I neither seeke by bribes to please, Nor by desert to breed offence. Thus do I live; thus will I die; Would all did so as well as I! SIR EDWARD DYER.* TO THE HON. CHARLES MONTAGUE. The worthless prey but only shows In Homer's riddle and in life. So, whilst in feverish sleeps we think We taste what waking we desire, The dream is better than the drink, Which only feeds the sickly fire. To the mind's eye things well appear, At distance through an artful glass; Bring but the flattering objects near, They're all a senseless gloomy mass. Seeing aright, we see our woes : Then what avails it to have eyes? From ignorance our comfort flows, The only wretched are the wise. 'Tis much immortal beauty to admire, But must not with too near a love adore; LORD EDWARD THURLOW. OF MYSELF. MATTHEW PRIOR, THIS only grant me, that my means may lie Not from great deeds, but good alone; Rumor can ope the grave. Acquaintance I would have, but when 't depends Not on the number, but the choice, of friends. Books should, not business, entertain the light, And sleep, as undisturbed as death, the night. My house a cottage more Than palace; and should fitting be For all my use, no luxury. My garden painted o'er BEAUTY. FROM "HYMN IN HONOR OF BEAUTY." So every spirit, as it is most pure, Therefore wherever that thou dost behold A comely corpse, with beauty fair endued, Yet oft it falls that many a gentle mind With Nature's hand, not Art's; and pleasures Dwells in deformèd tabernacle drowned, yield, Horace might envy in his Sabine field. *This is frequently attributed to William Byrd. Bartlett, how ever, gives it to Sir Edward Dyer, referring to Hannah's Courtly Poets as authority; so, also, Ward, in his English Poets, Vol. I., 1880. Either by chance, against the course of kind, Or through unaptnesse in the substance found, Which it assumed of some stubborne ground, That will not yield unto her form's direction, But is performed with some foul imperfection. And oft it falls (aye me, the more to rue!) Yet nathèmore is that faire beauty's blame, Nothing so good, but that through guilty shame THOUGHT. EDWARD SPENSER. THOUGHT is deeper than all speech, We are spirits clad in veils ; Man by man was never seen; All our deep communing fails To remove the shadowy screen. Heart to heart was never known; Mind with mind did never meet; We are columns left alone Of a temple once complete. Like the stars that gem the sky, Far apart, though seeming near, In our light we scattered lie; All is thus but starlight here. What is social company But a babbling summer stream? What our wise philosophy But the glancing of a dream? Only when the sun of love Melts the scattered stars of thought, Only when we live above What the dim-eyed world hath taught, Only when our souls are fed By the fount which gave them birth, And by inspiration led Which they never drew from earth, We, like parted drops of rain, Swelling till they meet and run, Shall be all absorbed again, Melting, flowing into one. CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH. |