Three blessings wait upon them, one of which
Should move-they make us holy, happy, rich.
When the world's up, and every swarm abroad,
Keep well thy temper, mix not with each clay;
Despatch necessities; life hath a load
Which must be carried on, and safely may;
Yet keep those cares without thee; let the heart
Be God's alone, and choose the better part.

The Rainbow.

[From the same.]

Still young and fine, but what is still in view
We slight as old and soil'd, though fresh and new.
How bright wert thou when Shem's admiring eye
Thy burnish'd flaming arch did first descry;
When Zerah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot,
The youthful world's gray fathers, in one knot
Did with intentive looks watch every hour
For thy new light, and trembled at each shower!
When thou dost shine, darkness looks white and fair;
Forms turn to music, clouds to smiles and air;
Rain gently spends his honey-drops, and pours
Balm on the cleft earth, milk on grass and flowers.
Bright pledge of peace and sunshine, the sure tie
Of thy Lord's hand, the object of his eye!
When I behold thee, though my light be dim,
Distinct, and low, I can in thine see him,
Who looks upon thee from his glorious throne,
And minds the covenant betwixt all and One.

The Story of Endymion.

[Written after reading M. Gombauld's Romance
of Endymion."]

I've read thy soul's fair night-piece, and have seen
The amours and courtship of the silent queen;
Her stol'n descents to earth, and what did move her
To juggle first with heav'n, then with a lover;
With Latmos' louder rescue, and (alas!)
To find her out, a hue and cry in brass;
Thy journal of deep mysteries, and sad
Nocturnal pilgrimage; with thy dreams, clad
In fancies darker than thy cave; thy glass
Of sleepy draughts; and as thy soul did pass
In her calm voyage, what discourse she heard
Of spirits; what dark groves and ill-shap'd guard
Ismena led thee through; with thy proud flight
O'er Periardes, and deep-musing night
Near fair Eurotas' banks; what solemn green
The neighbour shades wear; and what forms are seen
In their large bowers; with that sad path and seat
Which none but light-heel'd nymphs and fairies beat;
Their solitary life, and how exempt

From common frailty-the severe contempt
They have of man-their privilege to live
A tree or fountain, and in that reprieve
What ages they consume: with the sad vale
Of Diophania; and the mournful tale

Of the bleeding, vocal myrtle: these and more,
Thy richer thoughts, we are upon the score
To thy rare fancy for. Nor dost thou fall
From thy first majesty, or ought at all
Betray consumption. Thy full vigorous bays
Wear the same green, and scorn the lean decays
Of style or matter; just as I have known

Some crystal spring, that from the neighbour down
Deriv'd her birth, in gentle murmurs steal
To the next vale, and proudly there reveal
Her streams in louder accents, adding still
More noise and waters to her channel, till
At last, swoll'n with increase, she glides along
The lawns and meadows, in a wanton throng

Of frothy billows, and in one great name
Swallows the tributary brooks' drown'd fame.
Nor are they mere inventions, for we
In the same piece find scatter'd philosophy,
And hidden, dispers'd truths, that folded lie
In the dark shades of deep allegory,
So neatly weav'd, like arras, they descry
Fables with truth, fancy with history
So that thou hast, in this thy curious mould,
Cast that commended mixture wish'd of old,
Which shall these contemplations render far
Less mutable, and lasting as their star;
And while there is a people, or a sun,
Endymion's story with the moon shall run.

Timber.

Sure thou didst flourish once, and many springs,
Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers,
Pass'd o'er thy head; many light hearts and wings
Which now are dead, lodg'd in thy living towers.

And still a new succession sings and flies,
Fresh groves grow up, and their green branches shoot
Towards the old and still enduring skies,

While the low violet thrives at their root.

THOMAS STANLEY.

THOMAS STANLEY, the learned editor of Eschylus, and author of a History of Philosophy, appears early in this period as a poet, having published a volume of his verses in 1651. The only son of Sir Thomas Stanley, knight, of Camberlow-Green, in Hertfordshire, he was educated at Pembroke college, Oxford; spent part of his youth in travelling; and afterwards lived in the Middle Temple. His poems, whether original or translated, are remarkable for a rich style of thought and expression, though deformed to some extent by the conceits of his age.

The Tomb.

When, cruel fair one, I am slain
By thy disdain,

And, as a trophy of thy scorn,

To some old tomb am borne,
Thy fetters must their power bequeath
To those of Death;

Nor can thy flame immortal burn,
Like monumental fires within an urn:
Thus freed from thy proud empire, I shall prove
There is more liberty in Death than Love.

