned my warm desire  
Till it had raised a wild unruly fire,  
Which nor sighs cool, nor tears extinguish can,  
Although my eyes out-flowed the Ocean:  
Forth of my thoughts for ever, Thing of Air,  
Begun in error, finished in despair.   

Farewell vain World, upon whose restless stage  
Twixt Love and Hope I have fooled out my age;  
Henceforth ere sue to thee for my redress,  
I'll woo the wind, or court the wilderness;  
And buried from the day's discovery,  
Study a slow yet certain way to die.   

My woeful Monument shall be a Cell,  
The murmur of the purling brook my knell;  
My lasting Epitaph the Rock shall groan:  
Thus when sad Lovers ask the weeping stone,  
What wretched thing does in that Centre lie?  
The hollow Echo will reply, 'twas I.    

A Black-moor Maid wooing a fair Boy: sent to the Author by Mr. Hen. Rainolds.  
STay lovely Boy, why fliest thou me  
That languish in these flames for thee?  
I'm black 'tis true: why so is Night,  
And Love doth in dark Shades delight.  
The whole World, do but close thine eye,  
Will seem to thee as black as I;  
Or oped, and see what a black shade  
Is by thine own fair body made,  
That follows thee where e'er thou go;  
(O who allowed would not do so?)  
Let me for ever dwell so nigh,  
And thou shalt need no other shade than I  Mr. Hen. Rainolds.  

The Boys answer to the Blackmoor.  
BLack Maid, complain not that I fly,  
When Fate commands Antipathy:  
Prodigious might that union prove,  
Where Night and Day together move,  
And the conjunction of our lips  
Not kisses make, but an Eclipse;  
In which the mixed black and white  
Portends more terror than delight.  
Yet if my shadow thou wilt be,  
Enjoy thy dearest wish: But see  
Thou take my shadow's property,  
That hastes away when I come nigh:  
Else stay till death hath blinded me,  
And then I will bequeath myself to thee.   

To a Friend upon Overbury's wife given to her.  
I Know no fit subject for your view  
Then this, a meditation ripe for you,  
As you for it. Which when you read you'll see  
What kind of wife yourself will one day be:  
Which happy day be near you, and may this  
Remain with you as earnest of my wish;  
When you so far lo●e any, that you dare  
Venture your whole affection on his care,  
May he for whom you change your Virgin-life  
Prove good to you, and perfect as this Wife.   

Upon the same.  
Madam, who understands you well would swear,  
That you the Life, and this your Copy were.   

To A. R. upon the same.  
NOt that I would instruct or tutor you  
What is a Wife's behest, or Husbands due,  
Gi'; ve I this Widdow-Wife. Your early date  
Of knowledge makes such Precepts slow and late.  
This book is but your glass, where you shall see  
What yourself are, what other Wives should be.   

An Epitaph on Niobe turned to Stone.  

THis Pile thou seest built out of Flesh, not Stone,  
Contains no shroud within, nor mouldering bone:   

This bloodless Trunk is destitute of Tomb  
Which may the Soul-fled Mansion enwombe.   

This seeming Sepulchre (to tell the troth)  
Is neither Tomb nor Body, and yet both.    

Upon a Braid of Hair in a Heart sent by Mrs. E. H.  
IN this small Character is sent  
My Love's eternal Monument.  
Whilst we shall live, know, this chained Heart  
Is our affection's counterpart.  
And if we never meet, think I  
Bequeathed it as my Legacy.   

SONNET.  

TEll me no more how fair she is,  
I have no mind to hear  
The story of that distant bliss  
I never shall come near:  
By sad experience I have found  
That her perfection is my wound.   

And tell me not how fond I am  
To tempt a daring Fate,  
From whence no triumph ever came,  
But to repent too late:  
There is some hope ere long I may  
In silence dote myself away.   

I ask no pity (Love) from thee,  
Nor will thy justice blame,  
So that thou wilt not envy me  
The glory of my flame:  
Which crowns my heart when ere it dies,  
In that it falls her sacrifice.    

SONNET.  
Were thy heart soft as thou art fair,  
Thou were't a wonder past compare:  
But frozen Love and fierce disdain  
By their extremes thy grace's stain.  
Cold coyness quenches the still fires  
Which glow in Lovers warm desires;  
And scorn, like the quick Lightnings blaze,  
Darts death against affections gaze.  
O Heavens, what prodigy is this  
When Love in Beauty buried is!  
Or that dead pity thus should be  
Tombed in a living cruelty.   

SONNET.  

GO thou that vainly dost mine eyes invite  
To taste the softer comforts of the night,  
And bid'st me cool the fever of my brain,  
In those sweet balmy dews which slumber pain;  
Enjoy thine own peace in untroubled sleep,  
Whilst my sad thoughts eternal vigils keep.   

O couldst thou for a time change breasts with me,  
Thou in that broken Glass shouldst plainly see,  
A heart which wastes in the slow smothering fire  
Blown by despair, and fed by false desire,  
Can only reap such sleeps as Seamen have,  
When fierce winds rock them on the foaming wave.    

SONNET. To Patience.  

DOwn stormy passions, down; no more  
Let your rude waves invade the shore  
Where blushing reason sits and hides  
Her from the fury of your tides.  
Fit only 'tis where you bear sway  
That Fools or frantics do obey;  
Since judgement, if it not resists,  
Will lose itself in your blind mists.   

Fall easy Patience, fall like rest  
Whose soft spells charm a troubled breast:  
And where those Rebels you espy,  
O in your silken cordage tie  
Their malice up! so shall I raise  
Altars to thank your power, and praise  
The sovereign virtue of your Balm,  
Which cures a Tempest by a Calm.    

Silence. A SONNET.  

PEace my hearts blab, be ever dumb,  
Sorrows speak loud without a tongue:  
And my perplexed thoughts forbear  
To breath yourselves in any ear:  
'tis scarce a true or manly grief  
Which gads abroad to find relief.   

Was ever stomach that lacked meat  
Nourished by what another eat?  
Can I bestow it, or will woe  
Forsake me when I bid it go?  
Then I'll believe a wounded breast  
May heal by shrift, and purchase rest.   

But if imparting it I do  
Not ease myself, but trouble two,  
'Tis better I alone possess  
My treasure of unhappiness:  
Engrossing that which is my own  
No longer than it is unknown.   

If silence be a kind of death,  
He kindles grief who gives it breath;  
But let it rak't in embers lie,  
On thine own hearth 'twill quickly die;  
And spite of fate, that very womb  
Which carries it, shall prove its tomb.    

Love's Harvest.  

FOnd Lunatic forbear, why dost thou sue  
For thy affections pay  it is due?  
Love's fruits are legal use; and therefore may  
Be only taken on the marriage day.  
Who for this interest too early call,  
By that exaction lose the Principal.   

Then gather not those immature delights,  
Until their riper Autumn the● invites.  
He that abortive Corn cuts off his ground,  
No Husband but a Ravisher is found:  
So those that reap their love before they wed,  
Do in effect but Cuckold their own Bed.    

The Forlorn Hope.  

HOw long vain Hope dost thou my joys suspend?  
Say! must my expectation know no end!  
Thou wast more kind unto the wand'ring Greek  
Who did ten years his Wife and Country seek:  
Ten lazy Winters in my glass are run,  
Yet my thoughts travail seems but new begun.   

●ooth Quicksand which the easy World beguiles,  
●ou shalt not bury me in the false smiles.  
They that in hunting shadows pleasure take  
May benefit of thy illusion make.  
Since thou hast banished me from my content  
I here pronounce thy final banishment.   

Farewell thou dream of nothing! thou mere voice  
Get thee to fools that can feed fat with noise:  
Bid wretches marked for death look for reprieve,  
Or men broke on the wheel persuade to live.  
Henceforth my comfort and best Hope shall be▪  
By scorning Hope, ne'er to rely on thee.    

The Retreat.  

PUrsue no more (my thoughts!) that false unkin  
You may assoon imprison the Northwind;  
Or catch the Lightning as it leaps; or reach  
The leading billow first ran down the breach;  
Or undertake the flying clouds to tract  
In the same path they yesterday did rack.  
Then, like a Torch turned downward, let the sa●  
Desire which nourished it, put out your flame.   

Lo thus I do divorce thee from my breast,  
False to thy vow, and traitor to my rest!  
Henceforth thy tears shall be (though thou repent)  
Like pardons after execution sent.  
Nor shalt thou ever my love's story read,  
But as some Epitaph of what is dead.  
So may my hope on future blessings dwell,  
As 'tis my firm resolve and last farewell.    

SONNET.  

TEll me you stars that our affections move,  
Why made ye me that cruel one to love?  
Why burns my heart her scorned sacrifice,  
Whose breast is hard as Crystal, cold as Ice?   

God of Desire! if all thy Votaries  
Thou thus repay, succession will grow wise;  
No sighs for incense at thy Shrine shall smoke,  
Thy Rites will be despised, thy Altars broke.   

O! or give her my flame to melt that snow  
Which yet unthawed does on her bosom grow;  
Or make me ice, and with her crystal chains  
Bind up all love within my frozen veins.    

SONNET.  

I Prithee turn that face away  
Whose splendour but benights my day.  
Sad eyes like mine, and wounded hearts  
Eat the bright rays which beauty darts.  
Unwelcome is the Sun that pries  
Into those shades where sorrow lies.   

Go shine on happy things. To me  
That blessing is a misery:  
Whom thy fierce Sun not warms, but burns,  
Like that the sooty Indian turns.  
I'll serve the night, and there confined  
Wish thee less fair, or else more kind.    

SONNET.  

DRy those fair, those crystal eyes  
Which like growing fountains rise  
To drown their banks. Griefs sullen brooks  
Would better flow in furrowed looks.  
Thy lovely face was never meant  
To be the shore of discontent.   

Then clear those waterish stars again  
Which else portend a lasting rain;  
Lest the clouds which settle there  
Prolong my Winter all the Year:  
And the example others make  
In love with sorrow for thy sake.    

SONNET.  

When I entreat, either thou wilt not hear,  
Or else my suit arriving at thy ear  
Cools and dies there. A strange extremity  
To freeze i'th' Sun, and in the shade to frie.  
Whilst all my blasted hopes decline so soon,  
'tis Evening with me, though at high Noon.   

For pity to thyself, if not to me  
Think time will ravish, what I lose, from thee.  
If my scorched heart whither through thy delay,  
Thy beauty withers too. And swift decay  
Arrests thy Youth. So thou whilst I am slighted  
Will't be too soon with age or sorrow nighted.    

To a Lady who sent we a copy of verses at my going to bed.  

LAdy your art or wit could ne'er devise  
To shame me more than in this night's surprise.  
Why I am quite unready, and my eye  
Now winking like my candle, doth deny  
To guide my hand, if it had aught to write;  
Nor can I make my drowsy sense indite  
Which by your verses music (as a spell  
Sent from the Sybellean Oracle)  
Is charmed and bound in wonder and delight,  
Faster than all the leaden chains of night.   

What pity is it then you should so ill  
Employ the bounty of your flowing quill,  
As to expend on him your bedward thought,  
Who can acknowledge that large love in nought  
But this lean wish; that fate soon send you those  
Who may requite your rhimes with midnight prose?   

Mean time, may all delights and pleasing Themes  
Like Masquers revel in your M●●den dreams,  
Whilst dull to write, and to do more unmeet,  
I, as the night invites me, fall asleep.    

The Pink.  

FAir one, you did on me bestow  
Comparisons too sweet to owe;  
And but I found them sent from you  
I durst not think they could be true.   

But 'tis your uncontrolled power  
Goddess-like to produce a flower,  
And by your breath, without more seed,  
Make that a Pink which was a Weed.   

Because I would be loath to miss  
So sweet a Metamorphosis,  
Upon what stalk soe'er I grow  
Disdain not you sometimes to blow  
And cherish by your Virgin eye  
What in your frown would droop and die:   

So shall my thankful leaf repay  
Perfumed wishes every day:  
And o'er your fortune breathe a spell  
Which may his obligation tell,  
Who though he nought but she can give  
Must ever your (Sweet) creature live.    

To his Friends of Christ-Church upon the mislike of the Marriage of the Arts acted at Woodstock.  

BUt is it true, the Court misliked the Play,  
That Christ Church and the A●ts have lost the day;  
That Ignoramus should so far excel,  
Their Hobby horse from ours hath born the Bell?   

Troth you are justly served, that would present  
Aught unto them, but shallow merriment;  
Or to your Marriage-table did admit  
Guests that are stronger far in smell then wit.   

Had some acquaint Bawdry larded every Scene,  
Some fawning Sycophant, or courted quean;  
Had there appeared some sharp cross-gartered man  
Whom their loud laugh might nickname Puritan,  
Cased up in factious breeches and small ruff,  
That hates the surplis, and defies the cuff:  
Then sure they would have given applause to crown  
That which their ignorance did now cry down.   

Let me advise, when next you do bestow  
Your pains on men that do but little know,  
You do no Chorus nor a Comment lack,  
Which may expound and construe every Act:  
That it be short and slight; for if it be good  
'tis long, and neither liked nor understood.   

Know 'tis Court fashion still to discommend  
All that which they want brain to comprehend.    

The Surrender.  

MY once dear Love; hapless that I no more  
Must call thee so: the rich affections store  
That fed our hopes, lies now exhausted and spent,  
Like sums of treasure unto Bankrupts lent.   

We that did nothing study but the way  
To love each other, with which thoughts the day  
Rose with delight to us, and with them set,  
Must learn the hateful Art how to forget.   

We that did nothing wish that Heaven could give  
Beyond ourselves, nor did desire to live  
Beyond that wish, all these now cancel must  
As if not writ in faith, but words and dust.   

Yet witness those clear vows which Lovers make,  
Witness the chaste desires that never broke  
Into unruly heats; witness that breast  
Which in thy bosom anchored his whole rest,  
'tis no default in us, I dare acquit  
Thy Maiden faith, thy purpose fair and white   

As thy pure self. Cross Planets did envy  
●s to each other, and Heaven did untie  
● after than vows could bind. O that the Stars,  
When Lovers meet, should stand opposed in wars!   

Since then some higher Destinies command,  
Let us not strive nor labour to withstand  
What is past help. The longest date of grief  
Can never yield a hope of our relief;  
And though we waste ourselves in moist laments,  
Tears may drown us but not our discontents.   

