And that a more majestic queen,
Or humbler slaves, he had not seen.
All this with indignation spoke,
In vain I struggled with the yoke

Of mighty Love: that conquering look,
When next beheld, like lightning strook
My blasted soul, and made me bow
Lower than those I pitied now.

So the tall stag, upon the brink Of some smooth stream about to drink, Surveying there his armed head, With shame remembers that he fled The scorned dogs, résolves to try The combat next; but if their cry Invades again his trembling ear, He straight resumes his wonted care; Leaves the untasted spring behind, And, winged with fear, outflies the wind.

On a Girdle.

That which her slender waist confined
Shall now my joyful temples bind :
No monarch but would give his crown
His arms might do what this hath done.

It was my heaven's extremest sphere,
The pale which held that lovely deer;
My joy, my grief, my hope, my love,
Did all within this circle move!
A narrow compass! and yet there

Dwelt all that's good, and all that 's fair : Give me but what this ribband bound, Take all the rest the sun goes round.

On the Marriage of the Dwarfs.
Design or chance makes others wive,
But Nature did this match contrive:
Eve might as well have Adam fled,
As she denied her little bed

To him, for whom Heaven seemed to frame
And measure out this only dame.

Thrice happy is that humble pair,
Beneath the level of all care!
Over whose heads those arrows fly

Of sad distrust and jealousy;

Secured in as high extreme,

As if the world held none but them.

To him the fairest nymphs do shew

Like moving mountains topped with snow; And every man a Polypheme

Does to his Galatea seem.

Ah, Chloris, that kind Nature thus From all the world had severed us; Creating for ourselves us two,

As love has me for only you!

From 'A Panegyric to my Lord Protector.'
While with a strong and yet a gentle hand,
You bridle faction, and our hearts command,
Protect us from ourselves, and from the foe,
Make us unite, and make us conquer too;

Let partial spirits still aloud complain,
Think themselves injured that they cannot reign,
And own no liberty, but where they may
Without control upon their fellows prey.

Above the waves, as Neptune shewed his face,
To chide the winds, and save the Trojan race,
So has your Highness, raised above the rest,
Storms of ambition tossing us repressed.

Your drooping country, torn with civil hate,
Restored by you, is made a glorious state;
The seat of empire, where the Irish come,
And the unwilling Scots, to fetch their doom.

The sea's our own; and now all nations greet
With bending sails, each vessel of our fleet;
Your power extends as far as winds can blow,
Or swelling sails upon the globe may go.

Heaven, that hath placed this island to give law,
To balance Europe, and its states to awe,
In this conjunction doth on Britain smile,
The greatest leader, and the greatest isle!

Whether this portion of the world were rent
By the rude ocean from the continent,
Or thus created, it was sure designed
To be the sacred refuge of mankind.

Hither the oppressed shall henceforth resort,
Justice to crave, and succour at your court;
And then your Highness, not for ours alone,
But for the world's Protector shall be known.

Still as you rise, the state exalted too,

Finds no distemper while 'tis changed by you; Changed like the world's great scene! when, witho noise,

The rising sun night's vulgar lights destroys.

Had you, some ages past, this race of glory
Run, with amazement we should read your story;
But living virtue, all achievements past,
Meets envy still to grapple with at last.

This Cæsar found; and that ungrateful age,
With losing him, went back to blood and rage;
Mistaken Brutus thought to break their yoke,
But cut the bond of union with that stroke.

That sun once set, a thousand meaner stars
Gave a dim light to violence and wars;
To such a tempest as now threatens all,
Did not your mighty arm prevent the fall.

If Rome's great senate could not wield that sword,
Which of the conquered world had made them lord,
What hope had ours, while yet their power was new,
To rule victorious armies, but by you?

You, that had taught them to subdue their foes,
Could order teach, and their high spirits compose;
To every duty could their minds engage,
Provoke their courage, and command their rage.

So when a lion shakes his dreadful mane,
And angry grows, if he that first took pain
To tame his youth approach the haughty beast,
He bends to him, but frights away the rest.

As the vexed world, to find repose, at last
Itself into Augustus' arms did cast;
So England now does, with like toil opprest,
Her weary head upon your bosom rest.

