The soul there restless, helpless, hopeless, lies;

There ceaseless racks the body agonize;

There's life that never lives, there's death that never dies.

Hence, while unsettled here he fighting reigns,
Shut in a tower, where thousand enemies
Assault the fort; with wary care and pains,
He guards all entrance, and by divers spies,

Searcheth into his foes' and friends' designs;
For most he fears his subjects' wavering minds;
This tower then only falls when treason undermines.
Therefore, while yet he lurks in earthly tent,
Disguised in worthless robes and poor attire,
Try we to view his glory's wonderment",
And get a sight of what we so admire;

For when away from this sad place he flies,
And in the skies abides, more bright than skies,
Too glorious is his sight for our dim mortal eyes.

THE HAPPINESS OF A RURAL LIFE.

THE shepherds, guarded from the sparkling heat Of blazing air, upon the flowery banks,

(Where various flowers damask the fragrant seat, And all the grove perfume,) in wonted ranks,

Securely sit them down, and sweetly play:

At length thus Thirsis ends his broken lay,
Lest that the stealing night his later song might stay.
"Thrice, oh, thrice happy, shepherd's life and state!
When courts are happiness, unhappy pawns7:
His cottage low, and safely humble gate,

Shuts out proud Fortune with her scorns and fawns3 :
No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep :

Singing all day, his flock he learns to keep :
Himself as innocent as are his simple sheep.

"No Serian worms he knows, that with their thread Draw out their silken lives:-nor silken pride: His lambs' warm fleece well fits his little need!

Not in that proud Sidonian tincture dyed:

4 racks, instruments of torture. 5 wonderment, wonderful nature. 6 damask, adorn with various colours and devices.

7 pawns, the lowest in rank; the least valuable of chess-men are called pawns.

8 fawns, fawnings, flatteries.
9 Serian worms; silk-worms, origi-

nally brought from the country of the Seres, or northern Chinese.

10 Sidonian purple; the finest purple dye known to the ancients was obtained from a shell-fish, found on the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. The colour is more frequently called Tyrian than Sidonian.

No empty hopes, no courtly fears him fright;
Nor begging wants his middle fortune bite;
But sweet content exiles both misery and spite.

"Instead of music and base flattering tongues,
Which wait to first salute my lord's uprise;
The cheerful lark wakes him with early songs,
And birds' sweet whistling notes unlock his eyes.
In country plays is all the strife he uses;
Or song, or dance, unto the rural Muses,
And but in music's sports all difference refuses.
"His certain life, that never can deceive him,
Is full of thousand sweets and rich content:
The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him
With coolest shades, till noon-tide's rage is spent:
His life is neither tost in boisterous seas

Of troublous world, nor lost in slothful ease:
Pleased and full blest he lives, when he his God can please

His bed of wool yields safe and quiet sleeps, While by his side his faithful spouse hath place: His little son into his bosom creeps,

The lively picture of his father's face:

Never his humble house or state torment him;
Less he could like, if less his God had sent him;

And when he dies, green turfs, with grassy tomb, content him. "The world's great light his lowly state hath blessed, And left his heaven to be a shepherd base:

Thousand sweet songs he to his pipe addressed: Swift rivers stood, beasts, trees, stones, ran apace, And serpents flew to hear his softest strains : He fed his flock where rolling Jordan reigns; Then took our rags, gave us his robes, and bore our pains,"

trusive life.

before him.

GILES FLETCHER,

THE brother of the preceding poet, has left even fewer memorials of his unobHe flourished about the same time as Phineas, but died some years Though only known to posterity by a single poem, Christ's Victory and Triumph, yet its merits are sufficient to ensure him the applause of posterity.

THE MORNING OF THE RESURRECTION.

But now the second morning from her bower
Began to glisten in her beams, and now

The roses of the day began to flower

In the eastern garden; for heaven's smiling brow
Half insolent for joy began to show;

The early sun came lively dancing out,

And the brag lambs ran wantoning about,

That heaven and earth might seem in triumph both to shout. The engladdened spring, forgetful now to weep,

Began to emblazon from her leafy bed;

The waking swallow broke her half-year's sleep, And every bush lay deeply purpured1

With violets, the wood's late wintry head

Wide flaming primroses set all on fire,

And his bald trees put on their green attire,
Among whose infant leaves the joyous birds conspire2.
Say, Earth, why hast thou got thee new attire,
And stickst thy habit full of daisies red?

