O, let them in their gold quaff dropsies down!

O, let them surfeits feast in silver bright! Whilst sugar hires the taste the brain to drown, And bribes of sauce corrupt false appetite,

His master's rest, health, heart, life, soul, to sell; Thus plenty, fulness, sickness, ring their knell. Death weds, and beds them; first in grave, and then in hell.

But, ah! let me under some Kentish hill,

Near rolling Medway 'mong my shepherd peers,

With fearless merry-make, and piping still,

Securely pass my few and slow-paced years:

While yet the great Augustus of our nation

Shuts up old Janus in this long cessation, Strength'ning our pleasing ease, and gives us sure vacation.

There may I, master of a little flock,

Feed my poor lambs, and often change their fare:

My lovely mate shall tend my sparing stock,

And nurse my little ones with pleasing care,

Whose love, and look, shall speak their father plain;
Health be my feast, heaven hope, content my gain;

So in my little house, my lesser heart shall reign.

The beech shall yield a cool safe canopy,

While down I sit, and chant to th' echoing wood: Ah, singing might I live, and singing die!

So by fair Thames, or silver Medway's flood,

The dying swan, when years her temples pierce,
In music's strains breathes out her life and verse,

And, chanting her own dirge, tides on her watʼry hearse,

II.

FEMALE FICKLENESS.

P. FLETCHER.

WHO Sows the sand? or ploughs the easy shore?
Or strives in nets to prison in the wind?

Yet I, (fond I) more fond, and senseless more,
Thought in sure love a woman's thoughts to bind.
Fond, too fond thoughts, that thought in love to tie

One more inconstant than inconstancy!

Look as it is with some true April day,

Whose various weather stores the world with flowers;
The sun his glorious beams doth fair display,

Then rains, and shines again, and straight it lowrs,
And twenty changes in one hour doth prove;

So, and more changing, is a woman's love.

Or as the hairs which deck their wanton heads,

Which loosely fly, and play with every wind,
And with each blast turn round their golden threads;
Such as their hair, such is their looser mind:
The difference this, their hair is often bound;
But never bonds a woman might embound.

False is their flattering colour, false and fading;
False is their flattering tongue; false every part,
Their hair is forged, their silver foreheads shading;
False are their eyes, but falsest is their heart:
Then this in consequence must needs ensue ;
All must be false, when every part's untrue.

Fond then my thoughts, which thought a thing so vain! Fond hopes, that anchor on so false a ground!

Fond love, to love what could not love again!

Fond heart, thus fired with love, in hope thus drown'd Fond thoughts, fond heart, fond hope; but fondest I, the wind, and love inconstancy!

Το

grasp

SONNET.

III.

DRUMMOND.

IN mind's pure glass when I myself behold,
And lively see how my best days are spent,
What clouds of care above my head are roll'd,
What coming ill, which I cannot prevent:
My course begun I, wearied, do repent,
And would embrace what reason oft hath told;
But scarce thus think I, when love hath control'd
All the best reasons reason could invent.

Though sure I know my labour's end is grief,
The more I strive that I the more shall pine,

That only death shall be my last relief:

Yet when I think upon that face divine, Like one with arrow shot, in laughter's place,

Maugre my heart, I joy in my disgrace.