And when forsaken lovers come
To see my tomb,
Take heed thou mix not with the crowd,
And (as a victor) proud,

To view the spoils thy beauty made,
Press near my shade,

Lest thy too cruel breath or name
Should fan my ashes back into a flame,
And thou, devour'd by this revengeful fire,
His sacrifice, who died as thine, expire.

But if cold earth, or marble, must
Conceal my dust,
Whilst hid in some dark ruins, I,
Dumb and forgotten, lie,

The pride of all thy victory

Will sleep with me;

And they who should attest thy glory, Will, or forget, or not believe this story. Then to increase thy triumph, let me rest,

Since by thine eye slain, buried in thy breast.

[The following piece is a translation by Stanley from a poem by St Amant, in which that writer had employed his utmost genius to expand and enforce one of the over-free sentiments of the bard of Teios.]

Let's not rhyme the hours away;
Friends! we must no longer play:
Brisk Lycus-see!-invites
To more ravishing delights.

Let's give o'er this fool Apollo,

Nor his fiddle longer follow:

Fie upon his forked hill,

With his fiddle-stick and quill;

And the Muses, though they're gamesome,
They are neither young nor handsome;
And their freaks in sober sadness

Are a mere poetic madness:

Pegasus is but a horse;

He that follows him is worse.

See, the rain soaks to the skin,
Make it rain as well within.
Wine, my boy; we'll sing and laugh,
All night revel, rant, and quaff;
Till the morn stealing behind us,
At the table sleepless find us.
When our bones (alas !) shall have
A cold lodging in the grave;
When swift death shall overtake us,
We shall sleep and none can wake us.
Drink we then the juice o' the vine
Make our breasts Lyceus' shrine;
Bacchus, our debauch beholding,
By thy image I am moulding,
Whilst my brains I do replenish
With this draught of unmix'd Rhenish ;
By thy full-branch'd ivy twine;
By this sparkling glass of wine;
By thy Thyrsus so renown'd;

By the healths with which th' art crown'd;
By the feasts which thou dost prize;

By thy numerous victories;

By the howls by Monads made;
By this haut-gout carbonade;
By thy colours red and white;
By the tavern, thy delight;
By the sound thy orgies spread;
By the shine of noses red;
By thy table free for all;
By the jovial carnival;

By thy language cabalistic;

By thy cymbal, drum, and his stick;

By the tunes thy quart-pots strike up;
By thy sighs, the broken hiccup;
By thy mystic set of ranters;
By thy never-tamed panthers;

By this sweet, this fresh and free air;

By thy goat, as chaste as we are;
By thy fulsome Cretan lass;
By the old man on the ass;
By thy cousins in mix'd shapes ;
By the flower of fairest grapes;
By thy bisks fam'd far and wide;
By thy store of neats'-tongues dry'd;
By thy incense, Indian smoke;
By the joys thou dost provoke ;
By this salt Westphalia gammon ;

By these sausages that inflame one;

By thy tall majestic flaggons ;

By mass, tope, and thy flap-dragons;
By this olive's unctuous savour;

By this orange, the wines' flavour;

By this cheese o'errun with mites;

By thy dearest favourites;

To thy frolic order call us,

Knights of the deep bowl install us;
And to show thyself divine,

Never let it want for wine.

Note to Moschus.

[Stanley here translates a poem of Marino, in which that writer had in his eye the second idyl of Moschus.]

Along the mead Europa walks,

To choose the fairest of its gems,
Which, plucking from their slender stalks,
She weaves in fragrant diadems.
Where'er the beauteous virgin treads,
The common people of the field,
To kiss her feet bowing their heads,
Homage as to their goddess yield.
"Twixt whom ambitious wars arise,
Which to the queen shall first present
A gift Arabian spice outvies,
The votive offering of their scent.

When deathless Amaranth, this strife,
Greedy by dying to decide,

Begs she would her green thread of life,
As love's fair destiny, divide.
Pliant Acanthus now the vine

And ivy enviously beholds,
Wishing her odorous arms might twine
About this fair in such strict folds.
The Violet, by her foot opprest,

Doth from that touch enamour'd rise,
But, losing straight what made her blest,
Hangs down her head, looks pale, and dies.

Clitia, to new devotion won,

Doth now her former faith deny, Sees in her face a double sun,

And glories in apostacy.