Fold back our arms, take home our fruitless loves  
That must new fortunes try, like Turtle Doves  
Dislodged from their haunts. We must in tears  
●nwind a love knit up in many years.  
●n this last kiss I here surrender thee  
●ack to thyself, so thou again art free.  
●hou in another, sad as that, resend  
●he truest heart that Lover ere did lend.   

Now turn from each. So far our severed hearts  
●s the divoreed soul from her body parts.    

The Legacy.  

My dearest Love! when thou and I must part,  
And th'icy hand of death shall seize that heart  
Which is all thine; within some spacious will  
He leave no blanks for Legacies to fill:  
'tis my ambition to die one of those  
Who but himself hath nothing to dispose.   

And since that is already thine, what need,  
I to re-give it by some newer deed,  
Yet take it once again. Free circumstance  
Does oft the value of mean things advance:  
Who thus repeats what he bequeathed before,  
Proclaims his bounty richer than his store.   

But let me not upon my love bestow  
What is not worth the giving. I do owe  
Somewhat to dust: my body's pampered care  
Hungry corruption and the worm will share.  
That mouldering relic which in earth must lie  
Would prove a gift of horror to thine eye.   

With this cast rag of my mortality  
●et all my faults and errors buried he.  
And as my cerecloth rots, so may kind far  
Those worst acts of my life incinerate.  
He shall in story fill a glorious room  
Whose ashes and whose sins sleep in one Tomb.   

If now to my cold hearse thou deign to bring  
Some melting sighs as thy last offering,  
My peaceful exequys are crowned. Nor shall  
I ask more honour at my Funeral.  
Thou wilt more richly balm me with thy tears  
Then all the Nard fragrant Arabia bears.   

And as the Paphian Queen by her griefs shower  
Brought up her dead Love's Spirit in a flower:  
So by those precious drops reigned from thine eyes,  
Out of my dust, O may some virtue rise!  
And like thy better Genius thee attend,  
Till thou in my dark Period shalt end.   

Lastly, my constant truth let me commend  
To him thou choosest next to be thy friend.  
For (witness all things good) I would not have  
Thy Youth and Beauty married to my grave,  
'Twould show thou didst repent the style of wife  
Shouldst thou relapse into a single life.   

They with preposterous grief the world delude  
Who mourn for their lost Mates in solitude;  
Since Widowhood more strongly doth enforce  
The much lamented lot of their divorce.  
Themselves then of their losses guilty are  
Who may, yet will not suffer a repair.   

Those were Barbarian wives that did invent  
Weeping to death at th'husband's Monument,  
But in more civil Rites She doth approve  
Her first, who ventures on a second Love;  
For else it may be thought, if She refrain,  
She sped so ill She durst not try again.   

Up them my Love, and choose some worthler one  
Who may supply my room when I am gone;  
So will the stock of our affection thrive  
No less in death, than were I still alive.  
And in my urn I shall rejoice, that I  
Am both testator thus and Legacy.    

The short Wooing.  

LIke an Oblation set before a Shrine,  
Fair One! I offer up this heart of mine.  
Whether the Saint accept my Gift or no,  
He neither fear nor doubt before I know.  
For he whose faint distrust prevents reply,  
Doth his own suits denial prophecy.   

Your will the sentence is; Who free as Fate  
Can bid my love proceed, or else retreat.  
And from short views that verdict is decreed  
Which seldom doth one audience exceed.  
Love asks no dull probation, but like light  
Conveys his nimble influence at first sight.   

I need not therefore importune or press;  
This were t'extort unwilling happiness:  
And much against affection might I sin:  
To tyre and weary what I seek to win.  
Towns which by lingering siege enforced be  
Oft make both sides repent the victory.   

Be Mistress of yourself: and let me thrive  
Or suffer by your own prerogative.  
Yet stay, since you are Judge, who in one breath  
Bear uncontrolled power of Life and Death,  
Remember (Sweet) pity doth best become  
Those lips which must pronounce a Suitors doom   

If I find that, my spark of chaste desire  
Shall kindle into Hymen's holy fire:  
Else like sad flowers will these verses prove,  
To stick the Coffin of rejected Love.    

St. Valentine's day.  

NOw that each feathered Chorister doth sing  
The glad approaches of the welcome Spring  
Now Phoebus darts forth his more early beam,  
And dips it later in the curled stream,  
I should to custom prove a retrograde  
Did I still dote upon my sullen shade.   

Oft have the seasons finished and begun;  
Days into Months, those into years have run,  
Since my cross Stars and inauspicious fate  
Doomed me to linger here without my Mate:  
Whose loss ere since befrosting my desire,  
Left me an Altar without Gift or Fire.   

I therefore could have wished for your own sake  
That Fortune had designed a nobler stake  
For you to draw, then one whose fading day  
Like to a dedicated Taper lay  
Within a Tomb, and long burnt ou● in 〈◊〉,  
Since nothing there saw better by the flame.   

Yet since you like your Chance, I must not try  
To mar it through my incapacity.  
I here make title to it, and proclaim  
How much you honour me to wear my name;  
Who can no form of gratitude devise,  
But offer up myself your sacrifice.   

Hall then my worthy Lot! and may each Morn  
Successive springs of joy to you be born:  
May your content ne'er wane, until my heart  
Grown Bankrupt, wants good wishes to impart.  
Henceforth I need not make the dust my Shrine,  
Nor search the Grave for my lost Valentine.    

To his unconstant Friend.  

BUt say thou very woman, why to me  
This fit of weakness and inconstancy?  
What forfeit have I made of word or vow,  
That I am racked on thy displeasure now?  
If I have done a fault I do not shame  
To cite it from thy lips, give it a name:  
I ask the banes, stand forth, and tell me why  
We should not in our wont loves comply?  
Did thy cloyed appetite urge thee to try  
If any other man could love as I?  
I see friends are like clothes, lad up whilst new,  
But after wearing cast, though ne'er so true.  
Or did thy fierce ambition long to make  
Some Lover turn a martyr for thy sake?  
Thinking thy beauty had deserved no name  
Unless some one do perish in that flame:  
Upon whose loving dust this sentence lies,  
Here's one was murdered by his Mistress eyes.  
Or was't because my love to thee was such,  
I could not choose but blab it? swear how much  
I was thy slave, and doting let thee know,  
I better could myself then thee forgo.   

Harken ye men that ere shall love like me,  
He give you counsel gratis: if you be  
Possessed of what you like, let your fair friend  
Lodge in your bosom, but no secrets send  
To seek their lodging in a female breast;  
For so much is abated of your rest.  
The Steed that comes to understand his strength  
Grows wild, and casts his manager at length:  
And that tame Lover who unlocks his heart  
Into his Mistress, teaches her an art  
To plague himself; shows her the secret way  
How She may tyrannize another day.   

And now my fair unkindness, thus to thee;  
Mark how wise Passion and I agree:  
Hear and be sorry for't. I will not die  
To expiate thy crime of levity:  
〈◊〉 walk (not cross-armed neither) ear, and live,  
●ea live to pity thy neglect, not grieve  
That thou art from thy faith and promise gone,  
Nor envy him who by my loss hath won.  
Thou shalt perceive thy changing Moon-like fits  
Have not infected me, or turned my wits  
To Lunacy. I do not mean to weep  
When I should eat, or sigh when I should sleep;  
I will not fall upon my pointed quill,  
Bleed ink and Poems, or invention spill  
To contrive Ballads, or wove Elegies  
For Nurses wearing when the infant cries.  
Nor like th'enamoured Tristrams of the time,  
Despair in prose, and hang myself in rhyme.  
Nor thither run upon my verses feet,  
Where I shall none but fools or madmen meet,  
Who midst the silent shades, and Myrtle walks,  
Pule and do penance for their Mistress faults.  
I'm none of those poetic malcontents  
Born to make paper dear with my laments:  
Or wild Orlando that will rail and vex,  
And for thy sake fall out with all the sex.  
No, I will love again, and seek a prize  
That shall redeem me from thy poor despise.  
He court my fortune now in such a shape  
That will no faint die, nor starved colour take.   

Thus launch I off with triumph from thy shore,  
To which my last farewell; for never more  
Will I touch there. I put to Sea again  
Blown with the churlish wind of thy disdain.  
Nor will I stop this course till I have found  
A Coast that yields safe harbour, and firm ground.   

Smile ye Love-Starres; winged with desire I fly,  
To make my wishes full discovery:  
Nor doubt I but for one that proves like you,  
I shall find ten as fair, and yet more true.    

Madam Gabrina, Or the Ill-favoured Choice. Con mala Muger el rem●dio Mucha Tierra por el medio.  

I Have oft wondered why thou didst elect  
Thy Mistress of a stuff none could affect,  
That wore his eyes in the right place. A thing  
Made up, when Nature's powers lay slumbering,  
One, where all pregnant imperfections met  
To make her sex's scandal: Teeth of jet,  
Hair died in Orpment, from whose fretful hue  
Canidia her highest Witchcrafts drew.  
A lip most thin and pale, but such a mouth  
Which like the Poles is stretched North and South.  
A face so coloured, and of such a form,  
As might defiance bid unto a storm:  
And the complexion of her sallow hide  
Like a wracked body washed up by the Tide:  
Eyes small: a nose so to her vizard glued  
As if 'twould take a Planets altitude.  
Last for her breath, 'tis somewhat like the smell  
That does in Ember weeks on Fishstreer dwell;  
Or as a man should fasting scent the Rose  
Which in the savoury Bear-garden grows.  
If a Fox cures the Paralytical,  
Hadst thou ten Palsies, she'd out-stink them all.   

But I have found thy plot: sure thou didst try  
To put thyself past hope of jealousy:  
And whilst unlearned fools the senses please,  
Thou cur'st thy appetite by a disease;  
As many use to kill an itch withal,  
Quicksilver or some biting Mineral.   

Dote upon handsome things each common man  
With little study and less labour can;  
But to make love to a Deformity,  
Only commends thy great ability,  
Who from hard-favoured objects drawest content,  
As Ostriches from iron nutriment.   

Well take her, and like mounted George, in bed  
Boldly achieve thy Dragon's Maidenhead:  
Where (though scarce sleep) thou mayst rest confident  
None dares beguile thee of thy punishment:  
The sin were not more foul he should commit,  
Then is that She with whom he acted it.   

Yet take this comfort: when old age shall raze,  
Or sickness ruin many a good face,  
Thy choice cannot impair; no cunning curse  
Can mend that night-piece, that is, make her worse.    

The Defence.  
Piensan los Enamorados  
Que tienen los otros, los oios quebranta does.  

Why slighrest thou what I approve?  
Thou art no Peer to try my love,  
Nor canst discern where her form lies,  
Unless thou saw'st her with my eyes.   

Say she were foul and blacker than  
The Night, or Sunburnt African,  
If liked by me, 'tis I alone  
Can make a beauty where was none;  
For rated in my fancy, she  
Is so as she appears to me.   

But 'tis not feature, or a face,  
That does my free election grace,  
Nor is my liking only led  
By a well tempered white and red;  
Can I enamoured grow on those,  
The Lily and the blushing Rose  
United in one stalk might be  
As dear unto my thoughts as she.   

But I look farther, and do find  
A richer beauty in her mind;  
Where something is so lasting fair,  
As time or age cannot impair.  
Hadst thou a perspective so clear,  
Thou couldst behold my object there;  
When thou her virtues shouldst espy,  
Theyled force thee to confess that I  
Had cause to like her, and learn thence  
To love by judgement not by sense.    

To One demarding why Wine sparkles.  

SO Diamonds sparkle, and thy Mistress eyes;  
When 'tis not Fire but light in either flies.  
Beauty not thawed by lustful flames will show  
Like a fair mountain of unmelted snow:  
Nor can the tasted vine more danger bring  
Then water taken from the crystal Spring,  
Whose end is to refresh and cool that heat  
Which unallayd becomes foul vices seat:  
Unless thy boiling veins, mad with desire  
Of drink, convert the liquor into fire.  
For than thou quaff'st down fevers, thy full bowls  
Carouse the burning draughts of Portia's coals.   

If it do leap and sparkle in the cup,  
'twill sink thy cares, and help invention up.  
There never yet was Muse or Poet known  
Not dipped or drenched in this Helicon.  
But Tom! take heed thou use it with such care  
As Witches deal with their Familiar.  
For if thy virtues circled not confine  
And guard thee from the Furies raised by wine,  
'Tis ten to one this dancing spirit may  
A Devil prove to bear thy wits away;  
And make thy glowing nose a Map of Hell  
Where Bacchus purple fumes like Meteors dwell.  
Now think not these sage morals thee invire  
To prove Carthusian or strict Rechabite;  
Let fools be mad, wise people may be free,  
Though not to licence turn their liberty.  
He that drinks wine for health, not for excess,  
Nor drowns his temper in a drunkenness,  
Shall feel no more the grapes unruly fate,  
Then if he took some chilling Opiate.    

By occasion of the Young Prince his happy birth  

AT this glad Triumph, when most Poets use  
Their quill, I did not bridle up my Muse  
For sloth or less devotion. I am one  
That can well keep my Holidays at home;  
That can the blessings of my King and State  
Better in prayer than poems gratulate;  
And in their fortunes bear a loyal part,  
Though I no bonfires light but in my heart.   

Truth is, when I received the first report  
Of a new Star risen and seen at Court;  
Though I felt joy enough to give a tongue  
Unto a mute, yet duty struck me dumb:  
And thus surprised by rumour, at first sight  
I held it some allegiance not to write.   

For howe'er Children, unto those that look  
Their pedigree in God's, not the Church book,  
Fair pledges are of that eternity  
Which Christians possess not till they die;  
Yet they appear viewed in that perspective  
Through which we look on men long since alive,  
Like succours in a Camp, sent to make good  
Their place that last upon the watches stood.  
So that in age, or fate, each following birth  
Doth set the Parent so much nearer earth:  
And by this Grammar we our heirs may call  
The smiling Preface to our funeral.   

This sadded my soft sense, to think that he  
Who now makes Laws, should by a bold decree  
Be summoned hence to make another room,  
And change his Royal Palace for a tomb.  
For none ere truly loved the present light,  
But grieved to see it rivalled by the night:  
And if't be sin to wish that light extinct,  
Sorrow may make it treason but to think't.  
I know each malcontent or giddy man,  
In his religion with the Persian,  
Adores the rising Sun; and his false view  
Best likes not what is best, but what is new.  
O that we could these gangrenes so prevent  
(For our own blessing and their punishment)  
That all such might, who for wild changes thirst,  
Racked on a hopeless expectation, burst,  
To see us fetter time, and by his stay  
To a consistence fix the flying day;  
And in a Solstice by our prayers made,  
Rescue our Sun from death or envies shade.   

