NOTHING PERFECT ON EARTH. EVEN as the soil (which April's gentle showers It languishes, and nipped with sin, doth fade. JERUSALEM IN RUINS. (FROM SION'S ELEGIES.) WOUNDED and wasted by th' eternal hand Unsepulchred my murdered people lie; My dead lie rudely scattered on the stones, My causeways all are paved with dead men's bones; MERCY TEMPERING JUSTICE. HAD not the milder hand of Mercy broke Thy mercy, Lord, is like the morning sun, HOPE IN GOD. IN thee, dear Lord, my pensive soul respires, DECAY OF LIFE. THE day grows old, the low-pitched lamp hath made No less than treble shade, And the descending damp doth now prepare T'uncurl bright Titan's hair; Whose western wardrobe now begins to unfold To clothe his evening glory, when th' alarms Nature now calls to supper, to refresh The toiling ploughman drives his thirsty teams The droyling swineherd knocks away, and feasts The box-bill ouzel, and the dappled thrush, And now the cold autumnal dews are seen And by the low-shorn rowans doth appear The sapless branches doff their summer-suits, And stormy blasts have forced the quaking trees To wrap their trembling limbs in suits of mossy frieze. Our wasted taper now hath brought her light To the next door to night; Her sprightless flame, grown great with snuff, doth turn Her slender inch, that yet unspent remains, And in a silent language bids her guest Now careful age hath pitched her painful plough And snowy blasts of discontented care, Have blanched the falling hair; Suspicious envy, mixed with jealous spite, He threatens youth with age; and now, alas! He owns not what he is, but vaunts the man he was. 1 Grey hairs, peruse thy days, and let thy past Those hasty wings that hurried them away, The constant wheels of nature scorn to tire, That blast that nipped thy youth will ruin thee, That hand that shook the branch will quickly strike the tree. WILLIAM HABINGTON. THIS amiable man and pleasing poet was born at Hendlip, in Worcestershire, in 1605. His family being Catholics, he was educated at St. Omer's, and afterwards at Paris. At an early age he married Lucia, daughter of William Herbert, first Lord Powis; this lady was the Castara of his poems. He died in 1654. The poems of Habington were introduced for the first time in a general collection, by Mr. Chalmers. "The great charm of these poems," says Mr. Wilmot, in his Lives of the Sacred Poets, "is their purity, and domestic tenderness: the religion of his fancy is never betrayed into any unbecoming mirth, or rapturous enthusiasm. He is always amiable, simple, and unaffected; if he has not the ingenuity of some of his rivals, he is also free from their conceits." NON NOBIS DOMINE.-DAVID. No marble statue, nor high To lose its head within the sky! God, be thou only praised! Thou in a moment canst defeat The mighty conquests of the proud, How can the feeble works of art Hold out against th' assault of storms? Or how can brass to him impart Sense of surviving fame, whose heart Blind folly of triumphing pride! Eternity, why build'st thou here? That tide which did its banks o'erflow, And all our trophies overthrow, Ebbs like a thief away. And thou who, to preserve thy name, Leav'st statues in some conquered land, How will posterity scorn fame, When th' idol shall receive a maim, How wilt thou hate thy wars, when he Perhaps thought worthier praise! No laurel wreath about my brow! To thee, my God, all praise, whose law The conquered doth, and conqueror bow! For both dissolve to air, if Thou Thy influence but withdraw. |