The Comming of Good Luck
	So Good-luck came, and on my roofe did light,
	Like noyse-lesse Snow; or as the dew of night:
	Not all at once, but gently, as the trees
	Are, by the Sun-beams, tickel’d by degrees.

	To Meddowes
	Ye have been fresh and green,
	Ye have been fill’d with flowers:
	And ye the Walks have been
	Where Maids have spent their houres.

	You have beheld, how they
	With Wicker Arks did come
	To kisse, and beare away
	The richer Couslips home.

	Y’ave heard them sweetly sing,
	And seen them in a Round:
	Each Virgin, like a Spring,
	With Hony-succles crown’d.

	But now, we see, none here,
	Whose silv’rie feet did tread,
	And with dishevell’d Haire,
	Adorn’d this smoother Mead.

	Like Unthrifts, having spent,
	Your stock, and needy grown,
	Y’are left here to lament
	Your poore estates, alone.

	The Departure of the Good Dœmon
	What can I do in Poetry,
	Now the good Spirit’s gone from me?
	Why nothing now, but lonely sit,
	And over-read what I have writ.

	Upon Prew His Maid
	In this little Urne is laid
	Prewdence Baldwin (once my maid)
	From whose happy spark here let
	Spring the purple Violet.

	On Himselfe
	Lost to the world; lost to my selfe; alone
	Here now I rest under this Marble stone:
	In depth of silence, heard, and seene of none.

ROBERT HERRICK The White Island: Or Place of the Blest

	In this world (the Isle of Dreames)
	While we sit by sorrowes streames,
	Teares and terrors are our theames
	Reciting:

	But when once from hence we flie,
	More and more approaching nigh
	Unto young Eternitie
	Uniting:

	In that whiter Island, where
	Things are evermore sincere;
	Candor here, and lustre there
	Delighting:

	There no monstrous fancies shall
	Out of hell an horrour call,
	To create (or cause at all)
	Affrighting.

	There in calm and cooling sleep
	We our eyes shall never steep;
	But eternall watch shall keep,
	Attending

	Pleasures, such as shall pursue
	Me immortaliz’d, and you;
	And fresh joyes, as never too
	Have ending.

RICHARD LOVELACE from Lucasta 1649

	Song. To Lucasta, Going to the Warres
	Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkinde,
	That from the Nunnerie
	Of thy chaste breast, and quiet minde,
	To Warre and Armes I flie.

	True; a new Mistresse now I chase,
	The first Foe in the Field;
	And with a stronger Faith imbrace
	A Sword, a Horse, a Shield.

	Yet this Inconstancy is such,
	As you too shall adore;
	I could not love thee (Deare) so much,
	Lov’d I not Honour more.

	To Althea from Prison
	When Love with unconfined wings
	Hovers within my Gates;
	And my divine Althea brings
	To whisper at the Grates:
	When I lye tangled in her haire,
	And fetterd to her eye;
	The Gods that wanton in the Aire,
	Know no such Liberty.

	When flowing Cups run swiftly round
	With no allaying Thames,
	Our carelesse heads with Roses bound,
	Our hearts with Loyall Flames;
	When thirsty griefe in Wine we steepe,
	When Healths and draughts go free,
	Fishes that tipple in the Deepe,
	Know no such Libertie.

	When (like committed Linnets) I
	With shriller throat shall sing
	The sweetnes, Mercy, Majesty,
	And glories of my KING;
	When I shall voyce aloud, how Good
	He is, how Great should be;
	Inlarged Winds that curie the Flood,
	Know no such Liberty.

	Stone Walls doe not a Prison make,
	Nor Iron bars a Cage;
	Mindes innocent and quiet take
	That for an Hermitage;
	If I have freedome in my Love,
	And in my soule am free;
	Angels alone that sore above,
	Injoy such Liberty.

