I have been in love and in debt and in drink

This many and many a year;

And those three are plagues enough, one would think, For one poor mortal to bear.

'Twas drink made me fall into love,

And love made me run into debt;

And though I have struggled and struggled and strove,

I cannot get out of them yet.

There's nothing but money can cure me

And rid me of all my pain.

'Twill pay all my debts,

And remove all my lets,

And my mistress that cannot endure me
Will love me, and love me again;

Then I'll fall to loving and drinking amain.

10

Where none will obey;

If the king ha'n't 's right, which way shall we?

They may vote and make laws

But no good they will cause

Till the king and his realms agree.

A pure religion I would have,

Not mixed with human wit;

And I cannot endure that each ignorant knave Should dare to meddle with it.

The tricks of the law

I would fain withdraw,

That it may be alike to each degree. And I fain would have such

As do meddle so much

With the king and the church agree.

40

50

William Davenant, born in 1605, was the son of an Oxford innkeeper. He was educated in the Grammar School and University of his native town, and then attached to the court as page to the Duchess of Richmond. Afterwards he was in the household of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, until his murder in 1628. He then wrote for the stage, and acquired reputation among dramatists of the time of Charles I., wrote court masques as well as plays, and became Master of the Revels. In the Civil War he served the king zealously, and was knighted for his service at the siege of Gloucester in 1643. These are two of his songs :

Whilst every quire shall sadly sing,

And Nature's self wear mourning. Yet we hereafter may be found,

By Destiny's right placing, Making, like flowers, love underground, Whose roots are still embracing.

Henry More, who published in 1642 a "Platonical Song of the Soul" in four books, was nine years than Davenant, and six years younger than younger Milton; moreover he was a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, Milton's College. He was tutor for a time in noble families, held a prebend in Gloucester until he gave it up to a friend; then having means enough to enable him to live simply a meditative life, he did so, and delighted in Platonic aspirations, as interpreted by the Neoplatonists. His verse is all philosophical, and he was troubled to find language for his thoughts, as we may read in this short poem of his "To Paro." Paro is Latin for a small light ship, and certainly Henry More's freight was a heavy one.

A rude confuséd heap of ashes dead

My verses seem, when that telestial flame
That sacred spirit of life's extinguished
In my cold breast. Then 'gin I rashly blame
My rugged lines: this word is obsolete,
That boldly coined; a third too oft doth beat

Mine humorous cars. Thus fondly curious
Is the faint reader, that doth want that fire
And inward vigour, heavenly furious,
That made my enrag'd spirit in strong desire
Break through such tender cobweb niceties
That oft entangle these blind buzzing flies.

Possessed with living sense I inly rave,
Careless how outward words do from me flow,
So be the image of my mind they have
Truly expressed, and do my visage show

As doth each river decked with Phoebus' beams
Fairly reflect the viewer of his streams.

Who can discern the moon's asperity
From off this earth, or could this earth's discover
If from the earth he raised were on high
Among the stars and in the sky did hover?

1 Billing, hacking with a bill. Spright, spirit, as in "sprightly."

Henry More lived in a seventh heaven high above care for the Civil War. Not so young Andrew Marvell, who in the Civil War time acted as tutor to Fairfax's only daughter. Andrew Marvell, born in 1620, was not thirty in the year of the execution of Charles I. He was the son of a clergyman and Master of the Grammar School at Kingston-onHull, was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and acquired skill in several foreign tongues by travel on the Continent before he was received at Bilbrough, in Yorkshire, as teacher of languages to the daughter of the house. There was a fine strain of thought in Marvell's earlier verse, as these pieces witness :

1 In Hakluyt's "Voyages" there is a description of Bermuda by Henry May, who was shipwrecked there in 1593. The Bermudas then first became known. In 1609 the admiral-ship of a fleet to Virginia was separated and wrecked on the island of Bermuda. The disaster called forth two tracts in 1610, and from that time attention was more strongly drawn to the group of about 300 islands in the North Atlantic, among which Bermuda-sixteen miles long, but nowhere more than a mile and a half broad-takes chief rank. Representative government was introduced into the Bermudas in 1620, and in 1621 the Bermuda Company of London issued a sort of charter to the colony, including rights and liberties, among them liberty of worship, that attracted many of those English emigrants whose feeling Marvell has here fashioned into song. Their rights were annulled by the English Government in 1685.

