GAY youths and frolic damsels round me throng, In unknown numbers and a foreign tongue? A PLAIN youth, Lady! and a simple lover, Gracious in thought, discreet, good, prompt, awake; ON HIS DECEASED WIFE. METHOUGHT I saw my late espoused Saint, And such as yet, once more, I trust to have But O! as to embrace me she inclin❜d, I wak'd-she fled, and day brought back my pain. HENRY GLAPTHORNE. 1639. Little is known of this author, except the encomium pronounced on him by Phillips, who thought him not altogether ill deserving of the English Stage. Glapthorne, besides several miscellaneous poems, wrote nine plays. UNCLOSE those eye-lids, and outshine Why should it fade so soon away? Oh! let not sadness cloud this beauty, To die so soon for a dead lover. ABRAHAM COWLEY. 1647. Cowley is among the number of celebrated men who have been indebted to maternal instruction for the rudiments of their education, and who have delighted to acknowledge the benefits which they had thus received. His proficiency in literature will appear astonishing, when it is remembered that he was only thirteen years of age on the publication of his first volume of poems. He studied at Westminster, and Cambridge; but the tranquillity of his pursuits being deranged by the civil wars, during the prevalence of which he suffered much for his devotion to the court, he passed the meridian of his days in different parts of Europe, subject to all the vicissitudes of royalty in distress. He was born in London, in 1618: he died at Porch House in Chertsey, Surry, in 1667. His funeral was sumptuously attended, to Westminster Abbey, where his remains were deposited between those of Chaucer and Spenser. With a display of learning that generally borders on pedantry, and a vigour that often degenerates into roughness, the poetry of Cowley, such of it, at least, as is dedicated to the sexual passion, must be admired rather for wit than warmth; for brilliant conceits, rather than interesting delineations of human feelings and sympathies. You who men's fortunes in their faces read, Or if stars shew it, gaze not on the skies, If thou find there kind and propitious rays, Is writ in heav'n; but oh! my heav'n is here. I NEVER yet could see that face Which had no dart for me; From fifteen years, to fifty's space, Love! thou'rt a devil, if I may call thee one; For sure in me thy name is Legión. Colour or shape, good limbs or face, And I'm so weak, the pistol need not be If tall, the name of proper slays; The fat, like plenty, fills my heart; Nay, Age itself does me to rage incline; And strength to women gives, as well as wine. |