IF cross'd with all mishaps be my poor life,
If one short day I never spent in mirth,
If my spirit with itself holds lasting strife,
If sorrow's death is but new sorrow's birth;
If this vain world be but a sable stage
Where slave-born man plays to the scoffing stars*,
If youth be toss'd with love, with weakness age,
If Knowledge serve to hold our thoughts in wars;
If time can close the hundred mouths of Fame,
And make what's long since past, like that to be,
If Virtue only be an idle name,

If I when I was born was born to die;

Why seek I to prolong these loathsome days?
The fairest rose in shortest time decays.

DRUMMOND.

Where slave-born man plays to the scoffing stars.] This language of desperation may be compared with these lines of Drayton:

Which doth inforce me partly to prefer
The opinion of that mad philosopher,

Who taught, that those all-framing powers above
(As 'tis supposed) made man not out of love

To him at all, but only as a thing

To make them sport with, which they use to bring
As men do monkies, puppets, and such tools.

Drayton to W. Browne.

In contradiction to this absurd and uncomfortable doctrine, let us hear what one of the wisest and greatest men this country has produced says: " But that nature should implant in man such a strong propension to religion, which is the reverence of a Deity, there being neither God nor angel nor spirit in the world, is such a slur committed by her, as there can be in no wise excogitated any excuse for. If there were a higher species of things to laugh at, as we do at the ape, it might seem more tolerable." Dr. H. More's Antidote against

1

TO THE SPRING*.

SWEET spring, thou turn'st + with all thy goodly train,
Thy head with flames, thy mantle bright with flow'rs,
The Zephyrs curl the green locks of the plain,
The clouds for joy in pearls weep down their show'rs.
Thou turn'st (sweet youth); but ah, my pleasant hours
And happy days with thee come not again,
The sad memorials only of my pain

Do with thee turn, which turn my sweets in sours.
Thou art the same which still thou wast before,
Delicious, wanton, amiable, fair;

But she, whose breath embalm'd thy wholesome air,
Is gone: nor gold nor gems her can restore.

Neglected Virtue, seasons go

and come,

While thine forgot lie closed in a tomb.

DRUMMOND.

Atheism, p. 152, Edit. 1655. The concluding idea in this extract some. what reminds us of a line in Pope's Essay on Man:

Superior beings..

Admir'd such wisdom in an earthly shape,
And show'd a Newton as we show an ape.

The best of Spenser's Sonnets is addressed to the Spring, Vol. V,

p. 73, Hughes's Edit.

+ Turn'st is here used for return'st.

Look how the flower, which ling'ringly doth fade,
The morning's darling late, the summer's queen,
Spoil'd of that juice, which kept it fresh and green,
As high as it did raise, bows low the head;
Right so my life (contentments being dead,
Or in their contraries but only seen)

With swifter speed declines than erst it spread,
And (blasted) scarce now shows what it hath been.
As doth the pilgrim therefore whom the night
By darkness would imprison on his way,
Think on thy home, (my soul) and think aright,
Of what yet rests thee of life's wasting day:
Thy sun posts westward, passed is thy morn,
And twice it is not given thee to be born*,

Drummond, Flowers of Sion,
1630, 4to.

* And twice it is not given thee to be born.] A mere reference might disappoint the classical reader; as such, I shall make no scruple to quote at length the well-known beautiful lines of Moschus on this subject:

Αι, Αι, ταὶ μαλάχαι μὲν ἐπὴν κατὰ κᾶπον ἔλωνίαι,
Η τὰ χλωρὰ σέλινα, τὸ τ ̓ εὐθαλὲς ὅλον ἄνηθον,
Ύστερον αν ζωονλι καὶ εἰς ἕλος ἄλλο φύοντι
Αμμες δ' οἱ μεγάλοι καὶ καρτεροὶ ἡ σοφοὶ ἄνδρες,
Οππότε πρώτα θάνωμες, ἀνάκροι ἐν χθονὶ κοιλα
Εύδομες εν μάλα μακρὸν ἀτέρμονα νήγρεῖον ύπνον.

I never saw the spirit of these verses better transfused, than in the following extract from the very early production of a friend, whose poetry is among the least of his many elegant attainments:

Yet mark the violet, how it loads with sweets
The pregnant gale, spreading its purple leaves;
The painted pink too, with the rose-bud's bloom,
And fair narcissus catch th' enchanted eye.
When winter's frost arrests the rushing stream,

TO THE NIGHTINGALE*.

SWEET bird, that sing'st away the early hours,
Of winters past, or coming void of care,
Well pleased with delights which present are,
Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers:
To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowers
Thou thy creator's goodness dost declare,
And what dear gifts on thee he did not spare,
A stain to human sense in sin that lowers.

And binds in icy chains the sadden'd year;
Fled is their beauty, fled that fragrant breath
Wont to regale the weary passenger.
But when the spring ethereal mildness sheds,
And bids the book its former flow resume,
Up springs the lark, Aurora's messenger,
Gladdning the goat-herd with his early song;
Each plant, each tower, inhales the genial breath,
And, op'ning into life, again pours forth,
Loose on the zephyr, all its wonted sweets.
Again the violet dark resumes its hue,
Nor wanting to the rose-bud is its bloom.
Whate'er amid the plant creation erst
Conspir'd to make the joyous year complete,
Again shoots forth, renewing ali its power:
Then why boasts man his origin divine,
(Lord of the universe, creation's pride)

His spring but once, but once his winter comes,
And when he falls, he falls to rise no more?

This note has been already too much extended to admit of Dr.Jor tin's imitation of Moschus's lines. See Lusus Poet. p. 32.

*The ancients seem to have been equally attached to this bird as the moderns. Attentive mention is made of it in Homer, Theocritus, Virgil, and Horace; and Mr. Huntingford, in his Apology for the Monostrophics (one of the few controversial works in which the scho

What soul can be so sick, which by thy songs
(Attir'd in sweetness) sweetly is not driven

Quite to forget earth's turmoils, spites and wrongs,
And lift a reverend eye and thought to heaven?

lar and the gentleman are most happily blended), has, by many passages, proved it the favourite also of Sophocles. See p. 89, &c. Some of the best poets of this country have signified their partiality to it, in strains almost as delicious as its own. Milton's regard for it must be well known to all his readers, as it has been remarked by almost all his commentators. Thomson*, pre-eminently the poet of nature, who wrote immediately from observation, has not been wanting in its praises. Gray has remembered it in his Ode to Spring. Is it not somewhat strange that Collins should have omitted to mention this bird? In all his poetry I recollect no allusion to this subject, and have always considered the absence of Philomel as no trivial blemish in his Ode to Evening. But above all the panegyrics that have been deservedly passed upon this universal favourite, I have seen nothing yet that in any degree approaches the notice of one who was certainly no poet; my reader will be surprised, perhaps, when I name honest Isaac Walton. But let him read this and judge. "But the nightingale, another of my airy creatures, breathes such sweet loud music out of her little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind to think miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say, Lord, what music hast thou provided for the saints in heaven, when thou affordest bad men such music on earth' 2" Complete Angler, page 1.

I will subjoin a few descriptions from our older poets. Niccols has been very minute on this head:

The little Philomel with curious care
Sitting alone, her ditties did prepare,
And many tunes, whose harmony did pass
All music else that e'er invented was;

The elegant and ingenious Mr. Pennant has very properly quoted in his British Zoology every passage from Milton in which it is mentioned.