That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer ; A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit. The first true gentleman that ever breathed.1

The Honest Whore. Parti. Act i. Sc. 12.

We are ne'er like angels till our passion dies.

Ibid. Part ii. Act i. Sc. 2.

To add to golden numbers, golden numbers.

Patient Grissell. Acti. Sc. 1.

Honest labour bears a lovely face.

Ibid.

ABRAHAM COWLEY. 1618-1667.

What shall I do to be for ever known,
And make the age to come my own?

The Motto.

1 Of the offspring of the gentilman Jafeth, come Habraham, Moyses, Aron, and the profettys; and also the Kyng of the right lyne of Mary, of whom that gentilman Jhesus was borne. — Juliana Berners, Heraldic Blazonry.

-

His time is for ever, everywhere his place. Friendship in Absence.

We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine; But search of deep philosophy,

Wit, eloquence, and poetry;

Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine. On the Death of Mr. William Harvey.

His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might Be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right.1 On the Death of Crashaw.

We grieved, we sighed, we wept: we never blushed before.

Discourse concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell.

The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
And drinks and gapes for drink again;
The plants suck in the earth, and are
With constant drinking fresh and fair.

From Anacreon. Drinking.

Why

Should every creature drink but I?
Why, man of morals, tell me why?

A mighty pain to love it is,
And 't is a pain that pain to miss ;
But of all pains, the greatest pain
It is to love, but love in vain.

1 For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, He can't be wrong whose life is in the right.

Ibid.

Gold.

Pope, Essay on Man, Ep. iii. Line 306.

Th' adorning thee with so much art

Is but a barb'rous skill;

'Tis like the poisoning of a dart,

Too apt before to kill.

The Waiting Maid.

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,

But an eternal now does always last.1

Davideis. Vol. i. Book i.

The monster London ..

....

Let but thy wicked men from out thee go,
And all the fools that crowd thee so,
Even thou, who dost thy millions boast,
A village less than Islington wilt grow,
A solitude almost.

Of Solitude.

God the first garden made, and the first city

Cain.2

The Garden. Essay v.

Hence ye profane, I hate ye all,

Both the great vulgar and the small.

Horace. Book iii. Ode 1.

Charm'd with the foolish whistling of a name.3

Words that weep and tears that speak.*

The Prophet.

One of our poets (which is it?) speaks of an everlasting now. -Southey, The Doctor, Ch. xxv. p. I.

2 Compare Bacon, Of Gardens.

3 Ravish'd with the whistling of a name.

Pope, Essay on Man, Ep. iv. Line 283. ♦ Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. Gray, The Progress of Poesy, iii. 3, 4.

EDMUND WALLER.

1605 - 1687.

The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,1
Lets in new light thro' chinks that time has made.
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become,
As they draw near to their eternal home.

Verses upon his Divine Poesy.
Under the tropic is our language spoke,
And part of Flanders hath received our yoke.
Upon the Death of the Lord Protector.

A narrow compass! and yet there

Dwelt all that's good, and all that 's fair:

Give me but what this riband bound,

Take all the rest the sun goes round.

Go, lovely rose !

On a Girdle.

Tell her that wastes her time and me
That now she knows,

When I resemble her to thee,

How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Go, lovely Rose.

How small a part of time they share

That are so wondrous sweet and fair! Ibid. Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse,

And every conqueror creates a muse.

For all we know

Panegyric on Cromwell.

Of what the blessed do above

Is, that they sing and that they love.

While I listen to thy voice. The yielding marble of her snowy breast. On a Lady passing through a Crowd of People. 1 See Fuller, The Holy and the Profane State, i. ii

Poets lose half the praise they should have got, Could it be known what they discreetly blot. Upon Roscommon's Trans. of Horace, De Arte Poetica. Could we forbear dispute, and practise love, We should agree as angels do above.

Divine Love. Canto iii.

That eagle's fate and mine are one,
Which, on the shaft that made him die,
Espied a feather of his own,

Wherewith he wont to soar so high.1

To a Lady singing a Song of his Composing.

MARQUIS OF MONTROSE.

1612-1650.

He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,

1 So in the Libyan fable it is told

That once an eagle, stricken with a dart,
Said when he saw the fashion of the shaft,
"With our own feathers, not by other's hands
Are we now smitten."

Eschylus, Fragm. 123, Plumptre's Translation.
So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart,
And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart.
Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Line 826.

Like a young eagle, who has lent his plume
To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom;
See their own feathers pluck'd, to wing the dart
Which rank corruption destines for their heart.
Thomas Moore, Corruption.