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GEORGE HERBERT.

GEORGE HERBERT, "Holy George Herbert," as he is often called, was born April 3, 1593, in the castle of Montgomery, in Wales. He was of gentle birth, and was a younger brother of Lord Edward Herbert, of Cherbury, the famous diplomatist and philosopher. George was educated at Westminster and at Cambridge, where "he consecrated the first fruits of his early age to virtue and a serious study of learning." He was chosen a fellow of Trinity College in 1615, and in 1619 was made public orator, which was then considered a very distinguished honor, much coveted by aspiring men, as it was a high-road to preferment at court.

Herbert for some years was a zealous courtier, and was high in favor with King James I., who gave him a valuable sinecure in 1623. But the death of 'that monarch in 1625, and of two of Herbert's most powerful friends among the high nobility, put an end to his ambitious hopes, and led him to take holy orders. The date of his ordination is not known, but in 1626 he was made prebendary of Leighton Ecclesia, in the diocese of Lincoln. About three years later he married Jane Danvers, after an acquaintance of three days, an instance of "marrying in haste which was not accompanied by the usual result of "repenting at leisure," for the match proved an unusually happy one—“ so happy," says Walton, "that there never was any opposition betwixt them, unless it were a contest which should

most incline to a compliance with the other's desires."

In 1630 King Charles I. presented Herbert with the rectory of Bemerton, near Salisbury, where he remained during the rest of his life. He was a most exemplary and pious pastor, and was greatly beloved and reverenced by his flock, His career, however, was cut short by consumption, of which he died in February, 1632, at the age of thirty-nine. His life was written by Izaak Walton, the famous author of "The Complete Angler." His poems, which were very popular in his own day, are chiefly comprised in a series called "The Temple." Of this work twenty thousand copies were sold within a few years after its publication-a prodigious number for those days. This great popularity was owing not only to the poet's sweetness of fancy and vigorous sense, but to the fact that he is preeminently a poet of the Church of England. "His similes are drawn from her ceremonial; his most solemn thoughts are born of her mysteries; his tenderest lessons are taught by her prayers." During the last century his works fell into neglect; but in this more discerning age their high merits have been recognized, and George Herbert stands to-day among the foremost of the minor poets of England. His lines entitled "Virtue "are especially popular. There is a good edition of his poems, in one volume, in the Boston collection of the British poets.

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EDMUND WALLER.

EDMUND WALLER was born at Coleshill, Hertfordshire, March 3, 1605. He was of an ancient and wealthy family, and his mother was a sister of the celebrated John Hampden. During his infancy his father died, leaving him an estate of £3,500 a year. He was educated at Cambridge, and entered Parliament at the age of eighteen. At twenty-six he married a London heiress, who died soon after. He then paid court to Lady Dorothea Sydney, to whom he addressed innumerable poems, in which he gives her the name of "Sacharissa," and also to Lady Sophia Murphy, whom he styled "Amoret." These suits being unsuccessful, he speedily sought and found a second wife elsewhere. In politics, as in love, Waller adapted himself to circumstances with the utmost facility. In the Long Parliament he acted with the party of Hampden, and was one of the commissioners to negotiate with the king; then he was won over

by the royalists, and joined in a conspiracy to raise an open and armed resistance to Parliament, for which he was fined £10,000 and banished, after he had made an abject confession which sent three of his colleagues to the gallows. He spent ten years in France, living by the sale of his wife's jewels, and was then permitted to return. He at once became a flatterer of Cromwell; and after the restoration was quite as melodious in praise of Charles II. He reentered Parliament, and remained in it until his eightieth year, one of its wittiest and most forcible debaters. He died at Beaconsfield, October 21, 1687. Waller was about the earliest of our poets who, without great genius, gave to their conceits and amorous strains something of the gracefulness of modern verse. One of the most striking and frequently quoted of Byron's images is borrowed from him; it is contained in the last of the poems here selected.

TO AMORET.

FAIR! that you may truly know,
What you unto Thyrsis owe;
I will tell you how I do
Sacharissa love, and you.

Joy salutes me, when I set
My blest eyes on Amoret:
But with wonder I am strook,
While I on the other look.

If sweet Amoret complains,
I have sense of all her pains:
But for Sacharissa I
Do not only grieve, but die.
All that of myself is mine,
Lovely Amoret! is thine.
Sacharissa's captive fain
Would untie his iron chain,

And, those scorching beams to shun,

To thy gentle shadow run.

If the soul had free election
To dispose of her affection;
I would not thus long have borne
Haughty Sacharissa's scorn:
But 'tis sure some power above,
Which controls our wills in love!
If not a love, a strong desire
To create and spread that fire
In my breast, solicits me,
Beauteous Amoret! for thee.

'Tis amazement more than love,
Which her radiant eyes do move :
If less splendor wait on thine,
Yet they so benignly shine,
I would turn my dazzled sight
To behold their milder light.
But as hard 'tis to destroy
That high flame, as to enjoy:
Which how easily I may do,

Heaven (as eas'ly scal'd) does know!.
Amoret! as sweet and good

As the most delicious food,
Which, but tasted, does impart
Life and gladness to the heart.
Sacharissa's beauty's wine,
Which to madness doth incline:
Such a liquor as no brain
That is mortal can sustain.