Then let the Muses, with such notes as these,
Instruct us what belongs unto our peace.
Your battles they hereafter shall indite,
And draw the image of our Mars in fight.

Tell of towns stormed, and armies overrun,
And mighty kingdoms by your conduct won:
How, while you thundered, clouds of dust did choke
Contending troops, and seas lay hid in smoke.

Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse,
And every conqueror creates a Muse!
Here, in low strains, your milder deeds we sing,
But there, my lord, we'll bays and olives bring

To crown your head; while you in triumph ride
O'er conquered nations, and the sea beside :
While all your neighbour Princes unto you,
Like Joseph's sheaves, pay reverence and due.

From 'On a War with Spain.'
When Britain, looking with a just disdain
Upon this gilded majesty of Spain,
And knowing well that empire must decline
Whose chief support and sinews are of coin,
Our nation's solid virtue did oppose

To the rich troublers of the world's repose.
And now some months, encamping on the main,
Our naval army had besieged Spain :
They that the whole world's monarchy designed,
Are to their ports by our bold fleet confined,
From whence our Red Cross they triumphant see,
Riding without a rival on the sea.

Others may use the ocean as their road,
Only the English make it their abode,
Whose ready sails with every wind can fly,
And make a covenant with the inconstant sky:
Our oaks secure, as if they there took root,
We tread on billows with a steady foot.

At Penshurst.

While in this park I sing, the listening deer
Attend my passion, and forget to fear;
When to the beeches I report my flame,
They bow their heads, as if they felt the same.
To gods appealing, when I reach their bowers
With loud complaints, they answer me in showers.
To thee a wild and cruel soul is given,

More deaf than trees, and prouder than the heaven!
Love's foe professed! why dost thou falsely feign
Thyself a Sidney? from which noble strain
He sprung, that could so far exalt the name
Of Love, and warm our nation with his flame,
That all we can of love or high desire,

Seems but the smoke of amorous Sidney's fire.
Nor call her mother who so well does prove
One breast may hold both chastity and love.
Never can she, that so exceeds the spring
In joy and bounty, be supposed to bring
One so destructive. To no human stock
We owe this fierce unkindness, but the rock;
That cloven rock produced thee, by whose side
Nature, to recompense the fatal pride

Of such stern beauty, placed those healing springs
Which not more help, than that destruction, brings.
Thy heart no ruder than the rugged stone,
I might, like Orpheus, with my numerous moan

Melt to compassion; now my traitorous song
With thee conspires to do the singer wrong;
While thus I suffer not myself to lose

The memory of what augments my woes;
But with my own breath still foment the fire,
Which flames as high as fancy can aspire!

This last complaint the indulgent ears did pierce Of just Apollo, president of verse;

Highly concerned that the Muse should bring
Damage to one whom he had taught to sing :
Thus he advised me: 'On yon aged tree
Hang up thy lute, and hie thee to the sea,
That there with wonders thy diverted mind
Some truce, at least, may with this passion find.'
Ah, cruel nymph! from whom her humble swain
Flies for relief unto the raging main,

And from the winds and tempests does expect

A milder fate than from her cold neglect !
Yet there he'll pray that the unkind may prove
Blest in her choice; and vows this endless love
Springs from no hope of what she can confer,
But from those gifts which Heaven has heaped on her.

The Bud.

Lately on yonder swelling bush,
Big with many a coming rose,
This early bud began to blush,

And did but half itself disclose ;

I plucked it though no better grown,
And now you see how full 'tis blown.
Still, as I did the leaves inspire,

With such a purple light they shone, As if they had been made of fire,

And spreading so would flame anon. All that was meant by air or sun, To the young flower my breath has done.

If our loose breath so much can do, What may the same in forms of love, Of purest love and music too,

When Flavia it aspires to move? When that which lifeless buds persuades To wax more soft, her youth invades ?

Song-Go, Lovely Rose.

Go, lovely Rose !

Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,

When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Tell her, that's young,

And shuns to have her graces spied, That, hadst thou sprung

In deserts, where no men abide, Thou must have uncommended died.

Small is the worth

Of beauty from the light retired;
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.

Then die! that she

The common fate of all things rare

May read in thee,

How small a part of time they share

That are so wondrous sweet and fair!

From 'The Last Verses in the Book.'
The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er;
So calm are we when passions are no more:
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness which age descries.

