From SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT'S
The Siege of Rhodes, 1656.

LADIES IN ARMS.

LET us live, live! for, being dead,

The pretty spots,

Ribbons and knots,

And the fine French dress for the head,
No lady wears upon her

In the cold, cold bed of honour.

Beat down our grottos, and hew down our bowers,
Dig up our arbours, and root up our flowers;
Our gardens are bulwarks and bastions become;
Then hang up our lute, we must sing to the drum.
Our patches and our curls,

So exact in each station,
Our powders and our purls,1

Are now out of fashion.

Hence with our needles, and give us your spades; We, that were ladies, grow coarse as our maids. Our coaches have driven us to balls at the court, We now must drive barrows to earth up the fort.

CURSED JEALOUSY.

HIS cursed jealousy, what is't?

THIS

'Tis love that has lost itself in a mist;

'Tis love being frighted out of his wits;

'Tis love that has a fever got;

Love that is violently hot,

But troubled with cold and trembling fits.

'Tis yet a more unnatural evil:

Tis the god of love, 'tis the god of love, possessed

with a devil.

1 Embroidered borders of lace.

'Tis rich corrupted wine of love,

Which sharpest vinegar does prove;

From all the sweet flowers which might honey make, It does a deadly poison bring:

Strange serpent which itself doth sting!

It never can sleep, and dreams still awake;

It stuffs up the marriage-bed with thorns.

It gores itself, it gores itself, with imagined horns.

From SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT'S

The Man's the Master, 1669.

DRINK, DRINK, DRINK!

THE bread is all baked,

The embers are raked;

'Tis midnight now by chanticleer's first crowing; Let's kindly carouse

Whilst 'top of the house

The cats fall out in the heat of their wooing.
Time, whilst thy hour-glass does run out,
This flowing glass shall go about.

Stay, stay, the nurse is waked, the child does cry,
No song so ancient is as lulla-by.

The cradle's rocked, the child is hushed again,
Then hey for the maids, and ho for the men.
Now everyone advance his glass;
Then all at once together clash;
Experienced lovers know

This clashing does but show

That, as in music, so in love must be

Some discord to make up a harmony.

Sing, sing! When crickets sing why should not we?

Q

The crickets were merry before us;

They sung us thanks ere we made them a fire.
They taught us to sing in a chorus:

The chimney's their church, the oven their quire.
Once more the cock cries cock-a-doodle-doo!
The owl cries o'er the barn, to-whit-to-whoo!
Benighted travellers now lose their way

Whom Will-of-the-wisp bewitches:
About and about he leads them astray
Through bogs, through hedges, and ditches.
Hark! hark! the cloister bell is rung!
Alas! the midnight dirge is sung.

Let 'em ring,

Let 'em sing,

Whilst we spend the night in love and in laughter. When night is gone,

O then too soon

The discords and cares of the day come after.

Come, boys! a health, a health, a double health
To those who 'scape from care by shunning wealth.
Dispatch it away

Before it be day,

'Twill quickly grow early when it is late:

A health to thee,

To him, to me,

To all who beauty love, and business hate!

From SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT'S
The Law against Lovers, 1673.

WAKE ALL THE DEAD! WHAT HO! WHAT HO!

WAKE all the dead! what ho! what ho!

How soundly they sleep whose pillows lie low?
They mind not poor lovers who walk above
On the decks of the world in storms of love.
No whisper now nor glance shall pass

Through wickets or through panes of glass;
For our windows and doors are shut and barred.
Lie close in the church, and in the churchyard.
In every grave make room, make room!
The world's at an end, and we come, we come.

The state is now love's foe, love's foe;
'T has seized on his arms, his quiver and bow;
Has pinioned his wings, and fettered his feet,
Because he made way for lovers to meet.

But, O sad chance, his judge was old;

Hearts cruel grow, when blood grows cold. No man being young his process would draw. O heavens, that love should be subject to law! Lovers go woo the dead, the dead!

Lie two in a grave, and to bed, to bed!

From SIR WILLIAM BERKLEY'S

The Lost Lady, 1639.

WHERE DID YOU BORROW THAT LAST SIGH?

WHERE did you borrow that last sigh,

WHERE

And that relenting groan?

For those that sigh, and not for love,

Usurp what's not their own.

Love's arrows sooner armour pierce

Than your soft snowy skin;
Your eyes can only teach us love,
But cannot take it in.

From JASPER MAYNE'S The
Amorous War, 1648.

TIME is the feathered thing,

And, whilst I praise

The sparklings of thy looks and call them rays,
Takes wing,

Leaving behind him as he flies

An unperceived dimness in thine eyes.
His minutes whilst th' are told

Do make us old;

And every sand of his fleet glass,
Increasing age as it doth pass,
Insensibly sows wrinkles there
Where flowers and roses do appear.

Whilst we do speak, our fire
Doth into ice expire;