	The Grasse-hopper
	To My Noble Friend, Mr. CHARLES COTTON. Ode
	Oh thou that swing’st upon the waving haire
	Of some well-filled Oaten Beard,
	Drunke ev’ry night with a Delicious teare
	Dropt thee from Heav’n, where now th’ art reard.

	The Joyes of Earth and Ayre are thine intire,
	That with thy feet and wings dost hop and flye;
	And when thy Poppy workes thou dost retire
	To thy Carv’d Acron-bed to lye.

	Up with the Day, the Sun thou welcomst then,
	Sportst in the guilt-plats of his Beames,
	And all these merry dayes mak’st merry men,
	Thy selfe, and Melancholy streames.

	But ah the Sickle! Golden Eares are Cropt;
	Ceres and Bacchus bid good night;
	Sharpe frosty fingers all your Flowr’s have topt,
	And what sithes spar’d, Winds shave off quite.

	Poore verdant foole! and now green Ice, thy Joys
	Large and as lasting, as thy Peirch of Grasse,
	Bid us lay in ’gainst Winter, Raine, and poize
	Their flouds, with an o’reflowing glasse.

	Thou best of Men and Friends! we will create
	A Genuine Summer in each others breast;
	And spite of this cold Time and frosen Fate
	Thaw us a warme seate to our rest.

	Our sacred harthes shall burne eternally
	As Vestall Flames, the North-wind, he
	Shall strike his frost-stretch’d Winges, dissolve and flye
	This Ætna in Epitome.

	Dropping December shall come weeping in,
	Bewayle th’usurping of his Raigne;
	But when in show’rs of old Greeke we beginne
	Shall crie, he hath his Crowne againe!

	Night as cleare Hesper shall our Tapers whip
	From the light Casements where we play,
	And the darke Hagge from her black mantle strip,
	And sticke there everlasting Day.

	Thus richer then untempted Kings are we,
	That asking nothing, nothing need:
	Though Lord of all what Seas imbrace; yet he
	That wants himselfe, is poore indeed.

WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN from the French of Jean Passerat

	Song
	AMINTAS, DAPHNÈ
	D. Shephard loveth thow me vell?
	A. So vel that I cannot tell.
	D. Like to vhat, good shephard, say?
	A. Like to the, faire, cruell May.
	D. Ah! how strange thy vords I find!
	But yet satisfie my mind;
	Shephard vithout flatterie,
	Beares thow any love to me,
	Like to vhat, good shephard, say?
	A. Like to the, faire, cruell May.
	D. Better answer had it beene
	To say, I love thee as mine eine.
	A. Voe is me, I love them not,
	For be them love entress got,
	At the time they did behold
	Thy sveet face and haire of gold.
	D. Like to vhat, good shephard, say?
	A. Like to thee, faire cruell May.
	D. But, deare shephard, speake more plaine,
	And I sal not aske againe;
	For to end this gentle stryff
	Doth thow love me as thy lyff?
	A. No, for it doth eb and flow
	Vith contrare teeds of grief and voe;
	And now I thruch loves strange force
	A man am not, but a dead corse.
	D. Like to vhat, good shephard, say?
	A. Like to thee, faire, cruel May.
	D. This like to thee, O leave, I pray,
	And as my selfe, good shephard, say.
	A. Alas! I do not love my selff,
	For I me split on beuties shelff.
	D. Like to vhat, good shephard, say?
	A. Like to the, faire, cruel May.

(1711)

JAMES GRAHAM, MARQUIS OF MONTROSE On Himself, upon Hearing What was His Sentence 1650

	Let them bestow on ev’ry Airth a Limb;
	Open all my Veins, that I may swim
	To Thee my Saviour, in that Crimson Lake;
	Then place my pur-boil’d Head upon a Stake;
	Scatter my Ashes, throw them in the Air:
	Lord (since Thou know’st where all these Atoms are)
	I’m hopeful, once Thou’lt recollect my Dust,
	And confident Thou’lt raise me with the Just.

