ON THE DEATH OF A FAIR INFANT Above mortality, that showed thou wast divine.

To stand 'twixt us and our deserved smart? But thou can'st best perform that office where thou

art.

Then thou, the mother of so sweet a child,
Her false-imagined loss cease to lament,
And wisely learn to curb thy sorrows wild;
Think what a present thou to God hast sent,
And render him with patience what he lent;
This if thou do, he will an offspring give,
That, till the world's last end, shall make thy name
to live.

ANNO ÆTATIS 19.

May tell at length how green eyed Neptune raves
In Heaven's defiance mustering all his waves;
Then sing of secret things that came to pass
When beldam Nature in her cradle was;
And last of kings, and queens, and heroes old,
Such as the wise Demodocus once told
In solemn songs at king Alcinous' feast,
While sad Ulysses' soul, and all the rest,
Are held with his melodious harmony
In willing chains and sweet captivity.
But fie, my wandering muse, how thou dost stray
Expectance calls thee now another way;
Thou knowest it must be now thy only bent
To keep in compass of thy predicament:
Then quick about thy proposed business come,
That to the next I may resign my room.

Then Ens is represented as father of the predicaments his two
song, whereof the eldest stood for substance with his canora,
which Ens, thus speaking, explains.

Good luck befriend thee, son; for at thy birth,
The fairy ladies danced upon the hearth;
Thy drowsy nurse hath sworn she did them spy
Come tripping to the room where thou didst lie,
And sweetly singing round about thy bed,
Strew all their blessings on thy sleeping head.
She heard them give thee this, that thou shouldst
still

From eyes of mortals walk invisible:

Al a Vacation Exercise in the college, part Latin, part Eng.
lish. The Latin speeches ended, the English thus began.
Hat, native Language, that by sinews weak
Did'st move my first endeavouring tongue to speak,
And madest imperfect words with childish trips
Half unpronounced, slide through my infant lips,
Driving dumb Silence from the portal door,
Where he had mutely sat two years before!
Here I salute thee, and thy pardon ask,
That now I use thee in my latter task:
Small loss it is that thence can come unto thee,
I know my tongue but little grace can do thee:
Thou needest not be ambitious to be first,
Believe me I have thither packed the worst:
And, if it happens as I did forecast,
The daintiest dishes shall be served up last,
I pray thee then deny me not thy aid,
For this same small neglect that I have made:
But haste thee straight to do me once a pleasure,
And from thy wardrobe bring the chiefest treasure." Your son," said she, (" nor can you it prevent,)
Not those new fangled toys, and trimming slight
Which takes our late fantastics with delight;
Bat cull those richest robes, and gayest attire,
Which deepest spirits, and choicest wits desire.
I have some naked thoughts that rove about,
And loudly knock to have their passage out;
And, weary of their place do only stay

Till thou hast decked them in thy best array;
That so they may, without suspect or fears,
Fly swiftly to this fair assembly's ears;
Yet I had rather, if I were to choose,
Thy service in some graver subject use,
Such as may make thee search thy coffers round,
Before thou clothe my fancy in fit sound:
Such where the deep transported mind may soar
Above the wheeling poles, and at Heaven's door
Look in, and see cach blissful deity

How he before the thunderous throne doth lie,
Listening to what unshorn Apollo sings
To the touch of golden wires, while Hebe brings
Immortal nectar to her kingly sire:
Then passing through the spheres of watchful fire
And misty regions of wide air next under,
And hills of snow, and lofts of piled thunder,

Yet there is something that doth force my fear;
For once it was my dismal hap to hear
A sybil old, bow-bent with crooked age,
That far events full wisely could presage,
And in time's long and dark prospective glass
Foresaw what future days should bring to pass;

Shall subject be to many an accident.

O'er all his brethren he shall reign as king,
Yet every one shall make him underling;
And those that can not live from him asunder,
Ungratefully shall strive to keep him under;
In worth and excellence he shall outgo them,
Yet, being above them, he shall be below them;
From others he shall stand in need of nothing,
Yet on his brother shall depend for clothing.
To find a foe it shall not be his hap;
And peace shall lull him in her flowery lap;
Yet shall he live in strife, and at his door
Devouring war shall never cease to roar;
Yea, it shall be his natural property
To harbour those that are at enmity.
What power, what force, what mighty spell, if not
Your learned hands, can loose this Gordian knot?"

The next Quantity and Quality spake in prose, then Rea
tion was called by his name.

