A Description of the Country's Recreations. QUIVERING Fears, heart-tearing Cares, Fly, fly to courts! Fly to fond worldlings' sports, Where strain'd Sardonic Smiles are glosing still, And sorrows only real be! Fly from our country pastimes! fly, Come, serene looks, Clear as the chrystal brooks, Or the pure azur'd heaven, that smiles to see Peace and a secure mind, Which all men seek, we only find. Abused mortals! did you know Where joy, heart's-ease, and comforts grow, You'd scorn proud towers, And seek them in these bowers Where winds sometimes our woods perhaps may shake, But blustering care could never tempest make, Nor murmurs e'er come nigh us, Here's no fantastic masque, nor dance, But of our kids, that frisk and prance; Nor wars are seen, Unless upon the green Two harmless lambs are butting one the other; Which done, both bleating run, each to his mother; And wounds are never found, Save what the plough-share gives the ground. Go, let the diving negro seek For gems, hid in some forlorn creek! We all pearls scorn, Save what the dewy morn Congeals upon each little spire of grass, Which careless shepherds beat down as they pass; And gold ne'er here appears, Save what the yellow Ceres bears. Blest, silent groves! O may ye be For ever Mirth's best nursery! May pure Contents For ever pitch their tents Upon these downs, these meads, these rocks, these mountains, And Peace still slumber by these purling fountains, Which we may every year Find, when we come a-fishing here. Subscribed Ignoto. Tears at the grave of Sir Albertus Morton, who was buried at Southampton, wept by Sir H. Wotton. SILENCE, in truth, would speak my sorrow best, For deepest wounds can least their feelings tell: Yet, let me borrow from mine own unrest But time to bid him whom I lov'd farewell! Oh my unhappy lines! you that before Have serv'd my youth to vent some wanton cries, And now, congeal'd with grief, can scarce implore Strength to accènt,-Here my Albertus lies! This is the sable stone, this is the cave And womb of earth that doth his corps em brace! While others sing his praise, let me engrave These bleeding numbers to adorn the place. Here will I paint the characters of wo, Where, though I mourn my matchless loss alone, And none between my weakness judge and me; Yet e'en these pensive walls allow my moan, Whose doleful echoes to my plaints agree. But is he gone? and live I rhyming here As if some Muse would listen to my lay, When all distun'd sit waiting for their dear, And bathe the banks where he was wont to play? Dwell thou in endless light, discharged Soul, Freed now from Nature's and from Fortune's trust! While on this fluent globe my glass shall roll, Upon the Death of Sir Albertus Morton's Wife. He first deceas'd; she for a little tried SIR JOHN DAVIS, The son of a wealthy tanner at Chisgrove, in Wiltshire, was born about 1570, and in 1585 entered a commoner at Queen's-College, Oxford. Having taken a degree, he removed to the Middle Temple; but was expelled, says Wood, for that "he being a high-spirited young man, did, upon some "slight provocation or punctilio, bastinado Rich. Martin "6 (afterward recorder of London) in the common-hall, "while he was at dinner." He then retired to Oxford, and composed his "Nosce Teipsum." Being restored by the favour of the lord keeper Ellesmere, he practised as a barrister; was elected a burgess in Parliament in 1601; and, after the death of Elizabeth, was successively promoted by King James to the offices of solicitor and attorney-general, of serjeant at law, and king's serjeant in Ireland, and in 1626 was appointed chief justice of the King's Bench in England; but died before he could enter upon the duties of this office. His poem on the Immortality of the Soul is a noble monu ment of his learning, acuteness, command of language, and facility of versification. His similies (as Mrs. Cooper and Mr. Headley have justly observed) are singularly happy; always enlivening, and often illustrating his abstruse and difficult subject: but while we admire his wit and ingenuity, we sometimes regret the more indefinite but sublimer conceptions of his model, Lucretius. Besides the "Nosce Teipsum," he composed "Orchestra," a poem on Dancing; and twenty-six "Acrosticke Hymnes" on the words Elisabetha Regina, one of which is here given. They are probably the best acrostics ever written, B b VOL. II. |