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Your pining sickness, and your restless pain, it once the land affecting, and the main. When the glad news, that you were admiral, carce through the nation spread, 't was fear'd by all hat our great Charles, whose wisdom shines in you, hould be perplexed how to chuse a new: o more than private was the joy and grief, hat at the worst it gave our souls relief, 'hat in our age such sense of virtue liv'd, 'hey joy'd so justly, and so justly griev'd. Nature, her fairest light eclipsed, seems lerself to suffer in these sad extremes; While not from thine alone thy blood retires, ut from those cheeks which all the world admires. he stem thus threat'ned, and the sap, in thee roop all the branches of that noble tree; heir beauties they, and we our love suspend, ought can our wishes save thy health intend; s lillies overcharg'd with rain, they bend [tend, heir beauteous heads, and with high Heaven conold thee within their snowy arms, and cry, He is too faultless, and too young to die:" », like immortals, round about thee they t, that they fright approaching Death away. Tho would not languish by so fair a train, ɔ be lamented and restor'd again?

r thus with-held, what hasty soul would go, hough to the blest? O'er young Adonis so

ir Venus mourn'd, and with the precious show'r f her warm tears cherish'd the springing flower. The next support, fair hope of your great name, nd second pillar of that noble frame, y loss of thee would no advantage have, ut, step by step, pursues thee to thy grave. And now relentless Fate, about to end he line, which backward doth so far extend bat antique stock, which still the world supplies With bravest spirits, and with brightest eyes, ind Phoebus interposing, bade me say, Such storms no more shall shake that house; but ike Neptune and his sea-born niece, shall be he shining glories of the land and sea, With courage guard, and beauty warm our age, nd lovers fill with like poetic rage."

ON MISTRESS N.

TO THE GREEN SICKNESS.

TAY, Coward blood, and do not yield
o thy pale sister beauty's field,
Vho, there displaying round her white
Ensigns, hath usurp'd thy right;
nvading thy peculiar throne,

he lip, where thou shouldst rule alone; ind on the cheek, where Nature's care Allotted each an equal share, Her spreading lily only grows, Whose milky deluge drowns thy rose. Quit not the field, faint blood, nor rush In the short sally of a blush pon thy sister foe, but strive To keep an endless war alive; Though peace do petty states maintain, Tere war alone makes beauty reign.

[they,

UPON A MOLE IN CELIA'S BOSOM.

THAT lovely spot which thou dost see
In Celia's bosom was a bee,
Who built her amorous spicy nest
I' th' hyblas of her either breast;
But, from close ivory hives she flew
To suck the aromatic dew

Which from the neighbour vale distils,
Which parts those two twin-sister hills;
There feasting on ambrosial meat,

A rowling file of balmy sweet

(As in soft murmurs, before death,

Swan-like she sung) chok'd up her breath.
So she in water did expire,

More precious than the phenix' fire;

Yet still her shadow there remaius
Confin'd to those Elysian plains;
With this strict law, that who shall lay
His bold lips on that milky way,

The sweet and smart from thence shall bring
Of the bee's honey and her sting.

AN HYMENEAL SONG

ON THE NUPTIALS OF THE LADY ANNE WENT-
WORTH', AND THE LORD Lovelace.

BREAK not the slumbers of the bride,
But let the Sun in triumph ride,

Scattering his beamy light;
When she awakes, he shall resign
His rays, and she alone shall shine
In glory all the night.

For she, till day return, must keep An amorous vigil, and not steep Her fair eyes in the dew of sleep.

Yet gently whisper as she lies,
And say her lord waits her uprise,

The priests at th' altar stay; With flow'ry wreaths the virgin crew Attend, while some with roses strew, And myrtles trim the way.

Now to the temple and the priest
See her convey'd, thence to the feast;
Then back to bed, though not to rest.

For now, to crown his faith and truth,
We must admit the noble youth
To revel in love's sphere;
To rule, as chief intelligence,
That orb, and happy time dispense
To wretched lovers here.