But here we dally with fate, and in this  
Stern Destiny mocks and controls our wish;  
Informing us, if fathers should remain  
For ever here, children were born in vain;  
And we in vain were Christians, should we  
In this world dream of perpetuity.  
Decay is nature's Calendar; nor can  
●t hurt the King to think he is a man;  
Nor grieve, but comfort him, to hear us say  
That his own children must his Sceptre sway.  
Why slack I then to contribute a vote  
●arge as the Kingdom's joy, free as my thought?  
●ong live the Prince, and in that title bear  
The world long witness that the King is here:  
●ay he grow up till all that good he reach  
Which we can wish, or his Great Father teach:  
●et him shine long a mark to Land and Main,  
Like that bright Spark placed nearest to Charles Wain,  
●nd like him lead successions golden Team,  
●hich may possess the British Diadem.   

But in the mean space, let his Royal Sire,  
Who warms our hopes with true Promethean fire,  
●o long his course in time and glory run,  
●ill he estate his virtue on his son.  
●o in his Father's days this happy One  
●hall crowned be, yet not usurp the Throne;  
And Charles reign still, since thus himself will be  
Heir to himself through all Posterity.    

Upon the King's happy return from Scotland.  

SO breaks the day when the returning Sun  
Hath newly through his Winter Tropic run,  
As You (Great Sir!) in this regress come forth  
From the remoter Climate of the North.   

To tell You now what cares, what fears we passed  
What Clouds of sorrow did the land o'ercast,  
Were lost, but unto such as have been there  
Where the absented Sun benights the year:  
Or have those countries' travelled which ne'er feel  
The warmth and virtue of his flaming wheel.   

How happy yet were we! that when you went,  
You left within your Kingdom's firmament  
A Partner-Light, whose lustre may despise  
The nightly glimmering Tapers of the skies,  
Your peerless Queen; and at each hand a Star  
Whose hopeful beams from You enkindled are.  
●hough (to say truth) the light which they could bring  
●erv'd but to lengthen out our evening.   

Heaven's greater lampsillumine it; each spark  
●dds only this, to make the sky less dark.  
●ay She who is the glory of her sex  
Did sadly droop for lack of Your reflex:  
Oft did She her fair brow in loneness shroud,  
And dimly shone, like Venus in a cloud.   

Now are those gloomy mists dried up by You,  
As the World's eye scatters the Evening dew:  
And You bring home that blessing to the land  
Which absence made us rightly understand.   

Here may You henceforth stay! there need no charms  
To hold You, but the circle of her arms,  
Whose fruitful love yields You a rich increase,  
Seals of Your joy, and of the kingdom's peace.  
O may those precious pledges fix You here,  
And You grow old within that crystal Sphere!   

Pardon this bold detention. Else our love  
Will merely an officious trouble prove.  
Each busy minute tells us as it flies,  
That there are better objects for your eyes.  
To them let us leave you, whilst we go pray,  
Raising this triumph to a Holiday.   

And may that soul the Church's blessing want;  
May his content be short, his comforts scant,  
Whose Bosom-Altar does no incense burn,  
In thankful sacrifice for your return.    

To the Queen at Oxford.  

GReat Lady! That thus quite against our use,  
We speak your welcome by an English Muse,  
And in a vulgar tongue our zeals contrive,  
Is to confess your large prerogative,  
Who have the powerful freedom to dispense  
With our strict Rules, or Customs difference.   

'tis fit when such a Star deigns to appear  
And shine within the Academic Sphere,  
That every College graced by your resort,  
Should only speak the language of your Court;  
As if Apollo's learned Choir, but You  
No other Queen of the Ascendent knew.   

Let those that list invoke the Delphian name,  
To light their verse, and quench their doting flame;  
In Helicon it were High Treason now,  
Did any to a feigned Minerva bow;  
When You are present, whose chaste virtues slain  
The vaunted glories of her Maiden brain.   

I would not flatter. May that diet feed  
Deformed and vicious souls: they only need  
Such physic, who grown sick of their decays,  
Are only cured with surfeits of false praise;  
Like those, who fallen from Youth or Beauty's grace,  
Lay colours on which more belly the face.   

Be You still what You are; a glorious Theme  
For Truth to crown. So when that Diadem  
Which circle's Your fair brow drops off, and time  
Shall lift You to that pitch our prayers climb;  
Posterity will plat a nobler wreath,  
To crown Your fame and memory in death.  
This is sad truth and plain, which I might fear  
Would scarce prove welcome to a Prince's ear;  
And hardly may you think that Writer wise  
Who preaches there where he should poetize;  
Yet where so rich a bank of goodness is,  
Triumphs and Feasts admit such thoughts as this;  
Nor will your virtue from her Client turn,  
Although he bring his tribute in an urn.   

Enough of this: who knows not when to end  
Needs must by tedious diligence offend.  
'Tis not a Poet's office to advance  
The precious value of allegiance.  
And least of all the rest do I affect  
To word my duty in this dialect.   

My service lies a better way, whose tone  
Is spirited by full devotion.  
Thus whilst I mention You, Your Royal Mate,  
And Those which your blessed line perpetuate,  
I shall such votes of happiness rehearse,  
Whose softest accents will out-tongue my verse.    

A salutation of his Majesty's Ship the Sovereign.  

MOve on thou floating Trophy built to fame!  
And bid her trump spread thy Majestic name;  
That the blue Tritons, and those petty Gods  
Which sport themselves upon the dancing floods,  
May bow as to their N●ptune, when they feel  
The awful pressure of thy potent keel.   

Great wonder of the time! whose form unites,  
In one aspect two warring opposites,  
Delight and horror; and in them portends  
Differing events both to thy foes and friends  
To these thy radiant brow, Peace's bright Shrine,  
Doth like that golden Constellation shine,  
Which guides the Sea man with auspicious beams,  
Safe and unshipwrackt through the troubled streams,  
But, as a blazing Meteor, to those  
●t doth oftents of blood and death disclose.  
For thy rich Decks lighten like Heavens fires,  
To usher forth the thunder of thy Thes.   

O never may cross wind, or swelling wave  
Conspire to make the treacherous sands thy grave:  
Nor envious rocks in their white foamy laugh  
Rejoice to wear thy losses Epitaph.  
But may the smoothest, most successful gales  
Distend thy sheet, and wing thy flying sails:  
That all designs which must on thee embark,  
May be securely placed as in the Ark.  
May'st thou, where ere thy streamers shall display,  
Enforce the bold disputers to obey:  
That they whose pens are sharper than their swords:  
May yield in fact what they denied in words.  
Thus when th'amazed world our Seas shall see  
Shut from Usurpers, to their own Lord free,  
Thou may'st returning from the conquered Main,  
With thine own Triumphs be crowned Sovereign.    

AN EPITAPH On his most honoured Friend Richard Earl of Dorset.  

LEt no profane ignoble foot tread near  
This hall owed piece of earth, Dorset lies here.  
A small sad relic of a noble spirit,  
Free as the air, and ample as his merit;  
Whose least perfection was large, and great  
Enough to make a common man complete.  
A soul refined and culled from many men,  
That reconciled the sword unto the pen,  
Using both well. No proud forgetting Lord,  
But mindful of mean names and of his word.  
One that did love for honour, not for ends,  
And had the noblest way of making friends  
By loving first. One that did know the Court,  
Yet understood it better by report  
Then practice, for he nothing took from thence  
But the king's favour for his recompense.   

One for religion, or his countries' good  
That valued not his Fortune nor his blood.  
One high in fair opinion, rich in praise;  
And full of all we could have wished, but days.   

He that is warned of this, and shall forbear  
To vent a sigh for him, or lend a tear;  
May he live long and scorned, unpitied fall,  
And want a mourner at his funeral.    

The Extquy.  

ACcept thou Shrine of my dead Saint,  
Instead of Dirges this complaint;  
And for sweet flowers to crown thy hearse,  
Receive a strew of weeping verse  
From thy grieved friend, whom thou mightst see  
Quite melted into tears for thee.   

Dear loss! since thy untimely fate  
My task hath been to meditate  
On thee, on thee: thou art the book,  
The library whereon I look  
Though almost blind. For thee (loved clay)  
I languish out not live the day,  
Using no other exercise  
But what I practise with mine eyes:  
By which wet glasses I find out  
How lazily time creeps about  
To one that mourns: this, only this  
My exercise and business is:  
So I compute the weary hours  
With sighs dissolved into showers.   

Nor wonder if my time go thus  
Backward and most preposterous;  
Thou hast benighted me, thy set  
This Eve of blackness did beget,  
Who was't my day, (though overcast  
Before thou hadst thy Noon-tide passed)  
And I remember must in tears,  
Thou scarce hadst seen so many years  
●s Day tells hours. By thy clear Sun  
●y love and fortune first did run;  
●ut thou wilt never more appear  
●olded within my Hemisphere,  
●ince both thy light and motion  
●ike a fled Star is fallen and gone,  
And twixt me and my souls dear wish  
The earth now interposed is,  
Which such a strange eclipse doth make  
As ne'er was read in Almanac.   

I could allow thee for a time  
To darken me and my sad Clime,  
Were it a month, a year, or ten,  
I would thy exile live till then;  
And all that space my mirth adjourn,  
So thou wouldst promise to return;  
And putting off thy ashy   
At length disperse this sorrows cloud.   

But woe is me! the longest date  
Too narrow is to calculate  
These empty hopes: never shall I  
Be so much blest as to descry  
A glimpse of thee, till that day come  
Which shall the earth to cinders doom,  
And a fierce Fever must calcine  
The body of this world like thine,  
(My Little World!) that fit of fire  
Once off, our bodies shall aspire  
To our soul's bliss: then we shall rise,  
And view ourselves with clearer eyes  
In that calm Region, where no night  
Can hid us from each others sight.   

Mean time, thou hast her earth: much good  
May my harm do thee. Since it stood  
With Heavens will I might not call  
Her longer mine, I give thee all  
My short-lived right and interest  
In her, whom living I loved best:  
With a most free and bounteous grief,  
I give thee what I could not keep.  
Be kind to her, and prithee look  
Thou writ into thy Doomsday book  
Each parcel of this Rarity  
Which in thy Casket shrined doth lie:  
See that thou make thy reckoning straight,  
And yield her back again by weight;  
For thou must audit on thy trust  
Each grain and atom of this dust,  
As thou wilt answer Him that lent,  
Not gave thee my dear Monument.   

So close the ground, and 'bout her shade  
Black curtains draw, my Bride is laid.   

Sleep on my Love in thy cold bed  
Never to be disquieted!  
My last good night! Thou wilt not wak●  
Till I thy fate shall overtake:  
Till age, or grief, or sickness must  
Marry my body to that dust  
It so much loves; and fill the room  
My heart keeps empty in thy Tomb.  
Stay for me there; I will not fail  
To meet thee in that hallow Valerius  
And think not much of my delay;  
I am already on the way,  
And follow thee with all the speed  
Desire can make, or sorrows breed.  
Each minute is a short degree,  
And every hour a step towards thee.  
At night when I betake to rest,  
Next morn I rise nearer my West  
Of life, almost by eight hours' sail,  
Then when sleep breathed his drowsy gale.   

Thus from the Sun my Bottom stears,  
And my day's Compass downward bears:  
Nor labour I to stem the tide  
Through which to Thee I swiftly glide.   

'Tis true, with shame and grief I yield,  
Thou like the Vann first took'st the field,  
And gotten hast the victory  
In thus adventuring to die  
Before me, whose more years might crave  
A just precedence in the grave.  
But hark! My Pulse like a soft Drum  
Beats my approach, tells Thee I come;  
And slow howe'er my marches be,  
I shall at last sit down by Thee.   

The thought of this bids me go on,  
And wait my dissolution  
With hope and comfort. Dear (forgive  
The crime) I am content to live  
Divided, with but half a heart,  
Till we shall meet and never part.    

The Anniverse. AN ELEGY.  

SO soon grown old! hast thou been six years dead▪  
Poor earth, once by my Love inhabited!  
And must I live to calculate the time  
To which thy blooming youth could never climb,  
But fell in the ascent! yet have not I  
Studied enough thy losses history.   

How happy were mankind if Death's strict laws  
Consumed our lamentations like the cause!  
Or that our grief turning to dust might end  
With the dissolved body of a friend!   

But sacred Heaven! O how just thou art  
In stamping deaths impression on that heart  
Which through thy favours would grow insolent,  
Were it not physick't by sharp discontent.  
If then it stand resolved in thy decree  
That still I must doomed to a Desert be  
Sprung out of my loan thoughts, which know no path  
But what my own misfortune beaten hath:  
If thou wilt bind me living to a coarse,  
And I must slowly waste; I then of force  
Stoop to thy great appointment, and obey  
That will which nought avail me to gainsay.   

For whilst in sorrow's Maze I wander on,  
I do but follow life's vocation.  
Sure we were made to grieve: at our first birth  
With cries we took possession of the earth;  
And though the lucky man reputed be  
Fortunes adopted son, yet only he  
Is Nature's true born child, who sums his years  
(Like me) with no Arithmetic but tears.    

On two Children dying of one Disease, and buried in one Grave.  

BRought forth in sorrow, and bred up in care,  
Two tender Children here entombed are:  
One Place, one Sire, one Womb their being gave,  
They had one mortal sickness, and one grave.  
And though they cannot number many years  
In their Account, yet with their Parents tears  
This comfort mingles; Though their days were few  
They scarcely sin, but never sorrow knew:  
So that they well might boast, they carried hence  
What riper ages lose, their innocence.   

You pretty losses, that revive the fate  
Which in your mother death did antedate,  
O let my high-swol'n grief distil on you  
The saddest drops of a parental dew:  
You ask no other dower then what my eyes  
Lay out on your untimely exequys:  
When once I have discharged that mournful score,  
Heaven hath decreed you ne'er shall cost me more,  
Since you release and quit my borrowed trust,  
By taking this inheritance of dust.    

A Letter.  

I Ne'er was dressed in Forms; nor can I bend  
My pen to flatter any, nor commend,  
Unless desert or honour do present  
Unto my verse a worthy argument.   