The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made :
Stronger by weakness wiser men become,

As they draw near to their eternal home.
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
That stand upon the threshold of the new.

Editions of Waller are those of Fenton (1729), and Mr G. Thorn Drury in 'The Muses Library' (1893; who gives the 1686 text of the poems). Mr Gosse in his Cambridge lectures, From Shakespeare to Pope (1885), has been thought to attach too much importance to the influence of Waller. See also Julia Cartwright's Sacharissa (1892), and Mr Beeching's essay on 'Waller's Distich' in An English Miscellany (1901).

Sir William D'Avenant, poet and playwright, was born in February 1606, and was the son of a vintner at Oxford. A scandalous story was told by Pope to Oldys, and to Pope by Betterton the player-that he was the natural son of Shakespeare, who was in the habit of putting up at the Crown Tavern on his journeys between London and Stratford. This tradition was evidently encouraged by D'Avenant himself, who was ostentatious in admiring Shakespeare above all other poets, and 'one of the first essays of whose muse' in boyhood was an Ode to Shakespeare. D'Avenant's career led him through some strange vicissitudes. He was entered at Lincoln College, but left without taking a degree; he then became page to the Duchess of Richmond, and afterwards was in the service of the poet Lord Brooke. About 1628 he began to write for the stage; and in 1638, the year after the death of Ben Jonson, he was appointed Laureate. About the same time he lost his nose through an illness—a calamity which exposed him to the merriment of Suckling, Denham, and other wits. He became in 1639 manager of Drury Lane, but entering into the intrigues of the Civil War, fell under the suspicion of Parliament and fled to France. When the queen sent over to the Earl of Newcastle a quantity of military stores, D'Avenant resolved to return to England, and he distinguished himself so much in the cause of the royalists that he was knighted by Charles I. at the siege of Gloucester (September 1643). On the decline of the king's affairs he returned to France, and wrote part of his Gondibert. His next move was to sail for Virginia, sent by the queen in charge of new colonists; but the vessel was captured by one of the Parliamentary ships-of-war, and D'Avenant was lodged in prison at Cowes Castle in the Isle of Wight. In 1650 he was removed to the Tower, in order to be tried by the High Commission Court-a danger from which he was released after two years' imprison

behalf; and as D'Avenant is reported to have interfered in favour of Milton when the royalists were again in the ascendant after the Restoration, one would gladly believe in this graceful reciprocity. When the author of Gondibert obtained his enlargement, he set about establishing a theatre, and, to the surprise of all, succeeded in the attempt (1658), having two years earlier produced in a private house what was practically the first opera in England. By these semi-public performances in a private house, D'Avenant may be said to have revived the stage in England under the Commonwealth, and with the sanction of the authorities. But his earliest dramatic piece. Albovine, King of Lombardy, was written in 1629 and deals with some of the same personages as the poem Gondibert. It is the first of a long series of five-and-twenty plays, some in prose, some in blank verse; while the opera The Siege of Rhodes and some of the masques are in rhyme. Not a few of the plays are fairly readable; they are usually more decorous than those of his contemporaries, but in some the humour is even coarser than the diction, and the author rollicks in tales of lust and horror. The Platonick Lovers is not so coarse as might have been expected in a comedy satirising Lovers of a pure

Celestial kind such as some style Platonical

(as one of the characters says in words Byron might have written); though it sufficiently appears that as to Plato, in the author's opinion,

They father on him a fantastic love He never knew, poor gentleman. After the Restoration he again basked in royal favour, and engaged the services of some highly accomplished actors. Killigrew and he had licenses for theatres in 1661, and were both formally empowered to employ women actors for women's parts-heretofore a sporadic occurrence. But Southey, not without some reason, says: His last work was his worst: it was an alteration of the Tempest, executed in conjunction with Dryden; and marvellous indeed is it that two men of such great and indubitable genius should have combined to debase and vulgarise and pollute such a poem as the Tempest? D'Avenant, who continued to write and superintend the performance of plays till his death, 7th April 1668, was buried in Westminster Abbey.