For there, exalted far above
All hope, fear, change, or they to move
The wheel that spins the fates of love;

This lady was the daughter of Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, by his second wife, Arabella daughter of lord Clare. Her husband, mentioned here by the name of lord Lovelace, was Edward Watson lord Rockingham, progenitor of the present marquis of Rockingham.

They know no night, nor glaring noon,
Measure no hours of Sun or Moon,

Nor mark Time's restless glass; Their kisses measure, as they flow, Minutes, and there embraces show

The hours as they do pass.

Their motions the year's circle make, And we from their conjunctions take Rules to make love an almanack.

A MARRIED WOMAN.

WHEN I shall marry, if I do not find

A wife thus moulded, I'll create this mind:
Nor from her noble birth, nor ample dower,
Beauty, or wit, shall she derive a power
To prejudice my right; but if she be
A subject born, she shall be so to me,
As to the soul the flesh, as appetite

To reason is; which shall our wills unite
In habits so confirm'd, as no rough sway
Shall once appear, if she but learn t' obey.
For, in habitual virtues, sense is wrought
To that calm temper, as the body's thought
To have nor blood nor gall, if wild and rude
Passions of lust and anger are subdu'd ;
When 't is the fair obedience to the soul
Doth in the birth those swelling acts controul.
If I in murder steep my furious rage,
Or with adult'ry my hot lust assuage,
Will it suffice to say, "My sense, the beast,
Provok'd me to 't?" Could I my soul divest,
My plea were good. Lions and bulls commit
Both freely, but man must in judgment sit,
And tame this beast; for Adam was not free,
When in excuse he said, "Eve gave it me:"
Had he not eaten, she perhaps had been
Unpunish'd; his consent made her's a sin.

Whose priest sung sweetest lays, thou didst appear A glorious mystery, so dark, so clear,

As Nature did intend

All should confess, but none might comprehend?

Perhaps all other beauties share a light
Proportion'd to the sight

Of weak mortality, scatt'ring such loose fires,
As stir desires,

And from the brain distil salt, amorous rheums; Whilst thy immortal flame such dross consumes And from the earthy mould

With purging fires severs the purer gold.

If so, then why in fame's immortal scrowl
Do we their names inroll,

Whose easy hearts and wanton eyes did sweat
With sensual heat?

If Petrarch's unarm'd bosom catch a wound From a light glance, must Laura be renown'd? Or both a glory gain,

He from ill-govern'd love, she from disdain?

Shall he more fam'd in his great art become
For wilful martyrdom ?

Shall he more title gain to chaste and fair,
Through his despair?

Is Troy more noble 'cause to ashes turn'd,
Than virgin cities that yet never burn'd?
Is fire, when it consumes

Temples, more fire, than when it melts perfumes?

'Cause Venus from the ocean took her form.
Must love needs be a storm?
'Cause she her wanton shrines in islands rears,
Through seas of tears,

O'er rocks and gulphs, with our own sighs for gale,
Must we to Cyprus or to Paphos sail?

Can there no way be given,

But a true Hell, that leads to her false Heaven?

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LOVE'S FORCE.

In the first ruder age, when Love was wild,
Not yet by laws reclaim'd, not reconcil'd
To order, nor by reason mann'd, but flew,
Full-plum'd by nature, on the instant view,
Upon the wings of appetite, at all

The eye could fair, or sense delightful call,
Election was not yet; but as their cheap
Food from the oak, or the next acorn-heap,
As water from the nearest spring or brook,
So men their undistinguish'd females took
By chance, not choice. But soon the heavenly spark,
That in man's bosom lurk'd, broke through this dark
Confusion; then the noblest breast first felt
Itself for its own proper object melt.

A FANCY.

