A New Library of Poetry and Song

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I neither seeke by bribes to please, Nor by desert to breed offence. Thus do I live; thus will I die; Would all did so as well as I!

SIR EDWARD DYER.

TO THE HON. CHARLES MONTAGUE.
OUR hopes, like towering falcons, aim
At objects in an airy height;
But all the pleasure of the game
Is afar off to view the flight.

The worthless prey but only shows The joy consisted in the strife; Whate'er we take, as soon we lose

In Homer's riddle and in life.

So, whilst in feverish sleeps we think We taste what waking we desire, The dream is better than the drink, Which only feeds the sickly fire.

To the mind's eye things well appear,

At distance through an artful glass; Bring but the flattering objects near,

They're all a senseless gloomy mass.

Seeing aright, we see our woes:

Then what avails it to have eyes? From ignorance our comfort flows, The only wretched are the wise.

'T IS much immortal beauty to admire,
But more immortal beauty to withstand;
The perfect soul can overcome desire,
If beauty with divine delight be scanned.
For what is beauty but the blooming child
Of fair Olympus, that in night must end,
And be forever from that bliss exiled,
If admiration stand too much its friend?
The wind may be enamored of a flower,
The ocean of the green and laughing shore,
The silver lightning of a lofty tower,
But must not with too near a love adore ;
Or flower and margin and cloud-capped tower
Love and delight shall with delight devour!

LORD EDWARD THURLOW.

OF MYSELF.

MATTHEW PRIOR.

THIS only grant me, that my means may lie Too low for envy, for contempt too high.

Some honor I would have,

Not from great deeds, but good alone;
The unknown are better than ill known:

Rumor can ope the grave.

BEAUTY.

FROM "HYMN IN HONOR OF BEAUTY."

So every spirit, as it is most pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer body doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairly dight
With cheerful grace and amiable sight;
For of the soul the body form doth take;
For soul is form, and doth the body make.

Therefore wherever that thou dost behold

Acquaintance I would have, but when 't depends A comely corpse, with beauty fair endued,

Not on the number, but the choice, of friends.

Books should, not business, entertain the light, And sleep, as undisturbed as death, the night.

My house a cottage more

Than palace; and should fitting be

For all my use, no luxury.

My garden painted o'er

Know this for certain, that the same doth hold
A beauteous soul, with fair conditions thewed,
Fit to receive the seed of virtue strewed;
For all that fair is, is by nature good;
That is a sign to know the gentle blood.

Yet oft it falls that many a gentle mind

With Nature's hand, not Art's; and pleasures Dwells in deformed tabernacle drowned,

yield,

Horace might envy in his Sabine field.

This is frequently attributed to William Byrd. Bartlett, how

ever, gives it to Sir Edward Dyer, referring to Hannah's Courtly Poets as authority; so, also, Ward, in his English Poets, Vol. I, 1880.

Either by chance, against the course of kind, Or through unaptnesse in the substance found, Which it assumed of some stubborne ground, That will not yield unto her form's direction, But is performed with some foul imperfection.

A FANCY FROM FONTENELLE.
"De mémoires de Roses on n'a point vu mourir le Jardinier."

THE Rose in the garden slipped her bud,
And she laughed in the pride of her youthful blood,
As she thought of the Gardener standing by-
"He is old-so old! And he soon must die!"

The full Rose waxed in the warm June air,
And she spread and spread till her heart lay bare;
And she laughed once more as she heard his tread-
"He is older now! He will soon be dead!"

But the breeze of the morning blew, and found

That the leaves of the blown Rose strewed the ground;

And he came at noon, that Gardener old,

And he raked them gently under the mould.

And I wove the thing to a random rhyme:
For the Rose is Beauty; the Gardener, Time.

AUSTIN DOBSON.

I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous puises,

All day, the commotion of sinewy, mane-tossing horses;

All night, from their cells, the importunate tramping and neighing.

Cowards and laggards fall back; but alert to the saddle,
Straight, grim, and abreast, vault our weather-worn, galloping legion,
With stirrup-cup each to the one gracious woman that loves him.

The road is through dolor and dread, over crags and morasses;
There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us:
What odds? We are knights, and our souls are but bent on the riding!

Thought's self is a vanishing wing, and joy is a cobweb,
And friendship a flower in the dust, and glory a sunbeam:
Not here is our prize, nor, alas! after these our pursuing.

A dipping of plumes, a tear, a shake of the bridle,
A passing salute to this world, and her pitiful beauty!
We hurry with never a word in the track of our fathers.

I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,
All day, the commotion of sinewy mane-tossing horses,

All night, from their cells, the importunate tramping and neighing.

We spur to a land of no name, outracing the storm-wind;
We leap to the infinite dark, like the sparks from the anvil.
Thou leadest, O God! All's well with Thy troopers that follow!

LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY.

And oft it falls (aye me, the more to rue!)
That goodly beauty, albeit heavenly born,
Is foul abused, and that celestial hue,
Which doth the world with her delight adorn,
Made but the bait of sin, and sinners' scorn,
Whilst every one doth seek and sue to have it,
But every one doth seek but to deprave it.

Yet nathèmore is that faire beauty's blame,
But theirs that do abuse it unto ill :

Nothing so good, but that through guilty shame
May be corrupt, and wrested unto will:
Natheless the soule is fair and beauteous still,
However fleshe's fault it filthy make;
For things immortal no corruption take.

THOUGHT.

EDWARD SPENSER.

THOUGHT is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught.

We are spirits clad in veils ;

Man by man was never seen; All our deep communing fails

To remove the shadowy screen.

Heart to heart was never known; Mind with mind did never meet; We are columns left alone

Of a temple once complete.

Like the stars that gem the sky, Far apart, though seeming near, In our light we scattered lie;

All is thus but starlight here.

What is social company

But a babbling summer stream? What our wise philosophy

But the glancing of a dream?

Only when the sun of love

Melts the scattered stars of thought, Only when we live above

What the dim-eyed world hath taught,

Only when our souls are fed

By the fount which gave them birth, And by inspiration led

Which they never drew from earth,

We, like parted drops of rain,
Swelling till they meet and run,
Shall be all absorbed again,
Melting, flowing into one.

CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH.

CONTENTMENT.

I WEIGH not fortune's frown or smile;
I joy not much in earthly joys;
I seek not state, I reck not style;
I am not fond of fancy's toys :
I rest so pleased with what I have,
I wish no more, no more I crave.

I quake not at the thunder's crack;
I tremble not at news of war;

I swound not at the news of wrack;
I shrink not at a blazing star;
I fear not loss, I hope not gain,
I envy none, I none disdain.

I see ambition never pleased;

I see some Tantals starved in store;

I see gold's dropsy seldom eased ;
I see even Midas gape for more;
I neither want nor yet abound,
Enough's a feast, content is crowned.

I feign not friendship where I hate ;
I fawn not on the great (in show);
I prize, I praise a mean estate, -
Neither too lofty nor too low :
This, this is all my choice, my cheer,
A mind content, a conscience clear.

CONTENT.

JOSHUA SYLvester.

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