You are my friend, and in that word to me  
Stand blazoned in your noblest Heraldry;  
That style presents you full, and does relate  
The bounty of your love, and my own fate,  
Both which conspired to make me yours. A choice  
Which needs must in the giddy people's voice,  
That only judge the outside, and like apes  
Play with our names, and comment on our shapes,  
Appear too light: but it lies you upon  
To justify the disproportion.   

Truth be my record, I durst not presume  
To seek to you, 'twas you that did assume  
Me to your bosom. Wherein you subdued  
One that can serve you, though ne'er could intrude  
Upon great titles; nor knows how t'invade  
Acquaintance: Like such as are only paid  
With great men's smiles; if that the passant Lord  
Let fall a forced salute, or but afford  
The Nod Regardant. It was test enough  
For me, you ne'er did find such servile stuff  
Couched in my temper; I can freely say,  
I do not love you in that common way  
For which Great Ones are loved in this false time:  
I have no wish to gain, nor will to climb;  
I cannot pawn my freedom, nor outlive  
My liberty for all that you can give.  
And sure you may retain good cheap such friends,  
Who not your fortune make, but you, their ends.  
I speak not this to vaunt in my own story,  
All these additions are unto your glory;  
Who counter to the world, use to elect,  
Not to take up on trust what you affect.  
Indeed 'tis seldom seen that such as you  
Adopt a friend, or for acquaintance sue;  
Yet you did this vouchsafe, you did descend  
Below yourself to raise an humble friend,  
And fix him in your love: where I will stand  
The constant subject of your free command.  
Had I no airy thoughts sure you would teach  
Me higher than my own dull sphere to reach:  
And by reflex instruct me to appear  
Something (though course and plain) fit for your wear.   

Know, best of friends, however wild report  
May justly say I am unapt to sort  
With your opinion or society,  
(Which truth would shame me did I it deny)  
There's something in me says, I dare make good,  
When honour calls me, all I want in blood.   

Put off your Giant titles, than I can  
Stand in your judgements blank an equal man.  
Though Hills advanced are above the Plain,  
They are but higher earth, nor must disdain  
Alliance with the Vale: we see a spade  
Can levelly them, and make a Mount a Glade.  
Howe'er we differ in the Herald's book,  
He that mankind's extraction shall look  
In Nature's Rolls, must grant we all agree.  
In our best parts, immortal pedigree:  
You must by that perspective only view  
My service, else 'twill ne'er show worthy you.   

You see I court you bluntly like a friend  
Not like a Mistress; my Muse is not penned  
For smooth and oily flights: And I indent  
To use more honesty than compliment.   

But I have done; in lieu of all you give  
Receive his thankful tribute who must live  
Your vowed observer, and devotes a heart  
Which will in death seal the bold counterpart.    

An Acknowledgement.  

MY best of friends! what needs a chain to tie  
One by your merit bound a Votary?  
Think you I have some plot upon my peace,  
I would this bondage change for a release?  
Since 'twas my fate your prisoner to be,  
Heaven knows I nothing fear but liberty.   

Yet you do well that study to prevent,  
After so rich a stock of favour spent  
On one so worthless, lest my memory  
Should let so dear an obligation dy  
Without Record. This made my precious Friend  
Her Token, as an Antidote to send  
Against forgetful poisons. That as they  
Who Vespers late, and early Matins say  
Upon their Beads, so on this linked score  
In golden numbers I might reckon over  
Your virtues and my debt, which does surmount  
The trivial laws of Popular account:  
For that within this emblematic knot  
Your beauteous mind, and my own fate is wrote.   

The sparkling constellation which combines  
The Lock, is your dear self, whose worth out shines  
Most of your sex: so solid and so clear  
You like a perfect Diamond appear;  
Casting from your example fuller light  
Than those dim sparks which glaze the brow of night,  
And gladding all your friends, as doth the ray  
Of that East-starre which wakes the cheerful day.   

But the black Map of death and discontent  
Behind that Adamantine firmament,  
That luckless figure which like Calvary  
Stands strewed and coppy'd out in skulls, is I:  
Whose life your absence clouds, and makes my time  
Move blindfold in the dark ecliptic line.   

Then wonder not if my removed Sun  
So low within the Western Tropic run;  
My eyes no day in this Horizon see,  
Since where You are not all is night to me.   

Lastly, the anchor which enfastned lies  
Upon a pair of deaths, sadly applies  
That Monument of Rest which harbour must  
Our Shipwrecked fortunes in a road of dust.   

So then how late soe'er my joyless life  
Be tired out in this affection's strife:  
Though my tempestuous fancy like the sky  
Travail with storms, and through my watery eye  
Sorrows high-going waves spring many a leak;  
Though sighs blow loud till my heart's cordagebrea●  
Though Bath, and all my wishes prove untrue,  
Yet Death shall fix and anchor Me with You.  
'Tis some poor comfort that this mortal scope  
Will Period, though never Crown my Hope.    

The Acquittance.  
NOt knowing who should my Acquittance take,  
I know as little what discharge to make.  
The favour is so great, that it outgoes  
All forms of thankfulness I can propose.  
Those grateful livies which my pen would raise,  
Are stricken dumb, or buried in amaze.  
Therefore, as once in Athens there was shown  
An Altar built unto the God unknown,  
My ignorant devotions must by guests  
This blind return of gratitude address,  
Till You vouchsafe to show me where and how  
I may to this revealed Goddess bow.   

The Forfeiture.  

MY Dearest, To let you or the world know  
What Debt of service I do truly owe  
To your unpatterned self, were to require  
A language only formed in the desire  
Of him that writes. It is the common fate,  
Of greatest duties to evaporate  
In silent meaning, as we often see  
Fires by their too much fuel smothered be:  
Small Obligations may find vent and speak,  
When greater the unable debtor break.  
And such are mine to you, whose favours store,  
Hath made me poorer than I was before;  
For I want words and language to declare  
How strict my Bond or large your bounties are.   

Since nothing in my  fortune found,  
Can payment make, nor yet the sum compound  
You must lose all, or else of force accept  
The body of a Bankrupt for your debt.  
Then Love, your Bond to Execution sue,  
And take myself, as forfeited to you.    

The Departure. AN ELEGY.  

Were I to leave no more than a good friend,  
Or but to hear the summons to my end,  
(Which I have longed for) I could then with ease  
Attire my grief in words, and so appease  
That passion in my bosom, which outgrowes  
The language of strict verse or largest prose.  
But here I am quite lost; writing to you  
All that I pen or think, is forced and new.  
My faculties run cross, and prove as weak  
T'indite this melancholy task, as speak:  
Indeed all words are vain, well might I spare  
This rendering of my tortured thoughts in air,  
Or sighing paper. My infectious grief  
Strikes inward, and affords me no relief.  
But still a deeper wound, to lose a sight  
More loved than health, and dearer than the light.  
But all of us were not at the same time  
Brought forth, nor are we billeted in one clime.  
Nature hath pitched mankind at several rates,  
Making our places divers as our fates.  
Unto that universal law I bow,  
Though with unwilling knee; and do allow  
Her cruel justice, which disposed us so  
That we must counter to our wishes go.  
'Twas part of man's first curse, which ordered well  
We should not always with our like dwell.  
'Tis only the Triumphant Church where we  
Shall in unsevered Neighbourhood agree.   

Go then best soul, and where You must appear  
Restore the Day to that dull Hemisphere.  
Near may the hapless Night You leave behind  
Darken the comforts of Your purer mind.  
May all the blessings Wishes can invent  
Enrich your days, and crown them with content.  
And though You travel down into the West,  
May Your life's Sun stand fixed in the East,  
Far from the weeping set; nor may my car  
Take in that kill whisper, You once were.   

Thus kiss I your fair hands, taking my leave  
As Prisoners at the Bar their doom receive,  
All joys go with You: let sweet peace attend  
You on the way, and wait Your journey's end.  
But let Your discontents, and sourer fate  
Remain with me, born off in my Retreat.  
Might all your crosses in that sheet of lead  
Which folds my heavy heart lie buried:  
'Tis the last service I would do You, and the best  
My wishes ever meant, or tongue professed.  
Once more I take my leave. And once for all,  
Our parting shows so like a funeral,  
It strikes my soul, which hath most right to be  
Chief Mourner at this sad solemnity.   

And think not, Dearest, ' cause this parting knell  
Is rung in verses, that at Your farewell  
I only mourn in Poetry and Ink:  
No, my Pens melancholy Plommets sink  
So low, they dive where th' hid affections sit,  
Blotting that Paper where my mirth was writ.   

Believe't that sorrow truest is which lies  
Deep in the breast, not floating in the eyes:  
And he with saddest circumstance doth part,  
Who seals his farewell with a bleeding heart,    

PARADOX. That it is best for a Young Maid to marry an Old Man.  
FAir one, why cannot you an old man love?  
He may as useful, and more constant prove.  
Experience shows you that maturer years  
Are a security against those fears  
Youth will expose you to; whose wild desire  
As it is hot, so 'tis as rash as fire.  
Mark how the blaze extinct in a she's lies,  
Leaving no brand nor embers when it dies  
Which might the flame renew: thus soon consumes  
Youths wand'ring hear, and vanishes in fumes.  
When ages riper love unapt to stray  
Through lose and giddy change of objects, may  
In your warm bosom like a cynder lie,  
Quickened and kindled by your sparkling eye.  
'Tis not denied, there are extremes in both  
Which may the fancy move to like or loath:  
Yet of the two you better shall endure  
To marry with the Cramp than Calenture.  
Who would in wisdom choose the Torrid Zone  
Therein to settle a Plantation?  
Merchant's can tell you, those hot Climes were made  
But at the longest for a three years' trade:  
And though the Indies cast the sweeter smell,  
Yet health and plenty do more Northward dwell ';  
For where the raging Sunbeams burn the earth,  
Her scorched mantle withers into dearth;  
Yet when that drought becomes the Harvests curse,  
Snow doth the tender Corn most kindly nurse:  
Why now then woo you not some snowy head  
To take you in mere pity to his bed?  
I doubt the harder task were to persuade  
Him to love you: for if what I have said  
In Virgins as in Vegetals holds true,  
he'll prove the better Nurse to cherish you.  
Some men we know renowned for wisdom grown  
By old records and antique Medals shown;  
Why ought not women than be held most wise  
Who can produce living antiquities?  
Besides if care of that main happiness  
Your sex triumphs in, doth your thoughts possess,  
I mean your beauty from decay to keep;  
No wash nor mask is like an old man's sleep.  
Young wives need never to be Sunburnt fear,  
Who their old husbands for Umbrellaes wear:  
How russet looks an Orchard on the hill  
To one that's watered by some neighh'ring Drill?  
Are not the floated Meadows ever seen  
To flourish soon, and hold longest green?  
You may be sure no moistening lacks that Bride,  
Who lies with Winter thawing by her side.  
She-should be fruitful too as fields that join  
Unto the melting waste of Apennine.  
Whilst the cold morning-drops bedew the Rose,  
It doth nor leaf, nor smell, nor colour lose;  
Then doubt not Sweet! Age hath supplies of wet  
To keep You like that flower in water set.  
Dripping Catarrhs and Fontinells are things  
Will make You think You grew betwixt two Springs.  
And should You not think so, You scarce allow  
The force or Merit of Your Marriage-Vow;  
Where maids a new Creed learn, & must from thence  
Believe against their own or others sense.  
Else Love will nothing differ from neglect,  
Which turns not to a virtue each defect.  
I'll say no more but this; you women make  
Your children's reckoning by the Almanac.  
I like it well, so you contented are,  
To choose their Feathers by that Calendar.  
Turn then old Erra Pater, and there see  
According to life's posture and degree,  
What age or what complexion is most fit  
To make an English Maid happy by it;  
And You shall find, if You will choose a man,  
Set justly for Your own Meridian,  
Though You perhaps let One and Twenty woe,  
Your elevation is for Fifty Two.   

PARADOX. That Fruition destroys Love.  

LOve is our Reason's Paradox, which still  
A 'gainst the judgement doth maintain the Will:  
And governs by such arbitrary laws,  
It only makes the Act our Like cause:  
We have no brave revenge, but to forgo  
Our full desires, and starve the Tyrant so.   

They whom the rising blood tempts not to taste,  
Preserve a stock of Love can never waste;  
When easy people who their wish enjoy,  
Like Prodigals at once their wealth destroy.  
Adam till now had stayed in Paradise  
Had his desires been bounded by his eyes.  
When he did more than look, that made th'offence,  
And forfeited his state of innocence.  
Fruition therefore is the bane t'undo  
Both our affection and the subject too.  
'Tis Love into worse language to translate,  
And make it into Lust degenerate:  
'Tis to De-throne, and thrust it from the heart,  
To seat it grossly in the sensual part.  
Seek for the Star that's shot upon the ground,  
And nought but a dim jelly there is found.  
Thus foul and dark our female star sappear,  
If fallen or loosened once from Virtue's Sphere.  
Glow-worm's shine only looked on, and let lie,  
But handled crawl into deformity:  
So beauty is no longer fair and bright,  
Then whilst unstained by the appetite:  
And then it withers like a blasted flower  
Some poisonous worm or spider hath creptiore.  
Pigmaleon's dotage on the carved stone,  
Shows Amorists their strong illusion.  
Whilst he to gaze and court it was content,  
He served as Priest at beauty's Monument:  
But when by loser fires t'embraces led,  
It proved a cold hard Statue in his bed.  
Irregular affects, like mad men's dreams  
Presented by false lights and broken beams,  
So long content us, as no near address  
Shows the weak sense our painted happiness.  
But when those pleasing shadows us forsake,  
Or of the substance we a trial make,  
Like him, deluded by the fancies mock,  
We shipwreck ' 'gainst an Alabaster rock.  
What though thy Mistress far from Marble be?  
Her softness will transform and harden thee.  
Lust is a Snake, and Gild the Gorgon's head,  
Which Conscience turns to Stone, & Joys to Led.   