Rivers, arise; whether thou be the son
Of utmost Tweed, or Oose, or gulfy Dun,
Or Trent, who, like some earthborn giant spreade
His thirty arms along the indented meads;

Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold And speckled vanity

Will sicken soon and die,

And leprous Sin will melt from earthly mould; And hell itself will pass away,

Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering

keep.

When such music sweet

Their hearts and ears did greet,

As never was by mortal finger strook;

Divinely warbled voice

Answering the stringed noise,

As all their souls in blissful rapture took;

The air, such pleasures loath to lose,

day.

Yea, Truth and Justice then

Will down return to men,

Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing, Mercy will sit between,

Throned in celestial sheen;

With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering;

With thousand echoes still prolongs each heaven- And Heaven, as at some festival,. ly close.

Nature that heard such sound,

Beneath the hollow round

Of Cynthia's seat, the airy region thrilling, Now was almost won

To think her part was done,

And that her reign had here its last fulfilling;

She knew such harmony alone

Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.

Could hold all Heaven and earth in happier union. The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through

At last surrounds their sight

A globe of circular light.

the deep!

With such a horrid clang

That with long beams the shamefaced night ar- As on Mount Sinai rang,

rayed;

The helmed cherubim,

And sworded seraphim,

While the red fire and smouldering clouds out. brake:

The aged carth aghast,

Are seen in glittering ranks with wings dis- With terror of that blast, played;

Harping in loud and solemn choir,

Shall from the surface to the centre shake;

When, at the world's last session,

With unexpressive notes to Heaven's new-born The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his

In consecrated earth,

And on the holy hearth,

The Lares, and Lemures, mourn with midnight plaint;

In urns, and altars round,

A drear and dying sound

Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint;

And the chill marble seems to sweat,

So when the sun in bed,
Curtained with cloudy red,

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,
The flocking shadows pale
Troop to the infernal jail,

Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave;
And the yellow skirted fayes,

Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-love

maze.

But see,

the Virgin blest

Hath laid her Babe to rest;

Time is our tedious song should here have ending;
Heaven's youngest teemed star
Hath fixed her polished car,

Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attend.
ing;

And all about the courtly stable

While each peculiar Power foregoes his wonted Bright harnessed angels sit in order serviceable.

scat.

Peor and Baalim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice battered God of Palestine;* And mooned Ashtaroth,

Heaven's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine;
The Libyc Hammon shrinks his horn,
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded

muz mourn.

And sullen Moloch, fled,
Flath left in shadows dread

His burning idol all of blackest hue;
In vain with cymbals' ring

They call the grisly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blue: The brutish gods of Nile as fast,

Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis haste.

Nor is Osiris seen

In Memphian grove or green,

THE PASSION.

EREWHILE of music, and ethereal mirth,
Wherewith the stage of air and earth did ring,
And joyous news of heavenly Infant's birth,
My muse with angels did divide to sing;
But headlong joy is ever on the wing;

Thum-Soon swallowed up in dark and long outliving night.
In wintry solstice like the shortened light,

For now to sorrow must I tune my song,
And set my harp to notes of saddest wo,
Which on our dearest Lord did seize ere long,
Dangers, and
snares, and
and worse than
wrongs,

Which he for us did freely undergo:

Most perfect Hero, tried in heaviest plight
Of labours huge and hard, too hard for human wight!

He, sovereign Priest, stooping his regal head,
That dropt with odorous oil down his fair eyes,
Poor fleshy tabernacle entered,

Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings His starry front low rooft beneath the skies:

loud:

Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest;

Naught but profoundest hell can be his shroud; In vain with timbrelled anthems dark

O what a mask was there, what a disguise:
Yet more;
the stroke of death he must abide,
Then lies him meekly down fast by his brethren's
side.

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipped ark. These latest scenes confine my roving verse;

He feels from Judah's land
The dreaded Infant's hand,

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;
Nor all the gods beside

Longer dare abide,

Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine: Our babe, to show his Godhead true,

Can in his swaddling bands control the damned crew.

"That twice-battered God of Palestine;"-Dagon, first martered by Samson, then by the ark of God.

To this horizon is my Phoebus bound:
His godlike acts, and his temptations fierce,
And former sufferings other where are found;
Loud o'er the rest Cremona's trump doth sound;
Me softer airs befit, and softer strings
Of lute, or viol still, more apt for mournful things,
Befriend me, Night, best patroness of grief;
Over the pole thy thickest mantle throw,

"Cremona's trump doth sound"-alluding to the Christiad of Vida, a native of Cremona.