Had it later been wrote,
And sooner been brought,
They had got what they sought;
But now it serves for nought.

On Sandys they ran aground;
And our return was crowned
With full ten-thousand pound.

ABRAHAM COWLEY.

[Born in London, 1618, the son of a grocer; died at Chertsey, 28 July 1667. He was extraordinarily precocious, publishing at the age of fifteen a volume of Poetical Blossoms. During the Parliamentary War he was mostly abroad, and was laboriously employed in conducting a correspondence in cipher between the King and Queen. Afterwards he became a doctor of medicine, paying some considerable attention to botany. At the age of forty-two he retired to a life of rural and lettered seclusion at Chertsey: this also, it would seem, palled upon him, and death put a period to it after a brief interval of years. Cowley is one of the poets of remote and brilliant turns of thought, and elaborated literary distinction. One does not love his poetry; but one can admire it often-if only one would read it].

THE CHRONICLE, A BALLAD.
MARGARITA first possessed,
If I remember well, my breast,
Margarita first of all;

But, when a while the wanton maid
With my restless heart had played,
Martha took the flying ball.

Martha soon did it resign
To the beauteous Catharine :
Beauteous Catharine gave place
(Though loth and angry she to part
With the possession of my heart)
To Eliza's conquering face.

Eliza till this hour might reign,
Had she not evil counsels ta'en:
Fundamental laws she broke,
And still new favourites she chose,
Till up in arms my passions rose,
And cast away her yoke.

Mary then, and gentle Anne,

Both to reign at once began;

Alternately they swayed;

And sometimes Mary was the fair,

And sometimes Anne the crown did wear,

And sometimes both I obeyed.

Another Mary then arose,
And did rigorous laws impose;

A mighty tyrant she!

Long, alas! should I have been
Under that iron-sceptred queen,
Had not Rebecca set me free.

When fair Rebecca set me free,
'Twas then a golden time with me:
But soon those pleasures fled;
For the gracious princess died
In her youth and beauty's pride,
And Judith reigned in her stead.

One month, three days, and half an hour,
Judith held the sovereign power.
Wondrous beautiful her face;

But so weak and small her wit
That she to govern was unfit,
And so Susanna took her place.

But, when Isabella came,
Armed with a resistless flame,
And the artillery of her eye,
Whilst she proudly marched about,
Greater conquests to find out,
She beat out Susan by the bye.

But in her place I then obeyed
Black-eyed Bess, her viceroy made,---
To whom ensued a vacancy.

Thousand worst passions then possessed
The interregnum of my breast.
Bless me from such an anarchy !

Gentle Henrietta then,

And a third Mary, next began:
Then Joan, and Jane, and Audria;
And then a pretty Thomasine,
And then another Catharine.
And then a long et cætera.

But should I now to you relate

The strength and riches of their state,
The powder, patches, and the pins,
The ribands, jewels, and the rings,
The lace, the paint, and warlike things,
That make up all their magazines;

If I should tell the politic arts
To take and keep men's hearts,
The letters, embassies, and spies,
The frowns, the smiles, and flatteries,
The quarrels, tears, and perjuries,
Numberless, nameless mysteries ;-

And all the little lime-twigs laid
By Machiavel the waiting-maid;
I more voluminous should grow
(Chiefly if I like them should tell
All change of weathers that befell)
Than Holinshed or Stow.

But I will briefer with them be,
Since few of them were long with me.
An higher and a nobler strain
My present Emperess does claim,—
Heleonora, first o' the name,

Whom God grant long to reign!

RICHARD LOVELACE.

[Born in 1618, son of Sir William Lovelace, of Woolwich; died in London, 1658. He was twice imprisoned in the royal cause-firstly, in the Gatehouse, Westminster, in 1642, for delivering to the House of Commons the Kentish petition "for restoring the king to his rights" &c., and again in 1648, when he remained in confinement until the execution of Charles I. was past. His miscellaneous poems appeared under the title of Lucasta: he wrote also a tragedy and a comedy, never printed. Lovelace died in poverty and obscurity, though probably not in such abject want as some writers have represented. He was, in his early youth, accounted," says Wood, "the most amiable and beautiful person that ever eye beheld; a person also of innate modesty, virtue, and courtly deportment "].

TO A LADY THAT DESIRED ME I WOULD BEAR MY PART WITH HER IN A SONG.