Turtles themselves will blush, if put to name  
The Act, whereby they quench their amorous flame.  
Who then that's wise or virtuous, would not fear  
To catch at pleasures which forbidden were,  
When those which we count lawful, cannot be  
Required without some loss of modesty?  
Even in the Marriagebed, where soft delights.  
Are customary and authorised Rites;  
What are those tributes to the wa●●●● fence,  
But toleration of Incontinence?  
For properly you cannot call that Love  
Which does not from the Soul, but Humour move.  
Thus they who worshipped Pun or 1st Shrine,  
By the fair Front judged all within Divine:  
Though entering, found 'twas but a Goat or Co●  
To which before their ignorance did b●●.  
Such Temples and such God desses are these  
Which foolish Lovers and admirers please:  
Who if they chance within the Shrine to pry,  
Find that a beast they thought a Deity.  
Nor makes it only our opinion less  
Of what we liked before, and now possess;  
But robs the Fuel, and corrupts the Spice  
Which sweetens and inflames Love's sacrifice,  
After Fruition once, what is Desire  
But ashes kept warm by a dying fire?  
This is (if any) the Philosopher's Stone,  
Which still miscarries at Projection.  
For when the Heat ad Octo intermits,  
It poorly takes us like Third Ague fits;  
Or must on Embers as dull Drugs infuse,  
Which we for Medicine not for Pleasure use.   

Since Lovers joys than leave so sick a taste,  
And soon as relished by the Sense are past;  
They are but Riddies sure, lost if possessed,  
And therefore only in Reversion best.  
For bate them Expectation and Delay,  
You take the most delightful Scenes away.  
These two such rule within the fancy keep,  
As banquets apprehended in our sleep;  
After which pleasing trance next morn we wake  
Empty and angry at the night's mistake.  
Give me long Dreams and Visions of content,  
Rather than pleasures in a minute spent.  
And since I know before, the shedding Rose  
In that same instant doth her sweetness lose,  
Upon the Virgin-stock still let her dwell  
For me, to feast my long with her smell.  
Those are but counterfeits of joy at best,  
Which languish soon as brought unto the test.  
Nor can I hold it worth his pains who tries  
To Inn that Harvest which by reaping dies.   

Resolve me now what spirit hath delight,  
It by full feed you kill the appetite?  
That stomach healthy'st is, that ne'er was cloyed,  
Why not that Love the best then, ne'er enjoyed?  
Since naturally the blood, when tamed or sated,  
Will cool so fast it leaves the object hated.  
Pleasures like wonders quickly lose their price  
When Reason or Experience makes us wise.   

To close my argument then. I dare say  
(And without Paradox) as well we may  
Enjoy our Love and yet preserve Desire,  
As warm our hands by putting out the fire.    

The Change Il sabio mude conseio: Il loco persevera.  

WE loved as friends now twenty years and more:  
Is't time or reason think you to give o'er?  
When though two prenticeships set Jacob free,  
I have not held my Rachel dear at three.   

Yet will I not your levitle accuse;  
Continuance sometimes is the worse abuse.  
In judgement I might rather hold it strange,  
If like the fleeting world, you did not change:  
Be it your wisdom therefore to retract,  
When perseverance oft is folly's act.   

In pity I can think, that what you do  
Hath Justice in't, and some Religion too;  
For of all virtues Moral or Divine,  
We know but Love none must in Heaven shine:  
Well did you the presumption then foresee  
Of counterfeiting immortality:  
Since had you kept our loves too long alive,  
We might invade Heaven's prerogative;  
Or in our progress, like the Jews, comprise  
The Legend of an earthly Paradise.   

Live happy and more prosperous in the next,  
You have discharged your old friend by the Text.  
Farewell fair Shadow of a female faith,  
And let this be our friendship's Epitaph:   

Affection shares the frailty of our fate,  
When (like ourselves) 'tis old and out of date:  
'Tis just all humane Loves their period have,  
When friends are frail and dropping to the gra●●    

To my Sister Anne King, who chid me in verse for being angry.  

DEar Nan, I would not have thy counsel lost,  
Though I last night had twice so much been crossed;  
Well is a Passion to the Market brought,  
When such a treasure of advice is bought  
With so much dross. And couldst thou me assure,  
●ach vice of mine should meet with such a cure,  
〈◊〉 would sin oft, and on my guilty brow  
●ear every misperfection that I owe,  
●pen and visible; I should not hid  
●ut bring my faults abroad: to hear thee chide  
〈◊〉 such a Note, and with a Quill so sage,  
〈◊〉 Passion tunes, and calms a Tempest's rage.   

〈◊〉 Well I am charmed, and promise to redress  
●hat, without shrift, my follies do confess  
●gainst myself: wherefore let me entreat,  
●hen I fly out in that distempered heat  
●hich frets me into fasts, thou wilt reprove  
●hat froward spleen in Poetry and Love:  
〈◊〉 though I lose my reason in such fits,  
●●oul't time me back again into my wits.    

AN ELEGY Upon the immature loss of the most virtuous Lady Anne Rich.  

I Envy not thy mortal triumphs, Death,  
(Thou enemy to Virtue as to Breath)  
Nor do I wonder much, nor yet complain  
The weekly numbers by thy arrow slain.  
The whole world is thy Factory, and we  
Like traffic driven and retailed by Thee:  
And where the springs of life fill up so fast,  
Some of the waters needs must run to waste.   

It is confessed, yet must our griefs dispute  
That which thine own conclusion doth refute  
Ere we begin. Harken! for if thy ear  
Be to thy throat proportioned, thou canst hear.  
Is there no order in the work of Fate?  
Nor rule, but blindly to anticipate  
Our growing seasons or thinkest thou 'tis just,  
To sprinkle our fresh blossoms with thy dust,  
Till by abortive funerals, thou bring  
That to an Autumn Nature meant a Spring?  
Is't not enough for thee that withered age  
Lies the unpitied subject of thy rage;  
But like an ugly Amorist, thy crest  
Must be with spoils of Youth and Beauty dressed?  
In other Camps, those which sat down to day  
March first to morrow, and they longest stay  
Who last came to the service: But in thine,  
Only confusion stands for discipline.  
We fall in such promiscuous heaps, none can  
Put any difference 'twixt thy Rear or Van;  
Since oft the youngest lead thy Files. For this  
The grieved world here thy accuser is,  
And I a Plaintiff, ' mongst those many ones  
Who wet this Lady's Urn with zealous moans;  
As if her ashes quick'ning into years  
Might be again embodied by our tears  
But all in vain; the moisture we bestow  
Shall make assoon her curled Marble grow,  
As render heat, or motion to that blood,  
Which through her veins branched like an azurè flood;  
Whose now still Current in the grave is lost,  
Locked up, and feetered by eternal frost.   

Desist from hence, doting Astrology!  
To search for hidden wonders in the sky;  
Or from the concourse of malignant stars  
Foretell diseases gen'ral as our wars:  
What barren droughts, forerunners of lean dearth  
Threaten to starve the plenty of the earth:  
What horrid forms of darkness must affright  
The sickly world, hastening to that long night  
Where it must end. If there no Portents are,  
No black eclipses for the Calendar,  
Our times sad Annals will remembered be  
Ith'loss of bright Northumberland and Thee:  
Two Stars of Court, who in one fatal year  
By most untimely set dropped from their Sphere.  
She in the winter took her flight, and soon  
As her perfections reached the point of Noon,  
Wrapped in a cloud, contracted her wished stay  
Unto the measure of a short-lived day.  
But Thou in Summer, like an early Rose  
By Death's cold hand nipped as Thou didst disclose,  
Tookest a long day to run that narrow stage,  
Which in two gasping minutes summed thy age.  
And, as the fading Rose, when the leaves shed  
Lies in its native sweetness buried,  
Thou in thy virtues bedded and inherst  
Sleepest with those odours thy pure fame dispersed.  
Where till that Rising Morn thou must remain,  
In which thy withered flowers shall spring again.  
And greater beauties thy waked body vest  
Then were at thy departure here possessed.   

So with full eyes we close thy vault. Content  
(With what thy loss bequeathes us) to lament,  
And make that use of thy grieved funeral,  
As of a Crystal broken in the fall;  
Whose pitied fractures gathered up, and set,  
May smaller Mirrors for Thy Sex beget;  
There let them view themselves, until they see  
The end of all their glories shown in Thee.   

Whilst in the truth of this sad tribute, I  
Thus strive to Canonize thy Memory.    

AN ELEGY Upon Mrs. Kirk unfortunately drowned in Thames.  

FOr all the Shipwrecks, and the liquid graves  
Lost men have gained within the furrowed waves,  
The Sea hath fined and for our wrongs paid use,  
When its wrought foam a Venus did produce.   

But what repair wilt thou unhappy Thames  
Afford our loss? thy dull unactive streams  
Can no new beauty raise, nor yet restore  
Her who by thee was ravished from our shore:  
Whose death hath stained the glory of thy flood,  
And mixed the guilty Channel with her blood.   

O Neptune! was thy favour only writ  
In that lose Element where thou dost sit?  
That after all this time thou shouldst repent  
Thy fairest blessing to the Continent?  
Say, what could urge this Fate? is Thetis dead,  
Or Amphitrite from thy wet arms fled?  
Was't thou so poor in Nymphs, that thy moist love  
Must be maintained with pensions from above?  
If none of these, but that whilst thou didst sleep  
Upon thy sandy pillow in the deep,  
This mischief stole upon us: may our grief  
Waken thy just revenge on that lie thief,  
Who in thy fluid Empire without leave,  
And unsuspected, durst her life bereave.  
Henceforth invert thy order, and provide  
In gentlest floods a Pilot for our guide.  
Let rugged Seas be loved, but the Brooks smile  
Shunned like the courtship of a Crocodile;  
And where the Current doth most smoothly pass,  
Think for her sake that stream death's Looking-glass,  
To show us our destruction is most near,  
When pleasure hath begot least sense of fear.   

Else break thy forked Sceptre ' 'gainst some Rock,  
If thou endure a flattering calm to mock  
Thy far-famed power, and violate that law  
Which keeps the angry Ocean in awe.  
Thy Trident will grow useless, which doth still  
Wild tempests, if thou let tame rivers kill.   

Mean time we owe thee nothing. Our first debt  
Lies cancelled in thy wa●ry Cabinet.  
We have for Her thou sentest us from the Main,  
Returned a Venus back to thee again.    

AN ELEGY Upon the death of Mr. Edward Holt.  

Whether thy Fathers, or diseases rage,  
More mortal proved to thy unhappy age,  
Our sorrow needs not question; since the first  
Is known for length and sharpness much the worst.  
Thy Fever yet was kind; which the ninth day  
For thy misfortunes made an easy way.  
When th'other barbarous and Hectic fit,  
In nineteen winters did not intermit.   

I therefore vainly now not ask thee why  
Thou didst so soon in thy Youths mid way die:  
But in my sense the greater wonder make  
Thy long oppressed heart no sooner brake.  
Of force m●st the neglected blossom all  
When the tough root becomes unnatural,  
And to his branches doth that sap deny,  
Which them with life and verdure should supply.  
For Parent's shame, let it forgotten be,  
And may the sad example die with thee.   

It is not now thy grieved friends intent  
To render thee dull Pity's argument.  
Thou hast a bolder title unto fame,  
And at Edge-Hill thou didst make good the claim;  
When in thy Royal Master's Cause and War  
Thy ventured life brought off a noble scar.  
Nor did thy faithful services desist  
Till death untimely struck thee from the List.   

Though in that prouder vault then, which doth tomb  
Thy ancestors, thy body find not room,  
Thine own deserts have purchased thee a place,  
Which more renowned is then all thy race;  
For in this earth thou dost ennobled   
With marks of Valour and of Loyalty.    

To my dead friend Ben: Johnson:  

I See that wreath which doth the wearer arm  
' 'Gainst the quick strokes of thunder, is no charm  
To keep off deaths pale dart. For, Johnson than  
Thou hadst been numbered still with living men.  
Time's  had feared thy Laurel to invade,  
Nor thee this subject of our sorrow made.   

Amongst those many votaries who come  
To offer up their Garlands at thy Tomb;  
Whilst some more lofty pens in their bright verse  
(Like glorious Tapers flaming on thy hearse)  
Shall light the dull and thankless world to see,  
How great a maim it suffers wanting thee;  
Let not thy learned shadow scorn, that I  
Pay meaner Rites unto thy memory;  
And since I nought can add, but in desire  
Restore some sparks which leapt from thine own fire.   

What ends soever others quills invite,  
I can protest, it was no ●tch to write,  
Nor any vain ambition to be read,  
But merely Love and Justice to the dead  
Which raised my fameless Muse; and caused her bring  
These drops, as tribute thrown into that spring,  
To whose most rich and fruitful head we owe  
The purest streams of language which can flow.   

For 'tis but truth, thou taught'st the ruder age  
To speak by Grammar, and reform'dst the Stage:  
Thy Comic Sock induced such purged sense,  
A Lucrece might have heard without offence.  
Amongst those soaring wits that did dilate  
Our English, and advance it to the rate  
And value it now holds, thyself was one  
Helped lift it up to such proportion.  
That thus refined and robed, it shall not spare  
With the full Greck or Latin to compare.  
For what tongue ever durst, but ours, translate  
Great Tully's Eloquence, or Homer's State?  
Both which in their unblemished lustre shine,  
From Chapman's pen, and from thy Catiline.  
All I would ask for thee, in recompense  
Of thy successful toil and times expense,  
Is only this poor Boon: that those who can  
Perhaps read French, or talk Italian,  
Or do the lofty Spaniard affect;  
To show their skill in Foreign Dialect,  
Prove not themselves so unnaturally wife,  
They therefore should their Mother-tongue despise.  
(As if her Poets both for style and wit  
Not equalled, or not passed their best that writ)  
Until by studying Johnson they have known  
The height and strength and plenty of their own.   

Thus in what low earth or neglected room  
Soe'er thou sleepest, thy book shall be thy tomb.  
Thou wilt go down a happy Coarse, bestrewed  
With thine own Flowers; and feel thyself renewed,  
Whilst thy immortal neve-with'ring Bays  
Shall yearly flourish in thy Readers praise.  
And when more spreading Titles are forgot,  
Or spite of all their Lead and Cerecloth rot,  
Thou wrapped and Shrined in thine own sheets, wilt lie  
A Relic famed by all Posterity.    

