GOING TO THE WARS.

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery

Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field,

And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.
Yet this inconstancy is such

As you too shall adore,

I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more.

THE ROSE.

Sweet, serene, sky-like flower,
Haste to adorn her bower,

From thy long cloudy bed
Shoot forth thy damask head.
New-startled blush of Flora,
The grief of pale Aurora

(Who will contest no more),

Haste, haste to strew her floor!

Vermilion ball that's given

From lip to lip in heaven,
Love's couch's coverled,

Haste, haste to make her bed.

Dear offspring of pleased Venus
And jolly plump Silenus,

Haste, haste to deck the hair
O'the only sweetly fair!

See rosy is her bower,

Her floor is all this flower,

Her bed a rosy nest

By a bed of roses pressed!

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 lie tangled in her hair,
And fettered to her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.

When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,

Our careless heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free,
Fishes that tipple in the deep
Know no such liberty.

When, like committed linnets, I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
And glories of my King;

When I shall voice aloud, how good
He is, how great should be,
Enlarged winds that curl the flood
Know no such liberty.

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.

THE GRASSHOPPER.

[Ode to Mr. Charles Cotton.]

Oh! thou that swingst upon the waving ear
Of some well-filled oaten beard,
Drunk every night with a delicious tear,

Dropt thee from heaven, where thou wert reared;

The joys of earth and air are thine entire,

That with thy feet and wings dost hop and fly,
And, when thy poppy works, thou dost retire
To thy carved acorn-bed to lie.

Up with the day, the Sun thou welcomest then,
Sport'st in the gilt plaits of his beams,
And all these merry days mak'st merry men,
Thyself, and melancholy streams.

But ah! the sickle! Golden ears are cropped;
Ceres and Bacchus bid good night;

Sharp frosty fingers all your flowers have topped,
And what scythes spared, winds shave off quite.
Thou best of men and friends! we will create

A genuine summer in each other's breast, And spite of this cold time and frozen fate, Thaw us a warm seat for our rest.

Our sacred hearths shall burn eternally,

As vestal flames; the North Wind, he
Shall strike his frost-stretched wings, dissolve and fly
This Ætna in epitome.

Night, as clear Hesper, shall our tapers whip
From the light casements where we play,
And the dark hag from her black mantle strip,
And stick there everlasting day.

Thus richer than untempted kings are we,
That asking nothing, nothing need;
Though lord of all that seas embrace, yet he
That wants himself is poor indeed.

TO LUCASTA

Lucasta, frown, and let me die!
But smile, and, see, I live!
The sad indifference of your eye
Both kills and doth reprieve;
You hide our fate within its screen;

We feel our judgment, e'er we hear; So in one picture I have seen

An angel here, the devil there!

L

[EDWARD HERBERT, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, elder brother of the poet George Herbert, was born in 1581, and closed a life full of incident and interest in Queen Street, London, August 20, 1648.]

The world has long done justice to Lord Herbert's famous treatise De Veritate, to his admirable Life of Henry VIII, to his singularly interesting Autobiography; but no one has yet been found to vindicate his claim to a place among English poets. His poems first appeared in a little volume which was published in 1665, nearly eighteen years after his death; and, as we gather from the preface, were collected by Henry Herbert, uncle to the second Lord Herbert of Cherbury, to whom they are dedicated. They consist of Sonnets, Epitaphs, Satires, Madrigals, and Odes in various measures. Herbert is, like his more distinguished brother, a disciple of the Metaphysical School, though his poems, unlike those of George, are not of a religious character. With much of that extravagance which deforms the lyric poetry of his contemporaries, Lord Herbert has in a large measure grace, sweetness, and originality. He never lacks vigour and freshness. His place is, with all his faults, beside Donne and Cowley. His versification is indeed as a rule far superior to theirs. It is uniformly musical, and his music is often at once delicate and subtle. Though he did not invent the metre, he certainly discovered the melody of that stanza with which Tennyson's great poem has familiarised us, and he has as certainly anticipated some of its most beautiful effects. He is never likely to hold the same place among English poets as his brother, but we do not hesitate to say that no collection of representative English poets should be considered complete which does not contain the poetical works of Lord Herbert of Cherbury.

J. CHURTON COLLINS.