Each greedy hand will strive to catch the flower,
When none regard the stalk it grows upon;
Baseness desires the fruit still to devour,
And leave the tree to fall or stand alone:

But this advice, fair creature, take of me,
Let none take fruit unless he'll have the tree.

Believe not oaths, nor much-protesting men,
Credit no vows, nor a bewailing song;

Let courtiers swear, forswear, and swear again,
The heart doth live ten regions from the tongue :

For when with oaths and vows they make
you tremble,
Believe them least, for then they most dissemble.

Beware lest Croesus do corrupt thy mind,
Or fond Ambition sell thy modesty;

Say, though a king thou even courteous find,
He cannot pardon thy impurity.

Begin with kings, to subjects you will fall,
From lord to lacquey, and at last to all *.

Epigrams, subjoined to J. Sylvester's
Du Bartas, Edit. 1641.

* These lines, though far from excellent, are stik, in my opinion, better than any thing Sylvester could have produced. I am therefore inclined to suspect, that the publisher of the folio edition of Du Bartas, in 1641, is mistaken in giving this to Sylvester. In the same edition, p. 652, verses, entitled The Soules Errand, are to be found (printed in Vol. II. of Dr. Percy's Reliques, under the title of The Lye,) and beyond a doubt not his.

THE

FRAILTY AND HURTFULNESS OF BEAUTY.

BRITTLE beauty, that nature made so frail,

Whereof the gift is small, and short the season;
Flow'ring to-day, to-morrow apt to fail,
Tickled treasure, abhorred of reason:

Dangerous to deal with, vain, of none avail,
Costly in keeping, past, not worth two peason;
Slipper in sliding, as is an eel's tail;

Hard to attain, once gotten not geason.
Jewel of jeopardy, that peril doth assail,
False and untrue, enticed oft to treason;
Enemy to youth, that most may I bewail;
Ah, bitter sweet! infecting as the poison,
Thou farest as fruit, that with the frost is taken,
To-day ready ripe, to-morrow all to shaken.

EARL OF SURREY.

TO THE ROSE.

SWEET rose, whence is this hue

Which does all hues excel?

Whence this most fragrant smell?

And whence this form and gracing grace* in you?
In flow'ry Postum's fields perhaps you grew,

. gracing grace.] This is a sort of Græcism. As innumerable instances of this form of expression will immediately suggest themselves to the classical reader, one instance will be sufficient here:

, hunc, oro, sine me furere ante furorem.

Æn. XII. 680.

Or Hybla's hills you bred,

Or odoriferous Enna's plains you fed,

Or Tmolus, or where boar young Adon' slew;
Or hath the queen of love you dy'd of new

In that dear blood, which makes you look so red?
No, none of these, but cause more high you bliss'd,
My lady's breast you bore, her lips you kiss'd.

Drummond's Sonnets and Madrig.
Edinb. 1711, Fol.

DRY those fair, those crystal eyes,

Which like growing fountains rise

To drown their banks. Grief's sullen brooks
Would better flow in furrow'd looks.

Thy lovely face was never meant
To be the shore of discontent.

Then clear those wat'rish stars again,
Which else portend a lasting rain;
Lest the clouds which settle there
Prolong my winter all the year:
And the example others make
In love with sorrow for thy sake.

Dr. King's Poems, p. 19.

Whence will Cupid get his darts

Feather'd now to pierce our hearts ?

A wound he may,

Not love convey,

Now this faithful bird is gone;

O let mournful turtles join

With loving redbreasts*, and combine

To sing dirges o'er his stone.

Cartwright's Plays and Poems.

* With loving redbreasts.] This bird has justly been a favourite with some of our most distinguished poets, and has received due attention from them in their writings. I will set before the reader a few instances, out of many which I have collected, perhaps rather too idly and unnecessarily. In a concert of birds by Browne, B. I. Song iii. the redbreast is thus distinguished:

The mountain lark, day's herald, got on wing,
Bidding each bird choose out his bough and sing.
The lofty treble sung the little wren;

Robin, the mean, that best of all loves men.

Thompson's Edit.

In Niccols's Cuckow, p. 12, Edit. 1607, in a collection of birds we meet with

The redbreast sweet, that loves the looks of men.

Drayton, in his Owl:

Covering with moss the dead's unclosed eye,
The little redbreast teacheth charity.

Collins, in his Dirge :

The redbreast oft at evening hours

Shall kindly lend his little aid,

With hoary moss and gather'd flowers,

To deck the ground where thou art laid.

But above all others on this subject, Thomson is entitled to superlative praise:

one alone,

The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,
Wisely regardful of th' embroiling sky,
In joyless fields, and thorny thickets, leave
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
His annual visit. Half afraid, he first