Your pining sickness, and your restless pain, Nature, her fairest light eclipsed, seerns [tend, Or thus with-held, what hasty soul would go, [they, "Such storms no more shall shake that house; but Like Neptune and his sea-born niece, shall be The shining glories of the land and sea, With courage guard, and beauty warm our age, And lovers fill with like poetic rage." ON MISTRESS N. TO THE GREEN SICKNESS. STAY, coward blood, and do not yield he lip, where thou shouldst rule alone; hose milky deluge drowns thy rose. Quit not the field, faint blood, nor rush the short sally of a blush pon thy sister foe, but strive › keep an endless war alive; nough peace do petty states maintain, ere war alone makes beauty reign. UPON A MOLE IN CELIA'S BOSOM. THAT lovely spot which thou dost see Which from the neighbour vale distils, More precious than the phenix' fire; Yet still her shadow there remains The sweet and smart from thence shall bring AN HYMENEAL SONG ON THE NUPTIALS OF THE LADY ANNE WENT- Scattering his beany light; For she, till day return, must keep Yet gently whisper as she lies, The priests at th' altar stay; With flow'ry wreaths the virgin crew Attend, while some with roses strew, And myrtles trim the way. Now to the temple and the priest For now, to crown his faith and truth, For there, exalted far above This lady was the daughter of Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, by his second wife, Arabella daughter of lord Clare. Her husband, mentioned here by the name of lord Lovelace, was Edward Watson lord Rockingham, progenitor of the present marquis of Rockingham. They know no night, nor glaring noon, Nor mark Time's restless glass; Their kisses measure, as they flow, Minutes, and there embraces show The hours as they do pass. Their motions the year's circle make, And we from their conjunctions take Rules to make love an almanack. A MARRIED WOMAN. WHEN I shall marry, if I do not find A wife thus moulded, I'll create this mind: To reason is; which shall our wills unite A DIVINE LOVE. WHY should dull Art, which is wise Nature's ape, So far beyond all patterns that of old As thine, admir'd Lucinda! not bring forth Like her great work, no print of vulgar path? Is it because the rapes of poetry,` Rifling the spacious sky Of all his fires, light, beauty, influence, On airy creations that surpast The real works of Nature, she at last, To prove their raptures vain, Show'd such a light as poets could not feign? Or is it 'cause the factious wits did vie Whose goddess was supreme, and so had hurl'd LOVE'S FORCE. In the first ruder age, when Love was wild, The eye could fair, or sense delightful call, A FANCY. MARK how this polish'd eastern sheet Doth with our northern tincture meet; For though the paper seem to sink, Yet it receives and bears the ink; And on her smooth, soft brow these spots, As careless works of black and white: To fold up silks, may wrap up wit. TO HIS MISTRESS. GRIEVE not, my Celia, but with haste Discreetly out our wretched state, Will prove thy virtue, though offence. Who knows but Destiny may relent, To all the griefs she plung'd thee in; And then the certainty she meant Reverted is by accident. But yet I must confess 't is much, Hills of milk with azure mix'd While she doth breathe. From those hills descends a valley Where all fall, that dare to dally. As fair pillars under stand Whiter than the silver swan All this but the casket is Which contains Such a jewel, as the miss Breeds endless pains; That's her mind, and they that know it May admire, but cannot show it. TO CELIA, UPON LOVE'S UBIQUITY. As one that strives, being sick, and sick to death, I am the dial's hand, still walking round; Time shall stand still, and moist waves flaming be: S$ Yet, being gone, think not on me; I am A thing too wretched for thy thoughts to name; basement, and on the plinth' stood a great vase of gold, richly enchased, and beautified with sculp tures of great relieve, with fruitages hanging from the upper part. At the foot of this sate two youths naked, in their natural colours; each of these with one arm supported the vase, on the cover of which stood two young women in draperies, arm in arm; the one figuring the glory of princes, and the other mansuetude': their other arms bore up an oval, in which, to the king's majesty, was this impress, a lion with an imperial crown on his head; the words, Animum sub pectore forti: On the other side was the like composition, but the design of the figures varied; and in the oval on the top, being borne up by nobility and fecundity, was this impress to the queen's majesty, a lilly growing with branches and leaves, and three lesser lilies springing out of the stem; the words, semper inclyta virtus: all this ornament was heightened with gold, and for the invention, and various composition, was the newest and most gracious that hath been done in this place. The curtain was watchet and a pale yellow in panes, which, flying up on the sudden, discovered the scene, representing old arches, old palaces, decayed walls, parts of temples, theatres, basilicas' and thermes, with confused heaps of broken Columns, bases, cornices, and statues, lying as underground, and altogether resembling the ruins of some great city of the ancient Romans, or civiliz'd Britons. This strange prospect detained the eyes of the spectators some time, when to a loud music Mercury descends. On the upper part of his chariot stands a cock in action of crowing. His habit was a coat of flame-colour girt to him, and a white mantle trimm'd with gold and silver: upon his head a wreath with small falls of white feathers, a caducens in his hand, and wings at his heels: THE first thing that presented itself to the sight was a rich ornament that enclosed the scene; in the upper part of which were great branches of foliage growing out of leaves and husks, with a cornice at the top; and in the midst was placed a large compartiment, composed of grotesque work, wherein were harpies with wings