The Gillyflower, which mocks the skies,
(The meadow's painted rainbow) seeks
A brighter lustre from her eyes,

And richer scarlet from her cheeks.
The jocund flower-de-luce appears,
Because neglected, discontent;
The morning furnish'd her with tears;
Her sighs expiring odours vent.
Narcissus in her eyes, once more,
Seems his own beauty to admire;
In water not so clear before,

As represented now in fire.

The Crocus, who would gladly claim
A privilege above the rest,
Begs with his triple tongue of flame,
To be transplanted to her breast.
The Hyacinth, in whose pale leaves

The hand of Nature writ his fate,
With a glad smile his sigh deceives
In hopes to be more fortunate.
His head the drowsy Poppy rais'd,

Awak'd by this approaching morn,
And view'd her purple light amaz'd,
Though his, alas! was but her scorn.
None of this aromatic crowd,

But for their kind death humbly call,
Courting her hand, like martyrs proud,
By so divine a fate to fall.

The royal maid th' applause disdains
Of vulgar flowers, and only chose
The bashful glory of the plains,

Sweet daughter of the spring, the Rose.
She, like herself, a queen appears,
Rais'd on a verdant thorny throne,
Guarded by amorous winds, and wears
A purple robe, a golden crown.

SIR JOHN DENHAM.

SIR JOHN DENHAM (1615-1668) was the son of the chief baron of exchequer in Ireland, but was educated at Oxford, then the chief resort of all the poetical and high-spirited cavaliers. Denham was wild and dissolute in his youth, and squandered away great part of his patrimony at the gaming-table. He was made governor of Farnham castle by Charles I.; and after the monarch had been delivered into the hands of the army, his secret correspondence was partly carried on by Denham, who was furnished with nine several ciphers for the purpose. Charles had a respect for literature, as well as the arts; and Milton records of him that he made Shakspeare's plays the closet-companion of his solitude. It would appear, however, that the king wished to keep poetry apart from state affairs: for he told Denham,

21

on seeing one of his pieces, that when men are young, and have little else to do, they may vent the overflowings of their fancy in that way; but when they are thought fit for more serious employments, if they still persisted in that course, it looked as if they minded not the way to any better.' The poet stood corrected and bridled in his muse. In 1648 Denham conveyed the Duke of York to France, and resided in that country some time. His estate was sold by the Long Parliament; but the Restoration revived his fallen dignity and fortunes. He was made surveyor of the king's buildings, and a knight of the bath. In domestic life the poet does not seem to have been happy. He had freed himself from his early excesses and follies, but an unfortunate marriage darkened his closing years, which were unhappily visited by insanity. He recovered, to receive the congratulations of Butler, his fellowpoet, and to commemorate the death of Cowley, in one of his happiest effusions.

Cooper's Hill, the poem by which Denham is now best known, consists of between three and four hundred lines, written in the heroic couplet. The descriptions are interspersed with sentimental digressions, suggested by the objects around-the river Thames, a ruined abbey, Windsor forest, and the field of Runnymede. The view from Cooper's Hill is rich and luxuriant, but the muse of Denham was more reflective than descriptive. Dr Johnson assigns to this poet the praise of being the author of a species of composition that may be denominated local poetry, of which the fundamental subject is some particular landscape, to be poetically described, with the addition of such embellishments as may be supplied by historical retrospection or incidental meditation.' Ben Jonson's fine poem on Penshurst may dispute the palm of originality on this point with the Cooper's Hill,' but Jonson could not have written with such correctness, or with such intense and pointed expression, as Denham. The versification of this poet is generally smooth and flowing, but he had no pretensions to the genius of Cowley, or to the depth and delicacy of feeling possessed by the old dramatists, or the poets of the Elizabethan period. He reasoned fluently in verse, without glaring faults of style, and hence obtained the approbation of Dr Johnson far above his deserts. Denham could not, like his contemporary, Chamberlayne, have described the beauty of a summer morning

The morning hath not lost her virgin blush,
Nor step, but mine, soil'd the earth's tinsell'd robe.
How full of heaven this solitude appears,
This healthful comfort of the happy swain;
Who from his hard but peaceful bed roused up,
In's morning exercise saluted is

By a full quire of feather'd choristers,
Wedding their notes to the enamour'd air!
Here nature in her unaffected dress

Plaited with valleys, and emboss'd with hills
Enchas'd with silver streams, and fring'd with woods,
Sits lovely in her native russet.*

Chamberlayne is comparatively unknown, and has never been included in any edition of the poets, yet every reader of taste or sensibility must feel that the above picture far transcends the cold sketches of Denham, and is imbued with a poetical spirit to which he was a stranger. That Sir John Denham began a reformation in our verse,' says Southey, 'is one of the most groundless assertions that ever obtained belief in literature. More thought and more skill had been exercised before his time in the construction of English metre than he ever bestowed on the

* Chamberlayne's Love's Victory.' 321

They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame,
True to his sense, but truer to his fame.