(1711)

ANONYMOUS from The Second Scottish Psalter

	Psalm 124
	Now Israel
	may say, and that truly,
	If that the Lord
	had not our cause maintain’d;
	If that the Lord
	had not our right sustain’d,
	When cruel men
	against us furiously
	Rose up in wrath,
	to make of us their prey;

	Then certainly
	they had devour’d us all,
	And swallow’d quick,
	for ought that we could deem;
	Such was their rage,
	as we might well esteem.
	And as fierce floods
	before them all things drown,
	So had they brought
	our soul to death quite down.

	The raging streams,
	with their proud swelling waves,
	Had then our soul
	o’erwhelmed in the deep.
	But bless’d be God,
	who doth us safely keep.
	And hath not giv’n
	us for a living prey
	Unto their teeth,
	and bloody cruelty.

	Ev’n as a bird
	out of the fowler’s snare
	Escapes away,
	so is our soul set free:
	Broke are their nets,
	and thus escaped we.
	Therefore our help
	is in the Lord’s great name,
	Who heav’n and earth
	by his great pow’r did frame.

HENRY VAUGHAN from Silex Scintillans, Or Sacred Poems

	The Retreate
	Happy those early dayes! when I
	Shin’d in my Angell-infancy.
	Before I understood this place
	Appointed for my second race,
	Or taught my soul to fancy ought
	But a white, Celestiall thought,
	When yet I had not walkt above
	A mile, or two, from my first love,
	And looking back (at that short space,)
	Could see a glimpse of his bright-face;
	When on some gilded Cloud, or flowre
	My gazing soul would dwell an houre,
	And in those weaker glories spy
	Some shadows of eternity;
	Before I taught my tongue to wound
	My Conscience with a sinfull sound,
	Or had the black art to dispence
	A sev’rall sinne to ev’ry sence,
	But felt through all this fleshly dresse
	Bright shootes of everlastingnesse.
	O how I long to travell back
	And tread again that ancient track!
	That I might once more reach that plaine,
	Where first I left my glorious traine,
	From whence th’ Inlightned spirit sees
	That shady City of Palme trees;
	But (ah!) my soul with too much stay
	Is drunk, and staggers in the way.
	Some men a forward motion love,
	But I by backward steps would move,
	And when this dust falls to the urn
	In that state I came return.

	¶
	Silence, and stealth of dayes! ’tis now
	Since thou art gone,
	Twelve hundred houres, and not a brow
	But Clouds hang on.
	As he that in some Caves thick damp
	Lockt from the light,
	Fixeth a solitary lamp,
	To brave the night
	And walking from his Sun, when past
	That glim’ring Ray
	Cuts through the heavy mists in haste
	Back to his day,
	So o’r fled minutes I retreat
	Unto that hour
	Which shew’d thee last, but did defeat
	Thy light, and pow’r,
	I search, and rack my soul to see
	Those beams again,
	But nothing but the snuff to me
	Appeareth plain;
	That dark, and dead sleeps in its known,
	And common urn,
	But those fled to their Makers throne,
	There shine, and burn;
	O could I track them! but souls must
	Track one the other,
	And now the spirit, not the dust
	Must be thy brother.
	Yet I have one Pearle by whose light
	All things I see,
	And in the heart of Earth, and night
	Find Heaven, and thee.

The World

	I saw Eternity the other night
	Like a great Ring of pure and endless light,
	All calm, as it was bright,
	And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years
	Driv’n by the spheres
	Like a vast shadow mov’d, In which the world
	And all her train were hurl’d;
	The doting Lover in his queintest strain
	Did their Complain,
	Neer him, his Lute, his fancy, and his flights,
	Wits sour delights,
	With gloves, and knots the silly snares of pleasure
	Yet his dear Treasure
	All scatter’d lay, while he his eys did pour
	Upon a flowr.

