On reading the following lines, the reader may perhaps cry out "Confusion worse confounded."

Here lies a she sun, and a he moon here,
She gives the best light to his sphere,

Or each is both, and all, and so

They unto one another nothing owe.

1

DONNE.

Who but Donne would have thought that a good

man is a telescope?

Though God be our true glass through which we see

All, since the being of all things is he,

Yet are the trunks, which do to us derive

Things in proportion fit, by perspective

Deeds of good men; for by their living here,
Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near.

Who would imagine it possible that in a very few lines so many remote ideas could be brought together?

Since 'tis my doom, love's undershrieve,

By every wind that comes this way,

Send me at least a sigh or two,

Such and so many I'll repay

As shall themselves make winds to get to you.

(A dismal glorious sight!) he shone afar.
The sun himself started with sudden fright,
To see his beams return so dismal bright.

COWLEY.

An universal consternation:

His bloody eyes he hurls round, his sharp paws
Tear up the gound; then runs he wild about,
Lashing his angry tail and roaring out.

Beasts creep into their dens, and tremble there;

Trees, though no wind is stirring, shake with fear;
Silence and horror fill the place around;

Echo itself dares scarce repeat the sound.

COWLEY.

THEIR fictions were often violent and unnatural.

Of his mistress bathing:

The fish around her crowded, as they do

To the false light that treacherous fishers shew,
And all with as much ease might taken be,

As she at first took me :

For ne'er did light so clear

Among the waves appear,

Though every night the sun himself set there.

COWLEY.

The poetical effect of a lover's name upon glass:

My name engraved herein

Doth contribute my firmness to this glass;

Which, ever since that charm, hath been
As hard as that which graved it was.

DONNE.

THEIR Conceits were sentiments slight and

trifling.

On an inconstant woman :

He enjoys the calmy sunshine now,
And no breath stirring hears,
In the clear heaven of thy brow

No smallest cloud appears.

He sees thee gentle, fair, and gay,

And trusts the faithless April of thy May.

COWLEY.

Upon a paper written with the juice of lemon,

and read by the fire:

Nothing yet in thee is seen,

But when a genial heat warms thee within,
A new-born wood of various lines there grows;
Here buds an L, and there a B,

Here spouts a V, and there a T,
And all the flourishing letters stand in rows.

COWLEY.

As they sought only for novelty, they did not much inquire whether their allusions were to things high or low, elegant or gross; whether they compared the little to the great, or the great to the little.

Physick and chirurgery for a lover.

Gently, ah gently, madam, touch

The wound, which you yourself have made;
That pain must needs be very much,
Which makes me of your hand afraid.

Cordials of pity give me now,

For I too weak of purgings grow.

The world and a clock.

Mahol th' inferior world's fantastic face
Thro' all the turns of matter's maze did trace;
Great Nature's well-set clock in pieces took;
On all the springs and smallest wheels did look
Of life and motion, and with equal art
Made up the whole again of every part.

COWLEY.

COWLEY.

A coal-pit has not often found its poet; but, that it may not want its due honour, Clieveland has paralleled it with the sun:

The moderate value of our guiltless ore

Makes no man atheist, and no woman whore;
Yet why should hallow'd vestal's sacred shrine
Deserve more honour than a flaming mine?
These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be,
Than a few embers, for a deity.

Had he our pits, the Persian would admire
No sun, but warm's devotion at our fire:
He'd leave the trotting whipster, and prefer
Our profound Vulcan 'bove that waggoner.
For wants he heat, or light? or would have store
Of both? 'tis here: and what can suns give more?
Nay, what's the sun but, in a different name,
A coal-pit rampant, or a mine on flame?
Then let this truth reciprocally run,

The sun's heaven's coalery, and coals our sun.

Death, a voyage :

No family

E'er rigg'd a soul for Heaven's discovery,
With whom more venturers might boldly dare
Venture their stakes, with him in joy to share.

DONNE.

Their thoughts and expressions were sometimes grossly absurd, and such as no figures or licence can reconcile to the understanding.

A lover neither dead nor alive:

Then down I laid my head

Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead,

And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled;
Ah, sottish soul, said I,

When back to its cage again I saw it fly;
Fool to resume her broken chain,

And row her galley here again!

Fool, to that body to return

Where it condemn'd and destined is to burn!

Once dead, how can it be,

Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee,

That thou should'st come to live it o'er again in me?

A lover's heart, a hand grenado:

Wo to her stubborn heart, if once mine come

Into the self same room;

"Twill tear and blow up

all within,

Like a grenado shot into a magazin.

COWLEY.

Then shall Love keep the ashes, and torn parts,
Of both our broken hearts:

Shall out of both one new one make:

From her's th' allay, from mine the metal take.

The poetical propagation of light:

The prince's favour is diffused o'er all,

From which all fortunes, names, and natures fall:

COWLEY.