Amidst his visions of angels ascending and descending, Crashaw had little time or relish for earthly love. He has, however, left a copy of verses, entitled Wishes to a Supposed Mistress, in which are some fine thoughts. Remembering Sir Philip Sidney and his Arcadia, Crashaw desires his fair one to possess

Sydneian showers

Of sweet discourse, whose powers

Can crown old Winter's head with flowers.

Whate'er delight

Can make Day's forehead bright,
Or give down to the wings of Night.

Soft silken hours,

Open suns, shady bowers;

'Bove all, nothing within that lowers.

We quote two similes, the first reminding us of a passage in Jeremy Taylor's Holy Dying, and the second of one of Shakspeare's best sonnets:

I've seen, indeed, the hopeful bud
Of a ruddy rose, that stood,
Blushing to behold the ray
Of the new-saluted day;

His tender top not fully spread;

The sweet dash of a shower new shed,
Invited him no more to hide
Within himself the purple pride
Of his forward flower, when lo,
While he sweetly 'gan to shew

His swelling glories, Auster spied him;
Cruel Auster thither hied him,
And with the rush of one rude blast
Shamed not spitefully to waste
All his leaves so fresh and sweet,
And lay them trembling at his feet.
I've seen the morning's lovely ray
Hover o'er the new-born day,
With rosy wings, so richly bright,
As if he scorned to think of night,
When a ruddy storm, whose scowl
Made heaven's radiant face look foul,
Called for an untimely night

To blot the newly blossomed light.

The felicity and copiousness of Crashaw's language are, however, best seen from his translations; and we subjoin entire his version of Music's Duel, from the Latin of Strada. It is seldom that so sweet and luxurious a strain of pure description and sentiment greets us in our poetical pilgrimage :

Music's Duel.

Now westward Sol had spent the richest beams
Of noon's high glory, when, hard by the streams
Of Tiber, on the scene of a green plat,
Under protection of an oak, there sat
A sweet lute's-master; in whose gentle airs

He lost the day's heat, and his own hot cares.
Close in the covert of the leaves there stood
A nightingale, come from the neighbouring wood-
The sweet inhabitant of each glad tree,
Their muse, their syren, harmless syren she-
There stood she listening, and did entertain
The music's soft report, and mould the same
In her own murmurs; that whatever mood
His curious fingers lent, her voice made good:
The man perceived his rival, and her art,
Disposed to give the light-foot lady sport,
Awakes his lute, and 'gainst the fight to come
Informs it in a sweet præludium

Of closer strains, and ere the war begin,
He lightly skirmishes on every string
Charged with a flying touch; and straightway she
Carves out her dainty voice as readily,
Into a thousand sweet distinguished tones,
And reckons up in soft divisions

Quick volumes of wild notes, to let him know,
By that shrill taste, she could do something too.
His nimble hand's instinct then taught each
string

A capering cheerfulness, and made them sing
To their own dance; now negligently rash
He throws his arm, and with a long-drawn dash
Blends all together; then distinctly trips
From this to that, then quick returning, skips
And snatches this again, and pauses there.
She measures every measure, everywhere
Meets art with art; sometimes, as if in doubt
Not perfect yet, and fearing to be out,
Trails her plain ditty in one long-spun note,
Through the sleek passage of her open throat,
A clear unwrinkled song; then doth she point it
With tender accents, and severely joint it
By short diminutives, that, being reared
In controverting warbles, evenly shared,
With her sweet self she wrangles; he amazed,
That from so small a channel should be raised
The torrent of a voice, whose melody
Could melt into such sweet variety,
Strains higher yet, that, tickled with rare art,
The tattling strings, each breathing in his part,
Most kindly do fall out; the grumbling base
In surly groans disdains the treble's grace ;
The high-perched treble chirps at this, and chides,
Until his finger (moderator) hides

And closes the sweet quarrel, rousing all
Hoarse, shrill at once; as when the trumpets call
Hot Mars to the harvest of death's field, and woo
Men's hearts into their hands. This lesson too
She gives them back: her supple breast thrills out
Sharp airs, and staggers in a warbling doubt
Of dallying sweetness, hovers o'er her skill,
And folds in waved notes, with a trembling bill,
The pliant series of her slippery song;
Then starts she suddenly into a throng

