I cut my love into his gentle bark,

And in three days, behold! 'tis dead:
My very written flames so violent be,

They 've burnt and wither'd-up the tree.
How should I live myself, whose heart is found
Deeply graven every where
With the large history of many a wound,
Larger than thy trunk can bear?
With art as strange as Homer in the nut,
Love in my heart has volumes put.

There is no danger, if the pain
Should me to a fever bring;
Compar'd with heats I now sustain,
A fever is so cool a thing,

(Like drink which feverish men desire)
That I should hope 'twould almost quench my

fire.

THE SEPARATION.

Ask me not what my love shall do or be
(Love, which is soul to body, and soul of me!)
When I am separated from thee;
Alas! I might as easily show,
What after death the soul will do;
'Twill last, I'm sure, and that is all we know.
The thing call'd soul will never stir nor move,
But all that while a lifeless carcase prove;

For 'tis the body of my love:
Not that my love will fly away,
But still continue; as, they say,
Sad troubled ghosts about their graves

What a few words from thy rich stock did take
The leaves and beauties all,

As a strong poison with one drop does make
The nails and hairs to fall:

THE TREE.

I CHOSE the flourishing'st tree in all the park,
With freshest boughs and fairest head;

Love (I see now) a kind of witchcraft is,
Or characters could ne'er do this.

Pardon, ye birds and nymphs, who lov'd this

shade;

do stray.

And pardon me, thou gentle tree;

I thought her name would thee have happy made,
And blessed omens hop'd from thee:

"Notes of my love, thrive here," said I, "and

grow;

And with ye let my love do so."

Alas, poor youth! thy love will never thrive !
This blasted tree predestines it;
Go, tie the dismal knot (why should'st thou live?)
And, by the lines thou there hast writ,
Deform'dly hanging, the sad picture be
To that unlucky history.

THE GAZERS.

COME, let's go on, where love and youth does
I've seen too much, if this be all." [call;
Alas! how far more wealthy might I be
With a contented ignorant poverty!

To show such stores, and nothing grant,
Is to enrage and vex my want.
For Love to die an infant is lesser ill,
Than to live long, yet live in childhood still.
We 'ave both sat gazing only, hitherto,
As man and wife in picture do:
The richest crop of joy is still behind,
And he who only sees, in love, is blind.
So, at first, Pygmalion lov'd,
But th' amour at last improv'd;
The Statue itself at last a woman grew,
And so at last, my dear, should you do too.
Beauty to man the greatest torture is,
Unless it lead to farther bliss,
Beyond the tyrannous pleasures of the eye;
t grows too serious a cruelty,

Unless it heal, as well as strike:
I would not, salamander-like,
In scorching heats always to live desire,
But, like a martyr, pass to Heaven through fire.

Though in thy thoughts scarce any tracks have
So much as of original sin,
[been

Such charms thy beauty wears, as might
Desires in dying confess'd saints excite:
Thou, with strange adultery,
Dost in each breast a brothel keep;
Awake, all men do lust for thee,
And some enjoy thee when they sleep.
Ne'er before did woman live,
Who to such multitudes did give
The root and cause of sin, but only Eve.
Though in thy breast so quick a pity be,

That a fly's death 's a wound to thee;
Though savage and rock-hearted those
Appear, that weep not ev'n romance's woes;
Yet ne'er before was tyrant known,
Whose rage was of so large extent;
The ills thou dost are whole thine own;
Thou'rt principal and instrument:
In all the deaths that come from you,
You do the treble office do

Of judge, of torturer, and of weapon too.
Thou lovely instrument of angry Fate,

Which God did for our faults create!
Thou pleasant, universal ill,
Which, sweet as health, yet like a plague dot
kill!

She. Though public punishment we escape, the
Will rack and torture us within: [sin
Guilt and sin our bosom bears;
And, though fair yet the fruit appears,
That worm which now the core does
waste,

When long 't has gnaw'd within, will break the
skin at last.

He. That thirsty drink, that hungry food, I

sought,

That wounded balm is all my

fault;

But she, fond maid, shuts and seals up the spring. Metals grow within the mine,

And not one star in Heaven offers to take thy part. Seek the birds in spring to pair?

We're by those serpents bit; but we're devour'd When young maidens courtship shurt,

almost without any thing else, makes an excel

Ir a man should undertake to translate Pindar word for word, it would be thought, that one mad-lent poet; for though the grammarians and critics man had translated another; as may appear, have laboured to reduce his verses into regular when he that understands not the original, reads feet and measures (as they have also those of the verbal traduction of him into Latin prose, the Greek and Latin comedies) yet in effect they than which nothing seems more raving. And are little better than prose to our ears. And I sure, rhyme, without the addition of wit, and would gladly know what applause our best pieces the spirit of poetry, (quod nequeo monstrare & of English poesy could expect from a Frenchsentio tantum) would but make it ten times man or Italian, if converted faithfully, and word more distracted than it is in prose. We must for word, into French or Italian prose. And consider in Pindar the great difference of time when we have considered all this, we must needs betwixt his age and ours, which changes, as in confess, that, after all these losses sustained by pictures, at least, the colours of poetry; the no Pindar, all we can add to him by our wit or inless difference betwixt the religions and customs vention (not deserting still his subject) is not of our countries; and a thousand particularities like to make him a richer man than he was in his of places, persons, and manners, which do but own country. This is in some measure to be confusedly appear to our eyes at so great a dis- applied to all translations; and the not observing And lastly (which were enough alone of it, is the cause that all which ever I yet saw for my purpose) we must consider, that our are so much inferior to their originals. The fars are strangers to the music of his numbers, like happens too in pictures, from the same root which, sometimes (especially in songs and odes) of exact imitation; which, being a vile and un

tance.