	The darksome States-man hung with weights and woe
	Like a thick midnight-fog mov’d there so slow
	He did nor stay, nor go;
	Condemning thoughts (like sad Ecclipses) scowl
	Upon his soul,
	And Clouds of crying witnesses without
	Pursued him with one shout.
	Yet dig’d the Mole, and lest his ways be found
	Workt under ground,
	Where he did Clutch his prey, but one did see
	That policie,
	Churches and altars fed him, Perjuries
	Were gnats and flies,
	It rain’d about him bloud and tears, but he
	Drank them as free.

	The fearfull miser on a heap of rust
	Sate pining all his life there, did scarce trust
	His own hands with the dust,
	Yet would not place one peece above, but lives
	In feare of theeves.
	Thousands there were as frantick as himself
	And hug’d each one his pelf,
	The down-right Epicure plac’d heav’n in sense
	And scornd pretence
	While others slipt into a wide Excesse
	Said little lesse;
	The weaker sort slight, triviall wares Inslave
	Who think them brave,
	And poor, despised truth sate Counting by
	Their victory.

	Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing,
	And sing, and weep, soar’d up into the Ring,
	But most would use no wing.
	O fools (said I,) thus to prefer dark night
	Before true light,
	To live in grots, and caves, and hate the day
	Because it shews the way,
	The way which from this dead and dark abode
	Leads up to God,
	A way where you might tread the Sun, and be
	More bright than he.
	But as I did their madnes so discusse
	One whisper’d thus,
	This Ring the Bride-groome did for none provide
	But for his bride.

1651 WILLIAM CARTWRIGHT No Platonique Love

	Tell me no more of minds embracing minds,
	And hearts exchang’d for hearts;
	That Spirits Spirits meet, as Winds do Winds,
	And mix their subt’lest parts;
	That two unbodi’d Essences may kiss,
	And then like Angels, twist and feel one Bliss.

	I was that silly thing that once was wrought
	To practice this thin Love;
	I climb’d from Sex to Soul, from Soul to Thought;
	But thinking there to move,
	Headlong, I rowl’d from Thought to Soul, and then
	From Soul I lighted at the Sex agen.

	As some strict down-look’d men pretend to fast
	Who yet in Closets Eat;
	So Lovers who profess they Spirits taste,
	Feed yet on grosser meat;
	I know they boast they Soules to Soules Convey,
	How e’r they meet, the Body is the Way.

	Come, I will undeceive thee, they that tread
	Those vain Aeriall waies,
	Are like young Heyrs, and Alchymists misled
	To waste their wealth and Daies,
	For searching thus to be for ever Rich,
	They only find a Med’cine for the Itch.

JOHN CLEVELAND The Antiplatonick

	For shame, thou everlasting Woer,
	Still saying Grace and ne’re fall to her!
	Love that’s in Contemplation plac’t,
	Is Venus drawn but to the Wast.
	Unlesse your Flame confesse its Gender,
	And your Parley cause surrender,
	Y’are Salamanders of a cold desire,
	That live untouch’t amid the hottest fire.

	What though she be a Dame of stone,
	The Widow of Pigmalion;
	As hard and un-relenting She,
	As the new-crusted Niobe;
	Or what doth more of Statue carry
	A Nunne of the Platonick Quarrey?
	Love melts the rigor which the rocks have bred,
	A Flint will break upon a Feather-bed.

	For shame you pretty Female Elves,
	Cease for to Candy up your selves;
	No more, you Sectaries of the Game,
	No more of your calcining flame.
	Women Commence by Cupids Dart,
	As a Kings Hunting dubs a Hart.
	Loves Votaries inthrall each others soul,
	Till both of them live but upon Paroll.

	Vertue’s no more in Woman-kind
	But the green-sicknesse of the mind.
	Philosophy, their new delight,
	A kind of Charcoal Appetite.
	There is no Sophistry prevails,
	Where all-convincing Love assails,
	But the disputing Petticoat will Warp,
	As skilfull Gamesters are to seek at Sharp.

