TO DELIA.

Look, Delia, how w’esteem the half-blown rose,

,
The image of thy blush, and summer's honour*!
Whilst yet her tender bud doth undisclose
That full of beauty, Time bestows upon her.
No sooner spreads her glory in the air,
But straight her wide-blown pomp comes to decline;
She then is scorn'd, that late adorn’d the fair;
So fade the roses of those cheeks of thine!
No April can revive thy wither'd flow'rs,
Whose springing grace adorns thy glory now:
Swift speedy Time, feather'd with flying hours,
Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow,
Then do not thou such treasure waste in vain,
But love now, whilst thou may'st be lov'd again.

Daniel, Son. 36.

summer's honour.] Honour is frequently used by our old poets for beauty. The Latins used honos in the same manner for pulchritudo. As in Horace:

Non semper idem floribus est honos
Vernis.

B. II. Od. ii.

A VISION,

UPON THIS CONCEIT OF THE FAIRY QUEEN.

Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay,
Within that temple where the vestal flame
Was wont to burn; and passing by that way,
To see that buried dust of living fame
Whose tomb fair Love and fairer Virtue kept,
All suddenly I saw the fairy queen:
At whose approach, the soul of Petrarch wept,
And from thenceforth those graces were not seen.
For they this queen attended; in whose stead
Oblivion laid him down on Laura's hearse :
Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed,
And groans of buried ghosts the heavens did pierce,

Where Homer's sprite did tremble all for grief,
And curs'd th' access of that celestial thief.

SIR W. RALEIGH.

TO SLEEP*.

Sleep, silence' child, sweet father of soft rest,
Prince, whose approach peace to all mortals brings,
Indifferent host to shepherds and to kings,
Sole comforter of minds with grief oppress'd.

* On this subject poets of all ages and nations have been very cloquent ;

suffice it to say, that Shakspeare, in his Henry the Fourth, Part II. Act III. Sc. i. has surpassed every thing that has hitherto ap

Lo, by thy charming rod all breathing things
Lie slumb'ring, with forgetfulness possess’d,
And yet o’er me to spread thy drowsy wings
Thou spar'st, alas ! who cannot be thy guest.
Since I am thine, O come, but with that face
To inward light which thou art wont to show,
With fained solace ease a true-felt woe,
Or if, deaf god, thou do deny that grace,

Come as thou wilt, and what thou wilt bequeath,
I long to kiss the image of my death. .

Drummond, Edinb. 1616.

peared on the same subject. And his admirers may safely defy the most bigoted and industrious scholars to produce, from the collected works of all antiquity, an invocation of such transcendant merit:

Since I am thine, O come, &c. In the original spirit of the Greek Epigram, the following lines are composed, and, as I have been informed, were intended to have been placed under a statue of Somnus, in the garden of the late learned James Harris, Esq. of Salisbury. It will be no derogation to their beauties to compare them with the conclusion of Drummond's Son

Ret:

AD SOMNUM.

Somne veni, et quanquam certissima mortis imago es,

Consortem cupio te tamen esse tori !
Huc ades, haud abiture cito: nam sic sine vitâ

Vivere, quam suave est, sic sine morte mori! It may be necessary to inform some readers, that they are written by the present Poet Laureat *. In Popham’s Selecta Poemata, p. 57, they occur; but they appear to have undergone a revisal considerably for the better, in the copy from which I have printed them. A translation of them is to be found in the Gentleman's Magazine for March, 1775, p. 144.

TO

THE RIVER ANKER.

Clear Anker, on whose silver-sanded shore,
My soul-shrin'd saint, my fair Idea, lies,
O blessed brook, whose milk-white swans adore
Thy crystal stream refined by her eyes,
Where sweet myrrh-breathing Zephyr in the Spring
Gently distils his nectar-dropping showers,
Where nightingales in Arden sit and sing
Amongst the dainty dew-impearled flowers ;
Say thus, fair brook, when thou shalt see thy queen,
Lo, here thy shepherd spent his wand'ring years;
And in these shades, dear nymph, he oft had been,
And here to thee he sacrific'd his tears :

Fair Arden, thou my Tempe art alone,
And thou, sweet Anker, art my Helicon*.

Drayton, Son. 53.

* Drayton has here, in the compass of fourteen lines only, been very profuse of fine compound epithets. Silver-sanded shore, soulshrined saint, milk-white swans, myrrh-breathing Zephyr, nectardropping showers, dew-impearled flowers. Browne compliments Drayton as the swain

Who on the banks of Ancor tun'd his pipe. See B. I. Song v. p.179.

I

KNOW that all beneath the moon decays,
And what by mortals in this world is brought,
In Time's great periods shall return to nought,
That fairest states have fatal nights and days.
I know that all the Muses' heavenly lays,
With toil of sp'rit which are so dearly bought,
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought,
And that nought lighter is than airy praise.
I know frail beauty like the purple flower,
To which one morn oft birth and death affords,
That love a jarring is of minds accords,
Where Sense and Will envassal Reason's power:

Know what I list, all this can not me move,
But that (oh me !) I both must write and love.

DRUMMOND.

Restore thy tresses to the golden ore ;
Yield Cytherea's son those arks of love;
Bequeath the heavens the stars that I adore,
And to th’ orient do thy pearls remove.
Yield thy hands pride unto the ivory white,
T Arabian odours give thy breathing sweet;
Restore thy blush unto Aurora bright,
To Thetis give the honour of thy feet.

* The fairest states have fatal nights and days.] Fatal here means destined by the Fates, like the word fatalis in Latin:

Non licuit fines Italos, fataliaque arva
Nec tecum Ausonium, quicumque est, quærere Tybrim,

Æn. V. 89.