The epic poem of Gondibert (1651), which was regarded by D'Avenant's friends and admirersCowley and Waller being of the number-as a great and durable monument of genius, has retained a certain interest which the author's dramas have entirely lost. The scene is laid in Lombardy: but names like Oswald and Hurgonill, Astragon and Paradine, show that no attempt is made to ensure local colour or historic vraisemblance. The critics were from the very first strangely at variance as to its merits, doubtless because the poem, though not without a certain solidity of

composition, and though it has really fine passages here and there, is on the whole obscure and dull, and in its longer parts indeed almost unreadable. The prodigious length of the thing (6000 lines) repels; and its long four-lined stanza with alternate rhymes, borrowed from Sir John Davies and copied by Dryden in his Annus Mirabilis, requires a lighter hand than D'Avenant's. The poet prefixed a long and elaborate prose preface to his poem, which may be considered the precursor of Dryden's admirable critical introductions to his plays. It is addressed to his much honour'd friend Mr Hobs,' and drew from the Malmesbury philosopher a disquisition on aesthetics by way of reply, also prefixed to the poem. D'Avenant's worship of Shakespeare continued unabated to the last; but in later years he modelled himself upon the French tragedians. Dryden in his preface to his and D'Avenant's version of the Tempest declares that he did not set any value on what he had written in that play, but cherished it out of gratitude to the memory of Sir William D'Avenant, who, he adds, 'did me the honour to join me with him in the alteration of it. It was originally Shakespeare's-a poet for whom he had particularly a high veneration, and whom he first taught me to admire.' So was veneration for Shakespeare understood in the brave days of Glorious John, of Shadwell, and of Nahum Tate! Most of the miscellaneous work of D'Avenant, once prized so highly, is now not merely unread but contemned; and he is by some modern critics unfeelingly ranked amongst the poetasters.

To the Queen,

Entertained at night by the Countess of Anglesey.

Faire as unshaded light, or as the day
In its first birth, when all the year was May;
Sweet as the altars smoak, or as the new
Unfolded bud, swel'd by the early dew;
Smooth as the face of waters first appear'd,
Ere tides began to strive, or winds were heard ;
Kind as the willing saints, and calmer farre
Than in their sleeps forgiven hermits are.
You that are more than our discreeter feare
Dares praise, with such full art, what make you here?
Here, where the summer is so little seen,

That leaves, (her cheapest wealth,) scarce reach at green;
You come, as if the silver planet were
Misled a while from her much injur'd sphere;
And, t' case the travels of her beames to-night,
In this small lanthorn would contract her light.

Song.

The lark now leaves his watry nest,
And climbing shakes his dewy wings:
He takes this window for the east,

And to implore your light he sings:
Awake, awake, the morn will never rise,
Till she can dress her beauty at your eies!
The merchant bowes unto the seamans star,
The ploughman from the sun his season takes;
But still the lover wonders what they are
Who look for day before his mistress wakes:

She ne'r saw courts, yet courts could have undone
With untaught looks, and an unpractis'd heart;
Her nets the most prepar'd could never shun,
For Nature spread them in the scorn of Art.

She never had in busie cities bin,

Ne'r warm'd with hopes, nor e'er allay'd with fears;
Not seeing punishment could guess no sin;
And sin not seeing, ne'r had use of tears.

But here her father's precepts gave her skill,
Which with incessant business fill'd the houres;
In spring she gathered blossoms for the still;
In autumn, berries; and in summer, flowers.

And as kinde Nature, with calm diligence,
Her own free vertue silently imploys,
Whilst she unheard does rip'ning growth dispence,
So were her vertues busie without noise.

Whilst her great mistris, Nature, thus she tends,
The busie household waites no less on her;

By secret law, each to her beauty bends,
Though all her lowly minde to that prefer.

Gracious and free she breaks upon them all
With morning looks; and they, when she does rise,
Devoutly at her dawn in homage fall,

And droop like flowers when evening shuts her eyes.

Beneath a mirtle covert she does spend

In maids weak wishes her whole stock of thought; Fond maids! who love with mindes fine stuff would mend, Which Nature purposely of bodys wrought.

She fashions him she lov'd of angels' kinde;
Such as in holy story were imploy'd
To the first fathers from th' Eternal Minde,
And in short vision only are injoy'd.

