My right hand with triumphant crowns is stored,
Which all the kings of former times adored :
These gifts are thine: then enter where no strife,
No grief, no pain, shall interrupt thy life.

VIRTUE.

Stay, hasty wretch, here deadly serpents swell,
And thy next step is on the brink of hell:
Wouldst thou, poor weary man, thy limbs repose?
Behold my house, where true contentment grows;
Not like the baits which this seducer gives,
Whose bliss a day, whose torment ever lives.

WORLD.

Regard not these vain speeches, let them go:
This is a poor worm, my contemned foe,
Bold, threadbare Virtue, who dare promise more
From empty bags, than I from all my store;
Whose counsels make men draw unquiet breath,
Expecting to be happy after death.

VIRTUE.

Canst thou now make, or hast thou ever made,
Thy servants happy in those things that fade?
Hear this my challenge: One example bring
Of such perfection; let him be the king
Of all the world, fearing no outward check,
And finding others by his voice or beck;
Yet shall this man at every moment find
More gall than honey in his restless mind.

No, monster, since my words have struck thee dumb,
Behold this garland, whence such virtues come,
Such glories shine, such piercing beams are thrown
As make thee blind, and turn thee to a stone.
And thou, whose wandering feet were running down
The infernal steepness, look upon this crown:

Within these folds lie hidden no deceits,

No golden lures on which perdition waits;
But when thine eyes the prickly thorns have past,
See in the circle boundless joys at last.

PILGRIM.

These things are now most clear, thee I embrace:
Immortal wreath, let worldlings count thee base;
Choice is thy matter, glorious is thy shape,
Fit crown for them who tempting dangers 'scape.

PHINEAS FLETCHER.

PHINEAS FLETCHER, a brother of Giles Fletcher, was born in 1584. He was elected from Eton to King's College, and Sir Henry Willoughby gave him the living of Hilgay, in Norfolk, which he held twenty-nine years; when it is supposed he died, 1650. The principal poem of this author is "The Purple Island," in twelve cantos, containing an allegorical description both of the body and soul of man. It has been truly said, that no degree of skill in the poet could render this subject agreeable, as a whole, to the modern reader. It abounds. however, with picturesque passages, and touches of natural and pleasing sentiment.

INVOCATION.

FROM CANTO XI. OF THE PURPLE ISLAND.

THE early morn lets out the peeping day,
And strewed his paths with golden marigolds:

The moon grows wan, and stars fly all away,

Whom Lucifer locks up in wonted folds,

Till light is quenched and heaven in seas hath flung
The headlong day-to the hill the shepherds throng,

And Thirsil now began to end his task and song.

Who now, alas! shall teach my humble vein,
That never yet durst peep from covert glide;
But softly learnt for fear to sigh and plain,
And vent her griefs to silent myrtle's shade?
Who now shall teach to change my oaten quill
For trumpet 'larms, or humble verses fill
With graceful majesty and lofty rising skill?

Ah, thou dread Spirit! shed thy holy fire,
Thy holy flame into my frozen heart;
Teach thou my creeping measures to aspire
And swell in bigger notes, and higher art;

Teach my low muse thy fierce alarms to ring,
And raise my soft strain to high thundering:
Tune thou my lofty song; thy battles must I sing.

Such as thou wert within the sacred breast

Of that thrice famous poet shepherd-king;
And taught'st his heart to frame his cantos best,
Of all that e'er thy glorious works did sing;
Or as those holy fishers once amongs,

Thou flamedst bright with sparkling parted tongues, And brought'st down heaven to earth in those allconquering songs.

AN APOSTROPHE TO THE FALLEN EMPIRES OF THE WORLD,

FOND man, that looks on earth for happiness,
And here long seeks what here is never found!
For all our good we hold from heaven by lease,
With many forfeits and conditions bound;

Nor can we pay the fine and rentage due:
Though now but writ, and sealed, and given anew,
Yet daily we it break, then daily must renew.

Why shouldst thou here look for perpetual good,
At every loss 'gainst heaven's face repining?
Do but behold where glorious cities stood,
With gilded tops and silver turrets shining;

There now the hart, fearless of greyhound, feeds,
And loving pelican in safety breeds:

There screeching satyrs fill the people's empty stedes.'

Where is the Assyrian lion's golden hide,

That all the east once grasped in lordly paw? Where that great Persian bear, whose swelling pride The lion's self tore out with rav'nous jaw?

Or he who 'twixt a lion and a pard,

Through all the world with nimble pinions fared, And to his greedy whelps his conquered kingdoms shared?

Hardly the place of such antiquity,

Or note of those great monarchies we find : Only a fading verbal memory,

And empty name in writ is left behind:

But when this second life and glory fades,

And sinks at length in time's obscurer shades, A second fall succeeds, and double death invades.

That monstrous beast, which nursed in Tiber's fen,
Did all the world with hideous shape affray;

That filled with costly spoil his gaping den,
And trod down all the rest to dust and clay;

His battering horns, pulled out by civil hinds,
And iron teeth lie scattered on the sands;
Backed, bridled by a monk, with seven heads yoked stands.

And that black vulture, which with dreadful wing
O'ershadows half the earth, whose dismal sight

Frightened the muses from their native spring,
Already stoops, and flags with weary flight:

Who then shall look for happiness beneath?

Where each new day proclaims, chance, change, and

death,

And life itself's as fleet as is the air we breathe.

1 Places.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE CHURCH.

WITH that a thundering noise seemed shake the sky,
As when with iron wheels through stony plain
A thousand chariots to the battle fly;

Or when with boisterous rage the swelling main,

Puffed up by mighty winds, does hoarsely roar, And breaking with his waves the trembling shore, His sandy girdle scorns, and breaks earth's rampart door.

And straight an angel, full of heavenly might,
(Three several crowns circled his royal head,)
From northern coast heaving his blazing light,
Through all the earth his glorious beams dispread,
And open lays the beast and Dragon's shame;
For to this end the Almighty did him frame,
And therefore from supplanting gave his ominous name.

A silver trumpet oft he loudly blew,

Frighting the guilty earth with thundering knell; And oft proclaimed, as round the world he flew,

66

Babel, great Babel, lies as low as hell.

Let every angel loud his trumpet sound,

Her heaven-exalted towers in dust are drowned; Babel, proud Babel's fallen, and lies as low as ground!"

The broken heavens dispart with fearful noise,
And from the breach outshoots a sudden light;
Straight shrilling trumpets, with loud-sounding voice,
Give echoing summons to new bloody fight:

Well knew the Dragon that all-quelling blast,
And soon perceived that day must be his last,
Which struck his frightened heart and all his troops aghast

Yet full of malice and of stubborn pride,

Though oft had strove, and had been foiled as oft, Boldly his death and certain fate defied;

And, mounted on his flaggy sails aloft,