MARK how this polish'd eastern sheet Doth with our northern tincture meet; For though the paper seem to sink, Yet it receives and bears the ink;

And on her smooth, soft brow these spots,
Seem rather ornaments than blots,
Like those you ladies use to place
Mysteriously about your face;
Not only to set off and break
Shadows and eye-beams, but to speak
To the skill'd lover, and relate,
Unheard, his sad or happy fate.
Nor do their characters delight,

As careless works of black and white:
But 'cause you underneath may find
A sense that can inform the mind;
Divine or moral rules impart,
Or raptures of poetic art:
So what at first was only fit

To fold up silks, may wrap up wit.

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Hills of milk with azure mix'd
Swell beneath,
Waving sweetly, yet still fix'd,

While she doth breathe. From those hills descends a valley Where all fall, that dare to dally.

As fair pillars under stand
Statues two,

Whiter than the silver swan

That swims in Po; If at any time they move her, Every stept begets a lover.

All this but the casket is

Which contains

Such a jewel, as the miss

Breeds endless pains; That's her mind, and they that know it May admire, but cannot show it.

TO CELIA,

UPON LOVE'S UBIQUITY.

As one that strives, being sick, and sick to death,
By changing places, to preserve a breath,
A tedious restless breath, removes and tries
A thousand rooms, a thousand policies,
To cozen pain, when he thinks to find ease,
At last he finds all change, but his disease;
So (like a ball with fire and powder fill'd)
I restless am, yet live, each minute kill'd,
And with that moving torture must retain,
With change of all things else, a constant pain.
Say I stay with you, presence is to me
Nought but a light to show my misery,
And parting are as racks, to plague love on,
The further stretch'd, the more affliction.
Go I to Holland, France, or Furthest Inde,
I change but only countries, not my mind.
And though I pass through air and water free,
Despair and hopeless fate still follow me.
Whilst in the bosom of the waves I reel,
My heart I 'll liken to the tottering keel,
The sea to my own troubled fate, the wind
To your disdain, sent from a soul unkind:
But when I lift my sad looks to the skies,
Then shall I think I see my Celia's eyes;
And when a cloud or storm appears between,
I shall remember what her frowns have been.
Thus, whatsoever course my fates allow,
All things but make me mind my business, you.
The good things that I meet, I think streams be
From you the fountain; but when bad I see,
How vile and cursed is that thing, think I,
That to such goodness is so contrary?
My whole life is 'bout you, the center star,
But a perpetual motion circular.

I am the dial's hand, still walking round;
You are the compass; and I never sound
Beyond your circle; neither can I shew
Aught but what first expressed is in you,
That wheresoe'er my tears do cause me move,
My fate still keeps me bounded with your love;
Which ere it die, or be extinct in me,

Time shall stand still, and moist waves flaming

Ss

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THE DESCRIPTION OF THE SCENE.

THE first thing that presented itself to the sight was a rich ornament that enclosed the scene; in the upper part of which were great branches of foliage growing out of leaves and husks, with a cornice at the top; and in the midst was placed a large compartiment, composed of grotesque work, wherein were harpies with wings and lions' claws, and their hinder parts converted into leaves and branches. Over all was a broken frontispiece, wrought with scrowls and masque-heads of children, and within this, a table adorn'd with a lesser compartiment, with this inscription, COELUM BriTANNICUM. The two sides of this ornament were thus ordered: first, from the ground arose a square

Masque. This species of composition was long the favourite of the British court, and even disputed the ground with the regular compositions of the dramatic Muse. Unguided by any rules, unrestrained by any laws, it might wander thro' the universe for objects either new or monstrous, and where it found none it might create them. With these powers, it was well calculated to charm the fancy in the absence of taste; but, as taste established her empire in the minds of men, the Masque, with all its unaccountable monsters, retired.

-It had its birth in Italy, about the 16th century, when it was the fashion for every bard to have a world of his own creation. From whence it migrated, with other exotics, cross the Channel, and found a warm reception in the benevolent soil of Britain. The poets of queen Elizabeth's reign, and of the following age, were pleased with the extravagance of the thing; and as they followed Ariosto and his brethren through all the wildness of Fairyland, they followed them also in this, and almost surpassed heir masters.