Of short thick sobs, whose thundering volleys float

And roll themselves over her lubric throat

In panting murmurs, stilled out of her breast;
That ever-bubbling spring, the sugared nest
Of her delicious soul, that there does lie
Bathing in streams of liquid melody;
Music's best seed-plot; when in ripened ears
A golden-headed harvest fairly rears
His honey-dropping tops, ploughed by her breath
Which there reciprocally laboureth.
In that sweet soil it seems a holy quire,
Sounded to the name of great Apollo's lyre;
Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes
Of sweet-lipped angel-imps, that swill their throats
In cream of morning Helicon, and then
Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men,

To woo them from their beds, still murmuring
That men can sleep while they their matins sing-
Most divine service-whose so early lay
Prevents the eyelids of the blushing day.
There might you hear her kindle her soft voice,
In the close murmur of a sparkling noise;
And lay the groundwork of her hopeful song,
Still keeping in the forward stream so long,
Till a sweet whirlwind-striving to get out-
Heaves her soft bosom, wanders round about,
And makes a pretty earthquake in her breast,
Till the fledged notes at length forsake their nest,
Fluttering in wanton shoals, and to the sky,
Winged with their own wild echoes, prattling fly.
She opes the flood-gate, and lets loose a tide
Of streaming sweetness, which in state doth ride

On the waved back of every swelling strain,
Rising and falling in a pompous train,
And while she thus discharges a shrill peal
Of flashing airs, she qualifies their zeal
With the cool epode of a graver note;
Thus high, thus low, as if her silver throat

Would reach the brazen voice of war's hoarse

bird;

Her little soul is ravished, and so poured

Into loose ecstasies, that she is placed
Above herself, Music's enthusiast.

Shame now and anger mixed a double stain

In the musician's face: 'Yet, once again,

Mistress, I come. Now reach a strain, my lute,
Above her mock, or be for ever mute.

Or tune a song of victory to me,

Or to thyself sing thine own obsequy.'
So said, his hands sprightly as fire he flings,
And with a quavering coyness tastes the strings:
The sweet-lipped sisters musically frighted,
Singing their fears, are fearfully delighted:
Trembling as when Apollo's golden hairs
Are fanned and frizzled in the wanton airs
Of his own breath, which, married to his lyre,

Doth tune the spheres, and make heaven's self look higher;

From this to that, from that to this he flies,
Feels Music's pulse in all her arteries;

Caught in a net which there Apollo spreads,
His fingers struggle with the vocal threads,
Following those little rills, he sinks into
A sea of Helicon; his hand does go

Those parts of sweetness which with nectar drop,
Softer than that which pants in Hebe's cup:
The humorous strings expound his learned touch
By various glosses; now they seem to grutch,
And murmur in a buzzing din, then jingle
In shrill-tongued accents, striving to be single;
Every smooth turn, every delicious stroke
Gives life to some new grace; thus doth he invoke
Sweetness by all her names: thus, bravely thus-
Fraught with a fury so harmonious-

The lute's light genius now does proudly rise,
Heaved on the surges of swollen rhapsodies;
Whose flourish-meteor-like-doth curl the air
With flash of high-born fancies, here and there
Dancing in lofty measures, and anon
Creeps on the soft touch of a tender tone,
Whose trembling murmurs, melting in wild airs,
Run to and fro, complaining his sweet cares;
Because those precious mysteries that dwell
In Music's ravished soul he dare not tell
But whisper to the world: thus do they vary,
Each string his note, as if they meant to carry
Their master's blest soul-snatched out

ears

By a strong ecstasy-through all the spheres
Of Music's heaven; and seat it there on high,
In the empyreum of pure harmony.
At length, after so long, so loud a strife

Of all the strings, still breathing the best life
Of blest variety, attending on

His fingers' fairest revolution,

In many a sweet rise, many as sweet a fallA full-mouthed diapason swallows all.

at his

This done, he lists what she would say to this; And she, although her breath's late exercise Had dealt too roughly with her tender throat, Yet summons all her sweet powers for a note. Alas! in vain! for while-sweet soul-she tries To measure all those wild diversities Of chatt'ring strings by the small size of one Poor simple voice, raised in a natural tone, She fails, and failing grieves, and grieving dies: She dies, and leaves her life the victor's prize, Falling upon his lute. Oh, fit to have

That lived so sweetly-dead, so sweet a grave!