As eagles then when nearest heav'n they fly,
Of wild impossibles soon weary grow;
Feeling their bodies finde no rest so high,
And therefore peerch on earthly things below;
So now she yields; him she an angel deem'd
Shall be a man, the name which virgins fear;
Yet the most harmless to a maid he seemed,
That ever yet that fatal name did bear.

Soon her opinion of his hurtless heart

Affection turns to faith; and then love's fire To heaven, though bashfully, she does impart, And to her mother in the heav'nly quire.

If I do love (said she), that love, O Heav'n! Your own disciple, Nature, bred in me; Why should I hide the passion you have given, Or blush to shew effects which you decree?

And you, my alter'd mother, grown above

Great Nature, which you read and reverenc'd here, Chide not such kindness as you once called love, When you as mortal as my father were.

This said, her soul into her breast retires!

With love's vain diligence of heart she dreams Herself into possession of desires,

And trusts unanchor'd hope in fleeting streams.

In A Journey into Worcestershire' in wet weather, on horseback, and along with Endymion Porter and others, he thus refers to London annoyances, including inconsiderate tailors' bills: And I whom some odd hum'rous planets bid To register the doughty acts they did, Took horse; leaving i' th' town ill plays, sowre wines, Fierce serjeants, and the plague, besides of mine An Ethnick taylor too, that was far worse Than these or what just Heaven did ever curse.

D'Avenant's poem on Madagascar is probably as little explored as the most inaccessible part of the island-home of aye-ayes and traveller's trees. It provides neither amusement nor instruction, being a sort of vision, addressed to Prince Rupert, foreshadowing his fitness to be made governor of an English colony in Madagascar-a project seriously recommended to King Charles I. in 1636.

The last verse of a nautical poem on Winter Storms (of which the first verses begin 'Blow, blow,' and 'Port, port') is as follows:

Aloof, aloof! Hey, how those carracks and ships Fall foul and are tumbled and driven like chips! Our boatsen, alass, a silly weak grisle,

For fear to catch cold

Lies down in the hould:

We all hear his sighs, but few hear his whistle. D'Avenant's Dramatic Works have been edited by Maidment and Logan (5 vols. 1872-75). The old standard edition of the Works s the folio of 1673. Aubrey is the main authority for the Life.

Sir John Suckling (1609–42) possessed such a natural liveliness of fancy and exuberance of animal spirits that he often broke through the artificial restraints imposed by the literary taste of his times, but he never rose into the poetry of strong passion. He is a delightful writer of what have been called 'occasional poems.' His polished wit, playful fancy, and knowledge of life and society enabled him to give interest to trifles and to clothe familiar thoughts in the garb of poetry. His own life seems to have been one summer day; like the voyager on Gray's gilded vessel

Youth at the prow, and Pleasure at the helmhe dreamed of enjoyment, not of fame. His father, Sir John Suckling (1569–1627), was Secretary of State and comptroller of the household to James I. and Charles I. The year before his death the son, who was born at Whitton, in Twickenham parish, had passed from Trinity College, Cambridge, to Gray's Inn; emancipated from all restraint, and with an immense fortune, he set off in 1628 on his travels to France and Italy. Knighted in 1630, he next year joined an auxiliary army of 6000 raised in England, and commanded by the Marquis of Hamilton, to act under Gustavus Adolphus in Germany. He served in several sieges and battles, and on his return in 1632 became celebrated for his wit, gallantry, and munificence at the court of Charles I. He was also considered the best bowler and card-player in England (cribbage was his invention); and his sisters, it is said, distressed and alarmed at his passion for gambling, 'came one day to the Peccadillo bowling-green, crying for the fear he should lose all their portions.' Fortune, however, would not seem to have yet deserted the poet, for when, in 1639, Charles I. took up arms against the Scots, Suckling presented the king with a hundred horsemen, richly equipped and maintained at his own expense, at a cost, it is said, of £12,000. This gaudy regiment formed part of the cavalry commanded by Lord Holland; but no sooner had they come within sight of the Scots encampment on Duns Law than they turned and fled. Suckling was no worse than the rest, but he was made the subject of numerous lampoons and satires. A rival wit and poet, Sir John Mennes (1599-1671), who was successively a military and naval commander, and author of several pieces in the Musarum Delicia (1656), indited a ballad on the retreat, which is worth reprinting here as a lively political ditty of the period: