Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets Part 71

7 If friendship sympathy impart, Why this ill-shuffled game, That heart can never meet with heart, Or flame encounter flame?

What does this cruelty create?

Is't the intrigue of love or fate?

8 Had friendship ne'er been known to men, (The ghost at last confessed) The world had then a stranger been To all that heaven possessed.

But could it all be here acquired, Not heaven itself would be desired.

A FRIEND.

1 Love, nature's plot, this great creation's soul, The being and the harmony of things, Doth still preserve and propagate the whole, From whence man's happiness and safety springs: The earliest, whitest, blessed'st times did draw From her alone their universal law.

2 Friendship's an abstract of this n.o.ble flame, 'Tis love refined and purged from all its dross, The next to angels' love, if not the same, As strong in pa.s.sion is, though not so gross: It antedates a glad eternity, And is an heaven in epitome.

3 Essential honour must be in a friend, Not such as every breath fans to and fro; But born within, is its own judge and end, And dares not sin though sure that none should know.

Where friendship's spoke, honesty's understood; For none can be a friend that is not good.

4 Thick waters show no images of things; Friends are each other's mirrors, and should be Clearer than crystal or the mountain springs, And free from clouds, design, or flattery.

For vulgar souls no part of friendship share; Poets and friends are born to what they are.

MARGARET, d.u.c.h.eSS OF NEWCASTLE.

This lady, if not more of a woman than Mrs Phillips, was considerably more of a poet. She was born (probably) about 1625. She was the daughter of Sir Charles Lucas, and became a maid-of-honour to Henrietta Maria.

Accompanying the Queen to France, she met with the Marquis, afterwards Duke of Newcastle, and married him at Paris in 1645. They removed to Antwerp, and there, in 1653, this lady published a volume, ent.i.tled 'Poems and Fancies.' The pair aided each other in their studies, and the result was a number of enormous folios of poems, plays, speeches, and philosophical disquisitions. These volumes were, we are told, great favourites of Coleridge and Charles Lamb, for the sake, we presume, of the wild sparks of insight and genius which break irresistibly through the scholastic smoke and bewildered nonsense. When Charles II. was restored, the Marquis and his wife returned to England, and spent their life in great harmony. She died in 1673, leaving behind her some beautiful fantasias, where the meaning is often finer than the music, such as the 'Pastime and Recreation of Fairies in Fairy-land.' Her poetry, particularly her contrasted pictures of Mirth and Melancholy, present fine acc.u.mulations of imagery drawn direct from nature, and shewn now in brightest sunshine, and now in softest moonlight, as the change of her subject and her tone of feeling require.

MELANCHOLY DESCRIBED BY MIRTH.

Her voice is low, and gives a hollow sound; She hates the light, and is in darkness found; Or sits with blinking lamps, or tapers small, Which various shadows make against the wall.

She loves nought else but noise which discord makes, As croaking frogs, whose dwelling is in lakes; The raven's hoa.r.s.e, the mandrake's hollow groan, And shrieking owls which fly i' the night alone; The tolling bell, which for the dead rings out; A mill, where rushing waters run about; The roaring winds, which shake the cedars tall, Plough up the seas, and beat the rocks withal.

She loves to walk in the still moonshine night, And in a thick dark grove she takes delight; In hollow caves, thatched houses, and low cells, She loves to live, and there alone she dwells.

MELANCHOLY DESCRIBING HERSELF.

I dwell in groves that gilt are with the sun; Sit on the banks by which clear waters run; In summers hot, down in a shade I lie; My music is the buzzing of a fly; I walk in meadows, where grows fresh green gra.s.s; In fields, where corn is high, I often pa.s.s; Walk up the hills, where round I prospects see, Some brushy woods, and some all champaigns be; Returning back, I in fresh pastures go, To hear how sheep do bleat, and cows do low; In winter cold, when nipping frosts come on, Then I do live in a small house alone; Although 'tis plain, yet cleanly 'tis within, Like to a soul that's pure, and clear from sin; And there I dwell in quiet and still peace, Not filled with cares how riches to increase; I wish nor seek for vain and fruitless pleasures; No riches are, but what the mind intreasures.