and lions' claws, and their hinder parts converted into leaves and branches. Over all was a broken frontispiece, wrought with scrowls and masque-heads of chil-being come to the ground, he dismounts, and goes dren, and within this, a table adorn'd with a lesser up to the state. compartiment, with this inscription, COELUM BRITANNICUM. The two sides of this ornament were thus ordered: first, from the ground arose a square 'Masque. This species of composition was long the favourite of the British court, and even disputed the ground with the regular compositions of the dramatic Muse. Unguided by any rules, unrestrained by any laws, it might wander thro' the universe for objects either new or monstrous, and where it found none it might create them. With these powers, it was well calculated to charm the fancy in the absence of taste; but, as taste established her empire in the minds of men, the Masque, with all its unaccountable monsters, retired. -It had its birth in Italy, about the 16th century, when it was the fashion for every bard to have a world of his own creation. From whence it migrated, with other exotics, cross the Channel, and found a warm reception in the benevolent soil of Britain. The poets of queen Elizabeth's reign, and of the following age, were pleased with the extravagance>f the thing; and as they followed Ariosto and his brethren through all the wildness of Fairyland, they followed them also in this, and almost surpassed heir masters. MERCURY. FROM the high senate of the gods, to you, 'Basilicas, in architecture, are public halls with * The uppermost member of the entablature of two ranges of pillars, and galleries over them. a column, or that which crowns the order. 8 Baths. T N H T An Those days are fled; the rebel flame is quench'd To loose embraces. Your exemplar life She lays aside, and through th' Olympic hall, On earthly beauties, which his raging queen, Merc. Peace, railer, bridle your licentious tongue, And let this presence teach you modesty. 9 Mom. Let it, if it can; in the mean time I will acquaint it with my condition. Know, gay people, that though your poets (who enjoy by patent a particular privilege to draw down any of the deities from Twelfth-night to Shrove-Tuesday, at what time there is annually a most familiar intercourse between the two courts) have as yet never invited me to these solemnities, yet it shall appear by my intrusion this night, that I am a very considerable person upon these occasions, and may most properly assist at such entertainments. My name is Momus ap-Somnus ap-Erabus ap-Chaos ap-Demorgorgon ap-Eternity. My offices and titles are, the supreme theomastix, hypercritic of manners, prothonotary of abuses, arch informer, dilator general, universal calumniator, eternal plaintiff, and perpetual foreman of the grand inquest. My privileges are an ubiquitary, circumambulatory, speculatory, interrogatory, redargutory immunity over all the privy lodgings; behind hangings, doors, curtains; through key-holes, chinks, windows; about all venereal lobbies, sconces, or redoubts, though it be to the surprise of a perdu ", page or chambermaid; in, and at, all courts of civil and criminal judicature, all councils, consultations, and parliamentary assemblies, where though I am but a wool-sack god, and have no vote in the sanction of new laws, I have yet a prerogative of wresting the old to any whatsoever interpretation, whether it be to the behoof or prejudice of Jupiter, his crown, and dignity; for, or against, the rites of either house of patrician or plebeian gods. My natural qualities are to make Jove frown, Juno pout, Mars chafe, Venus blush, Vulcan glow, Saturn quake, Cynthia pale, Phoebus hide his face, and Mercury here take his heels. My recreations are witty mischiefs, as when Satan gelt his father; the smith caught his wife and her bravo in a net of cobweb iron; and Hebe, through the lubricity of the pavement tumbling over the halfspace, presented the emblem of the forked tree, and discovered to the tann'd Ethiops the snowy cliffs of Calabria, with the grotto of Puteolum. But that you may arrive at the perfect knowledge of me, Enter MOMUs attired in a long darkish robe, all by the familiar illustration of a bird of mine own wrought over, with poniards, serpents, tongues, eyes, feather, old Peter Aretine, who reduc'd all the and ears; his beard and hair party-coloured, and scepters and mitres of that age tributary to his upon his head a wreath stuck with feathers, and awit, was my parallel, and Frank Rabelais suck'd porcupine in the forepart. He view'd himself, he found his loathsome stains; Sits the fair consort of your heart and throne; Mom. By your leave, mortals. Good cousin Hermes, your pardon, good my lord ambassador: I found the tables of your arms and titles in every inn betwixt this and Olympus, where your present expedition is registered: your nine thousand nine hundred ninty ninth legation. I cannot reach the policy why your master breeds so few statesmen; it suits not with his dignity, that in the whole Empyræum there should not be a god fit to send on these honourable errands but yourself, who are not yet so careful of his honour or your own, as might become your quality, when you are itinerant. The hosts upon the high-way cry out with open mouth upon you, for supporting plafery in your train; which though, as you are the god of petty larceny, you might protect, yet you know it is directly against the new orders, and oppose the reformation in diameter. much of my milk too; but your modern French hospital of oratory is a mere counterfeit, an arrant mountebank; for though, fearing no other fortunes than his sciatica, he discourses of kings and queens with as little reverence as of grooms and chambermaids, yet he wants their fangteeth and scorpion's tail; I mean that fellow, who, to add to his stature, thinks it a greater grace to dance on his tip-toes like a dog in a doublet, than to walk like other men on the soles of his feet. |