Seems that thou dost to some high thoughts aspire,
And some new-found-out bride-groom meanst to wed:
Tell me, ye trees, so fresh apparelled,

So never let the spiteful canker waste you,

So never let the heavens with lightnings blast you, Why go you now so trimly drest, or whither haste you? Answer me, Jordan, why thy crooked tide

So often wanders from his nearest way,

As though some other way thy stream would slide,
And fain salute the place where something lay;
And you, sweet birds, that shaded from the ray
Sit carolling and piping grief away,

The while the lambs to hear you dance and play,
Tell me, sweet birds, what is it you so fain would say?
And thou, fair spouse of Earth, that every year

Getst such a numerous issue of thy bride,

How chance thou hotter shinest and drawest most near?
Sure thou somewhere some worthy sight hast spied,
That in one place for joy thou canst not hide;

And you, dead swallows, that so lively now,
Through the fleet air your winged passage row,
How could new life into your frozen ashes flow?
Ye primroses and purple violets,

Tell me, why blaze ye from your leafy beds,
And woo men's hands to rent ye from your sets,
As though you would somewhere be carried,
With fresh perfumes and velvets garnished?

But ah! I need not ask, 'tis surely so,

You all would to your Saviour's triumph go; There would ye all await, and humble homage do.

1 purpured, made to appear of a purple colour.

2 conspire, breathe, or rather sing together.

There should the Earth itself, with garlands new And lovely flowers embellished, adore:

Such roses never in her garland grew,
Such lilies never in her breast she wore :
Like beauty never yet did shine before:

There should the Sun another Sun behold,
From whence himself borrows his locks of gold,
That kindle heaven and earth with beauties manifold.
There might the violet and primrose sweet,
Beams of more lively and more lovely grace,
Arising from their beds of incense, meet;
There should the swallow see new life embrace
Dead ashes, and the grave unveil his face,

To let the living from his bowels creep,
Unable longer his own dead to keep:

There heaven and earth should see their Lord awake from sleep.
Their Lord, before by others judged to die,
Now Judge of all himself; before forsaken
Of all the world, that from his aid did fly,
Now by the saints into their armies taken;
Before for an unworthy man mistaken,

Now worthy to be God confessed; before
With blasphemies by all the basest tore,
Now worshipped by angels that him low adore.
Whose garment was before indipt in blood,
But now imbrightened into heavenly flame,
The sun himself outglitters, though he should
Climb to the top of the celestial frame,

And force the stars to hide themselves for shame :
Before that under earth was buried,

But now above the heavens is carried,

And there for ever by the angels heried3.

So fairest Phosphor, the bright morning star,
But newly washed in the green element,
Before the drowsy night is half aware,
Shooting his flaming locks with dew besprent",
Springs lively up into the orient",

And the bright drove, fleeced all in gold, he chases
To drink, that on the Olympic mountain? grazes,
The while the minor planets forfeit all their faces.

3 heried, served as their master.
Phosphor, the bringer of light, i. e. naries seem to rise.

heaven in which the celestial lumi

the morning star.

besprent, besprinkled.

6

7 Olympic mountain; Mount Olympus, in Thessaly, was fabled by the

orient, the east; that part of the heathen to be the heaven of their gods.

So long he wandered in our lower sphere,
That Heaven began his cloudy stars despise,
Half envious to see on earth appear
A greater light than flamed in his own skies:
At length it burst for spite, and out there flies

A globe of winged angels, swift as thought,
That on their spotted feathers lively caught
The sparkling earth, and to their azure fields it brought.

WILLIAM HABINGTON.

LITTLE is known of Habington, more than that he was born A.D. 1605, and died A.D. 1654. He was an amiable man, and his works are more remarkable for excellence of principle than beauty of expression.

THE BRIEF TRIUMPH OF THE WICKED.

SWELL no more, proud man, so high!
For enthroned where'er you sit,
Raised by fortune, sin, and wit;
In a vault thou dust must lie.
He who's lifted up by vice
Hath a neighbouring precipice,
Dazzling his distorted eye.

Shallow is that unsafe sea,

Over which you spread your sail;
And the bark you trust to, frail
As the winds it must obey.

Mischief, while it prospers, brings
Favour from the smile of kings,
Useless, soon is thrown away.

Profit, though sin it extort,

Princes even accounted good,
Courting greatness ne'er withstood,

Since it empire doth support.

But when death makes them repent,
They condemn the instrument,

And are thought religious for't.

Pitched down from that height you bear,
How distracted will you lie;

When your flattering clients fly;
As your fate infectious were;

When of all the obsequious throng,
That moved by your eye and tongue,

None shall in the storm appear!