Rich hated: wise suspected: scorn'd if poor: Would the world now adopt me for her heir, Would beauty's queen entitle me 'The Fait,' Fame speak me Fortune's minion, could I vie Command bare heads, bow'd knees, strike Justice dumb, Welcome pure thoughts, welcome ye silent groves, In which I will adore sweet virtue's face. could I vie Angels with India.] An angel is a piece of coin, value ten shillings. The words to vie angels, are a periphrasis, and signify to compare wealth. See Sir J. Hawkins's note on the passage, Walton's Angler, p. 264. Cartwright uses the word angels: You shall ne'er know what angels, pieces, pounds, These names of want and beggary mean. The Ordinary, Act II. Sc. iii. Then here I'll sit, and sigh my hot love's folly, And if Contentment be a stranger then, SIR H. WOTTON. THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE. My glass is half unspent? forbear t' arrest My time-devouring minutes will be done The gain's not great I purchase by this stay; My following eye can hardly make a shift The secret wheels of hurrying time do give And what's a life? a weary pilgrimage, And what's a life? the flourishing array Read on this dial *, how the shades devour Behold these lillies, which thy hands have made To view, how soon they droop, how soon they fade! Shade not that dial night will blind too soon; * Read on this dial, &c.] No poet whatever has introduced this circumstance with the happiness of Shakspeare, who compares the silent and almost imperceptible flight of beauty to the stealing shadow of a sun-dial. As the lines are in one of his minor poems, they may probably have escaped the notice of common readers: Ah yet doth beauty like a dial hand Steal from his figure, and no place perceiv'd; So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, Poems, Constant Affection, Edit. 1640. The verses are incorrect, but the idea is fine: the shadow steals from the dial's hand, and not the dial's hand from the shadow. My short-lived winter's day.] Dyer, in his well-known Grongar Hill, well denominates the smile of Fate, A sun-beam in a winter's day. For further observations on this piece, see Jackson's very elegant and sensible Letters, Vol. II. Let. xix. Nor do I beg this slender inch, to wile The time away, or falsely to beguile My thoughts with joy; here's nothing worth a smile. Quarles' Emblems, B. III. Emb. xiii. O THAT THOU WOULDST HIDE ME IN THE GRAVE, THAT THOU WOULDST KEEP ME IN SECRET UNTIL THY WRATH BE PAST. PSALMS. AH! whither shall I fly? what path untrod Where shall I sojourn? what kind sea will hide What if my feet should take their hasty flight, What if my soul should take the wings of day, What if some, solid rock should entertain Nor sea, nor shade, nor shield, nor rock, nor cave, Where flame-ey'd Fury * means to smite, can save. "Tis vain to flee; 'till gentle Mercy show Her better eye, the further off we go, The swing of Justice deals the mightier blow. Th' ingenuous child, corrected, doth not fly Great God! there is no safety here below; Quarles' Emblems. ALL THINGS ARE VAIN. ALTHOUGH the purple morning, brags in brightness of the sun As though he had of chased night, a glorious conquest won: The time by day, gives place again to force of drowsy night, And every creature is constrain'd to change his lusty plight. flame-ey'd Fury.] An epithet highly original and fine. Shakspeare uses fire-ey'd Fury in his Romeo and Juliet. + For further observations, see Jackson's Letters, Vol. II. Let. xxx. where both these particular pieces of Quarles were first more immediately brought forward to the public eye. |