Thus am I solitary, live alone, Yet better loved, the more that I am known; And though my face ill-favoured at first sight, After acquaintance, it will give delight.

Refuse me not, for I shall constant be; Maintain your credit and your dignity.

THOMAS STANLEY.

Thomas Stanley, like Thomas Brown in later days, was both a philosopher and a poet; but his philosophical reputation at the time eclipsed his poetical. He was the only son of Sir Thomas Stanley of Camberlow Green, in Hertfordshire, and was born in 1620. He received his education at Pembroke College, Oxford; and after travelling for some years abroad, he took up his abode in the Middle Temple. Here he seems to have spent the rest of his life in patient and multifarious studies. He made translations of some merit from Anacreon, Bion, Moschus, and the 'Kisses' of Secundus, as well as from Marino, Boscan, Tristan, and Gongora. He wrote a work of great pretensions as a compilation, ent.i.tled 'The History of Philosophy,' containing the lives, opinions, actions, and discourses of philosophers of every sect, of which he published the first volume in 1655, and completed it in a fourth in 1662. It is rather a vast collection of the materials for a history, than a history itself.

He is a Cudworth in magnitude and learning, but not in strength and comprehension, and is dest.i.tute of precision and clearness of style.

Stanley also wrote some poems, which discover powers that might have been better employed in original composition than in translation.

His style, rich of itself, is enriched to repletion by conceits, and sometimes by voluptuous sentiments and language. He adds a new flush to the cheek of Anacreon himself; and his grapes are so heavy, that not a staff, but a wain were required to bear them. Stanley died in 1678.

CELIA SINGING.

1 Roses in breathing forth their scent, Or stars their borrowed ornament; Nymphs in their watery sphere that move, Or angels in their orbs above; The winged chariot of the light, Or the slow, silent wheels of night; The shade which from the swifter sun Doth in a swifter motion run, Or souls that their eternal rest do keep, Make far less noise than Celia's breath in sleep.

2 But if the angel which inspires This subtle flame with active fires, Should mould this breath to words, and those Into a harmony dispose, The music of this heavenly sphere Would steal each soul (in) at the ear, And into plants and stones infuse A life that cherubim would choose, And with new powers invert the laws of fate, Kill those that live, and dead things animate.

SPEAKING AND KISSING.

1 The air which thy smooth voice doth break, Into my soul like lightning flies; My life retires while thou dost speak, And thy soft breath its room supplies.

2 Lost in this pleasing ecstasy, I join my trembling lips to thine, And back receive that life from thee Which I so gladly did resign.

3 Forbear, Platonic fools! t'inquire What numbers do the soul compose; No harmony can life inspire, But that which from these accents flows.

LA BELLE CONFIDANTE.

You earthly souls that court a wanton flame Whose pale, weak influence Can rise no higher than the humble name And narrow laws of sense, Learn, by our friendship, to create An immaterial fire, Whose brightness angels may admire, But cannot emulate.

Sickness may fright the roses from her cheek, Or make the lilies fade, But all the subtle ways that death doth seek Cannot my love invade.

THE LOSS.

1 Yet ere I go, Disdainful Beauty, thou shalt be So wretched as to know What joys thou fling'st away with me.

2 A faith so bright, As Time or Fortune could not rust; So firm, that lovers might Have read thy story in my dust,

3 And crowned thy name With laurel verdant as thy youth, Whilst the shrill voice of Fame Spread wide thy beauty and my truth.

4 This thou hast lost, For all true lovers, when they find That my just aims were crossed, Will speak thee lighter than the wind.

5 And none will lay Any oblation on thy shrine, But such as would betray Thy faith to faiths as false as thine.

6 Yet, if thou choose On such thy freedom to bestow, Affection may excuse, For love from sympathy doth flow.

NOTE ON ANACREON.

Let's not rhyme the hours away; Friends! we must no longer play: Brisk Lyaeus--see!--invites To more ravishing delights.

Let's give o'er this fool Apollo, Nor his fiddle longer follow: Fie upon his forked hill, With his fiddlestick and quill; And the Muses, though they're gamesome, They are neither young nor handsome; And their freaks in sober sadness Are a mere poetic madness: Pegasus is but a horse; He that follows him is worse.