Temperance, or the Cheap Physician.
Hark, hither, reader! wilt thou see
Nature her own physician be?
Wilt see a man, all his own wealth,
His own music, his own health;
A man whose sober soul can tell
How to wear her garments well;
Her garments, that upon her sit,

As garments should do, close and fit;
A well-clothed soul that's not oppressed

Nor choked with what she should be dressed;

A soul sheathed in a crystal shrine,

Through which all her bright features shine; As when a piece of wanton lawn,

A thin aërial veil, is drawn

O'er Beauty's face, seeming to hide,
More sweetly shews the blushing bride;

A soul, whose intellectual beams

No mists do mask, no lazy steams

A happy soul, that all the way

To heaven hath a summer's day?

Wouldst see a man, whose well-warmed blood Bathes him in a genuine flood?

A man whose tuned humours be

A seat of rarest harmony?

Wouldst see blithe looks, fresh cheeks, beguile

Age? Wouldst see December smile?
Wouldst see nests of new roses grow

In a bed of reverend snow?
Warm thoughts, free spirits flattering
Winter's self into a spring?

In sum, wouldst see a man that can
Live to be old, and still a man?
Whose latest and most leaden hours

Fall with soft wings, stuck with soft flowers;
And when life's sweet fable ends,
Soul and body part like friends;
No quarrels, murmurs, no delay;
A kiss, a sigh, and so away:

This rare one, reader, wouldst thou see?
Hark, hither! and thyself be he.

The hands be pure That hold these weapons, and the eyes Those of turtles, chaste and true, Wakeful and wise,

Here is a friend shall fight for you. Hold but this book before your heart, Let Prayer alone to play his part.

Oh, come away

And kill the death of this delay.
O see, so many worlds of barren years
Melted and measured out in seas of tears!
Oh, see the weary lids of wakeful hope-
Love's eastern windows-all wide ope
With curtains drawn,

To catch the daybreak of thy dawn!
Oh, dawn at last, long-looked-for day!
Take thine own wings and come away.
Lo, where aloft it comes! It comes, among
The conduct of adoring spirits, that throng
Like diligent bees, and swarm about it.

Oh, they are wise,

And know what sweets are sucked from out it. It is the hive

By which they thrive,

Where all their hoard of honey lies.
Lo, where it comes, upon the snowy dove's
Soft back, and brings a bosom big with loves.
Welcome to our dark world, thou womb of day!
Unfold thy fair conceptions; and display
The birth of our bright joys.

Sweet name! in thy each syllable
A thousand blest Arabias dwell;

A thousand hills of frankincense;
Mountains of myrrh and beds of spices,
And ten thousand paradises,

The soul that tastes thee takes from thence.
How many unknown worlds there are

Of comforts, which thou hast in keeping!
How many thousand mercies there
In Pity's soft lap lie a-sleeping!

Happy he who has the art

To awake them,

And to take them

On their bold breasts about the world they bore thee,
And to the teeth of hell stood up to teach thee;
In centre of their inmost souls they wore thee,
Where racks and torments strived in vain to reach thee.
Little, alas! thought they

Who tore the fair breasts of thy friends,

Their fury but made way

For thee, and served them in thy glorious ends.
What did their weapons, but with wider pores
Enlarge thy flaming-breasted lovers,

More freely to transpire

That impatient fire

The heart that hides thee hardly covers ?
What did their weapons, but set wide the doors
For thee? fair purple doors, of love's devising;
The ruby windows which enriched the east
Of thy so oft-repeated rising.

Each wound of theirs was thy new morning,
And re-enthroned thee in thy rosy nest,

With blush of thine own blood thy day adorning :

It was the wit of love o'erflowed the bounds

Of wrath, and made the way through all these wounds. Welcome, dear, all-adored name!

For sure there is no knee

That knows not thee;

Or if there be such sons of shame,
Alas! what will they do,

When stubborn rocks shall bow,

And hills hang down their heaven-saluting heads
To seek for humble beds

Of dust, where, in the bashful shades of night,
Next to their own low nothing they may lie,

And couch before the dazzling light of thy dread
Majesty.

