Hast thou not found each woman's breast
(The land where thou hast travelled)
Either by savages possest,

Or wild, and uninhabited?

What joy could'st take, or what repose,
In countries so unciviliz'd as those?
Lust, the scorching dog-star, here
Rages with immoderate heat;
Whilst Pride, the rugged northern bear,
In others makes the cold too great.
And where these are temperate known,

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,
Life's taper out?

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,
A new-born wood of various lines there grows;
Here buds an L, and there a B,

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
Makes no man atheist, and no woman whore;
Yet why should hallow'd vestal's sacred shrine
Deserve more honour than a flaming mine?
These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be,
Than a few embers, for a deity.

Had he our pits, the Persian would admire
No sun, but warm's devotion at our fire:
He'd leave the trotting whipster, and prefer
Our profound Vulcan 'bove that waggoner.

For wants he heat, or light? or would have store,
Or both? 'tis here: and what can suns give more?
Nay, what's the Sun, but, in a different name,
A coal-pit rampant, or a mine on flame!

Then let this truth reciprocally run,

The Sun's Heaven's coalery, and coals our sun.
Death, a Voyage:

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,
Than woman can be plac'd by Nature's hand;
And I must needs, I'm sure, a loser be,

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.