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And as the Paphian queen by her grief's show'r
Brought up her dead love's spirit in a flow'r:
So by those precious drops rain'd from thine eyes,
Out of my dust, O may some virtue rise!
And like thy better genius thee attend,
Till thou in my dark period shalt end.
Lastly, my constant truth let me commend
To him thou choosest next to be thy friend.
For (witness all things good) I would not have
Thy youth and beauty married to my grave,
Twould show thou didst repent the style of wife
Should'st thou relapse into a single life.
They with preposterous grief the world delude
Who mourn for their lost mates in solitude;
Since widowhood more strongly doth enforce
The much-lamented lot of their divorce.
Themselves then of their losses guilty are,
Who may, yet will not, suffer a repair.
Those were barbarian wives that did invent
Weeping to death at th' husband's monument,
But in more civil rites she doth approve
Her first, who ventures on a second love;
For else it may be thought if she refrain,
She sped so ill she durst not try again.

Up then, my love, and choose some worthier one
Who may supply my room when I am gone;
So will the stock of our affection thrive
No less in death, than were I still alive.
And in my urn I shall rejoice, that I
Am both testator thus and legacy *.

Dr. King's Poems, p. 28.

* This little piece is worth all the unmanly snivelling Elegies that Hammond ever wrote.

THE PRIMROSE.

ASK

me why I send you here

This firstling of the infant year;

Ask me why I send to you

This primrose all bepearl'd with dew;
I straight will whisper in your ears,
The sweets of love are wash'd with tears.

Ask me why this flower doth shew
So yellow, green, and sickly too;
Ask me why the stalk is weak,
And bending yet it doth not break;

I must tell you these discover,

What doubts and fears are in a lover.

T. Carew's Poems.

A

CAUTION FOR COURTLY DAMSELS.

BEWARE, fair maid, of mighty courtiers' oaths,
Take heed what gifts or favours you receive;
Let not the fading gloss of silken clothes

Dazzle your virtues, or your fame bereave:
For once but leave the hold have of grace,
Who will regard your fortune or your face?

you

Each greedy hand will strive to catch the flower,
When none regard the stalk it grows upon;
Baseness desires the fruit still to devour,
And leave the tree to fall or stand alone:

But this advice, fair creature, take of me,
Let none take fruit unless he'll have the tree.

Believe not oaths, nor much-protesting men,
Credit no vows, nor a bewailing song;

Let courtiers swear, forswear, and swear again,

The heart doth live ten regions from the tongue:

For when with oaths and vows they make you tremble,

Believe them least, for then they most dissemble.

Beware lest Croesus do corrupt thy mind,
Or fond Ambition sell thy modesty;

Say, though a king thou even courteous find,
He cannot pardon thy impurity.

Begin with kings, to subjects you will fall,
From lord to lacquey, and at last to all *.

Epigrams, subjoined to J. Sylvester's
Du Bartas, Edit. 1641.

* These lines, though far from excellent, are still, in my opinion, better than any thing Sylvester could have produced. I am therefore inclined to suspect, that the publisher of the folio edition of Du Bartas, in 1641, is mistaken in giving this to Sylvester. In the same edition, p. 652, verses, entitled The Soules Errand, are to be found (printed in Vol. II. of Dr. Percy's Reliques, under the title of The Lye,) and beyond a doubt not his.

THE

FRAILTY AND HURTFULNESS OF BEAUTY.

BRITTLE beauty, that nature made so frail,
Whereof the gift is small, and short the season;
Flow'ring to-day, to-morrow apt to fail,
Tickled treasure, abhorred of reason:
Dangerous to deal with, vain, of none avail,
Costly in keeping, past, not worth two peason ;
Slipper in sliding, as is an eel's tail;

Hard to attain, once gotten not geason.
Jewel of jeopardy, that peril doth assail,
False and untrue, enticed oft to treason;
Enemy to youth, that most may I bewail;
Ah, bitter sweet! infecting as the poison,
Thou farest as fruit, that with the frost is taken,
To-day ready ripe, to-morrow all to shaken.

EARL OF SURREY.

TO THE ROSE.

SWEET rose, whence is this hue

Which does all hues excel?

Whence this most fragrant smell?

And whence this form and gracing grace* in you?

In flow'ry Postum's fields perhaps you grew,

gracing grace.] This is a sort of Græcism. As innumerable instances of this form of expression will immediately suggest themselves to the classical reader, one instance will be sufficient here:

hunc, oro, sine me furere ante furorem.

En. XII. 680.

Or Hybla's hills you bred,

Or odoriferous Enna's plains you fed,

Or Tmolus, or where boar young Adon' slew;
Or hath the queen of love you dy'd of new

In that dear blood, which makes you look so red?
No, none of these, but cause more high you bliss'd,
My lady's breast you bore, her lips you kiss'd.

Drummond's Sonnets and Madrig.
Edinb. 1711, Fol.

DRY those fair, those crystal eyes,

Which like growing fountains rise

To drown their banks. Grief's sullen brooks
Would better flow in furrow'd looks.

Thy lovely face was never meant
To be the shore of discontent.

Then clear those wat'rish stars again,
Which else portend a lasting rain;
Lest the clouds which settle there
Prolong my winter all the year:
And the example others make
In love with sorrow for thy sake.

Dr. King's Poems, p. 19.

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