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SONG.

THE WILLING PRISONER TO HIS MISTRESS.

LET fools great Cupid's yoke disdain, Loving their own wild freedom better; Whilst, proud of my triumphant chain,

I sit and court my beauteous fetter.

Her murdering glances, snaring hairs,
And her bewitching smiles, so please me,
As he brings ruin, that repairs

The sweet afflictions that disease me.

Hide not those panting balls of snow
With envious veils from my beholding;
Unlock those lips, their pearly row

In a sweet smile of love unfolding.

And let those eyes, whose motion wheels
The restless fate of every lover,
Survey the pains my sick heart feels,

And wounds, themselves have made, discover.

A PASTORAL DIALOGUE.

SHEPHERD, NYMPH, CHORUS.

Shep. THIS mossy bank they prest. Nym. That Did canopy the happy pair [aged oak

All night from the damp air. Cho. Here let us sit, and sing the words they spoke, Till the day-breaking their embraces broke. Shep. See, love, the blushes of the morn appear: And now she hangs her pearly store (Robb'd from the eastern shore) I' th' cowslip's bell and rose's ear: Sweet, I must stay no longer here.

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Shep. Hark! Nym. Ah me, stay! Shep. For ever. Nym. No, arise;

We must be gone. Shep. My nest of spice. Nym. My soul. Shep. My paradise. [eyes Cho. Neither could say farewell, but through their Grief interrupted speech with tears supplies.

FEMININE HONOUR.

IN what esteem did the gods hold

Fair innocence and the chaste bed, When scandal'd virtue might be bold,

Bare-foot upon sharp culters, spread O'er burning coals, to march; yet feel Nor scorching fire nor piercing steel!

Why, when the hard-edged iron did turn Soft as a bed of roses blown,

When cruel flames forgot to burn

Their chaste, pure limbs, should man alone 'Gainst female innocence conspire, Harder than steel, fiercer than fire?

Oh hapless sex ! unequal sway

Of partial honour! who may know Rebels from subjects that obey,

When malice can on vestals throw Disgrace, and fame fix high repute On the loose shameless prostitute? Vain Honour thou art but disguise,

A cheating voice, a juggling art; No judge of Virtue, whose pure eyes

Court her own image in the heart, More pleased with her true figure there, Than her false echo in the ear.

SONG.

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose ;
For in your beauties orient deep
These flow'rs, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more, whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For, in pure love, heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more, whither doth haste
The nightingale, when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters, and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more, where those stars light, That downwards fall in dead of night; For in your eyes they sit, and there Fixed become, as in their sphere.

Ask me no more, if east or west,
The phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.

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WILLIAM ALEXANDER, EARL OF STERLINE.

[Born, 1580. Died, 1640.]

WILLIAM ALEXANDER, of Menstrie, travelled | Having repaired to the court of James the First, on the Continent as tutor to the Earl of Argyll; and after his return to his native country (Scotland), having in vain solicited a mistress, whom he celebrates in his poetry by the name of Aurora, he married the daughter of Sir William Erskine.

he obtained the notice of the monarch, was appointed gentleman usher to Prince Charles, and was knighted by James. Both of those sovereigns patronized his scheme for colonizing Nova Scotia, of which the latter made him lord lieutenant

Charles the First created him Earl of Sterline in 1633, and for ten years he held the office of secretary of state for Scotland, with the praise of moderation, in times that were rendered pecu

SONNETS.

FROM HIS

SOME men delight huge buildings to behold,
Some theatres, mountains, floods, and famous
springs,

Some monuments of monarchs, and such things
As in the books of fame have been enroll'd,
Those stately towns that to the stars were raised;
Some would their ruins see (their beauty's gone),
Of which the world's three parts each boasts of one:
Though none of those, I love a sight as rare,
Even her that o'er my life as queen doth sit;
Juno in majesty, Pallas in wit,

As Phoebe chaste, than Venus far more fair;
And though her looks even threaten death to me,
Their threat'nings are so sweet I cannot flee.

I CHANCED, my dear, to come upon a day
Whilst thou wast but arising from thy bed,
And the warm snows, with comely garments cled,
More rich than glorious, and more fine than gay.
Then, blushing to be seen in such a case,
O how thy curled locks mine eyes did please;
And well become those waves thy beauty's seas,
Which by thy hairs were framed upon thy face;
Such was Diana once, when being spied
By rash Acton, she was much commoved:

liarly trying by the struggles of Laud against the Scottish presbyterians.-He wrote some very heavy tragedies; but there is elegance of expression in a few of his shorter pieces*.

RISE, lady! mistress, rise!
The night hath tedious been,
No sleep hath fallen into my eyes,
Nor slumbers made me sin :
Is not she a saint then, say,
Thought of whom keeps sin away?

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NATHANIEL FIELD.

[* "Lord Sterline is rather monotonous, as sonneteers usually are, and he addresses his mistress by the appellation, Fair tygress.' Campbell observes that there is elegance of expression in a few of his shorter pieces."— HALLAM, Lit. Hist., vol. iii. p. 505.]

[Died about 1638]

NATHANIEL FIELD had the honour of being | Chapel, Field played a part in Jonson's Poetaster, connected with Massinger in the Fatal Dowry, the play from which Rowe stole the plot of his Fair Penitent. [As one of the Children of the

1601; and Mr. Collier has conjectured that he could have hardly begun to write before 1609 or 1610. In 1612 he was an author in print.]

SONG.

FROM "AMENDS FOR LADIES." 1618.

Rise, madam! rise, and give me light,
Whom darkness still will cover,
And ignorance, darker than night,

Till thou smile on thy lover:
All want day till thy beauty rise,
For the gray morn breaks from thine eyes.

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