Hast thou not found each woman's breast Or wild, and uninhabited? What joy could'st take, or what repose, The soil's all barren sand, or rocky stone. COWLEY. A lover, burnt up by his affection, is compared to Egypt. The lover supposes his lady acquainted with the ancient laws of augury and rites of sacrifice. And yet this death of mine, I fear, Will ominous to her appear: When, sound in every other part, Her sacrifice is found without an heart. For the last tempest of my death Shall sigh out that too, with my breath. That the chaos was harmonised, has been recited of old; but whence the different sounds arose remained for a modern to discover. The tears of lovers are always of great poetical account; but Donne has extended them into worlds. again. If the lines are not easily understood, they may be read On reading the following lines, the reader may perhaps cry out-Confusion worse confounded. Here lies a she Sun, and a he Moon here, She gives the best light to his sphere, Or each is both, and all, and so They unto one another nothing owe. DONNE. Who but Donne would have thought, that a good man is a telescope? Though God be our true glass, through which we see All, since the being of all things is he; Yet are the trunks, which do to us derive Things in proportion, fit by perspective, Deeds of good men; for by their living here, Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near. Who would imagine it possible, that in a very few lines so many remote ideas could be brought together? Since 'tis my doom, Love's undershrieve, Why this reprieve? Why doth my she Advowson fly Incumbency? To sell thyself dost thou intend By candle's end, And hold the contrast thus in doubt, Think but how soon the market fails, Your sex lives faster than the males; And if to measure age's span, The sober Julian were th' account of man, Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian. CLEIVELAND. Of enormous and disgusting hyperboles, these may be examples: Upon a paper written with the juice of lemon, and read by the fire: Nothing yet in thee is seen, But when a genial heat warms thee within, Here spouts a V, and there a T, And all the flourishing letters stand in rows. COWLEY. As they sought only for novelty, they did not much inquire whether their allusions were to things high or low, elegant or gross: whether they compared the little to the great, or the great to the little. A coal-pit has not often found its poet: but, that it may not want its due honour, Cleiveland has paralleled it with the Sun: The moderate value of our guiltless ore Had he our pits, the Persian would admire For wants he heat, or light? or would have store, Then let this truth reciprocally run, The Sun's Heaven's coalery, and coals our sun. Their thoughts and expressions were sometimes grossly absurd, and such as no figure or licence can reconcile to the understanding. A Lover neither dead nor alive: Then down I laid my head Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead, And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled; Ah, sottish soul, said I, When back to its cage again I saw it fly; Fool to resume her broken chain, And row her galley here again! Fool, to that body to return Where it condemn'd and de tin'd is to burn! They were in very little care to clothe their notions with elegance of dress, and therefore miss the notice and the praise which are often gained by those who think less, but are more diligent to adorn their thoughts. That a Mistress beloved is fairer in idea than in reality, is by Cowley thus expressed: Thou in my fancy dost much higher stand, To change thee as thou'rt there, for very thee. That prayer and labour should co-operate, are thus taught by Donne: In none but us are such mix'd engines found, As hands of double office; for the ground We till with them; and them to Heaven we raise; Who prayerless labours, or, without this, prays, Doth but one half, that's none. By the same author, a common topic, the danger of procrastination, is thus illustrated: -That which I should have begun In my youth's morning, now late must be done; And I, as giddy travellers must do, Which stray or sleep all day, and having lost Light and strength, dark and tir'd, must then ride post. |