OU gods that have the power
To trouble, and compose,
All that's beneath your bower,
Calm silence on the seas, on earth impose.
Fair Venus! in thy soft arms
The God of Rage confine;
For thy whispers are the charms
Which only can divert his fierce design.
What though he frown, and to tumult do incline? Thou the flame
Kindled in his breast canst tame,
With that snow which unmelted lies on thine.
Great goddess! give this thy sacred island rest;
Make heaven smile,
That no storm disturb us while
Thy chief care, our halcyon, builds her nest.
Great Gloriana! fair Gloriana!
Bright as high heaven is, and fertile as earth,
Whose beauty relieves us,
Whose royal bed gives us
Both glory and peace,
Our present joy, and all our hopes' increase.
TO AMORET.
A MORET! the Milky Way
Framed of many nameless stars!†
* Mr. Fenton conjectures that this poem was written in 1640, when the Queen was delivered of her fourth son, the Duke of Gloucester.
Her face is like the milky way i' th' sky,
A meeting of gentle lights without a name.
The smooth stream where none can say
He this drop to that prefers!
Amoret! my lovely foe!
Tell me where thy strength does lie?
Where the power that charms us so?
In thy soul, or in thy eye?
By that snowy neck alone,
Or thy grace in motion seen,
No such wonders could be done;
Yet thy waist is straight and clean
As Cupid's shaft, or Hermes' rod,
And powerful, too, as either god.
TO PHYLLIS.*
PHYLLIS! why should we delay
Pleasures shorter than the day?
Could we (which we never can!)
Stretch our lives beyond their span,
Beauty like a shadow flies,
And our youth before us dies.
Or would youth and beauty stay,
Love hath wings, and will away.
Love hath swifter wings than Time;
Change in love to heaven does climb.
Gods, that never change their state,
Vary oft their love and hate.
Phyllis! to this truth we owe
All the love betwixt us two.
Founded, probably, on Ben Jonson's song in Volpone:
'Come, my Celia, let us prove,
While we can, the sports of love.'
Songs from the Dramatists, p. 115.
The original is supplied by Catullus. The idea is repeated in different forms by Herrick and Wyatt.-See WYATT'S Poems, Ann. Ed., p. 166.
Let not you and I inquire
What has been our past desire;
On what shepherds you have smiled,
Or what nymphs I have beguiled;
Leave it to the planets too,
What we shall hereafter do;
For the joys we now may prove,
Take advice of present love.
A LA MALADE.
AH, lovely Amoret! the care
Of all that know what's good or fair!
Is heaven become our rival too?
Had the rich gifts, conferred on you
So amply thence, the common end
Of giving lovers-to pretend?
Hence, to this pining sickness (meant
To weary thee to a consent
Of leaving us) no power is given
Thy beauties to impair; for heaven
Solicits thee with such a care,
As roses from their stalks we tear,
When we would still preserve them new
And fresh, as on the bush they grew.
With such a grace you entertain,
And look with such contempt on pain,
That languishing you conquer more,
And wound us deeper than before.
So lightnings which in storms appear,
Scorch more than when the skies are clear.
And as pale sickness does invade
Your frailer part, the breaches made
In that fair lodging, still more clear
Make the bright guest, your soul, appear.
So nymphs o'er pathless mountains borne,
Their light robes by the brambles torn
From their fair limbs, exposing new
And unknown beauties to the view
Of following gods, increase their flame,
And haste to catch the flying game.
UPON THE DEATH OF MY LADY RICH.*
AY those already cursed Essexian plains,
Where hasty death and pining sickness reigns,
Prove all a desert! and none there make stay,
But savage beasts, or men as wild as they!
There the fair light which all our island graced,
Like Hero's taper in the window placed,
Such fate from the malignant air did find,
As that exposed to the boisterous wind.
Ah, cruel Heaven! to snatch so soon away
Her for whose life, had we had time to pray,
With thousand vows and tears we should have sought
That sad decree's suspension to have wrought.
But we, alas, no whisper of her pain
Heard, till 'twas sin to wish her here again.
That horrid word, at once, like lightning spread,
Struck all our ears- -The Lady Rich is dead!
Heartrending news! and dreadful to those few
Who her resemble, and her steps pursue;
That Death should license have to rage among
The fair, the wise, the virtuous, and the young!
The Paphian queen from that fierce battle borne,
With gored hand, and veil so rudely torn,
Like terror did among the immortals breed,
Taught by her wound that goddesses may bleed.
* The Lady Anne Cavendish, daughter of the Earl of Devonshire, and married to the heir of the Earl of Warwick. She died in her twenty-seventh year, in 1638, leaving an only son, who was married to Cromwell's youngest daughter.
All stand amazed! but beyond the rest
The heroic dame whose happy womb she blessed,
Moved with just grief, expostulates with Heaven,
Urging the promise to the obsequious given,
Of longer life; for ne'er was pious soul
More apt to obey, more worthy to control.
A skilful eye at once might read the race
Of Caledonian monarchs in her face, †
And sweet humility; her look and mind
At once were lofty, and at once were kind.
There dwelt the scorn of vice, and pity too,
For those that did what she disdained to do;
So gentle and severe, that what was bad,
At once her hatred and her pardon had.
Gracious to all; but where her love was due,
So fast, so faithful, loyal, and so true,
That a bold hand as soon might hope to force
The rolling lights of Heaven as change her course.
Some happy angel, that beholds her there,
Instruct us to record what she was here!
And when this crowd of sorrow's overblown,
Through the wide world we'll make her graces known.
So fresh the wound is, and the grief so vast,
That all our art and power of speech is waste.
Here passion sways, but there the Muse shall raise
Eternal monuments of louder praise.
There our delight, complying with her fame,
Shall have occasion to recite thy name,
Fair Saccharissa!—and now only fair!
To sacred friendship we'll an altar rear,
(Such as the Romans did erect of old)
Where, on a marble pillar, shall be told
*The Countess of Devonshire, the only daughter of Lord Bruce. She lived to a great age. Sir William Temple records in 1667 that her house was constantly frequented by Waller.
Alluding to the descent of the Countess from Robert Bruce, two of whose descendants wore the crown of Scotland, which through the female line afterwards devolved on the Stuarts.
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