The uppermost member of the entablature of a column, or that which crowns the order.

basement, and on the plinth stood a great vase of gold, richly enchased, and beautified with sculptures of great relieve, with fruitages hanging from the upper part. At the foot of this sate two youths naked, in their natural colours; each of these with one arm supported the vase, on the cover of which stood two young women in draperies, arm in arm; the one figuring the glory of princes, and the other mansuetude': their other arms bore up an oval, in which, to the king's majesty, was this impress, a lion with an imperial crown on his head; the words, Animum sub pectore forti: On the other side was the like composition, but the design of the figures varied; and in the oval on the top, being borne up by nobility and fecundity, was this impress to the queen's majesty, a lilly growing with branches and leaves, and three lesser lilies springing out of the stem; the words, semper inclyta virtus: all this ornament was heightened with gold, and for the invention, and various composition, was the newest and most gracious that hath been done in this place.

The curtain was watchet and a pale yellow in panes, which, flying up on the sudden, discovered the scene, representing old arches, old palaces, decayed walls, parts of temples, theatres, basilicas' and thermes, with confused heaps of broken columns, bases, cornices, and statues, lying as underground, and altogether resembling the ruins of some great city of the ancient Romans, or civiliz'd Britons. This strange prospect detained the eye of the spectators some time, when to a loud music Mercury descends. On the upper part of his chariot stands a cock in action of crowing. Hs habit was a coat of flame-colour girt to him, and a white mantle trimm'd with gold and silver: upon his head a wreath with small falls of white feathers, a caducens in his hand, and wings at his heels: being come to the ground, he dismounts, and goo up to the state.

MERCURY.

FROM the high senate of the gods, to you,
Bright glorious twins of love and majesty,
Before whose throne three warlike nations bend
Their willing knees; on whose imperial brows
The regal circle prints no awful frowns
To fright your subjects, but whose calmer eyes
Shed joy and safety on their melting hearts,
That flow with cheerful, loyal reverence;
Come I, Cyllenius, Jove's ambassador,
Not, as of old, to whisper amorous tales
Of wanton love into the glowing ear
Of some choice beauty in this numerous train :

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Those days are fled; the rebel flame is quench'd
In heavenly breasts; the gods have sworn by Styx,
Never to tempt yielding mortality

To loose embraces. Your exemplar life
Hath not alone transfus'd a zealous heat
Of imitation through your virtuous court,
By whose bright blaze your palace is become
The envy'd pattern of this under world;
But the aspiring flame hath kindled Heaven:
Ch' immortal bosoms burn with emulous fires;
love rivals your great virtues, royal sir,
And Juno, madam, your attractive graces;
He his wild lusts, her raging jealousies
She lays aside, and through th' Olympic hall,
As yours doth here, the great example spreads.
And though, of old, when youthful blood conspir'd
With his new empire, prone to heats of lust,
He acted incests, rapes, adulteries,

On earthly beauties, which his raging queen,
Swoln with revengeful fury, turn'd to beasts,
And in despite he transformed to stars,
Fill he had fill'd the crowded firmament
With his loose strumpets, and their spurious race,
Where the eternal records of his shame
Shine to the world in flaming characters:
When in the crystal mirror of your reign

Merc. Peace, railer, bridle your licentious tongue, And let this presence teach you modesty.