Scarce can I to Heaven excuse
The devotion which I use
Unto that adored dame:
For 'tis not unlike the same,
Which I thither ought to send.
So that if it could take end,
'Twould to Heaven itself be due,
To succeed her, and not you:
Who already have of me
All that's not idolatry:

Which, though not so fierce a flame,
Is longer like to be the same.

Then smile on me, and I will prove Wonder is shorter-liv'd than love.

OF LOVE.

ANGER, in hasty words, or blows,
Itself discharges on our foes;
And sorrow, too, finds some relief
In tears, which wait upon our grief:
So every passion but fond love,
Unto its own redress does move:
But that alone the wretch inclines
To what prevents his own designs;
Makes him lament, and sigh, and weep,
Disorder'd, tremble, fawn, and creep;
Postures which render him despis'd,
Where he endeavors to be priz'd:

For women, born to be controll'd,
Stoop to the forward and the bold;
Affect the haughty and the proud,
The gay, the frolic, and the loud.
Who first the generous steed opprest,
Not kneeling did salute the beast;
But with high courage, life, and force
Approaching, tam'd th' unruly horse.
Unwisely we the wiser East
Pity, supposing them opprest

With tyrants' force, whose law is will,
By which they govern, spoil, and kill:
Each nymph, but moderately fair,
Commands with no less rigor here.
Should some brave Turk, that walks among
His twenty lasses, bright and young,
And beckons to the willing dame,
Preferr'd to quench his present flame,
Behold as many gallants here,
With modest guise, and silent fear,
All to one female idol bend,

While her high pride does scarce descend
To mark their follies, he would swear.
That these her guard of eunuchs were;
And that a more majestic queen,
Or humbler slaves, he had not seen.
All this with indignation spoke,
In vain I struggled with the yoke
Of mighty love: that conquering look,
When next beheld, like lightning strook
My blasted soul, and made me bow
Lower than those I pitied now.

So the tall stag, upon the brink
Of some smooth stream, about to drink,
Surveying there his armed head,
With shame rememb'ring that he fled
The scorned dogs, resolves to try
The combat next: but, if their cry
Invades again his trembling ear,
He strait resumes his wonted care;
Leaves the untasted spring behind,
And, wing'd with fear, outflies the wind

OF THE

MARRIAGE OF THE DWARFS.

DESIGN or Chance make others wive,
But Nature did this match contrive:
Eve might as well have Adam fled,
As she deny'd her little bed

To him, for whom Heav'n seem'd to frame,
And measure out this only dame.

Thrice happy is that humble pair,
Beneath the level of all care!
Over whose heads those arrows fly
Of sad distrust and jealousy:
Secured in as high extreme,
As if the world held none but them.

To him the fairest nymphs do show
Like moving mountains topp'd with snow,
And every man a Polypheme
Does to his Galatea seem:
None may presume her faith to prove;
He proffers death, that proffers love.

Ah! Chloris! that kind Nature thus
From all the world had sever'd us:
Creating for ourselves us two,
As Love has me for only you!

A PANEGYRIC

TO MY LORD PROTECTOR,

Of the Present Greatness, and Joint Interest, of his
Highness and this Nation.

WHILE with a strong, and yet a gentle, hand,
You bridle faction, and our hearts command,
Protect us from ourselves, and from the foe,
Make us unite, and make us conquer too:

Let partial spirits, still aloud complain,
Think themselves injur'd that they cannot reign,
And own no liberty, but where they may
Without control upon their fellows prey.

Above the waves as Neptune show'd his face, To chide the winds, and save the Trojan race. So has your highness, rais'd above the rest Storms of ambition, tossing us, represt.

Your drooping country, torn with civil have,
Restor'd by you, is made a glorious state;
The seat of empire, where the Irish come,
And the unwilling Scots, to fetch their doom

The sea's our own: and now, all nations greet,
With bending sails, each vessel of our fleet:
Your power extends as far as winds can blow
Or swelling sails upon the globe may go.

Heaven (that hath plac'd this island to give law
To balance Europe, and her states to awe,)
In this conjunction doth on Britain smile,
The greatest leader, and the greatest isle!
Whether this portion of the world were rent,
By the rude ocean, from the continent,
Or thus created; it was sure design'd
To be the sacred refuge of mankind.

Hither th' oppressed shall henceforth resort,
Justice to crave, and succor, at your court;
And then your highness, not for ours alone
But for the world's protector shall be known
Fame, swifter than your winged navy, flies
Through every land, that near the ocean lies;
Sounding your name, and telling dreadful news
To all that piracy and rapine use.

With such a chief the meanest nation blest,
Might hope to lift her head above the rest:
What may be thought impossible to do
By us, embraced by the sea and you?

Lords of the world's great waste, the ocean, we
Whole forests send to reign upon the sea;
And every coast may trouble, or relieve:
But none can visit us without your leave.

Angels and we have this prerogative,
That none can at our happy seats arrive;
While we descend at pleasure, to invade
The bad with vengeance, and the good to aid.

Our little world, the image of the great,
Like that, amidst the boundless ocean set,
Of her own growth hath all that nature craves.
And all that's rare, as tribute from the waves.

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