Odours sweet perfume the skies;
See how heavenly lightning fires
Hearts inflamed with high aspires!
All the substance of our souls
Up in clouds of incense rolls.
Leave we nothing to ourselves
Save a voice-what need we else!
Or an hand to wear and tire
On the thankful lute or lyre!
Sing aloud! His praise rehearse
Who hath made the universe.

RICHARD CRASHAW.

(16137-1649.)

The Wishes first appeared in Crashaw's The Delights of the Muses, 1646. The Flaming Heart: upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphical Saint Teresa first appeared in the second edition of Steps to the Temple, Sacred Poems, in 1648. The next piece is Crashaw's own translation, in 1646, of his Latin epigram No. 1, Pharisæus et Publicanus, in his Epigrammatum Sacrorum Liber, 1634. Crashaw's Works, edited by Dr. Grosart, 1872, are in the Fuller Worthies Library; his Poems are included in vol. vi. of Chalmers' Poets.

WISHES: TO HIS SUPPOSED MISTRESS.

WHOE'ER she be,

That not impossible she

That shall command my heart and me;

Where'er she lie,

Locked up from mortal eye,

In shady leaves of Destiny;

Till that ripe birth

Of studied Fate stand forth,

And teach her fair steps tread our Earth;

Till that divine

Idea take a shrine

Of crystal flesh, through which to shine;

Meet you her, my wishes,

Bespeak her to my blisses,

And be ye called, my absent kisses.

I wish her, beauty

That owes not all its duty

To gaudy tire or glistering shoe tie.

A face that's best

By its own beauty drest,

And can alone commend the rest.

A cheek where Youth,

And blood, with pen of Truth

Write, what their reader sweetly ru'th.

Lips, where all day

A lover's kiss may play

Yet carry nothing thence away.

Eyes, that displace

The neighbour diamond, and out-face

That sunshine, by their own sweet grace.

Tresses, that wear

Jewels, but to declare

How much themselves more precious are.

Days, that need borrow,

No part of their good morrow

From a forespent night of sorrow.

Life, that dares send

A challenge to his end

And when it comes say, Welcome friend!

I wish her store

Of worth may leave her poor

Of wishes; and I wish—no more.

Now if Time knows

That her, whose radiant brows
Weave them a garland of my vows;

Her that dares be,

What these lines wish to see:

I seek no further: it is she.

THE FLAMING HEART.

LIVE in these conquering leaves; live all the same;
And walk through all tongues one triumphant flame.
Live here, great heart; and love and die and kill;
And bleed and wound and yield and conquer still.
Let this immortal life where'er it comes
Walk in a crowd of loves and martyrdoms.
Let mystic deaths wait on 't; and wise souls be
The love-slain witnesses of this life of thee.
O sweet incendiary! show here thy art,
Upon this carcass of a hard cold heart;
Let all thy scattered shafts of light, that play
Among the leaves of thy large books of day,
Combined against this breast at once break in,
And take away from me my self and sin;
This gracious robbery shall thy bounty be,
And my best fortunes such fair spoils of me.
O thou undaunted daughter of desires!

(M 349)

X

By all thy dower of lights and fires;
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove;
By all thy lives and deaths of love;
By thy large draughts of intellectual day;
And by thy thirsts of love more large than they;
By all thy brim-filled bowls of fierce desire;

By thy last morning's draught of liquid fire;

By the full kingdom of that final kiss

That seized thy parting soul, and sealed thee His;

By all the heaven thou hast in Him

(Fair sister of the seraphim);

By all of Him we have in thee,
Leave nothing of my self in me.
Let me so read thy life, that I
Unto all life of mine may die.

TWO WENT UP INTO THE TEMPLE TO PRAY.

'WO went to pray? O rather say

Two

One went to brag, the other to pray:

One stands up close and treads on high,
Where the other dares not send his eye.

One nearer to God's altar trod,
The other to the altar's God.

HENRY VAUGHAN.

(1621-1695).

The Works of Henry Vaughan, Silurist", fill four volumes of the Fuller Worthies Library, edited by Dr. A. B. Grosart, 1871; they also appear in the Muses' Library, edited by Mr. E. K. Chambers, 1896. His Sacred Poems have been reprinted also in the Aldine Poets, 1847, edited by the Rev. H. F. Lyte, and his Secular Poems have been edited by Mr. J. R. Tutin, Hull, 1893. The first three selections are found in Silex Scintillans, 1650; the next in Part II. of the same title, 1655; and the last from Thalia Rediviva, 1678.

THE RETREAT.

[APPY those early days, when I

HAPPY

Shined in my angel-infancy!

Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy ought
But a white, celestial thought;
When yet I had not walked above
A mile or two from my first love,
And looking back-at that short space—
Could see a glimpse of His bright face;
When on some gilded cloud or flower
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;

Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense,
A several sin to every sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.
O how I long to travel back,
And tread again that ancient track!
That I might once more reach that plain,
Where first I left my glorious train;