Where'er she lie,

Lock'd up from mortal eye
In shady leaves of destiny:

Till that ripe birth

Of studied Fate stand forth,

And teach her fair steps tread our earth;

Till that divine

Idea take a shrine

Of crystal flesh, through which to shine:

-Meet you her, my Wishes,

Bespeak her to my blisses,

And be ye call'd, my absent kisses.

I wish her beauty

That owes not all its duty

To gaudy tire, or glist'ring shoe-tie:

Something more than

Taffata or tissue can,

Or rampant feather, or rich fan.

A face that's blest

By its own beauty drest,

And can alone commend the rest:

A face made up

Out of no other shop

Than what Nature's white hand sets ope.

Sydneian showers

Of sweet discourse, whose powers

Can crown old Winter's head with flowers.

Whate'er delight

Can make day's forehead bright

Or give down to the wings of night.

Soft silken hours,

Open suns, shady bowers;

'Bove all, nothing within that lowers.

Days, that need borrow

No part of their good morrow

From a fore-spent night of sorrow:

Days, that in spite

Of darkness, by the light

Of a clear mind are day all night.

Life, that dares send

A challenge to his end,

And when it comes, say, 'Welcome, friend.'

I wish her store

Of worth may leave her poor

Of wishes; and I wish

-Now, if Time knows

-no more.

That Her, whose radiant brows
Weave them a garland of my vows;

Her that dares be

What these lines wish to see:

I seek no further, it is She.

'Tis She, and here

Lo! I unclothe and clear
My wishes' cloudy character.

Such worth as this is

Shall fix my flying wishes,

And determine them to kisses.

Let her full glory,

My fancies, fly before ye;

Be ye my fictions:-but her story.

245

UPON THE BOOK AND PICTURE OF THE
SERAPHICAL SAINT TERESA

LIVE in these conquering leaves: live all the same;
And walk through all tongues one triumphant flame;
Live here, great heart; and love, and die, and kill:
And bleed, and wound, and yield, and conquer still.
Let this immortal life where'er it comes
Walk in a crowd of loves and martyrdoms.
Let mystic deaths wait on't; and wise souls be
The love-slain witnesses of this life of thee.
O sweet incendiary! show here thy art
Upon this carcase of a hard cold heart;
Let all thy scatter'd shafts of light, that play
Among the leaves of thy large books of day,
Combin'd against this breast at once break in,
And take away from me myself and sin;
This gracious robbery shall thy bounty be
And my best fortunes such fair spoils of me.
O thou undaunted daughter of desires!
By all thy dower of lights and fires;
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove;
By all thy lives and deaths of love;
By thy large draughts of intellectual day,

And by thy thirsts of love more large than they;
By all thy brim-filled bowls of fierce desire,
By thy last morning's draught of liquid fire;

By the full kingdom of that final kiss

That seized thy parting soul, and sealed thee His;
By all the Heav'n thou hast in Him
(Fair sister of the seraphim!);
By all of Him we have in thee;
Leave nothing of myself in me.
Let me so read thy life, that I
Unto all life of mine may die!

246

THOMAS JORDAN

[1612(?)-1685]

LET US DRINK AND BE MERRY

LET us drink and be merry, dance, joke, and rejoice,
With claret and sherry, theorbo and voice!
The changeable world to our joy is unjust,
All treasure's uncertain,

Then down with your dust!

In frolics dispose your pounds, shillings, and pence,
For we shall be nothing a hundred years hence.

We'll sport and be free with Moll, Betty, and Dolly,
Have oysters and lobsters to cure melancholy:
Fish-dinners will make a man spring like a flea,
Dame Venus, love's lady,

Was born of the sea:

With her and with Bacchus we'll tickle the sense,
For we shall be past it a hundred years hence.

Your most beautiful bride who with garlands is crown'd And kills with each glance as she treads on the ground. Whose lightness and brightness doth shine in such splendour That one but the stars

Are thought fit to attend her,

Though now she be pleasant and sweet to the sense,
Will be damnable mouldy a hundred years hence.

Then why should we turmoil in cares and in fears,
Turn all our tranquill'ty to sighs and to tears?
Let's eat, drink, and play till the worms do corrupt us,
'Tis certain, Post mortem

Nulla voluptas.

For health, wealth and beauty, wit, learning and sense
Must all come to nothing a hundred years hence.

247

ABRAHAM COWLEY

[1618-1667]

A SUPPLICATION

AWAKE, awake, my Lyre!

And tell thy silent master's humble tale
In sounds that may prevail;

Sounds that gentle thoughts inspire:
Though so exalted she

And I so lowly be

Tell her, such different notes make all thy harmony.

Hark, how the strings awake:
And, though the moving hand approach not near,
Themselves with awful fear

A kind of numerous trembling make.
Now all thy forces try;

Now all thy charms apply;

Revenge upon her ear the conquests of her eye.

Weak Lyre! thy virtue sure
Is useless here, since thou art only found
To cure, but not to wound,

And she to wound, but not to cure.

Too weak too wilt thou prove

My passion to remove;

Physic to other ills, thou'rt nourishment to love.

Sleep, sleep again, my Lyre!
For thou canst never tell my humble tale

In sounds that will prevail,

Nor gentle thoughts in her inspire;

All thy vain mirth lay by,

Bid thy strings silent lie,

Sleep, sleep again, my Lyre, and let thy master die.