Nor grieve this crystal stream so soon did fall The banks she past, so that each neighbour field The asp's slow venom, trembling she should be The flowers instruct our sorrows. Come, then, all Ye beauties, to true beauty's funeral, And with her to increase death's pomp, decay. Is fallen, how can ye stand? How can the night AGAINST THEM WHO LAY UNCHASTITY TO THE They meet but with unwholesome springs, Affirm no woman chaste and fair. Go, cure your fevers; and you'll say The dog-days scorch not all the year: In copper mines no longer stay, And grant all gold's not alchemy. What madman, 'cause the glow-worm's flame From guilt, damn'd to the bondage be? Nor grieve, Castara, though t' were frail; 'Tis majesty to rule alone. TO CASTARA. OF TRUE delight. Why doth the ear so tempt the voice As soon as I my ear obey, The echo's lost even with the breath; I'm left with no more taste than death. Be curious in pursuit of eyes Quick fancy! how it mocks delight! When I have sold my heart to lust, The rose yields her sweet blandishment When early in the spring she breathes. But winter comes, and makes each flower Our senses, like false glasses, show NOX NOCTI INDICAT SCIENTIAM. When I survey the bright Celestial sphere : So rich with jewels hung, that night My soul her wings doth spread The Almighty's mysteries to read For the bright firmament Shoots forth no flame So silent, but is eloquent In speaking the Creator's name. No unregarded star Contracts its light, Into so small a character, Remov'd far from our human sight, But if we steadfast look We shall discern In it as in some holy book, How man may heavenly knowledge learn. It tells the conqueror, That far-stretched power, Which his proud dangers traffic for, Is but the triumph of an hour. That from the farthest north Some nation may Yet undiscovered issue forth, And o'er his new got conquest sway. Some nation yet shut in With hills of ice, May be let out to scourge his sin, And then they likewise shall For as yourselves your empires fall, Thus those celestial fires, Though seeming mute, The fallacy of our desires And all the pride of life, confute. For they have watched since first And found sin in itself accursed, SIR JOHN SUCKLING. [SUCKLING was born at Twickenham in 1608-9, and committed suicide in Paris in 1642. He published during his life-time the drama of Aglaura in 1638 and the Ballad of a Wedding in 1640. His other works were first collected posthumously in 1648, under the title of Fragmenta Aurea.] It is impossible to consider the poems of Suckling without regard to his career. No English poet has lived a life so public, so adventurous and so full of vicissitude as his. Nothing short of an irresistible bias towards the art of poetry could have induced so busy and so fortunate a man to write in verse at all. Beautiful and vigorous in body, educated in all the accomplishments that grace a gentleman, endowed from earliest youth with the prestige of a soldier and a popular courtier, his enormous wealth enabled him to indulge every whim that a fondness for what was splendid or eccentric in dress, architecture and pageantry could devise. Such a life could present no void which literary ambition could fill, and Suckling's scorn for poetic fame was well known to his contemporaries. At the age of nineteen he went away to the continent, and wandered through France, Italy, Germany and Spain for four years, seeking adventure. He offered his sword to the King of Sweden, fought in command of a troop in front of Glogau and of Magdeburg, performed astounding feats of prowess in Silesia, and returned before the battle of Lützen simply because his imperious fancy began to find the great war a tedious pastime. He proceeded to London, and lived for six years in a style of such gorgeous profusion that at last he contrived to cripple one of the amplest fortunes of that age. He retired for a while, ostentatiously enough, into a literary seclusion at Bath, taking the obsequious Davenant with him as a sort of amanuensis. During this brief time, no doubt, his tragedies were composed. The King, however, |