Shep. See, Love, the blushes of the morn appear, In the cowslip's bell and roses rare; Nym. Those streaks of doubtful light usher not day, Shall shine till thou return; The yellow planets and the grey Dawn shall attend thee on thy way. Shep. If thine eyes gild my paths, they may forbear Shep. Those drops will make their beams more clear, Cho. They kissed and wept, and from their lips and eyes, Their joys and sorrows meet; But she cries out. Nym. Shepherd, arise, The sun betrays us else to spies. Shep. The winged hours fly fast whilst we embrace, They move with leaden feet. Nym. Then let us pinion time, and chase The day forever from this place. Shep. Hark! Nym. Ay me! stay! Shep. Forever: Nym. No! arise! We must be gone! Shep. My nest of spice! Nym. My soul! Shep. My Paradise! Cho. Neither could say farewell, but through their eyes 6 Meanwhile the bubbling stream shall court the shore, In varied tunes the deity of Love, The gentle blasts of western winds shall move The trembling leaves, and through their close boughs breathe Daphne hath broke her bark, and that swift foot, His cancelled laws, and, for their time misspent, EPITAPH ON THE LADY MARY VILLERS. The Lady Mary Villers lies Under this stone; with weeping eyes SONG. Would you know what's soft? I dare Nor, if you would music hear, Nor, to please your sense, bring forth Or on food were your thoughts placed, THE PROTESTATION. No more shall meads be decked with flowers, Nor greenest buds on branches spring, The fish shall in the ocean burn, Love shall his bow and shaft lay by, And day shall then be turned to night, Love shall no more inhabit earth, IN PRAISE OF HIS MISTRESS. You that will a wonder know, Two suns in a heaven of snow All they fire that do but eye them, Leaves of crimson tulips met Where two pearly rows be set, When they part themselves asunder All this but the casket is Which contains Such a jewel, as to miss Breeds endless pains,— That's her mind, and they that know it May admire, but cannot show it. ROBERT HERRICK. [ROBERT HERRICK was born in Cheapside, in August 1594, and died at Dean Prior, in Devonshire, on the 15th of October, 1674. He published one volume, containing Hesperides, dated 1648, and Noble Numbers, dated 1647.] Among the English pastoral poets, Herrick takes an undisputed precedence, and as a lyrist generally he is scarcely excelled, except by Shelley. No other writer of the seventeenth century approached him in abundance of song, in sustained exercise of the purely musical and intuitive gifts of poetry. Shakspeare, Milton, and perhaps Fletcher, surpassed him in the passion and elevated harmony of their best lyrical pieces, as they easily excelled him in the wider range of their genius and the breadth of their accomplishment. But while these men exercised their art in all its branches, Herrick confined himself very narrowly to one or two, and the unflagging freshness of his inspiration, flowing through a long life in so straitened a channel, enabled him to amass such a wealth of purely lyrical poetry as no other Englishman has produced. His level of performance was very high; he seems to have preserved all that he wrote, and the result is that we possess more than twelve hundred of his little poems, in at least one out of every three of which we may find something charming or characteristic. Of all the Cavalier lyrists Herrick is the only one that followed the bent of his genius undisturbed, and lived a genuine artist's li ́e. Consequently, while we have to lament, in the case of Lovelace or Suckling, a constant waste of energy, and unthrifty drain of poetic power, in Herrick all is wisely husbanded, and we feel satisfied that we possess the best that he could produce. His life was an ideal one so far as quiet and retirement went; to fourteen years of seclusion at Cambridge there succeeded twenty years of unbroken Arcadian repose in a Devonshire vicarage, and it was not till the desire to rhyme had left him that the poet was brought rudely face to face with the |