He that doth still and strongly good pursue,
To God, his neighbour, and himself most true:
Whom neither force nor fawning can
Unpin, or wrench from giving all their due.
Whose honesty is not
So loose or easy, that a ruffling wind
Can blow away, or glittering look it blind :
Who rides his sure and even trot,
While the world now rides by, now lags behind.
Who, when great trials come,
Nor seeks, nor shuns them; but doth calmly stay,
Till he the thing and the example weigh:
All being brought into a sum,
What place or person calls for, he doth pay.
Whom none can work or woo,
To use in any thing a trick or sleight;
For above all things he abhors deceit :
His words and works and fashion too
All of a piece, and all are clear and straight.
Who never melts or thaws
At close temptations: when the day is done,
His goodness sets not, but in dark can run :
The sun to others writeth laws,
And is their virtue; virtue is his sun.
Who, when he is to treat
With sick folks, women, those whom passions sway,
Allows for that, and keeps his constant way:
Whom others' faults do not defeat;
But though men fail him, yet his part doth play.
Whom nothing can procure,
When the wild world runs bias, from his will
To writhe his limbs, and share, not mend the ill.
This is the marksman, safe and sure,
Who still is right, and prays to be so still.
LOVING AND BELOVED.
HERE never yet was honest man
That ever drove the trade of love;
It is impossible, nor can
Integrity our ends promove:
For kings and lovers are alike in this,
That their chief art in reign dissembling is.
Here we are loved, and there we love,
Good nature now and passion strive
Which of the two should be above,
And laws unto the other give.
So we false fire with art sometimes discover,
And the true fire with the same art do cover.
What rack can fancy find so high?
Here we must court, and here engage,
Though in the other place we die.
Oh! 'tis torture all, and cozenage;
And which the harder is I cannot tell,
To hide true love, or make false love look well.
Since it is thus, God of desire,
Give me my honesty again,
And take thy brands back, and thy fire:
I am weary of the state I am in.
Since (if the very best should not befall)
Love's triumph must be Honour's funeral.
Sir John Suckling.
IVE way, give way; now, now my Charles shines
here,
A public light, in this immensive sphere;
Some stars were fix'd before, but these are dim,
Compared, in this my ample orb, to him.
Draw in your feeble fires, while that he
Appears but in his meaner majesty ;
Where, if such glory flashes from his name,
Which is his shade, who can abide his flame!
Princes, and such-like public lights as these,
Must not be look'd on but at distances;
For, if we gaze on these brave lamps too near,
Our eyes they'll blind, or if not blind, they'll bleer.
Robert Herrick.
N whom th' extremes of power and beauty move,
The Queen of Britain and the Queen of Love.
As the bright sun (to which we owe no sight
Of equal glory to your beauty's light)
Is wisely placed in so sublime a seat,
T'extend his light, and moderate his heat:
So happy 'tis you move in such a sphere
As your high majesty with awful fear
In human breasts might qualify that fire,
Which, kindled by those eyes, had flamed higher
Than when the scorched world like hazard run,
By the approach of the ill-guided sun.
No other nymphs have title to men's hearts,
But as their meanness larger hope imparts:
Your beauty more the fondest lover moves
With admiration than his private loves;
With admiration! for a pitch so high
(Save sacred Charles his) never Love durst fly.
Heaven that preferr'd a sceptre to your hand,
Favour'd our freedom more than your command:
Beauty had crown'd you, and you must have been
The whole world's mistress, other than a queen.
All had been rivals, and you might have spared,
Or kill'd and tyrannized without a guard.
No power achieved, either by arms or birth,
Equals Love's empire, both in heaven and earth.
Such eyes as yours on Jove himself have thrown
As bright and fierce a lightning as his own:
Witness our Jove, prevented by their flame
In his swift passage to th' Hesperian dame;
When, like a lion, finding in his way
To some intended spoil a fairer prey,
The royal youth pursuing the report
Of beauty, found it in the Gallic court;
There public care with private passion fought
A doubtful combat in his noble thought:
Should he confess his greatness and his love,
And the free faith of your great brother prove,
With his Achates breaking through the cloud
Of that disguise which did their graces shroud,
And, mixing with those gallants at the ball,
Dance with the ladies and outshine them all;
Or on his journey o'er the mountains ride?
So when the fair Leucothoe he spied,
To check his steeds impatient Phœbus yearn'd,
Though all the world was in his course concern'd
What may hereafter her meridian do,
Whose dawning beauty warm'd his bosom so? [4 ll.
THE PURITAN.
ITH face and fashion to be known
For one of sure election,
With eyes all white, and many a groan,
With neck aside to draw in tone,
With harp in 's nose, or he is none:
See a new teacher of the town,
O the town, O the town's new teacher! With pate cut shorter than the brow, With little ruff starch'd you know how, With cloak like Paul, no cape I trow; With surplice none; but lately now. With hands to thump, no knees to bow. See a new teacher of the town,
O the town, O the town's new teacher!
With coz'ning cough and hollow cheek,
To get new gatherings every week,
With paltry change of and to eke,
With some small Hebrew, and no Greek,
To find out words where stuff's to seek.
See a new teacher of the town,
O the town, O the town's new teacher! With shop-board breeding and intrusion, With some outlandish institution, With Ursin's catechism to muse on, With System's method for confusion, With grounds strong laid of mere illusion. See a new teacher of the town,
O the town, O the town's new teacher!
With rites indifferent all damnèd,
And made unlawful, if commanded,
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