YOUNG LOVE.

[Abridged from 8 stanzas.]

COME, little infant! love me now,
While thine unsuspected years

Clear thine aged father's brow
From cold jealousy and fears.

Pretty surely 'twere to see

By young love old time beguil'd, While our sportings are as free

As the nurses with the child.

Common beauties stay fifteen;

Such as yours should swifter move; Whose fair blossoms are too green Yet for lust, but not for love.

Love as much the snowy lamb,

Or the wanton kid does prize,

As the lusty bull, or ram,
For his morning sacrifice.

Now then love me: time may take Thee before thy time away;

Of this need we'll virtue make, And learn love before we may.

So we win of doubtful fate;

And if good she to us meant, We that good shall antedate; And if ill, that ill prevent.

છે.

ALEXANDER BROME.

[From his "Songs and other Poems," of which the first edition appeared in 1660, the second in 1664, and the third in 1668.]

The character of this witty loyalist, who is supposed to have contributed very essentially by his writings to the restoration of Charles II. is thus drawn by honest Isaac Walton, in what he calls " an humble Eglog, written on the 29th of May, 1660."

DAMON AND DORUS.

*

Let rebels' spirits sink, let those
That like the Goths and Vandals rose
To ruin families, and bring
Contempt upon our church, our king,
And all that's dear to us, be sad;
But be not thou; let us be glad.
And Dorus, to invite thee, look,

Here's a collection in this book
Of all those cheerful songs, that we
Have sung so oft and merrily,

As we have march'd to fight the cause
Of God's anointed, and our laws:

Such songs as virgins need not fear

To sing, or a grave matron hear.

Here's love dress'd neat, and chaste, and gay
As gardens in the month of May;

Here's harmony, and wit, and art,

To raise thy thoughts, and cheer thy heart.

Dorus. Written by whom?

Damon.

A friend of mine,

And one that's worthy to be thine:

A civil swain, that knows his times

For business, and that done, makes rhymes,
But not till then: my friend's a man
Loved by the muses, dear to Pan;
He blest him with a cheerful heart,

And they with this sharp wit, and art,
Which he so tempers, as no swain

That's loyal does or should complain, &c.

Born 1620: died 1666. He was an attorney in the Lord Mayor's Court, and preserved his loyalty untainted through the whole of the civil wars and the protectorship. In 1651, he published a comedy intitled " the Cunning Lovers," and in 1666, a translation of Horace by himself and others. He was also the editor of the dramatic works of his brother, Richard Brome.

SONG.

To a coy Lady.

I PRITHEE leave this peevish fashion,

Don't desire to be high-priz'd,
Love's a princely noble passion,

And doth scorn to be despis'd.

Though we say you're fair, you know

We your beauty do bestow,

For our fancy makes you so,

Don't be proud 'cause we adore you, We do't only for our pleasure; And those parts in which you glory We by fancy weigh and measure. When for deities you go,

For angels or for queens, pray know "Tis our fancy makes you so.

Don't suppose your majesty
By tyranny's best signified,
And your angelic natures be

Distinguish'd only by your pride. Tyrants make subjects rebels grow, And pride makes angels devils below, And your pride may make you so.

PALINODE.

No more, no more of this, I vow
"Tis time to leave this fooling now,
Which few but fools call wit;

There was a time when I begun,
And now 'tis time I should have done,
And meddle no more with it.
He physic's use doth quite mistake
That physic takes for physic's sake.