AN ELEGY Upon Prince Henry's death.  
KEep station Nature, and rest Heaven sure  
On thy supporters shoulders, lest past cure,  
Thou dashed in ruin fall by a griefs weight  
Will make thy basis shrink, and lay thy height  
Low as the Centre. Hark! and feel it read  
Through the astonished Kingdom, Henry's dead.  
It is enough; who seeks to aggravate  
One strain beyond this, prove more sharp his fate  
Then sad our doom. The world dares not survive  
To parallel this woes superlative.  
O kill Rhetoric of Death! two words  
Breathe stronger terrors than Plague, Fire, or Swords  
Ere conquered. This were Epitaph and Verse  
Worthy to be prefixed in Nature's hearse,  
Or Earth's sad dissolution; whose fall  
Will be less grievous though more general:  
For all the woe ruin ere buried,  
Sounds in these fatal accents, Henry's dead.  
Cease then unable Poetry, thy phrase  
Is weak and dull to strike us with amaze  
Worthy thy vaster subject. Let none dare  
To copy this sad hap, but with despair  
Hanging at his quills point. For not a stream  
Of Ink can write much less improve this Theme.  
Invention highest wrought by grief or wit  
Must sink with him, and on his Tombstone split.  
Who, like the dying Sun, tells us the light  
And glory of our Day set in his Night.   

AN ELEGY Upon S. W. R.  

I Will not weep, for 'twere as great a sin  
To shed a tear for thee, as to have been  
An Actor in thy death. Thy life and age  
Was but a various Scene on fortune's Stage,  
With whom thou tugg'st & strov'st even out of breath  
In thy long toil: ne'er mastered till thy death;  
And then despite of trains and cruel wit,  
Thou didst at once subdue malice and it.   

I dare not then so blast thy memory  
As say I do lament or pity thee.  
Were I to choose a subject to bestow  
My pity on, he should be one as low  
In spirit as desert. That durst not die  
But rather were content by slavery  
To purchase life: or I would pity those  
Thy most industrious and friendly foes:  
Who when they thought to makethee scandals story  
Lent thee a swifter flight to Heaven and glory.  
That thought by cutting off some withered days,  
(Which thou couldst spare them) to eclipse thy praise;  
Yet gave it brighter foil, made thy aged fame  
Appear more white and fair, then foul their shame:  
And did promote an Execution  
Which (but for them) Nature and Age had done.   

Such worthless things as these were only born  
To live on Pity's alms (too mean for scorn.)  
Thou didst an envious wonder, whose high fate  
The world must still admire, scarce imitate.    

AN ELEGY Upon the L. Bishop of London John King.  

SAd Relic of a blessed Soul! whose trust  
We sealed up in this religious dust.  
O do not thy low Exequys suspect  
As the cheap arguments of our neglect.  
'Twas a commanded duty that thy grave  
As little pride as thou thyself should have.   

Therefore thy covering is an humble stone,  
And but a word 
* Resurgam.  for thy inscription.  
When those that in the same earth neighbour thee,  
Have each his Chronicle and Pedigree:  
They have their waving pennons and their flags,  
Of Matches and Alliance formal brags.)  
When thou (although from Ancestors thou came  
Old as the Heptarchy, great as thy Name)  
sleepest there enshrined in thy admired parts,  
●nd hast no Heraldry but thy deserts.  
Yet let not Them their prouder Marbles boast,  
For They rest with less honour, though more cost.   

Go, search the world, and with your Mattox wound  
The groaning bosom of the patiented ground:  
Dig from the hidden veins of her dark womb  
All that is rare and precious for a tomb:  
Yet when much treasure, and more time is spent  
You must grant His the nobler Monument.   

Whose Faith stands o'er Him for a Hearse, and ha●  
The Resurrection for His Epitaph.    

Upon the death of my ever desired friend Doctor Donne Dean of Paul's.  

TO have lived eminent in a degree  
Beyond our lofty'st flights, that is like thee;  
Or t'have had too much merit is not safe;  
For such excesses find no Epitaph.  
At common graves we have Poetic eyes  
Can melt themselves in easy Elegies;  
Each quill can drop his tributary verse,  
And pin it with the Hatchments, to the Hearse:  
But at thine, Poem or inscription  
(Rich Soul of wit and language:) we have none;  
Indeed a silence does that Tomb befit  
Where is no Herald left to blazon it.  
Widowed invention justly doth forbear  
To come abroad knowing thou art not here,  
Late her great Patron; whose prerogative  
Maintained and clothed her so, as none alive  
Must now presume to keep her at thy rate,  
Though he the Indies for her dowry estate:  
Or else that awful fire, which once did burn  
In thy clear brain, now fallen into thy Urn.  
Lives there to fright rude Empirics from thence,  
Which might profane thee by their ignorance:  
Who ever writes of thee, and in a style  
Unworthy such a Theme, does but revile  
Thy precious dust, and wake a learned spirit  
Which may revenge his rapes upon thy merit.  
For all a low-pitcht fancy can devise,  
Will prove at best but hallowed injuries.   

Thou, like the dying Swan, didst lately sing  
Thy mournful Dirge in audience of the King;  
When pale looks, and faint accents of thy breath,  
Presented so to life that piece of death,  
That it was feared and prophesied by all  
Thou thither cam'st to preach thy Funeral.  
O! hadst thou in an Elegiac knell  
Rung out unto the world thine own farewell;  
And in thy high victorious numbers beat  
The solemn measure of thy grieved retreat:  
Thou mightst the Poet's service now have missed,  
As well as then thou didst prevent the Priest:  
And never to the world beholden be,  
So much as for an Epitaph for thee.   

I do not like the office. Nor is't fit  
Thou, who didst lend our age such sums of wit,  
Shouldst now reborrow from her Bankrupt Mine  
That Over to bury thee, which once was thine.  
Rather still leave us in thy debt; and know  
(Exalted Soul!) More glory 'tis to owe  
Unto thy Hearse what we can never pay,  
Then with embased coin those Rites defray.   

Commit we then Thee to Thyself: nor blame  
Our drooping loves, which thus to thine own fame  
Leave Thee Executor: since but thy own  
No pen could do Thee Justice, nor Bays crown  
Thy vast desert; save that we nothing can  
Depute to be thy ashes Guardian.   

So Jewellers no Art or Metal trust  
To form the Diamond, but the Diamonds dust.    

AN ELEGY Upon the most victorious King of Sweden Gustavus Adolphus.  

LIke a cold fatal sweat which ushers death  
My thoughts hang on me, & my labouring breath  
Stopped up with sighs, my fancy big with woes,  
Feels two twinned mountains struggle in her throws,  
Of boundless sorrow one, t'other of sin;  
For less let no one rate it to begin  
Where honour ends. In Great Gustavus flame  
That style burnt out, and wasted to a name,  
Does barely live with us. As when the snuff.  
That fed it fails, the Taper turns to snuff.  
With this poor snuff, this airy shadow, we  
Of Fame and Honour must contented be;  
Since from the vain grasp of our wishes fled  
Their glorious substance is, now He is dead.   

Speak it again, and louder, louder yet;  
Else whilst we hear the sound we shall forget  
What it delivers. Let hoarse rumour cry  
Till she so many echoes multiply,  
Those may like numerous witnesses confute  
Our unbelieving souls, that would dispute  
And doubt this truth for ever. This one way  
Is left our incredulity to sway;  
To waken our deaf sense, and make our ears  
As open and dilated as our fears;  
That we may feel the blow, and feeling grieve,  
At what we would not feign, but must believe.  
And in that horrid faith behold the world  
From her proud height of expectation hurled,  
Stooping with him, as if she strove to have  
No lower Centre now than sweden grave.   

O could not all thy purchased victories  
Like to thy Fame thy Flesh immortalize?  
Were not thy virtue nor thy valour charms  
To guard thy body from those outward harms  
Which could not reach thy soul? could not thy spirit  
Lend somewhat which thy frailty might inherit  
From thy diviner part, that Death nor Hate  
Nor envy's bullets ere could penetrate?  
Can not thy early Trophies in stern fight  
Torn from the Dane, the Pole, the Moscovite?  
Which were thy triumphs seeds, as pledges sown,  
That when thy honour's harvest was ripe grown,  
With full-summed wing thou Falcon-like wouldst fly  
And cuff the Eagle in the Germane sky:  
Forcing his iron beak and feathers feel  
They were not proof ' 'gainst thy victorious steel.  
Can not all these protect thee? or prevail  
To fright that Coward Death, who oft grew pale  
To look thee and thy battles in the face?  
Alas they could not: Destiny gives place  
To none; nor is it seen that Prince's lives  
Can saved be by their prerogatives.  
No more was thine; who closed in thy cold lead,  
Dost from thyself a mournful lecture read  
Of Man's short-dated glory: learn you Kings,  
You are like him but penetrable things;  
Though you from Demigods derive your birth,  
You are at best b●t honourable earth:  
And howe'er sisted from that courser bran  
Which does compound and knead the common man,  
Nothing's immortal or from earth refined  
About you, but your Office and your Mind.  
●ere then break your false Glasses, which present  
●ou greater than your Maker ever meant:  
Make truth your Mirror now, since you find all  
That flatter you confuted by his fall.   

Yet since it was decreed thy life's bright Sun  
●ust be eclipsed ere thy full course was run,  
●e proud thou didst in thy black Obsequies  
●ith greater glory set then others rise.  
●or in thy death, as life, thou heldest one  
●ost just and regular proportion.  
●ook how the Circles drawn by Compass meet  
indivisibly joined head to feet,  
●nd by continued points which them unite  
●row at once Circular and Infinite:  
〈◊〉 did thy Fate and honour now contend  
●o match thy brave beginning with thy end.  
●herefore thou hadst instead of Passing bells  
●he Drums and Cannons thunder for thy knells;  
●nd in the Field thou didst triumphing die,  
●osing thy eyelids with a victory:  
●hat so by thousands who there lost their breath  
kinglike thou mightst be waited on in death.  
Lived Plutarch now, and would of Caesar tell,  
He could make none but Thee his parallel;  
Whose tide of glory swelling to the brim  
Needs borrow no addition from Him.  
When did great Julius in any Clime  
Achieve so much and in so small a time?  
Or if he did, yet shalt Thou in that land  
Single for him and unexampled stand.  
When o'er the Germans first his Eagle towered  
What saw the Legions which on them he poured?  
But massy bodies, made their swords to try  
Subjects not for his fight 
Magis iumphati vam icti. acit. de ●or. Ger. , but slavery.  
In that so vast expanded piece of ground  
(Now sweden Theatre and Tomb) he found  
Nothing worth Caesar's valour, or his fear,  
No conquering Army, nor a Tilley there,  
Whose strength nor wiles, nor practice in the wan  
Might the fierce Torrent of thy triumphs bar,  
But that thy winged sword twice made him yield,  
Both from his trenches beat, and from the field.   

Besides the Roman thought he had done much  
Did he the bank of Rhenus' only touch.  
But though his march was bounded by the Rhine  
Not Oder nor the Danube Thee confine;  
And but thy frailty did thy fame prevent,  
Thou hadst thy conquests stretched to such extent,  
Thou mightst Vienna reach, and after span  
From Mulda to the Baltic Ocean.   

But death hath spanned thee: nor must we divine  
What heir thou leav'st to finish thy design,  
Or who shall thee succeed as Champion  
For liberty and for religion.   

Thy task is done; as in a Watch the spring  
Wound to the height, relaxes with the string:  
So thy steel nerves of conquest, from their steep  
Ascent declined, lie slacked in thy last sleep.   

Rest then triumphant soul! for ever rest!  
And, like the Phoenix in her spicy nest,  
Embalmed with thine own merit, upward fly,  
Born in a cloud of perfume to the sky.  
Whilst, as in deathless Urns, each noble mind  
Treasures thy ashes which are left behind.   

And if perhaps no Cassiopeian spark  
(Which in the North did thy first rising mark)  
Shine over thy Hearse: the breath of our just praise  
Shall to the Firmament thy virtues raise;  
Then fix, and kindle them into a Star,  
Whose influence may crown thy glorious war.   
— O Famâ ingens ingentior armis  
Rex Gustave, quibus Coelo te laudibus aequem?  Virgil. Aeneid. lib. 2.  

To my Noble and Judicious Friend Sir Henry Blount upon his Voyage.  

SIR, I must ever own myself to be  
Possessed with humane curiosity  
Of seeing all that might the sense i●●●●  
By those two baits of profit and delight:  
And since I had the wit to understand  
The terms of Native or of foreign land;  
I have had strong and oft desires to tread  
Some of those voyages which I have read.  
Yet still so fruitless have my wishes proved,  
That from my countries' smoke I never moved:  
Nor ever had the fortune (though designed)  
To satisfy the wander of my mind.  
Therefore at last I did with some content,  
Beguile myself in time, which others spent;  
Whose art to Provinces small lines allots,  
And represents large Kingdoms but in spots.  
Thus by Ortelius and Mercators' aid  
Through most of the discovered world I strayed.  
I could with ease double the Southern cape,  
And in my passage Africa's wonders take:  
Then with a speed proportioned to the Scale  
Northward again, as high as Zemla sail.  
Oft hath the travel of my eye outrun  
(Though I sat still) the journey of the Sun:  
Yet made an end, ere his declining beams  
Did night squench themselves in Thetis' streams.  
Oft have I gone through Egypt in a day,  
Not hindered by the droughts of Lybia;  
In which, for lack of water tides of sand  
By a dry deluge overflow the land.  
There I the Pyramids and Cairo see,  
Still famous for the wars of Tomombee,  
And its own greatness; whose immured fence  
Takes forty miles in the circumference.  
Then without guide, or stronger Caravan  
Which might secure the wild Arabian,  
Back through the scorched Deserts pass, to seek  
Once the world's Lord, now the beslaved Greek,  
Made by a Turkish yoke and fortunes hate  
In language as in mind, degenerate.   

And here all wrapped in pity and amaze  
I stand, whilst I upon the Sultan gaze;  
To think how he with pride and rapine fired  
So vast a Territory hath acquired;  
And by what daring steps he did become  
The Asian fear, and scoarge of Christendom:  
How he achieved, and kept, and by what arts  
He did concencer those divided parts;  
And how he holds that monstrous bulk in awe,  
By settled rules of tyranny, not Law:  
So Rivers large and rapid streams began,  
Swelling from drops into an Ocean.   

