Resolve me, then, oh soul, most surely blest!
(If so it be that thou these plaints dost hear);
Tell me, bright spirit, where'er thou hoverest,
Whether above that high first-moving sphere,
Or in the Elysian fields (if such were there);
Oh say me true, if thou wert mortal wight,
And why from us so quickly thou didst take thy flight?
But oh! why didst thou not stay here below
To bless us with thy heaven-loved innocence,
To slake his wrath whom sin hath made our foe,
To turn swift-rushing black perdition hence,
Or drive away the slaughtering pestilence,
To stand 'twixt us and our deserved smart?
But thou canst best perform that office where thou art.
Then thou, the mother of so sweet a child,
Her false-imagined loss cease to lament,
And wisely learn to curb thy sorrows wild;
Think what a present thou to God hast sent,
And render him with patience what he lent;
This if thou do, he will an offspring give,
That till the world's last end shall make thy name to live.
ON THE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT.
AVENGE, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipt stocks and stones.
Forget not in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piemontese that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. The moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundred-fold, who, having learned thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
ON HIS BLINDNESS.
WHEN I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he, returning, chide;
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask: but Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."
A POET and courtier, celebrated in the court of Charles I. implicated in the political troubles of the age, and fled to France, where he died in 1641.
FROM A BALLAD UPON A WEDDING.
THE maid, and thereby hangs a tale,
For such a maid no Whitsun-ale
Could ever yet produce:
No grape that's kindly ripe could be
So round, so plump, so soft as she,
Nor half so full of juice.
Her finger was so small, the ring
Would not stay on which they did bring;
It was too wide a peck:
And, to say truth-for out it must-
It looked like the great collar-just-
About our young colt's neck.
Her feet beneath her petticoat,
Like little mice, stole in and out,
As if they feared the light:
But oh! she dances such a way!
No sun upon an Easter-day
Is half so fine a sight.
Her cheeks so rare a white was on,
No daisy makes comparison;
Who sees them is undone ;
For streaks of red were mingled there,
Such as are on a Cath'rine pear,
The side that's next the sun.
Her lips were red; and one was thin,
Compared to that was next her chin,
Some bee had stung it newly;
But, Dick, her eyes so guard her face,
I durst no more upon them gaze,
Than on the sun in July.
Her mouth so small, when she does speak,
Thou'dst swear her teeth her words did break,
That they might passage get:
But she so handled still the matter,
They came as good as ours, or better,
And are not spent a whit.
A RELIGIOUS poet born in London, but the date unknown. During the civil wars, having refused to conform to the rules of the Parliament, he was ejected from a fellowship he enjoyed. He removed to France, where he became a Roman Catholic. He was afterwards made canon in the church of Loretto, in Rome, where he died about 1650. He wrote a volume of Latin poems, as well as several volumes of English poetry.
HYMN TO THE NAME OF JESUS.
I SING the Name which none can say,
But touched with an interior ray;
The name of our new peace; our good;
Our bliss, and supernatural blood;
The name of all our lives and loves
Hearken and help, ye holy doves!
The high-born brood of day; you bright
Candidates of blissful light,
The heirs-elect of love; whose names belong
Unto the everlasting life of song;
All ye wise souls, who in the wealthy breast
Of this unbounded Name build your warm nest.
Awake, my glory! soul-if such thou be,
And that fair word at all refer to thee-
Awake and sing,
And be all wing!
Bring hither thy whole self; and let me see
What of thy parent heaven yet speaks in thee.
O thou art poor
Of noble powers, I see,
And full of nothing else but empty me;
Narrow and low, and infinitely less
Than this great morning's mighty business.
One little world or two,
Alas! will never do;
We must have store;
Go, soul, out of thyself, and seek for more;
Go and request
Great Nature for the key of her huge chest
Of heav'ns, the self-involving set of spheres,
Which dull mortality more feels than hears;
Then rouse the nest
Of nimble art, and traverse round
The airy shop of soul-appeasing sound:
And beat a summons in the same
All-sovereign name,
To warn each several kind
And shape of sweetness-be they such
As sigh with supple wind
Or answer artful touch
That they convene and come away
To wait at the love-crowned doors of that illustrious day. Come, lovely name! life of our hope!
Lo, we hold our hearts wide ope!
Unlock thy cabinet of day,
Dearest sweet, and come away.
Lo, how the thirsty lands
Gasp for thy golden show'rs, with long-stretched hands!
Lo, how the labouring earth,
That hopes to be
All heaven by thee,
Leaps at thy birth!
The attending world, to wait thy rise,
First turned to eyes;
And then, not knowing what to do,
Turned them to tears, and spent them too.
Come, royal name! and pay the expense
Of all this precious patience :
Oh, come away
And kill the death of this delay.
Oh see, so many worlds of barren years
Melted and measured out in seas of tears!
Oh, see the weary lids of wakeful hope-
Love's eastern windows-all wide ope
With curtains drawn,
To catch the daybreak of thy dawn!
Oh, dawn at last, long-looked-for day!
Take thine own wings and come away.
Lo, where aloft it comes! It comes among
The conduct of adoring spirits, that throng
Like diligent bees, and swarm about it.
Oh, they are wise,
And know what sweets are sucked from out it.
It is the hive
By which they thrive,
Where all their hoard of honey lies.
Lo, where it comes, upon the snowy dove's
Soft back, and brings a bosom big with loves.
Welcome to our dark world, thou womb of day!
Unfold thy fair conceptions; and display
The birth of our bright joys.
Body of blessings! spirit of souls extracted!
Oh, dissipate thy spicy powers,
Cloud of condensed sweets! and break upon us
In balmy showers!
Oh, fill our senses, and take from us
All force of so profane a fallacy,
To think aught sweet but that which smells of thee.
Fair flow'ry name! in none but thee,
And thy nectareal fragrancy,
Hourly there meets
An universal synod of all sweets;
By whom it is defined thus--
That no perfume
For ever shall presume
To pass for odoriferous,
But such alone whose sacred pedigree
Can prove itself some kin, sweet name! to thee.
Sweet name! in thy each syllable
A thousand blest Arabias dwell;
A thousand hills of frankincense;
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