	The souldier, that man of Iron,
	Whom Ribs of Horror all inviron,
	That’s strung with Wire, in stead of Veins,
	In whose imbraces you’re in chains,
	Let a Magnetick Girle appear,
	Straight he turns Cupids Cuiraseer.
	Love storms his lips, and takes the Fortresse in,
	For all the Brisled Turn-pikes of his chin.

	Since Loves Artillery then checks
	The Breast-works of the firmest Sex,
	Come let us in Affections Riot,
	Th’are sickly pleasures keep a Diet.
	Give me a Lover bold and free,
	Not Eunuch’t with Formality;
	Like an Embassador that beds a Queen,
	With the Nice Caution of a sword between.

JOHN CLEVELAND A Song of Marke Anthony

	When as the Nightingall chanted her Vesper,
	And the wild Forrester coutch’d on the ground,
	Venus invited me in th’ Evening whisper,
	Unto a fragrant field with Roses crown’d:
	Where she before had sent
	My wishes complement,
	Who to my soules content
	Plaid with me on the Green.
	Never Marke Anthony
	Dallied more wantonly
	With the faire Egyptian Queen.

	First on her cherry cheekes I mine eyes feasted,
	Thence feare of surfetting made me retire
	Unto her warmer lips, which, when I tasted,
	My spirits dull were made active as fire.
	This heate againe to calme
	Her moyst hand yeilded balme,
	While we join’d palme to palme
	As if they one had beene.
	Never Marke, &c.

	Then in her golden hayre I my armes twined,
	Shee her hands in my locks twisted againe,
	As if our hayre had been fetters assigned,
	Great litle Cupids loose captives to chaine.
	Then we did often dart
	Each at the others heart,
	Arrowes that knew no smart;
	Sweet lookes and smiles between.
	Never Marke, &c.

	Wanting a glasse to pleat those amber trasses,
	Which like a bracelet deckt richly mine arme;
	Gawdier than Juno weares, when as she blesses
	Jove with embraces more stately than warme,
	Then did she peepe in mine
	Eyes humour Chrystaline;
	And by reflexive shine
	I in her eye was seene.
	Never Marke, &c.

	Mysticall Grammer of amorous glances,
	Feeling of pulses, the Phisicke of Love,
	Rhetoricall courtings, and Musicall Dances;
	Numbring of kisses Arithmeticke prove.
	Eyes like Astronomy,
	Streight limbs Geometry,
	In her arts ingeny
	Our wits were sharpe and keene.
	Never Marke, &c.

THOMAS STANLEY The Snow-ball

	Doris, I that could repell
	All those darts about thee dwell,
	And had wisely learn’d to fear,
	Cause I saw a Foe so near;
	I that my deaf ear did arm,
	‘Gainst thy voices powerful charm,
	And the lightning of thine eye
	Durst (by closing mine) defie,
	Cannot this cold snow withstand
	From the whiter of thy hand;
	Thy deceit hath thus done more
	Then thy open force before:
	For who could suspect or fear
	Treason in a face so clear,
	Or the hidden fires descry
	Wrapt in this cold out-side lie?
	Flames might thus involv’d in ice
	The deceiv’d world sacrifice;
	Nature, ignorant of this
	Strange Antiperistasis,
	Would her falling frame admire,
	That by snow were set on fire.

THOMAS STANLEY The Grassehopper

	Grasshopper thrice-happy! who
	Sipping the cool morning dew,
	Queen-like chirpest all the day
	Seated on some verdant spray;
	Thine is all what ere earth brings,
	Or the howrs with laden wings;
	Thee, the Ploughman calls his Joy,
	’Cause thou nothing dost destroy:
	Thou by all art honour’d; All
	Thee the Springs sweet Prophet call;
	By the Muses thou admir’d,
	By Apollo art inspir’d,
	Agelesse, ever singing, good,
	Without passion, flesh or blood;
	Oh how near thy happy state
	Comes the Gods to imitate!

SIR HENRY WOTTON Upon the Sudden Restraint of the Earle of Somerset, Then Falling from Favor

	Dazel’d thus, with height of place,
	Whilst our hopes our wits beguile,
	No man markes the narrow space
	’Twixt a prison, and a smile.