Sure who ere shall the just extraction bring  
Of this Gigantic power from the spring;  
Must there confess a higher Ordinance  
Did it for terror to the earth advance.  
For mark how ' mongst a lawless straggling crew  
Made up of Arab, Saracen, and Jew,  
The world's disturber, faithless Mahomet  
Did by Impostures an opinion get:  
O'er whom he first usurps as Prince, and than  
As Prophet does obtrude his Alcoran.  
Next, how fierce Ottoman his claim made good  
From that unblessed Religion, by blood;  
Whilst he the Eastern Kingdoms did deface,  
To make their ruin his proud Empires base.  
Then like a Comet blazing in the skies,  
How Death-portending Amurath did rise,  
When he his horned Crescents did display  
Upon the fatal Plains of Servia;  
And farther still his sanguine tresses spread,  
Till Croya Life and Conquests limited.  
Lastly, how Mahomet thence styled the Great,  
Made Constantine's his own Imperial Seat;  
After that he in one victorious bond  
Two Empires grasped, of Greece and Trabezond.   

This, and much more than this, I gladly read,  
Where my relators it had storied;  
Besides that People's Manners and their Rites,  
Their warlike discipline and ordered fights;  
Their  valour, hardened by the sense  
Of unavoided Fate and Providence:  
Their habit, and their houses, who confer  
Less cost on them then on their Sepulchre:  
Their frequent washings, and the several Bath  
Each Meschit to itself annexed hath:  
What honour they unto the Mufty give,  
What to the Sovereign under whom they live:  
What quarter Christians have; how just and free  
To inoffensive Travellers they be:  
Though I confess, like stomaches fed with news,  
I took them in for wonder, not for use,  
Till your experienced and authentic pen  
Taught me to know the places and the men;  
And made all those suspected truths become  
Undoubted now, and clear as Axiom.   

Sir, for this work more than my thanks is due,  
I am at once informed and cured by you.  
So that, were I assured I should live o'er  
My periods of time run out before;  
Near needed my erratic wish transport  
Me from my Native lists to that resort,  
Where many at outlandish Marts unlade  
Ingenuous manners, and do only trade  
For vices and the language. By your eyes  
I here have made my full discoveries;  
And all your Countries so exactly seen,  
As in the voyage I had sharer been.  
By this you make me so; and the whole land  
Your debtor: which can only understand  
How much she owes you, when her sons shall try  
The solid depths of your rare history,  
Which looks above our gadders trivial reach,  
The Common Place of travellers, who teach  
But Table-talk; and seldomly aspire  
Beyond the Countries' Diet or Attire;  
Whereas your piercing judgement does relate  
The Policy and Manage of each State.  
And since she must here without envy grant  
That you have further journeyed the Levant  
Then any noble spirit by her bred  
Hath in your way as yet adventured;  
I cannot less in justice from her look,  
Then that she henceforth Canonize your book  
A Rule to all her travellers, and you  
The brave example; from whose equal view  
Each knowing Reader may himself direct,  
How he may go abroad to some effect,  
And not for form: what distance and what trust  
In those remoter parts observe he must:  
How he with jealous people may converse,  
Yet take no hurt himself by that commerce.  
So when he shall embarked in dangers be,  
Which wit and wary caution not foresee;  
If he partake your valour and your brain,  
He may perhaps come safely off again,  
As you have done; though not so richly fraught  
As this return hath to our Staple brought.   

I know your modesty shuns vulgar praise,  
And I have none to bring: but only raise  
This monument of Honour and of Love,  
Which your long known deserts so far improve,  
They leave me doubtful in what style to end,  
Whether more your admirer or your friend.    

To my honoured Friend Mr. George Sandys.  

IT is, Sir, a confessed intrusion here  
That I before your labours do appear,  
Which no loud Herald need, that may proclaim  
Or seek acceptance, but the Author's fame.  
Much less that should this happy work commend,  
Whose subject is its licence, and doth send  
It to the world to be received and read,  
Far as the glorious beams of truth are spread.   

Nor let it be imagined that I look  
Only with Customs eye upon your book;  
Or in this service that 'twas my intent  
T'exclude your person from your argument:  
I shall profess much of the love I owe,  
Doth from the root of our extraction grow;  
To which though I can little contribute,  
Yet with a natural joy I must impute  
To our Tribes honour, what by you is done  
Worthy the title of a Prelate's son.   

And scarcely have two brothers farther borne  
〈◊〉 Father's name, or with more value worn  
Their own, than two of you; whose pens and feet  
Have made the distant Points of Heaven to meet;  
He by exact discoveries of the 
* Sr. Edw● Sandys survey of religion i● the West.  West,  
Yourself by painful travels in the East.   

Some more like you might powerfully confute  
Th'opposers of Priest's marriage by the fruit.  
And (since 'tis known for all their straight vowed life,  
They like the sex in any style but wife)  
Cause them to change their Cloister for that State  
Which keeps men chaste by vows legitimate:  
●or shame to father their relations,  
Or under Nephew's names disguise their sons.  
This Child of yours born without spurious blot,  
And fairly Midwived as it was begot,  
Doth so much of the Parents goodness wear,  
You may be proud to own it for your Heir.  
Whose choice acquits you from the common sin  
Of such, who finish worse than they begin:  
You mend upon yourself, and your last strain  
Does of your first the start in judgement gain;  
Since what in curious travel was begun,  
You here conclude in a devotion.   

Where in delightful raptures we descry  
As in a Map, Zions Chorography  
Laid out in so direct and smooth a line,  
Men need not go about through Palestine:  
Who seek Christ here will the straight Road prefer  
As nearer much than by the Sepulchre.  
For not a limb grows here, but is a path;  
Which in God's City the blessed Centre hath:  
And doth so sweetly on each passion strike,  
The most fantastic taste will somewhat like.  
To the unquiet soul Job still from hence  
Pleads in th'example of his patience. 
●ob.   
The mortified may hear the wise King preach, 
●cl siast●s   
When his repentance made him fit to teach.  
Nor shall the singing Sisters be content  
To chant at home the Act of Parliament, 
●re Act of parliament ●r public ●●a●ks gi●ing on the ●●th of No●●mb. set to ●●tune by 〈◊〉 Dod a tradesman of London, at the end of his Psalms, which sto●●●om the Press Anno Domini 1620.   
Turned out of reason into rhyme by one  
Free of his tr●de, though not of Helicon,  
Who did in his Poetic zeal contend  
Others edition by a worse to mend.  
●ere are choice Hymns and carols for the glad, 
Hymns Lament at. Psalms.   
●ith melancholy Dirges for the sad:  
●nd David (as he could his skill transfer)  
●eaks like himself by an interpreter.  
●ur Muse rekindled hath the Prophet's fire,  
●nd tuned the strings of his neglected Lyre;  
●aking the Note and Duty so agree,  
●ey now become a perfect harmony.   

I must confess, I have long wished to see  
●●e Psalms reduced to this conformity:  
sieving the songs of Zion should be sung  
〈◊〉 phrase not differing from a barbarous tongue,  
〈◊〉 ●f, by custom warranted, we may  
●●g that to God we would be loath to say.  
●r be it from my purpose to upbraid  
●eir honest meaning, who first offer made  
●at book in Meeter to compile, which you  
●●ve mended in the form, and built a new:  
●●d it was well, considering the time,  
●hich hardly could distinguish verse and rhyme,  
●t now the language, like the Church, hath won  
●●re lustre since the Reformation;  
None can condemn the wish or labour spent  
Good matter in good words to represent.   

Yet in this jealous age some such there be,  
So without cause afraid of novelty,  
They would not (were it in their power to choose)  
An old ill practice for a better lose.  
Men who a rustic plainness so affect,  
They think God served best by their neglect.  
Holding the cause would be profaned by it,  
Were they at charge of learning or of wit.  
And therefore bluntly (what comes next) they brin●  
Course and unstudied stuffs for offering;  
Which like th'old Tabernacles covering are,  
Made up of Badgers skins, and of Goat's hair.  
But these are Paradoxes they must use  
Their sloth and bolder ignorance t'excuse.  
Who would not laugh at one will naked go,  
' Cause in old hang truth is pictured so?  
Though plainness be reputed honours note,  
They mantles use to beautify the coat;  
So that a curious (unaffected) dress  
Adds much unto the body's comeliness:  
And wheresoever the subjects best, the sense  
Is bettered by the speakers eloquence.   

But, Sir, to you I shall no trophy raise  
From other men's detraction or disraise:  
That Jewel never had inherent worth,  
Which asked such foils as these to set it forth.  
If any quarrel your attempt or style,  
Forgive them; their own folly they revile.  
Since, ' 'gainst themselves, their factious envy shall  
Allow this work of yours Canonical.  
Nor may you fear the Poets common lot,  
Read, and commended, and then quite forgot:  
The brazen Mines and Marble Rocks shall waste,  
When your foundation will unshaken last.  
'Tis fame's best pay, that you your labours see  
By their immortal subject crowned be.  
For ne'er was writer in oblivion hid  
Who firmed his name on such a Pyramid.    

The Woes of Esay.  

Woe to the worldly men whose covetous  
Ambition labours to join house to house,  
Lay field to field, till their enclosures edge  
The Plain, girdling a country with one hedge:  
That leave no place unbought, no piece of earth  
Which they will not engross, making a dearth  
Of all inhabitants, until they stand  
Unneighboured as unblessed within their land.   

This sin cries in God's ear, who hath decreed  
The ground they sow shall not return the seed.  
They that unpeopled countries' to create  
Themselves sole Lords, made many desolate  
To build up their own house, shall find at last  
Ruin and fearful desolation cast  
Upon themselves. Their Mansion shall become  
A Desert, and their Palace prove a tomb.  
Their vines shall barren be, their land yield tares;  
Their house shall have no dwellers, they no heirs.   

Woe unto those that with the morning Sun  
Rise to drink wine, and sit till he have run  
His weary course; not ceasing until night  
Have quenched their understanding with the light:  
Whose raging thirst, like fire, will not be tamed,  
The more they pour the more they are inflamed.  
Woe unto them that only mighty are  
To wage with wine; in which unhappy war  
They who the glory of the day have won,  
Must yield them foiled and vanquished by the tun.  
Men that live thus, as if they lived in jest,  
Fooling their time with Music and a feast;  
That did exile all sounds from their soft ear  
But of the harp, must this sad discord hear  
Composed in threats. The feet which measures tread  
Shall in captivity be fettered:  
Famine shall scourge them for their vast excess;  
And Hell revenge their monstrous drunkenness;  
Which hath enlarged itself to swallow such,  
Whose throats ne'er knew enough, though still too much   

Woe unto those that countenance a sin,  
Siding with vice that it may credit win.  
By their unhallowed vote: that do benight  
The truth with error, putting dark for light,  
And light for dark; that call an evil good,  
And would by vice have virtue understood:  
That with their frown can sour an honest cause,  
Or sweeten any bad by their applause.  
That justify the wicked for reward;  
And void of moral goodness or regard,  
Plot with detraction to traduce the fame  
Of him whose merit hath enroled his name  
Among the just. Therefore Gods vengeful ire  
Glows on his people, and becomes a fire  
Whose greedy and exalted flame shall burn,  
Till they like straw or chaff to nothing turn.  
Because they have rebelled against the right,  
To God and Law perversely opposite,  
As Plants which Sun nor showers did ever bless,  
So shall their root convert to rottenness;  
And their succession's bud, in which they trust,  
Shall (like Gomorrahs' fruit) moulder to dust.   

Woe unto those that drunk with self-conceit,  
Value their own desiggs at such a rate  
Which humane wisdom cannot reach; that sit  
Enthroned, as sole Monopolists of wit:  
That out-look reason, and suppose the eye  
Of Nature blind to their discovery,  
Whilst they a title make to understand  
What ever secrets bosomed in the land.  
But God shall imp their pride, and let them see  
They are but fools in a sublime degree:  
He shall bring down and humble those proud eyes,  
In which false glasses only they looked wise:  
That all the world may laugh, and learn by it,  
There is no folly to pretended wit.   

Woe unto those that draw iniquity  
With cords, and by a vain security  
Lengthen the sinful trace, till their own chain  
Of many links formed by laborious pain,  
Do pull them into Hell; that as with lines  
And Cart-ropes drag on their unwilling crimes:  
Who, rather than they will commit no sin,  
Tempt all occasions to let it in.  
As if there were no God, who must exact  
The strict account for ev'ry vicious fact;    

An Essay on Death and a Prison.  
A Prison is in all things like a grave,  
Where we no better privileges have  
Then dead men, nor so good. The soul once fled  
Lives freer now, then when she was cloistered  
In walls of flesh; and though she organs want  
To act her swift designs, yet all will grant  
Her faculties more clear, now separate,  
Then if the same conjunction, which of late  
Did marry her to earth, had stood in force,  
Uncapable of death, or of divorce:  
But an imprisoned mind, though living, dies,  
And at one time feels two captivities;  
A narrow dungeon which her body holds,  
But narrower body which herself enfolds.  
Whilst I in prison●ly, nothing is free,  
Nothing enlarged but thought and misery;  
Though ev'ry chink be stopped, the doors close barred,  
Despite of walls and locks, through ev'ry ward  
These have their issues forth; may take the air,  
Though not for health, but only to compare  
How wretched those men are who freedom want,  
By such as never suffered a restraint.  
In which unquiet travel could I find  
Aught that might settle my distempered mind,  
Or of some comfort make discovery  
It were a voyage well employed: but I,  
Like our raw travellers that cross the seas  
To fetch home fashions or some worse disease,  
Instead of quiet a new torture bring  
Home t'afflict me, malice and murmuring.  
What is't I envy not? no dog nor fly  
But my desires prefer, and wish were I;  
For they are free, or if they were like me,  
They had no sense to know calamity.  
But in the grave no sparks of envy live,  
No hot comparisons that causes give  
Of quarrel, or that our affections move  
Any condition, save their own, to love.  
There are no objects there but shades and night,  
And yet that darkness better than the light.  
There lives a silent harmony, no jar  
Or discord can that sweet soft consort mar.  
The graves deaf ear is closed against all noise  
Save that which rocks must hear, the angel's voice:  
Whose trump shall wake the world, and raise up men  
Who in earth's bosom slept, bedrid till then.  
What man then would, who on death's pillow slumbers,  
Be re-inspired with life, though golden numbers  
Of bliss were poured into his breast; though he  
Were sure in change to gain a Monarchies  
A Monarches glorious state compared with his,  
Less safe, less free, less firm, less quiet is.  
For ne'er was any Prince advanced so high  
That he was out of reach of misery:  
Never did story yet a law report  
To banish fate or sorrow from his Court;  
Where ere he moves by land, or through the Main,  
These go along sworn members of his train.  
But he whom the kind earth hath entertained,  
Hath in her womb a sanctuary gained,  
Whose charter and protection arm him so,  
That he is privileged from future woe.  
The Coffin's a safe harbour, where he rides  
Land-bound, below cross winds, or churlish tides.  
For grief, sprung up with life, was man's half-brother  
Fed by the taste, brought forth by sin, the mother.  
And since the first seduction of the wife,  
God did decree to grief a lease for life;  
Which Patent in full force continue must,  
Till man that disobeyed revert to dust.  
So that life's sorrows ratified by God  
Cannot expire, or find their period,  
Until the soul and body disunite,  
And by two  ways from each take flight.  
But they dissolved once our woes disband,  
Th'assurance cancelled by one fatal hand;  
Soon as the passing bell proclaims me dead,  
My sorrows sink with me, lie buried  
In the same heap of dust, the selfsame Urn  
Doth them and me alike to nothing turn.  
If then of these I might election make  
Whether I would refuse, and whether take,  
Rather than like a sullen Anchorite  
I would live cased in stone, and learn to write  
A Prisoners story, which might steal some tears  
From the sad eyes of him that reads or hears;  
Give me a peaceful death, and let me meet  
My freedom sealed up in my winding sheet.  
Death is the pledge of rest, and with one bail  
Two Prisons quits, the Body and the Jail.   

