HENRY KING.

HENRY KING, author of miscellaneous poems, and a version of the Psalms, was born in 1591. He was successively Chaplain to James the First, Dean of Rochester, and Bishop of Chichester, and died in 1669. All the writings of King are religious, and there is a peculiar charm in his poetry, arising more from this circumstance than from its style.

THE DIRGE.

WHAT is the existence of man's life
But open war or slumbered strife,
Where sickness to his sense presents
The combat of the elements,

And never feels a perfect peace,

Till death's cold hand signs his release?

It is a storm, where the hot blood
Outvies in rage the boiling flood:
And each loose passion of the mind

Is like a furious gust of wind,

Which beats his bark with many a wave,
Till he casts anchor in the grave.

It is a flower, which buds and grows,
And withers as the leaves disclose,
Whose spring and fall faint seasons keep,
Like fits of waking before sleep;
Then shrinks into that fatal mould,

Where its first being was enrolled.

It is a dream, whose seeming truth

Is moralized in age and youth;
Where all the comforts he can share,

As wandering as his fancies are;
Till in a mist of dark decay

The dreamer vanished quite away.

It is a dial, which points out
The sun-set as it moves about;
And shadows out in lines of night,
The subtle stages of time's flight;
Till all-obscuring earth hath laid
His body in perpetual shade.

It is a weary interlude,

Which doth short joys, long woes, include:
The world the stage, the prologue tears,
The acts vain hopes and varied fears;
The scene shuts up with loss of breath,
And leaves no epilogue but death.

THE LABYRINTH.

LIFE is a crooked labyrinth, and we
Are daily lost in that obliquity.
'Tis a perplexed circle, in whose round
Nothing but sorrows and new sins abound.
How is the faint impression of each good
Drowned in the vicious channel of our blood,
Whose ebbs and tides by their vicissitude,
Both our great Maker and ourselves delude!
Oh! wherefore is the most discerning eye
Unapt to make its own discovery?
Why is the clearest and best judging mind,
In its own ills' prevention dark and blind?
Dull to advise, to act precipitate,

We scarce think what to do, but when too late,
Or if we think, that fluid thought, like seed,
Roots there to propagate some fouler deed.
Still we repent and sin-sin and repent;
We thaw and freeze; we harden and relent.
Those fires which cooled to day, the morrow's heat
Rekindles; thus frail nature does repeat

What she unlearnt, and still by learning on
Perfects her lesson of confusion.

Sick soul! what cure shall I for thee devise,
Whose leprous state corrupts all remedies?
What medicine or what cordial can be got
For thee, who poisonest thy best antidote?
Repentance is thy bane, since thou by it
Only revivest the fault thou didst commit.
Nor grievest thou for the past, but art in pain,
For fear thou mayest not act it o'er again;
So that thy tears, like water spilt on lime,
Serve not to quench, but to advance thy crime.
My blessed Saviour, unto Thee I fly!
For help against this home-bred tyranny.
Thou canst true sorrow in my soul imprint,
And draw contrition from a breast of flint;
Thou canst reverse this labyrinth of sin,
My will affects and actions wander in.
Oh! guide my faith! and, by thy grace's clue

Teach me to hunt that kingdom at the view,

Where true joys reign, which like their day shall last,

Those never clouded, nor that overcast.

SÍC VITA.

LIKE to the falling of a star,
Or as the flight of eagles are,

Or like the fresh Spring's gaudy hue,

Or silver drops of morning dew,

Or like a wind that chafes the flood,
Or bubbles which on water stood:
Even such is man, whose borrowed light
Is straight called in, and paid to night.

The wind blows out, the bubble dies;
The Spring entombed in Autumn lies
The dew dries up, the star is shot,
The flight is past-and man forgot.

JOHN MILTON.

THIS divine poet was born in London in 1608. He was educated with the most sedulous care, and the intensity of his boyish studies was the probable cause of his future blindness. After leaving Cambridge, he remained some time at his father's house in Horton, Buckinghamshire; when turned of thirty he went to Italy, and returned to England about the breaking out of the civil wars. He after a while took office under Cromwell, and being the literary champion of the Commonwealth, on the Restoration, he had no reason to expect anything but destruction; he was, however, included in the act of anmesty, and he retired to Chalfont St. Giles, Bucks, where the house in which he lived still stands almost entire. It was here that he produced in total darkness, that incomparable poem, his Paradise Lost; which to praise would be vain. He afterwards, at the same place, produced his Paradise Regained, a work of inferior merit. He died in 1674, and was buried in Cripplegate Church. A monument is erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey.

THE SON OF GOD OFFERING HIMSELF TO BECOME
THE SAVIOUR OF MAN.

The Father having foretold the fall of Man, and the only means of his recovery being an expiatory sacrifice, inquires :~

"SAY, heavenly powers, where shall we find such love?
Which of ye will be mortal to redeem

Man's mortal crime, and just, the unjust to save?
Dwells in all heaven charity so dear?"

He asked, but all the heavenly quire stood mute,
And silence was in heaven: on man's behalf

Patron or intercessor none appeared,
Much less that durst upon his own head draw
The deadly forfeiture, and ransom set.

And now without redemption all mankind

Must have been lost, adjudged to death and hell
By doom severe, had not the Son of God,

In whom the fulness dwells of love divine,

His dearest mediation thus renewed:

"Father, thy word is past, man shall find grace; And shall grace not find means, that finds her way, The speediest of thy winged messengers,

To visit all thy creatures, and to all

Comes unprevented, unimplored, unsought?
Happy for man, so coming! he her aid
Can never seek, once dead in sins and lost;
Atonement for himself, or offering meet,
Indebted and undone! hath none to bring:
Behold me then! me for him, life for life
I offer; on me let thine anger fall;
Account me man; I for his sake will leave
Thy bosom, and this glory next to Thee,
Freely put off, and for him lastly die

Well pleased; on me let death wreak all his rage;
Under his gloomy power I shall not long
Lie vanquished; Thou hast given me to possess

Life in myself for ever; by Thee I live,
Though now to death I yield, and am his due,
All that of me can die; yet, that debt paid,
Thou wilt not leave me in the loathsome grave
His prey, nor suffer my unspotted soul
For ever with corruption there to dwell;

But I shall rise victorious, and subdue

My vanquisher, spoiled of his vaunted spoil:

Death his death's-wound shall then receive, and stoop Inglorious, of his mortal sting disarmed.

I through the ample air in triumph high,

Shall lead hell captive, maugre hell! and show

The powers of darkness bound. Thou at the sight,

Pleased, out of heaven shalt look down and smile;
While by Thee raised I ruin all my foes,
Death last, and with his carcass glut the grave:
Then with the multitude of my redeemed,