They that by love's mild dictate now

Will not adore thee,

Shall then, with just confusion, bow
And break before thee.

DR WILLIAM STRODE.

This accomplished divine (whose scattered poetical pieces deserve collection) was born near Plympton, Devonshire, about 1598. He studied at Christchurch, Oxford, took orders in 1621, and was installed canon of Christchurch in 1638. He died April 10, 1644.

Answer to The Lover's Melancholy?

Return, my joys! and hither bring
A tongue not made to speak, but sing,
A jolly spleen, an inward feast;
A causeless laugh without a jest ;
A face which gladness doth anoint;
An arm for joy, flung out of joint;
A sprightful gait that leaves no print,
And makes a feather of a flint;
A heart that's lighter than the air;
An eye still dancing in its sphere;
Strong mirth which nothing shall control;
A body nimbler than a soul;

Free wandering thoughts not tied to muse,
Which, thinking all things, nothing choose,
Which, ere we see them come, are gone :
These life itself doth feed upon.

Men take no care but only to be jolly; To be more wretched than we must, is folly.

Kisses.

My love and I for kisses played:

She would keep stakes-I was content; But when I won, she would be paid;

This made me ask her what she meant. 'Pray, since I see,' quoth she, 'your wrangling vein, Take your own kisses; give me mine again.'

ROBERT HERRICK.

One of the most exquisite of our early lyrical poets was ROBERT HERRICK, born in Cheapside, London, in 1591. He studied at Cambridge, and having entered into holy orders, was presented by Charles I. in 1629, to the vicarage of Dean Prior, in Devonshire. After about twenty years' residence in this rural parish, Herrick was ejected from his living by the storms of the civil war, which, as Jeremy Taylor says, 'dashed the vessel of the church and state all in pieces.' Whatever regret the poet may have felt on being turned adrift on the world, he could have experienced little on parting with his parishioners, for he describes them in much the same way as Crabbe portrayed the natives of Suffolk, among whom he was cast in early life, as a 'wild amphibious race,' rude 'almost as salvages,' and 'churlish as the seas.' Herrick gives us a glimpse of his own character:

Born I was to meet with age,
And to walk life's pilgrimage:
Much, I know, of time is spent ;
Tell I can't what's resident.
Howsoever, cares adieu !
I'll have nought to say to you;
But I'll spend my coming hours

Drinking wine and crowned with flowers.

This light and genial temperament would enable the poet to ride out the storm in composure. About the time that he lost his vicarage, Herrick appears to have published his works. His Noble Numbers, or Pious Pieces, are dated 1647; his Hesperides, or the Works, both Humane and Divine, of Robert Herrick, Esquire, in 1648. The clerical prefix to his name seems now to have been abandoned by the poet; and there are certainly many pieces in the second volume which would not become one ministering at the altar, or belonging to the sacred profession. Herrick lived in Westminster, and was supported or assisted by the wealthy royalists. He associated with the jovial spirits of the age. He 'quaffed the mighty bowl' with Ben Jonson, but could not, he tells us, 'thrive in frenzy,' like rare Ben, who seems to have excelled all his fellow-compotators in sallies of wild wit and high imaginations. The recollection of these brave translunary scenes' of the poets inspired the muse of Herrick in the following strain :

Ah Ben!

Say how or when
Shall we, thy guests,
Meet at those lyric feasts

Made at the Sun,

The Dog, the Triple Tun;
Where we such clusters had

As made us nobly wild, not mad? And yet each verse of thine Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine.

My Ben!

Or come again,

Or send to us

Thy wit's great overplus.
But teach us yet

Wisely to husband it;

Lest we that talent spend ;

And having once brought to an end

That precious stock, the store

Of such a wit, the world should have no more.

