403.

404.

CHARLES WEBBE

Against Indifference

MORE love or more disdain I crave;

Sweet, be not still indifferent:
O send me quickly to my grave,
Or else afford me more content!
Or love or hate me more or less,
For love abhors all lukewarmness.
Give me a tempest if 'twill drive

Me to the place where I would be;
Or if you'll have me still alive,

Confess you will be kind to me.
Give hopes of bliss or dig my grave:
More love or more disdain I crave.

SIR GEORGE ETHEREGE

Song

c. 1678

1635-1691

LADIES, though to your conquering eyes

Love owes his chiefest victories,

And borrows those bright arms from you
With which he does the world subdue,
Yet you yourselves are not above
The empire nor the griefs of love.

Then rack not lovers with disdain,
Lest Love on you revenge their pain:
You are not free because you're fair:
The Boy did not his Mother spare.
Beauty's but an offensive dart :
It is no armour for the heart.

405. To a Lady asking him how long he would love her

T is not, Celia, in our power

IT

To say how long our love will last;

It may

be we within this hour

May lose those joys we now do taste;
The Blessed, that immortal be,

From change in love are only free.

Then since we mortal lovers are,

Ask not how long our love will last;
But while it does, let us take care

Each minute be with pleasure past:
Were it not madness to deny

To live because we're sure to die?

406.

THOMAS TRAHERNE

News

NEWS from a foreign country came

1637-1674

As if my treasure and my wealth lay there;

So much it did my heart inflame,

'Twas wont to call my Soul into mine ear;

Which thither went to meet

The approaching sweet,

And on the threshold stood

To entertain the unknown Good.

It hover'd there

As if 'twould leave mine ear,

And was so eager to embrace
The joyful tidings as they came,
'Twould almost leave its dwelling-place
To entertain that same.

As if the tidings were the things,
My very joys themselves, my foreign treasure-
Or else did bear them on their wings-

With so much joy they came, with so much pleasure.
My Soul stood at that gate

To recreate

Itself with bliss, and to

Be pleased with speed. A fuller view
It fain would take,

Yet journeys back would make

Unto my heart; as if 'twould fain

Go out to meet, yet stay within

To fit a place to entertain

And bring the tidings in.

What sacred instinct did inspire
My soul in childhood with a hope so strong?
What secret force moved my desire
To expect my joys beyond the seas, so young?
Felicity I knew

Was out of view,

And being here alone,

I saw that happiness was gone

From me! For this

I thirsted absent bliss,

And thought that sure beyond the seas,
Or else in something near at hand-
I knew not yet-since naught did please
I knew my Bliss did stand.

But little did the infant dream

That all the treasures of the world were by:
And that himself was so the cream
And crown of all which round about did lie.
Yet thus it was: the Gem,

The Diadem,

The ring enclosing all

That stood upon this earthly ball,
The Heavenly eye,

Much wider than the sky,

Wherein they all included were,

The glorious Soul, that was the King
Made to possess them, did appear
A small and little thing!

THOMAS FLATMAN

1637-1688

6

407.

The Sad Day

THE sad day!

When friends shall shake their heads, and say

Of miserable me

Hark, how he groans!

Look, how he pants for breath!

See how he struggles with the pangs of death !'

When they shall say of these dear eyes

'How hollow, O how dim they be !

Mark how his breast doth rise and swell

Against his potent enemy!'

When some old friend shall step to my bedside,
Touch my chill face, and thence shall gently slide.

But-when his next companions say

How does he do? What hopes?'-shall turn away, Answering only, with a lift-up hand'Who can his fate withstand?'

Then shall a gasp or two do more

Than e'er my rhetoric could before:

Persuade the world to trouble me no more!

CHARLES SACKVILLE, EARL OF DORSET

408.

Song

1638-1706

Written at Sea, in the First Dutch War (1665), the night before an Engagement.

To all you ladies now at land

We men at sea indite;

But first would have you understand
How hard it is to write :

The Muses now, and Neptune too,

We must implore to write to you—
With a fa, la, la, la, la.

For though the Muses should prove kind,
And fill our empty brain,

Yet if rough Neptune rouse the wind
To wave the azure main,

Our paper, pen, and ink, and we,

Roll up and down our ships at sea-
With a fa, la, la, la, la.