TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS, AND MOST

HOPEFUL PRINCE,

CHARLES,

PRINCE OF WALES*.

WELL may my book come forth like public day,

When such a light as you are leads the way;

Who are my work's creator, and alone

The flame of it, and the expansion.

And look how all those heav'nly lamps acquire
Light from the sun, that inexhausted fire !
So all my morn, and ev'ning stars from you
Have their existence, and their influence too.
Full is my book of glories, but all these
By you become immortal substances.

Afterwards King Charles the Second.

SELECT POEMS,

&c.

I.

TO HIS MUSE.

WHITHER, mad maiden, wilt thou roam?

Far safer 'twere to stay at home;

Where thou may'st sit, and piping please

The poor and private cottages:

Since cotes, and hamlets best agree

With this thy meaner minstrelsy:

There, with the reed, thou may'st express
The shepherd's fleecy happiness;

And with thy eclogues intermix
Some smooth, and harmless bucolics;
There, on a hillock thou may'st sing
Unto a handsome shepherdling;

POEMI.] William Cleland, a poet of no small merit, though not very generally known, who wrote a short time after Herrick, and whose poems were first printed 1658, then again after his death 1697, has a beautiful ode to Fancy, where he speaks and advises in a similar tone:

Hollo, my Fancy, whither would'st thou go?
In melancholy fancy

Out of thyself?

All the world surveying,

Nowhere staying,

Just like a fairy elf?

Hollo, my Fancy, hollo!

Stay, stay at home with me;

I can no longer follow,

For thou hast betray'd me!

Scott, in the notes to his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, vol. 3, page 201, mentions this writer, as a rigid nonconformist at the time of the revolution. He was slain in the field, 1689.

Or to a girl that keeps the neat,
With breath more sweet than violet;
There, there perhaps, such lines as these
May take the simple villages :

But for the court, the country wit
Is despicable unto it.

*Stay then at home; and do not go,
Or fly abroad to seek for woe:
Contempts in courts, and cities dwell;
No critic haunts the poor man's cell,
Where thou may'st hear thine own lines read,

By no one tongue there censured.

That man's unwise will search for ill,

And may prevent it sitting still.

II.

UPON JULIA'S RECOVERY.

DROOP, droop no more, nor hang the head,

Ye roses almost withered;

Now strength, and newer purple get,

Each here-declining violet.

O primroses! let this day be

A resurrection unto ye;

And to all flowers allied in blood,
Or sworn to that sweet sisterhood:
For health on Julia's cheek hath shed
Claret, and cream commingled.
And those her lips do now appear
As beams of coral, but more clear.

*Thus too Petrarch addresses, and concludes his twentysixth Canzone:

O poverella mia, come se rozza ;

Credo che tel conoschi;

Rimanti in questi boschi.

I dreamt the roses one time went
To meet, and sit in parliament :
The place for these, and for the rest
Of flowers, was thy spotless breast,
Over the which a state was drawn
Of tiffany, or cobweb lawn:
Then, in that parley, all those pow'rs
Voted the rose the queen of flow'rs;
But so, as that herself should be
The maid of honour unto thee.

IV.

TO PERILLA.

Aн, my Perilla! dost thou grieve to see Me, day by day, to steal away from thee? Age calls me hence; and my grey hairs bid come,

And haste away to mine eternal home:

'Twill not be long, Perilla, after this,

That I must give thee the supremest kiss :
Dead when I am, first cast in salt, and bring
Part of the cream from that religious spring,
With which, Perilla, wash my hands and feet;
That done, then wind me in that very sheet
Which wrapt thy smooth limbs, when thou didst
implore

The gods protection, but the night before;
Follow me weeping to my turf, and there

Let fall a primrose, and with it a tear;
Then, lastly, let some weekly strewings be
Devoted to the memory of me :

Then shall my ghost not walk about; but keep
Still in the cool, and silent shades of sleep.