The Labyrinth.  

LIfe is a crooked Labyrinth, and we  
Are daily lost in that Obliquity.  
'Tis a perplexed circle, in whose round  
Nothing but sorrows and new sins abound.  
How is the faint impression of each good  
Drowned in the vicious Channel of our blood?  
Whose Ebbs and tides by their vicissitude  
Both our great Maker and ourselves delude.   

O wherefore is the most discerning eye  
Unapt to make its own discovery?  
Why is the clearest and best judging mind  
In her own ills prevention dark and blind?  
Dull to advise, to act precipitate,  
We scarce think what to do but when too late.  
Or if we think, that fluid thought, like seed  
Rots there to propagate some fouler deed.  
Still we repent and sin, sin and repent;  
We thaw and freeze, we harden and relent.  
Those fires which cooled to day the morrows heat  
Rekindles. Thus frail nature does repeat  
What she unlearnt, and still by learning on  
Perfects her lesson of confusion.   

Sick soul! what cure shall I for thee devise,  
Whose leprous state corrupts all remedies?  
What medicine or what cordial can be got  
For thee, who poyson'st thy best antidote?  
Repentance is thy bane, since thou by it  
Only revivest the fault thou didst commit.  
Nor grievest thou for the past, but art in pain  
For fear thou mayst not act it o'er again.  
So that thy tears, like water spilt on lime,  
Serve not to quench, but to advance the crime.   

My blessed Saviour! unto thee I fly  
For help against this homebred tyranny.  
Thou canst true sorrows in my soul imprint,  
And draw contrition from a breast of flint.  
Thou canst reverse this labyrinth of sin  
My wild affects and actions wander in.  
O guide my faith! and by thy grace's clew  
Teach me to hunt that kingdom at the view  
Where true joys reign, which like their day shall last  
Those never clouded, nor that overcast.    

Being waked out of my sleep by a su●ff of Candle which offended me, I thus thought.  

PEthaps 'twas but conceit. Erroneous sense!  
Thou art thine own distemper and offence.  
Imagine then, that sick unwholesome steam  
Was thy corruption breathed into a dream.  
Nor is it strange, when we in charnels dwell,  
That all our thoughts of earth and frailty smell.   

Man is a Candle, whose unhappy light  
Burns in the day, and smothers in the night.  
And as you see the dying taper waste,  
By such degrees does he to darkness haste.   

Here is the difference: When our bodies lamps  
Blinded by age, or choked with mortal damps,  
Now faint and dim and sickly begin to wink,  
And in their hollow sockets lowly sink;  
When all our vital fires ceasing to burn,  
Leave nought but snuff and ashes in our Urn:  
God will restore those fallen lights again,  
And kindle them to an Eternal flame.    

Sic Vita.  

LIke to the falling of a Star;  
Or as the flights of Eagles are;  
Or like the fresh springs gaudy hue;  
Or silver drops of morning dew;  
Or like a wind that chafes the-flood;  
Or bubbles which on water stood;  
Even such is man, whose borrowed light  
Is straight called in, and paid to night.   

The Wind blows out; the Bubble dies;  
The Spring entombed in Autumn lies;  
The Dew dries up; the Star is shot;  
The Flight is past; and Man forgot.    

My Midnight Meditation.  

ILL busied man! why shouldst thou take such care  
To lengthen out thy life's short Calendar?  
When ev'ry spectacle thou look'st upon  
Presents and acts thy execution.  
Each drooping season and each flower doth cry,  
Fool! as I fade and whither, thou must die.   

The beating of thy pulse (when thou art well)  
Is just the tolling of thy Passing Bell:  
Night is thy Hearse, whose sable Canopy  
Covers a like deceased day and thee.  
And all those weeping dews which nightly fall,  
Are but the tears shed for thy funeral.    

A Penitential Hympne.  

Harken O God unto a Wretch's cries  
Who low dejected at thy footstool lies.  
Let not the clamour of my heinous sin  
Drown my requests, which strive to enter in  
At those bright gates, which always open stand  
To such as beg remission at thy hand.   

Too well I know, if thou in rigour deal  
I can nor pardon ask, nor yet appeal:  
To my hoarse voice, heaven will no audience grant,  
But deaf as brass, and hard as adamant  
Beat back my words; therefore I bring to thee  
A gracious Advocate to plead for me.   

What though my leprous soul no Jordan can  
Recure, nor floods of the laved Ocean  
Make clean? yet from my Saviour's bleeding side  
Two large and medicinable rivers glide.  
Lord, wash me where those streams of life abound,  
And new B●thesda●s flow from every wound.   

If I this precious Lather may obtain,  
I shall not then despair for any stain;  
I need no Gileads balm, nor oil, nor shall  
I for the purifying Hyssop call:  
My spots will vanish in His purple flood,  
And Crimson there turn white, though washed with blood.   

See Lord! with broken heart and bended knee,  
How I address my humble suit to Thee;  
O give that suit admittance to thy ears  
Which floats to thee not in my words but tears:  
And let my sinful soul this mercy crave  
Before I fall into the silent grave.    

AN ELEGY Occasioned by sickness.  

Well did the Prophet ask, Lord what is man?  
Implying by the question none can  
But God resolve the doubt, much less define  
What Elements this child of dust combine.   

Man is a stranger to himself, and knows  
Nothing so naturally as his woes.  
He loves to travel countries', and confer  
The sides of Heavens vast Diameter:  
Delights to sit in Nile or Boetis lap,  
Before he hath sailed over his own Map;  
By which means he returns, his travel spent,  
Less knowing of himself then when he went.  
Who knowledge hunt kept under foreign locks,  
May bring home wit to hold a Paradox,  
Yet be fools still. Therefore might I advise,  
I would inform the soul before the eyes:  
Make man into his proper Optics look,  
And so become the student and the book  
With his conception, his first leaf, begin;  
What is he there but complicated sin?  
When riper time, and the approaching birth  
Ranks him among the creatures of the earth,  
His wailing mother sends him forth to greet  
The light, wrapped in a bloody winding sheet;  
As if he came into the world to crave  
No place to dwell in, but bespeak a grave.   

Thus like a red and tempest-boading morn  
His dawning is: for being newly born  
He hails th'ensuing storm with shrieks and cries,  
And fines for his admission with wet eyes:   

How should that Plant whose leaf is bathed in tear  
Beat but a bitter fruit in elder years?  
Just such is this, and his maturer age  
Teems with event more sad than the presage.  
For view him higher, when his childhoods span  
Is raised up to Youth's Meridian;  
When he goes proudly laden with the fruit  
Which health, or strength, or beauty contribute;  
Yet as the mounted Canon batters down  
The Towers and goodly structures of a town:  
So one short sickness will his force defeat,  
And his frail Citadel to rubbish beat.  
How does a dropsy melt him to a flood,  
Making each vein run water more than blood?  
A Colic wracks him like a Northern gust,  
And raging fevers crumble him to dust.  
In which unhappy state he is made worse  
By his diseases then his maker's curse.  
God said in toil and sweat he should earn bread,  
And without labour not be nourished:  
Here, though like ropes of falling dew, his sweat  
Hangs on his labouring brow, he cannot eat.   

Thus are his sins scourged in opposed themes,  
And luxuries revenged by their extremes.  
He who in health could never be content  
With Rarities fetched from each Element,  
Is now much more afflicted to delight  
His tasteless Palate, and lost appetite.   

Besides though God ordained, that with the light  
Man should begin his work, yet he made night  
For his repose, in which the weary sense  
Repairs itself by rests soft recompense.  
But now his watchful nights, and troubled days  
Confused heaps of fear and fancy raise.  
His chamber seems a lose and trembling mine;  
His Pillow quilted with a Porcupine:  
Pain makes his downy Couch sharp thorns appear,  
And every feather prick him like a spear.  
Thus when all forms of death about him keep,  
He copies death in any form but sleep.   

Poor walking-clay! hast thou a mind to know  
To what unblessed beginnings thou dost owe  
Thy wretched self▪ fall sick a while, and than  
Thou wilt conceive the pedigree of Man.  
Learn shalt thou from thine own Anatomy,  
That earth his mother, worms his sisters be.  
That he's a short-lived vapour upward wrought,  
And by corruption unto nothing brought.  
A staggering Meteor by cross Planets bear,  
Which often reels and falls before his set:  
A tree which withers faster than it grows;  
A torch puffed out by every wind that blows;  
A web of forty weeks spun forth in pain,  
And in a moment ravelled out again.   

This is the Model of frail man: Then say  
●hat his duration's only for a day:  
●nd in that day more fies of changes pass,  
●hen Atoms run in the turned Hower-glass.   

So that th'incessant cares which life invade  
●ight for strong truth their heresy persuade,  
Who did maintain that humane souls are sent  
●to the body for their punishment:  
〈◊〉 lest with that Greek Sage still make us cry,  
Not to be born, or being born to die. 
* Non nasci, aut quàm citissinè mori.    

But Faith steers up to a more glorious scope,  
●hich sweetens our sharp passage; and firm hope  
●●hors our torn Barks on a blessed shore,  
ayond the Dead sea we here ferry o'er.  
〈◊〉 this, Death is our Pilot, and disease  
●e Agent which solicits our release.   

Though crosses than pour on my restless head,  
〈◊〉 lingering sickness nail me to my bed:  
●t this my Thoughts eternal comfort be,  
●at my closed eyes a better light shall see.  
And when by fortunes or by nature's stroke  
My bodies earthen Pitcher must be broke,  
My Soul, like gideon's lamp, from her cracked urn  
Shall Deaths black night to endless lustre turn.    

The Dirge.  

What is th'Existence of Man's life?  
But open war, or slumbered strife.  
Where sickness to his sense presents  
The combat of the Elements:  
And never feels a perfect Peace  
Till deaths cold hand signs his release.   

It is a storm where the hot blood  
Outvies in rage the boiling flood;  
And each loud Passion of the mind  
Is like a furious gust of wind,  
Which beats his Bark with many a Wave  
Till he casts Anchor in the Grave.   

It is a flower which buds and grows,  
And withers as the leaves disclose;  
Whose spring and fall faint seasons keep,  
Like fits of waking before sleep:  
Then shrinks into that fatal mould  
Where its first being was enroled.   

It is a dream, whose seeming truth  
Is moralised in age and youth:  
Where all the comforts he can share  
As wand'ring as his fancies are;  
Till in a mist of dark decay  
The dreamer vanish choir away.   

It is a Dial, which points out  
The Sunset as it moves about:  
And shadows out in lines of night  
The subtle stages of times slight,  
Till all obscuring earth hath laid  
The body in perpetual shade.   

It is a weary interlude  
Which doth short joys, long woes include.  
The World the Stage, the Prologue tears,  
The Acts vain hope, and varied fears:  
The Scene shuts up with loss of breath,  
And leaves no Epilogue but Death.    

AN ELEGY Occasioned by the less of the most incomparable Lady Stanhope, daught or to the Earl of Northumberland.  

Lightened by that dim Torch our sorrow bear,  
We sadly trace thy Coffin with our rears;  
And though the Ceremonious Rites are passed  
Since thy fair body into earth was cast;  
Though all thy Hatchments into rags are come,  
Thy Funeral Robes and Ornaments outwom;  
We still thy mourners without Show or Art,  
With solemn Blacks hung round about our heart,  
Thus constantly the Obsequies renew  
Which to thy precious memory are due.   

Yet think not that we tudely would invade  
The dark recess of thine untroubled shade,  
Or give disturbance to that happy peace  
Which thou enjoyest at full since thy release;  
Much less in sullen murmurs do complain  
Of His decree who took thee back again,  
And did e'er Fame had spread thy virtue's light,  
Eclipse and fold thee up in endless night.  
This like an act of envy not of grief  
Might doubt thy bliss, and shake our own belief,  
Whose studied wishes not proportion bear  
With joys which crown thee now in glories sphere.   

Know then blest Soul! we for ourselves not thee  
Seal our woes dictate by this Elegy:  
Wherein our tears united in one stream  
Shall to succeeding times convey this theme,  
Worth all men's pity who discern how rare  
Such early growths of fame and goodness are.  
Of these part must thy sex's loss bewail  
Maimed in her noblest Patterns through thy fail;  
For 'twould require a double term of life  
To match thee as a daughter or a wife:  
Both which Northumberlands dear loss improve  
And make his sorrow equal to his love.  
The rest fall for ourselves, who cast behind  
Cannot yet reach the Peace which thou dost find;  
But slowly follow thee in that dull stage  
Which most untimely posted hence thy age.   

Thus like religious Pilgrims who design  
A short salute to their beloved Shrine,  
Most sad and humble Votaries we come  
To offer up our sighs upon thy Tomb,  
And wet thy Marble with our dropping eyes  
Which till the spring which feeds their current dries  
Resolve each falling night and rising day  
This mournful homage at thy Grave to pay.    
FINIS.   

ERRATA.  

PAge 2. The Pink never wrote by the Author of these Poems. Pag. 22. lin. 8. for she read air.  
Pag. 100 lin. 3. for Mattox read Mattocks.