Let this year bring

To Charles our king:

To Charles, who is th' example and the law,
By whom the good are taught, not kept in awe.
Sir W. Davenant.

TO THE QUEEN ON A NEW YEAR'S DAY.

WAKE, great Queen! for as you hide or clear
Your eyes, we shall distrust or like the year.
Queens set their dials by your beauty's light,
By your eyes learn to make their own move right;
Yet know our expectation when you rise
Is not entirely furnish'd from your eyes;
But wisely we provide how to rejoice
In the fruition of your breath and voice;

Your breath which nature the example meant,
From whence our early blossoms take their scent,
Teaching our infant flowers how to excel,
Ere strong upon their stalks, in fragrant smell;
Your voice, which can allure and charm the best
Most gaudy-feather'd chanter of the east
To dwell about your palace all the spring,
And still can make him silent whilst you sing.
Rise, then! for I have heard Apollo swear,
By that first lustre which did fill his sphere,
He will not mount, but make eternal night,
Unless relieved, and cherish'd by your sight;
Your sight, which is his warmth, now he is old,
His horses weary, and his chariot cold.

Sir W. Davenant.

BEN JONSON'S ODE TO HIMSELF UPON THE

CENSURE OF HIS "NEW INN."

JANUARY 1630.

OME, leave the loathed stage,

And the more loathsome age;

Where pride and impudence, in faction knit,
Usurp the chair of wit!
Indicting and arraigning every day

Something they call a play.

Yet their fastidious, vain

Commission of the brain

Run on and rage, sweat, censure and condemn ;
They were not made for thee, less thou for them.

Say that thou pour'st them wheat,

And they will acorns eat;

'Twere simple fury still thyself to waste
On such as have no taste!

To offer them a surfeit of pure bread,
Whose appetites are dead!

No, give them grains their fill,

Husks, draff to drink and swill:

If they love lees, and leave the lusty wine,
Envy them not, their palate 's with the swine.

No doubt some mouldy tale,

Like Pericles, and stale

As the shrieve's crusts, and nasty as his fish-
Scraps, out of every dish

Thrown forth, and raked into the common tub,
May keep up the Play-club:

There, sweepings do as well

As the best-order'd meal;

For who the relish of these guests will fit,
Needs set them but the alms-basket of wit.

And much good do't to you

Brave plush and velvet-men,

then :

Can feed on orts; and, safe in your stage-clothes,
Dare quit, upon your oaths,

The stagers and the stage-wrights too, your peers,
Of larding your large ears

With their foul comic socks,

Wrought upon twenty blocks;

Which if they are torn, and turn'd, and patch'd enough, The gamesters share your gilt, and you their stuff.

Leave things so prostitute,
And take the Alcaic lute,

Or thine own Horace, or Anacreon's lyre;
Warm thee by Pindar's fire;

And though thy nerves be shrunk, and blood be cold
Ere years have made thee old,

Strike that disdainful heat
Throughout, to their defeat,

As curious fools, and envious of thy strain,
May, blushing, swear no palsy 's in thy brain.

But when they hear thee sing

The glories of thy king,

His zeal to God, and his just awe o'er men,
They may, blood-shaken then,

Feel such a flesh-quake to possess their powers
As they shall "Like ours,

cry,

In sound of peace or wars,

No harp e'er hit the stars,

In tuning forth the acts of his sweet reign;
And raising Charles his chariot 'bove his wain."
Ben Jonson.

AN EPIGRAM TO KING CHARLES FOR AN HUNDRED POUNDS HE SENT ME

IN MY SICKNESS. (1630.)

REAT Charles, among the holy gifts of grace
Annexed to thy person and thy place,
'Tis not enough (thy piety is such)

To cure the call'd King's-Evil with thy touch;
But thou wilt yet a kinglier mastery try,
To cure the Poet's-Evil, poverty:

And in these cures dost so thyself enlarge,
As thou dost cure our evil at thy charge.
Nay, and in this, thou show'st to value more
One poet, than of other folks ten score.
O piety, so to weigh the poor's estates!
O bounty, so to difference the rates!
What can the poet wish his king may do,
But that he cure the People's Evil too?

Ben Jonson.

VIRTUE.

WEET day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky,
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,

Thy root is ever in its grave,

And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie,

My music shows ye have your closes,

And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like season'd timber, never gives ;

But though the whole world turn to coal,

Then chiefly lives.

George Herbert.

UPON THE CURTAIN OF LUCASTA'S PICTURE.

H, stay that covetous hand; first turn all eye,
All depth and mind; then mystically spy
Her soul's fair picture, her fair soul's, in all

So truly copied from the original,

That
you will swear her body by this law
Is but its shadow, as this its ;-now draw.

Richard Lovelace.

THE DESCRIPTION OF CASTARA,

IKE the violet, which alone

Prospers in some happy shade,

My Castara lives unknown,

To no looser eye betray'd;

For she's to herself untrue

Who delights i' th' public view.

E