Mom. Let it, if it can; in the mean time I will acquaint it with my condition. Know, gay people, that though your poets (who enjoy by patent a particular privilege to draw down any of the deities from Twelfth-night to Shrove-Tuesday, at what time there is annually a most familiar intercourse between the two courts) have as yet never invited me to these solemnities, yet it shall appear by my intrusion this night, that I am a very considerable person upon these occasions, and may most properly assist at such entertainments. My name is Momus ap-Somnus ap-Erabus ap-Chaos ap-Demorgorgon ap-Eternity. My offices and titles are, the supreme theomastix, hypercritic of manners, prothonotary of abuses, arch informer, dilator general, universal calumniator, eternal plaintiff, and perpetual foreman of the grand inquest. My privileges are an ubiquitary, circumambulatory, speculatory, interrogatory, redargutory immunity over all the privy lodgings; behind hangings, doors, curtains; through key-holes, chinks, windows; about all venereal lobbies, sconces, or redoubts, though it be to the surprise of a perdu page or chambermaid; in, and at, all courts of civil and criminal judicature, all councils, consultations, and parliamentary assemblies, where though I am but a wool-sack god, and have no vote in the sanction of new laws, I have yet a prerogative of wresting the old to any whatsoever interpretation, whether it be to the behoof or prejudice of Jupiter, his crown, and dignity; for, or against, the rites of either house of patrician or plebeian gods. My natural qualities are to make Jove frown, Juno pout, Mars chafe, Venus blush, Vulcan glow, Saturn quake, Cynthia pale, Phoebus hide his face, and Mercury here take his heels. My recreations are witty mischiefs, as when Satan gelt his father; the smith caught his wife and her bravo in a net of cobweb iron; and Hebe, through the lubricity of the pavement tumbling over the halfspace, presented the emblem of the forked tree, and discovered to the tann'd Ethiops the snowy cliffs of Calabria, with the grotto of Puteolum. But that you may arrive at the perfect knowledge of me, Enter Momus attired in a long darkish robe, all by the familiar illustration of a bird of mine own wrought over with poniards, serpents, tongues, eyes, feather, old Peter Aretine, who reduc'd all the and ears; his beard and hair party-coloured, and scepters and mitres of that age tributary to his upon his head a wreath stuck with feathers, and awit, was my parallel, and Frank Rabelais suck'd porcupine in the forepart.

He view'd himself, he found his loathsome stains;
And now, to expiate th' infectious guilt
Of those detested luxuries, he'll chase
Th' infamous lights from their usurped sphere,
And drown in the Lethean flood their curs'd
Both names and memories: in those vacant rooms
First you succeed, and of the wheeling orb,
In the most eminent and conspicuous point,
With dazzling beams and spreading magnitude,
Shine the bright pole-star of this hemisphere.
Next, by your side, in a triumphant chair,
And crown'd with Ariadne's diadem,

Sits the fair consort of your heart and throne;
Diffus'd about you, with that share of light
As they of virtue have deriv'd from you,
He'll fix this noble train of either sex,
So to the British stars this lower globe
Shall owe its light, and they alone dispense
To th' world a pure, refined influence.

much of my milk too; but your modern French Mom. By your leave, mortals. hospital of oratory is a mere counterfeit, an arrant Good cousin Hermes, your pardon, good my lord ambassador: than his sciatica, he discourses of kings and mountebank; for though, fearing no other fortunes I found the tables of your arms and titles in every queens with as little reverence as of grooms and inn betwixt this and Olympus, where your present chambermaids, yet he wants their fangteeth and expedition is registered: your nine thousand nine scorpion's tail; I mean that fellow, who, to add to hundred ninty ninth legation. I cannot reach the his stature, thinks it a greater grace to dance on policy why your master breeds so few statesmen; his tip-toes like a dog in a doublet, than to walk it suits not with his dignity, that in the whole Em-like other men on the soles of his feet. pyræum there should not be a god fit to send on these honourable errands but yourself, who are not yet so careful of his honour or your own, as might become your quality, when you are itinerant. The hosts upon the high-way cry out with open mouth upon you, for supporting plafery in your train; which though, as you are the god of petty larceny, you might protect, yet you know it is directly against the new orders, and oppose the reformation in diameter.

Merc. No more impert'nent trifler; you disturb The great affair with your rude scurrilous chat. What doth the knowledge of your abject state Concern Jove's solemn message?

Mom. Sir, by our favour, though you have a

? Lying in wait to watch any thing,

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