	Then, since fortunes favours fade,
	You, that in her armes doe sleep,
	Learne to swim, and not to wade;
	For, the Hearts of Kings are deepe.

	But, if Greatness be so blind,
	As to trust in towers of Aire,
	Let it be with Goodness lin’d,
	That at’least, the Fall be faire.

	Then though darkned, you shall say,
	When Friends faile, and Princes frowne,
	Vertue is the roughest way,
	But proves at night a Bed of Downe.

1652 SIR RICHARD FANSHAWE from the Latin of Horace

	Odes. IV, 7 To L. Manlius Torquatus
	The Snows are thaw’d, now grass new cloaths the earth,
	And Trees new hair thrust forth.
	The Season’s chang’d, and Brooks late swoln with rain,
	Their proper bankes contain.
	Nymphs with the Graces (linkt) dare dance around
	Naked upon the ground.
	That thou must dye, the year and howers say
	Which draw the winged day.
	First Spring, then Summer that away doth chace,
	And must it self give place
	To Apple-bearing Autumne, and that past
	Dull Winter comes at last.
	But the decays of Time, Time doth repair:
	When we once plunged are
	Where good Æneas, where rich Ancus wades,
	Ashes we are, and shades.
	Who knows if Jove unto thy life’s past score
	Will add one morning more?
	When thou art dead, and Rhadamanthus just
	Sentence hath spoke thee dust,
	Thy Blood, nor eloquence can ransome thee,
	No nor thy Piety,
	For chast Hippolytus in Stygian night
	Diana cannot light:
	Nor Theseus break with all his vertuous pains
	His dear Perithous chains.

RICHARD CRASHAW from The Flaming Heart. Upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphicall Saint Teresa

	O sweet incendiary! shew here thy art,
	Upon this carcasse of a hard, cold, hart,
	Let all thy scatter’d shafts of light, that play
	Among the leaves of thy larg Books of day,
	Combin’d against this BREST at once break in
	And take away from me my self and sin,
	This gratious Robbery shall thy bounty be;
	And my best fortunes such fair spoiles of me.
	O thou undanted daughter of desires!
	By all thy dowr of LIGHTS & FIRES;
	By all the eagle in thee, all the dove;
	By all thy lives and deaths of love;
	By thy larg draughts of intellectuall day,
	And by thy thirsts of love more large then they;
	By all thy brim-fill’d Bowles of feirce desire
	By thy last Morning’s draught of liquid fire;
	By the full kingdome of that finall kisse
	That seiz’d thy parting Soul, and seal’d thee his;
	By all the heav’ns thou hast in him
	(Fair sister of the SERAPHIM!)
	By all of HIM we have in THEE;
	Leave nothing of my SELF in me.
	Let me so read thy life, that I
	Unto all life of mine may dy.

AURELIAN TOWNSHEND A Dialogue betwixt Time and a 1653 Pilgrime

	PILGRIM
	Aged man, that mowes these fields.
	TIME
	Pilgrime speak, what is thy will?
	PILGR.
	Whose soile is this that such sweet Pasture yields?
	Or who art thou whose Foot stand never still?
	Or where am I? TIME In love.
	PILGR.
	His Lordship lies above.
	TIME
	Yes and below, and round about
	Where in all sorts of flow’rs are growing
	Which as the early Spring puts out,
	Time falls as fast a mowing.
	PILGR.
	If thou art Time, these Flow’rs have Lives,
	And then I fear,
	Under some Lilly she I love
	May now be growing there.
	TIME
	And in some Thistle or some spyre of grasse
	My syth thy stalk before hers come may passe.
	PILGR.
	Wilt thou provide it may? TIME. No. PILGR. Allege the cause.
	TIME
	Because Time cannot alter but obey Fates laws.
	CHORUS
	Then happy those whom Fate, that is the stronger,
	Together twists their threads, and yet draws hers the longer.