After the Restoration, Herrick was replaced in his Devonshire vicarage. How he was received by the rude salvages of Dean Prior, or how he felt on quitting the gaieties of the metropolis, to recorded. He was now about seventy years of resume his clerical duties and seclusion, is not age, and was probably tired of canary sack and the pleasures of a country life, if we may judge tavern jollities. He had an undoubted taste for from his works, and the fondness with which he dwells on old English festivals and rural customs. Though his rhymes were sometimes wild, he says his life was chaste, and he repented of his errors: For these my unbaptised rhymes, Writ in my wild unhallowed times, For every sentence, clause, and word, That's not inlaid with thee, O Lord! Forgive me, God, and blot each line Out of my book that is not thine; But if, 'mongst all, thou findest one Worthy thy benediction,

That one of all the rest shall be

The glory of my work and me.

The poet would better have evinced the sincerity and depth of his contrition by blotting out the unbaptised rhymes himself, or not reprinting them; but the vanity of the author probably triumphed over the penitence of the Christian. Gaiety was the natural element of Herrick. His muse was a goddess fair and free, that did not move happily in serious numbers. The time of the poet's death was long unknown; but the parish register shews that he was interred at Dean Prior, on the 15th of October 1674.

The poetical works of Herrick_lay neglected for many years after his death. They are now again in esteem, especially his shorter lyrics, some of which have been set to music, and are sung and quoted by all lovers of song. His verses, Cherry Ripe, and Gather the Rose-buds while ye may-though the sentiment and many of the expressions of the latter are taken from Spenser-possess a delicious mixture of playful fancy and natural feeling. Those To Blossoms, To Daffodils, and To Primroses, have a tinge of pathos that wins its way to the heart. They abound, like all Herrick's poems, in lively imagery and conceits; but the pensive moral feeling predominates, and we feel that the poet's smiles might as well be tears. Shakspeare and Jonson had scattered such delicate fancies and snatches of lyrical melody among their plays and masksMilton's Comus and the Arcades had also been published-Carew and Suckling were before him -Herrick was, therefore, not without models of the highest excellence in this species of composition. There is, however, in his songs and anacreontics, an unforced gaiety and natural tenderness, that shew he wrote chiefly from the impulses of his own cheerful and happy nature. The select beauty and picturesqueness of Herrick's language, when he is in his happiest vein, is worthy of his fine conceptions; and his versification is harmony itself. His verses bound and flow like some exquisite lively melody, that echoes nature by wood and dell, and presents new beauties at every turn and winding. The strain is short, and sometimes fantastic; but the notes long linger in the mind, and take their place for ever in the memory. One or two words, such as

'gather the rose-buds,' call up a summer landscape, with youth, beauty, flowers, and music. This is, and ever must be, true poetry.

To Blossoms.

Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,
Why do you fall so fast?
Your date is not so past,

But you may stay yet here awhile,
To blush and gently smile,
And go at last.

What! were ye born to be

An hour or half's delight,
And so to bid good-night?
'Twas pity nature brought ye forth
Merely to shew your worth,
And lose you quite.

But you are lovely leaves, where we

May read how soon things have Their end, though ne'er so brave: And after they have shewn their pride, Like you awhile, they glide Into the grave.

2. It is an active flame, that flies

First to the babies of the eyes,

And charms them there with lullabies;

2. Then to the chin, the cheek, the ear, It frisks and flies: now here, now there; 'Tis now far off, and then 'tis near; Chor.-And here, and there, and everywhere.

I. Has it a speaking virtue ?—2. Yes. 1. How speaks it, say?-2. Do you but this, Part your joined lips, then speaks your kiss; Chor. And this love's sweetest language is. 1. Has it a body?-2. Ay, and wings, With thousand rare encolourings; And as it flies, it gently sings,

Chor.-Love honey yields, but never stings.

To the Virgins, to make much of their Time.
Gather the rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying,

And this same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,

The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But, being spent, the worse, and worst
Time shall succeed the former.

Be Twelfth-day queen for the night here.

Which known, let us make
Joy-sops with the cake;

And let not a man then be seen here,
Who unurged will not drink,
To the base from the brink,

A health to the king and the queen here.

Next crown the bowl full
With gentle lamb's-wool ;1
Add sugar, nutmeg, and ginger,
With store of ale, too;
And thus ye must do

To make the wassail a swinger.

Give them to the king
And queen wassailing;

And though with ale ye be wet here;
Yet part ye from hence,

As free from offence,

As when ye innocent met here.