You meaner beauties of the night
That poorly satisfy our eyes,

More by your number than your light,
You common people of the skies

What are you when the sun shall rise ?

You curious chaunters of the wood
That warble forth dame Nature's lays,
Thinking your passions understood

By your weak accents; what 's your praise
When Philomel her voice shall raise?

You violets, that first appear

By your pure purple mantles known,
Like the proud virgins of the year
As if the spring were all your own,

What are you when the rose is blown?

So, when my mistress shall be seen
In sweetness of her looks and mind,
By virtue first, then choice a queen,
Tell me if she were not designed

Th' eclipse and glory of her kind?

In such lines we can perceive not one of those higher attributes of the Muse which belong to her under all circumstances and throughout all time. Here every

No

thing is art, naked or but awkwardly concealed. prepossession for the mere antique (for in this case we can imagine no other prepossession) should induce us to dignify with the sacred name of Poesy, a series such as this, of elaborate and threadbare compliments, (threadbare even at the time of their composition) stitched apparently together, without fancy, without plausibility, without adaptation of parts and it is needless to add, without a jot of imagination.

VOL. IX. -7

We have been much delighted with the Shepherd's Hunting, by Wither a poem partaking, in a strange degree, of the peculiarities of the Penseroso. Speaking of Poesy he says

By the murmur of a spring
Or the least boughs rusteling,
By a daisy whose leaves spread
Shut when Tytan goes to bed,
Or a shady bush or tree

She could more infuse in me
Than all Nature's beauties can
In some other wiser man.
By her help I also now

Make this churlish place allow
Something that may sweeten gladness
In the very gall of sadness-
The dull loneness, the black shade
That these hanging vaults have made,
The strange music of the waves
Beating on these hollow caves,
This black den which rocks emboss
Overgrown with eldest moss,
The rude portals that give light
More to terror than delight,
This my chamber of neglect
Walled about with disrespect
From all these and this dull air
A fit object for despair,

She hath taught me by her might
To draw comfort and delight.

But these verses, however good, do not bear with them much of the general character of the English antique. Something more of this will be found in the following lines by Corbet - besides a rich vein of humor and sarcasm.

Farewell rewards and fairies!

Good housewives now you may say, For now foul sluts in dairies

Do fare as well as they :

And though they sweep their hearths no less
Than maids were wont to do,

Yet who of late for cleanliness
Finds sixpence in her shoe?

Lament, lament, old Abbies,

The fairies' lost command,
They did but change priests' babies,
But some have changed your land;
And all your children stolen from thence
Are now grown Puritanes,
Who live as changelings ever since

For love of your demaines.

At morning and at evening both
You merry were and glad,
So little care of sleep and sloth
These pretty ladies had :
When Tom came home from labor

Or Ciss to milking rose,

Then merrily went their tabor

And nimbly went their toes.

Witness those rings and roundelays
Of theirs which yet remain,
Were footed in Queen Mary's days
On many a grassy plain;

But since of late Elizabeth

And later James came in, They never danced on any heath As when the time hath bin.

By which we note the fairies
Were of the old profession,
Their songs were Ave Marys,

Their dances were procession;
But now alas they all are dead
Or gone beyond the seas,
Or farther for religion fled

Or else they take their ease.

A tell-tale in their company
They never could endure,
And whoso kept not secretly

Their mirth was punished sure;
It was a just and Christian deed
To pinch such black and blue—
Oh how the commonwealth doth need
Such justices as you!

Now they have left our quarters
A register they have,
Who can preserve their charters

A man both wise and grave.
An hundred of their merry pranks
By one that I could name
Are kept in store; con twenty thanks
To William for the same.

To William Churne of Steffordshire
Give land and praises due,
Who every meal can mend your cheer
With tales both old and true.

To William all give audience
And pray you for his noddle,
For all the fairies evidence

Were lost if it were addle.

The Maiden lamenting for her Fawn, by Marvell, is, we are pleased to see, a favorite with our friends of

the American Monthly. Such portion of it as we now copy, we prefer not only as a specimen of the elder poets, but, in itself, as a beautiful poem, abounding in the sweetest pathos, in soft and gentle images, in the most exquisitely delicate imagination, and in truthto any thing of its species.

It is a wondrous thing how fleet
'T was on those little silver feet,
With what a pretty skipping grace
It oft would challenge me the race,
And when 't had left me far away
'T would stay and run again and stay;
For it was nimbler much than hinds,
And trod as if on the four winds.

I have a garden of my own,

But so with roses overgrown,

And lilies that you

would it guess

To be a little wilderness,

And all the spring-time of the year

It only loved to be there.

Among the beds of lilies I

Have sought it oft where it should lie,
Yet could not till itself would rise
Find it although before mine eyes.
For in the flaxen lilies shade,
It like a bank of lilies laid,
Upon the roses it would feed
Until its lips even seemed to bleed,
And then to me 't would boldly trip,
And print those roses on my lip,
But all its chief delight was still
On roses thus itself to fill,
And its pure virgin limbs to fold
In whitest sheets of lilies cold.
Had it lived long it would have been
Lilies without, roses within.