The two last lines are very happily conceived and expressed. Denham wrote a tragedy, the Sophy, which is but a tame commonplace plot of Turkish jealousy, treachery, and murder. Occasionally, there is a vigorous thought or line, as when the envious king asks Haly

Have not I performed actions As great, and with as great a moderation?

The other replies

Ay, sir, but that's forgotten;

Actions of the last age are like almanacs of the last year.

This sentiment was too truly felt by many of the cavaliers in the days of Charles II. We subjoin part of Denham's elegy on the death of Cowley, in which it will be seen that the poet forgot that Shakspeare was buried on the banks of his native Avon, not in Westminster Abbey, and that both he and Fletcher died long ere time had 'blasted their bays.'

On Mr Abraham Cowley.

His Death and Burial amongst the Ancient Poets.

Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Old Chaucer, like the morning star,
To us discovers day from far.

His light those mists and clouds dissolv'd
Which our dark nation long involv'd;
But he, descending to the shades,
Darkness again the age invades ;
Next (like Aurora) Spenser rose,
Whose purple blush the day foreshows;
The other three with his own fires
Phoebus, the poet's god, inspires:
By Shakspeare's, Jonson's, Fletcher's lines,
Our stage's lustre Rome's outshines.
These poets near our princes sleep,
And in one grave their mansion keep.
They lived to see so many days,
Till time had blasted all their bays;
But cursed be the fatal hour

That pluck'd the fairest sweetest flower

That in the Muses' garden grew,

And amongst wither'd laurels threw.
Time, which made them their fame outlive,
To Cowley scarce did ripeness give.
Old mother wit and nature gave
Shakspeare and Fletcher all they have:
In Spenser and in Jonson, art
Of slower nature got the start;
But both in him so equal are,

None knows which bears the happiest share;
To him no author was unknown,
Yet what he wrote was all his own;
He melted not the ancient gold,
Nor with Ben Jonson did make bold
To plunder all the Roman stores
Of poets and of orators:
Horace his wit and Virgil's state
He did not steal, but emulate;
And when he would like them appear,
Their garb, but not their clothes, did wear:
He not from Rome alone, but Greece,
Like Jason brought the golden fleece;
To him that language (though to none
Of th' others) as his own was known.
On a stiff gale, as Flaccus sings,
The Theban swan extends his wings,
When through th' ethereal clouds he flies
To the same pitch our swan doth rise;
Old Pindar's heights by him are reach'd,
When on that gale his wings are stretch'd;
His fancy and his judgment such,
Each to th' other seem'd too much;
His severe judgment giving law,

His modest fancy kept in awe.

Song to Morpheus.

[From the Sophy,' Act v.]

Morpheus, the humble god, that dwells In cottages and smoky cells,

Hates gilded roofs and beds of down; And, though he fears no prince's frown, Flies from the circle of a crown.

Come, I say, thou powerful god,

And thy leaden charming rod,

Dipt in the Lethean lake,

O'er his wakeful temples shake,

Lest he should sleep and never wake.

Nature, alas! why art thou so

Obliged to thy greatest foe?

Sleep, that is thy best repast,

Yet of death it bears a taste,

And both are the same thing at last.

WILLIAM CHAMBERLAYNE.

WILLIAM CHAMBERLAYNE (1619-1689) describes himself in the title-page to his works as of Shaftesbury, in the county of Dorset.' The poet practised as a physician at Shaftesbury; but he appears to have wielded the sword as well as the lancet, for he was present among the royalists at the battle of Newbury. His circumstances must have been far from flourishing, as, like Vaughan, he complains keenly of the poverty of poets, and states that he was debarred from the society of the wits of his day. The works of Chamberlayne consist of two poems-Love's Victory, a tragi-comedy published in 1658; and Pharonnida, a Heroic Poem, published in 1659. The scene of the first is laid in Sicily, and that of Pharonnida' is also partly in Sicily, but chiefly in Greece. With no court connexion, no light or witty copies of verses to float him into popularity, relying solely on his two long and comparatively unattractive works-to appreciate which,