He gave us this eternal spring
Which here enamels every thing,
And sends the fowls to us in care
On daily visits through the air.
He hangs in shades the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night,
And does in the pomegranates close
Jewels more rich than Ormus shows.
He makes the figs our mouths to meet,
And throws the melons at our feet,
But apples plants of such a price
No tree could ever bear them twice.
With cedars chosen by his hand
From Lebanon, he stores the land,
And makes the hollow seas that roar
Proclaim the ambergrease on shore.
He cast, of which we rather boast,
The Gospel's pearl upon our coast,
And in these rocks for us did frame
A temple where to sound his name.
Oh! let our voice his praise exalt
"Til it arrive at heaven's vault,
Which, then, perhaps, rebounding, may
Echo beyond the Mexique Bay."

Thus sung they, in the English boat, A holy and a cheerful note, And all the way, to guide their chime, With falling oars they kept the time.

TO A FAIR SINGER.

To make a final conquest of all me
Love did compose so sweet an enemy
In whom both beauties to my death agree,
Joining themselves in fatal harmony,

That, while she with her eyes my heart does bind
She with her voice might captivate my mind.

I could have fled from one but singly fah, My disentangled soul itself might save, Breaking the curled trammels of her hair. But how should I avoid to be her slave Whose subtle art invisibly can wreathe My fetters of the very air I breathe?

It had been easy fighting in some plain
Where victory might hang in equal choice,
But all resistance against her is vain

Who has the advantage both of eyes and voice:
And all my forces needs must be undone,
She having gainéd both the wind and sun.

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE RESOLVED SOUL AND
CREATED PLEASURE.

Courage, my soul! now learn to wield
The weight of thine immortal shield;
Close on thy head thy helmet bright;
Balance thy sword against the fight;
See where an army, strong as fair,
With silken banners spread the air!
Now, if thou be'st that thing divine,
In this day's combat let it shine,
And show that nature wants an art
To conquer one resolvéd heart.

20

3390

40

10

Under the Commonwealth Marvell became the assistant to Milton as Foreign Secretary, recommended by his knowledge of French, Italian, Dutch. and Spanish, as well as Latin and Greek, and by his pure and earnest patriotism. Under Charles II. he shone out as a satirist, putting his wit only to the highest uses. His opinions never suffered change.

John Dryden, born in 1631, was eleven year younger than Marvell, and he went from Westminster School to the same college at Cambridge in which Marvell had been educated. Dryden was born into a good Northamptonshire family, both on his father's and his mother's side opposed to that theory of royal authority which was involved in the stand made by Charles I. against the Parliament. Bred in such a family, although his was a mind naturally inclined to rest on authority, he held at first the family opinion. Since he was not eighteen years old at the date of the king's execution, he was studying at Cambridge under the Commonwealth, and after he had left the university he went to London to begin life in the house of his cousin, Sir Gilbert Pickering, a close

personal friend of Cromwell's. While Cromwell lived the state stood firm, and nothing occurred to detach Dryden from the opinions in which he had been bred. He had reached his twenty-eighth year when, after the funeral of "the Protector, who died on the 3rd of September, 1658-adopting a measure used by Sir William Davenant in a heroic poem called "Gondibert," that had been published in the year 1651-he wrote, as a tribute to his memory, these

HEROIC STANZAS ON THE DEATH OF OLIVER
CROMWELL.

And now 'tis time; for their officious haste,
Who would before have borne him to the sky,
Like eager Romans, ere all rites were past,
Did let too soon the sacred eagle fly.

His grandeur he derived from heaven alone;

For he was great ere fortune made him so; And wars, like mists that rise against the sun, Made him but greater seem, not greater grow. No borrowed bays his temples did adorn,

But to our crown he did fresh jewels bring; Nor was his virtue poisoned soon as born With the too early thoughts of being king. Fortune (that easy mistress to the young,

But to her ancient servants coy and hard) Him at that age her favourites ranked among When she her best-loved Pompey did discard. He, private, marked the faults of others' sway, And set as sea-marks for himself to shun; Not like rash monarchs who their youth betray By acts their age too late would wish undone.

And yet dominion was not his design;

We owe that blessing not to him but heaven,
Which to fair acts unsought rewards did join,
Rewards, that less to him than us were given.

Our former chiefs, like sticklers of the war,
First sought to inflame the parties then to poise;
The quarrel loved, but did the cause abhor;
And did not strike to hurt, but make a noise.

War, our consumption, was their gainful trade,
We inward bled, whilst they prolonged our pain:

He fought to end our fighting, and essayed
To stanch the blood by breathing of the vein.

20

20