MADAM A. L.

THIS is the prettiest motion !1
Madam, the alarums of a drum
That calls your lord, set to your cries,
To mine are sacred symphonies.

What though 'tis said I have a voice;
I know 'tis but that hollow noise

Which (as it through my pipe doth speed)
Bitterns do carol through a reed;

In the same key with monkeys' jigs,
Or dirges of proscribed pigs,

Or the soft serenades above

In calm of night, when cats make love.

Was ever such a consort seen?
Fourscore-and-fourteen with fourteen!
Yet sooner they'll agree, one pair,
Than we in our spring-winter air.

They may embrace, sigh, kiss, the rest :

1 "Motion" and "drum" make up a very extraordinary rhyme. True, Lovelace was loose in his rhymes, and in his execution generally: yet I almost think a word must be missed here-perhaps "come!" (in the sense of "go to!")

Our breath knows nought but east and west.
Thus have I heard to children's cries

The fair nurse still such lullabies

That well, all said (for what there lay),

The pleasure did the sorrow pay.

Sure there's another way to save
Your fancy, madam; that's to have
('Tis but a petitioning kind fate)
The organs sent to Billingsgate,
Where they, to that soft murmuring choir,
Shall teach you all you can admire !
Or do but hear how love-bang Kate
In pantry dark, for freage of mate,

With edge of steel the square wood shapes,
And Dido1 to it chaunts or scrapes.

The merry Phaeton o' the car,
You'll vow, mades a melodious jar;
Sweeter and sweeter whistleth he
To unanointed axletree;

Such swift notes he and 's wheels do run,
For me, I yield him Phoebus' son.

Say, fair commandress, can it be

You should ordain a mutiny?
For, where I howl, all accents fall,
As kings' harangues, to one and all.
Ulysses' art is now withstood:
You ravish both with sweet and good.
Saint Siren, sing, for I dare hear;
But, when I ope, oh stop your ear!

Far less be't emulation

To pass me or in trill or tone,-
Like the thin throat of Philomel,

And the smart lute, who should excel;
As if her soft chords should begin,
And strive for sweetness with the pin.2

Yet can I music too; but such
As is beyond all voice or touch.
My mind can in fair order chime,
Whilst my true heart still beats the time.
My soul's so full of harmony

That it with all parts can agree.

If you wind up to the highest fret,3

It shall descend an eight from it;

And, when you shall vouchsafe to fall,

1 The ballad of Queen Dido. "Love-bang" seems to mean "fond of noise, obstreperous." Freage" is a word unknown to me.

66

2 A musical peg.

3 A piece of wire attached to the finger-board of a guitar,

Sixteen above you it shall call,
And yet, so dis-assenting one,
They both shall meet in unison.

Come then, bright cherubim, begin!
My loudest music is within.

Take all notes with your skilful eyes;
Hark if mine do not sympathize!

Sound all my thoughts, and see expressed
The tablature of my large breast.
Then you'll admit that I too can
Music above dead sounds of man;
Such as alone doth bless the spheres,
Not to be reached with human ears.

THE DUEL.

LOVE drunk, the other day, knocked at my breast;
But I, alas! was not within.

My man, my ear, told me he came to attest
That without cause he'd boxed him,
And battered the windows of mine eyes,
And took my neart for one of's nunneries.
I wondered at the outrage, safe returned,
And stormed at the base affront;
And by a friend of mine, bold faith, that burned,
I called him to a strict accompt.

He said that, by the law, the challenged might
Take the advantage both of arms and fight.
Two darts of equal length and points he sent,
And nobly gave the choice to me;

Which I not weighed, young and indifferent,'
Now full of nought but victory.

So we both met in one of his mother's groves ;-
The time, at the first murmuring of her doves.

I stripped myself naked all o'er, as he :

For so I was best armed, when bare.
His first pass did my liver raze: yet I
Made home a falsify1 too near:

For, when my arm to its true distance came,
I nothing touched but a fantastic flame.

This, this is Love we daily quarrel so,-
An idle Don-Quichoterie :

We whip ourselves with our own twisted woe,

And wound the air for a fly.

The only way to undo this enemy

Is to laugh at the boy, and he will cry.

"To falsify a thrust," says Phillips (World of Words), "is to make a feigned pass." Lovelace here employs the word as a substantive.