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And, in time's long and dark prospective glass,
Foresaw what future days should bring to pass;
"Your son," says she, nor can you it prevent,
Shall subject be to many an accident.
O'er all his brethren he shall reign a king,
Yet every one shall make him underling,
And those, that cannot live from him asunder,
Ungratefully shall strive to keep him under;
In worth and excellence he shall out-go them,
Yet, being above them, he shall be below them;
From others he shall stand in need of nothing,
Yet on his brothers shall depend for clothing,
To find a foe it shall not be his hap,

And peace shall lull him in her flowery lap;
Yet shall he live in strife, and at his door,
Devouring war shall never cease to roar:
Yea, it shall be his natural property
To harbour those that are at enmity.

What power, what force, what mighty spell, if not
Your learned hands, can loose this Gordian knot?"

The next, QUANTITY and QUALITY spake in prose, then RELATION was called by the same.

RIVERS, arise whether thou be the son of utmost Tweed, or Oose, or gulfy Dun,

Or Trent, who, like some earth-born giant, spreads
His thirsty arms, along the indented meads,

Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath,
Or Severn swift, guilty of maiden's death,
Or rocky Avon, or of sedgy Lee,

Or coaly Tine, or ancient hallow'd Dee;

Or Humber loud, that keeps the Scythian's name ; Or Medway smooth, or royal-tower'd Thame,

[The rest was prose.]

AN EPITAPH

ON THE ADMIRABLE DRAMATIC POET,

W. SHAKSPEARE.*

WHAT needs my Shakspeare, for his honour'd bones, The labour of an age in piled stones?

*This Epitaph is dated 1630, in Milton's own edition of his poems, in 1673.

Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid,
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou, in our wonder and astonishment,
Hast built thyself a live-long monument.

For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath, from the leaves of thy unvalued book,
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble, with too much conceiving;
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

ON THE UNIVERSITY CARRIER,

Who sickened at the time of his vacancy, being forbid
to go to London, by reason of the Plague.*
HERE lies old Hobson; Death hath broke his girt,
And here, alas, hath lard him in the dirt;
Or else the ways being foul, twenty to one,
He's here stuck in a slough, and overthrown.
'Twas such a shifter, that if truth were known,
Death was half glad when he had got him down;
For he had, any time this ten years full,

Dodg'd with him, betwixt Cambridge and The Bull.↑
And surely Death could never have prevail'd,
Had not his weekly course of carriage fail'd;
But lately finding him so long at home,

And thinking now his journey's end was come,
And that he had ta'en up his latest inn,

In the kind office of a chamberlain,

Show'd him his room, where he must lodge that night,
Pull'd off his boots, and took away the light.
If any ask for him, it shall be said,
"Hobson has supp'd, and 's newly gone to bed."

ANOTHER ON THE SAME.

HERE lieth one, who did most truly prove
That he could never die while he could move;

*Hobson, the Cambridge carrier, died Jan. 1, 1630, while the plague was in London.

+ In Bishopsgate-street, London.

So hung his destiny, never to rot,
While he might still jog on and keep his trot;
Made of sphere-metal, never to decay,
Until his revolution was at stay.

Time numbers motion, yet without a crime
'Gainst old truth motion number'd out his time;
And like an engine moved with wheel and weight,
His principles being ceased, he ended straight.
Rest, that gives all men life, gave him his death,
And too much breathing put him out of breath;
Nor were it contradiction to affirm,
Too long vacation hasten'd on his term.
Merely to drive the time away he sicken'd,
Fainted, and died, nor would with ale be quicken'd;
"Nay," quoth he, "on his swooning bed outstretch'd,
If I mayn't carry, sure I'll ne'er be fetch'd;
But vow, though the cross doctors all stood hearers,
For one carrier put down to make six bearers."
Ease was his chief disease, and to judge right,
He died for heaviness, that his cart went light;
His leisure told him, that his time was come,
And lack of load made his life burdensome,
That e'n to his last breath, there be that say it,
As he were press'd to death, he cried, "More weight;'
But had his doings lasted as they were,
He had been an immortal carrier.
Obedient to the moon, he spent his date
In course reciprocal, and had his fate
Link'd to the mutual flowing of the seas,
Yet, strange to think, his wain was his increase:
His letters are deliver'd all, and gone,
Only remains this superscription.

ON THE NEW FORCERS OF CONSCIENCE UNDER THE

LONG PARLIAMENT.

BECAUSE you have thrown off your Prelate-Lord,
And with stiff vows, renounced his Liturgy,
To seize the widow'd whore Plurality,
From them whose sin ye envied, not abhorr'd,
Dare ye, for this, adjure the civil sword,
To force our consciences, that Christ set free;
And ride us with a classic hierarchy,
Taught ye by mere A. S.* and Rutherford ?+
Men, whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent,
Would have been held in high esteem with Paul,
Must now be named and printed Heretics,
By shallow Edwardst and Scotch what d'ye call:||
But we do hope to find out all your tricks,
Your plots and packing, worse than those of Trent;
That so the Parliament
May, with their wholesome and preventive shears,
Clip your phylacteries, though balk your ears,
And succour our just fears,
When they shall read this clearly in your charge,
New Presbyter is but Old Priest, writ large.

* Adam Steuart, a Divine of the Church of Scotland.

+ Samuel Rutherford, one of the chief Commissioners of the Church of Scotland, and Professor of Divinity in the University of St. Andrew's.

Thomas Edwards, minister, a pamphleteering opponent of Milton.

|| Perhaps Henderson, or Gillespie, Scotch divines

TRANSLATIONS.

THE FIFTH ODE OF HORACE, LIB. I

WHAT slender youth, bedew'd with liquid odours,
Courts thee on roses, in some pleasant cave,
Pyrrha? For whom bind'st thou
In wreaths thy golden hair,

Plain in thy neatness? O, how oft shall he
On faith and changed gods complain, and seas
Rough with black winds, and storms
Unwonted, shall admire!

Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold,
Who, always vacant, always amiable,
Hopes thee, of flattering gales
Unmindful. Hapless they,

[vow'd

To whom thou, untried, seem'st fair. Me, in my
Picture, the sacred wall declares to have hung
My dank and dropping weeds,

To the stern god of sea.

*

FROM JEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH.* BRUTUS thus addresses DIANA in the country

of LEOGECIA.

GODDESS of shades, and huntress, who at will
Walk'st on the rolling spheres, and through the deep;
On thy third reign, the earth, look now, and tell
What land, what seat of rest, thou bidst me seek,
What certain seat, where I may worship thee
For aye, with temples vow'd and virgin quires.
To whom, sleeping before the altar, DIANA answers
in a vision the same night.

BRUTUS, far to the west, in th ocean wide,
Beyond the realm of Gaul, a land there lies,
Seagirt it lies, where giants dwelt of old;

*Hist. Brit. i. xi. "Diva potens nemorum," &c.

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