THE PICTURE OF T. C. IN A PROSPECT OF FLOWERS. See with what simplicity This nymph begins her golden days! In the green grass she loves to lie, And there with her fair aspect tames The wilder flowers and gives them names, But only with the roses plays, And them does tell What colours best become them, and what smell. Who can foretell for what high cause This darling of the gods was born? Appease this virtuous enemy of man! O then let me in time compound Where I may see the glories from some shade. Meantime, whilst every verdant thing Make that the tulips may have share. But most procure That violets may a longer age endure. But O, young beauty of the woods, Lest Flora, angry at thy crime To kill her infants in their prime, Should quickly make the example yours, Nip, in the blossom, all our hopes in thee. THE MOWER TO THE GLOW-WORMS. Ye living lamps, by whose dear light Ye country comets, that portend Ye glow-worms, whose officious flame Your courteous lights in vain you waste, For she my mind hath so displaced, That I shall never find my home. ALL my past life is mine no more, The time that is to come is not; The present moment 's all my lot; Then talk not of inconstancy, False hearts, and broken vows; If I, by miracle, can be This live-long minute true to thee, 'Tis all that Heaven allows. SONG. Give me leave to rail at you, I ask nothing but my due; To call you false, and then to say I must be your captive still. Cannot change, and would not die. Kindness has resistless charms, All besides but weakly move ; Fiercest anger it disarms, And clips the wings of flying Love. It gilds the lover's servile chain, And makes the slaves grow pleased again. CHARLES COTTON. 1630-1687. ["Poems on Several Occasions." (?) 1689.] TO CHLORIS. ODE. FAREWELL, my sweet, until I come Such as thou canst not then but take. To loyalty my love must bow, My honour, too, calls to the field, Where, for a lady's busk, I now Must keen and sturdy iron wield. Yet, when I rush into those arms, Where death and danger do combine, I shall less subject be to harms Than to those killing eyes of thine. Since I could live in thy disdain, Thou art so far become my fate, That I by nothing can be slain, Until thy sentence speaks my date. |