That which her slender waist confined,
Shall now my joyful temples bind;
No monarch but would give his crown
His arms might do what this has done.
It was my heaven's extremest sphere,
The pale which held that lovely deer,
My joy, my grief, my hope, my love,
Did all within this circle move.
A narrow compass, and yet there
Dwelt all that's good and all that's fair;
Give me but what this ribband bound,
Take all the rest the sun goes round.
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows
When I resemble her to thee
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That had'st thou sprung
In deserts where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.
Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired;
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.
Then die, that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee,
How small a part of time they share
Who are so wondrous sweet and fair.
FROM HIS MAJESTY'S ESCAPE AT ST. ANDREWS.'
While to his harp divine Arion sings
The loves and conquests of our Albion kings;
Of the fourth Edward was his noble song,
Fierce, goodly, valiant, beautiful and young;
He rent the crown from vanquished Henry's head,
Raised the white rose, and trampled on the red,
Till love triumphing o'er the victor's pride,
Brought Mars and Warwick to the conquered side,—
Neglected Warwick, whose bold hand like fate,
Gives and resumes the sceptre of our state,
Wooes for his Master, and with double shame,
Himself deluded, mocks the princely dame,—
The Lady Bona, whom just anger burns,
And foreign war with civil rage returns;
Ah! spare your sword, where beauty is to blame,
Love gave the affront, and must repair the same,
When France shall boast of her, whose conquering eyes
Have made the best of English hearts their prize,
Have power to alter the decrees of fate,
And change again the counsels of our state.
TO ONE WHO WROTE AGAINST A FAIR LADY.
What fury has provoked thy wit to dare
With Diomede to wound the Queen of Love?
Thy mistress' envy, or thine own despair?
Not the just Pallas in thy breast did move;
So blind a rage with such a different fate,
He honour won, where thou hast purchased hate.
She gave assistance to his Trojan foe;
Thou that without a rival thou may'st love,
Dost to the beauty of this lady owe,
While after her the gazing world does move;
Can'st thou not be content to love alone,
Or is thy mistress not content with one?
Hast thou not read of fairy Arthur's shield,
Which, but disclosed, amazed the weaker eyes
Of proudest foes, and won the doubtful field?
So shall thy rebel wit become her prize;
Should thy iambics swell into a book,
All were confuted with one radiant look.
Heaven he obliged that placed her in the skies, Rewarding Phoebus for inspiring so
His noble brain, by likening to those eyes
His joyful beams, but Phoebus is thy foe, And neither aids thy fancy nor thy sight, So ill thou rhym'st against so fair a light.
Lately on yonder swelling bush
Big with many a coming rose,
This early bud began to blush
And did but half itself disclose;
I plucked it, though no better grown,
And now you see how full 'tis blown.
Still as I did the leaves inspire,
With such a purple light they shone
As if they had been made of fire,
And spreading so, would flame anon
All that was meant by air or sun,
To the young flower my breath has done
If our loose breath so much can do,
What may the same informed of love,-
Of purest love and music too,—
When Flavia it aspires to move;
When that which lifeless buds persuades
To wax more soft, her youth invades.
THE MARRIAGE OF THE DWARFS.
Design or chance makes others wive,
But nature did this match contrive;
Eve might as well have Adam fled,
As she denied her little bed
To him, for whom Heaven seemed to frame
And measure out this only dame.
Thrice happy is that humble pair,
Beneath the level of all care,
Over whose heads those arrows fly
Of sad distrust and jealousy,
Secured in as high extreme
As if the world held none but them.
To him the fairest nymphs do show
Like moving mountains topped with snow,
And every man a Polypheme
Doth to his Galatea seem;
None may presume her faith to prove,
He profers death who profers love.
Ah! Chloris, that kind nature thus
From all the world had severed us,
Creating for ourselves us two,
As love has me for only you.
FROM THE BATTLE OF THE SUMMER'S ISLANDS.'
Such is the mould that the blest tenant feeds
On precious fruits, and pays his rent in weeds ;
With candied plantains, and the juicy pine,
On choicest melons and sweet grapes they dine,
And with potatoes fat their wanton swine;
Nature these cates with such a lavish hand
Pours out among them, that our coarser land
Tastes of that bounty, and does cloth return,
Which not for warmth but ornament is worn;
For the kind spring which but salutes us here,
Inhabits there and courts them all the year;
Ripe fruits and blossoms on the same trees live,
At once they promise what at once they give ;
So sweet the air, so moderate the clime,
None sickly lives or dies before his time;
Heaven sure has kept this spot of earth uncurst
To show how all things were created first.
The tardy plants in our cold orchards placed
Reserve their fruits for the next age's taste,
There a small grain in some few months will be
A firm, a lofty and a spacious tree;
The Palma Christi and the fair Papaw,
Now but a seed, preventing nature's law,
In half the circle of the hasty year
Project a shade, and lovely fruits do wear;
And as their trees in our dull region set
But faintly grow and no perfection get,
So in this northern tract our hoarser throats
Utter unripe and ill-constrainèd notes,
Where, the supporter of the poet's style,
Phoebus on them eternally does smile.
O how I long my careless limbs to lay
Under the plantain's shade, and all the day
With amorous airs my fancy entertain,
Invoke the Muses, and improve my vein !
No passion there in my free breast should move, None but the sweetest, best of passions, love! There while I sing, if gentle Love be by,
That tunes my lute, and winds the strings so high; With the sweet sound of Sacharissa's name,
I'll make the listening savages grow tame :—
But while I do these pleasing dreams indite,
I am diverted from the promised fight.
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