His flaming eyes' dire exhalation,

Unto a dreadfull pile gives fiery breath; Whose unconsum'd consumption preys upon The never-dying life of a long death.

In this sad house of slow destruction,

(His shop of flames) hee fryes himself, beneath

A masse of woes; his teeth for torment gnash, While his steele sides sound with his tayle's strong lash. Satan remembers his own quarrel with Heaven, and notes that his future prospects are darker:

Heaven's golden-winged herald late he saw
To a poore Galilean virgin sent ; . .

Mad with spight,

He markt how the poore shepheards ran to pay
Their simple tribute to the Babe whose Birth

Was the great businesse both of Heav'n and earth.

He cannot comprehend

That He Whom the sun serves should faintly peepe Through clouds of infant flesh that He the old

:

Eternall Word should be a child, and weepe:
That He Who made the fire should feare the cold:
That Heav'n's high Majesty His court should keepe
In a clay-cottage by each blast control'd:

That Glories Self should serve our griefs and feares,
And from Eternity submit to yeares.

Yet he sees that his power is seriously threatened,
fears that hell too may be wrested from him, and
takes counsel with the powers of hell, and com-
missions Cruelty to go and stir up Herod to
jealousy and suspicion against the Babe (hence the
title of the poem), and to take steps at once to
defend himself and carry out Satan's schemes.
The beginning of Sainte Mary Magdalene or the
Weeper is characteristic:

Hail, sister springs!

Parents of sylver-footed rills!
Ever-bubling things!
Thawing crystall! Snowy hills
Still spending, never spent! I mean
Thy fair eyes, sweet Magdalene !

Heavens thy fair eyes be; Heavens of ever-falling starres. 'Tis seed-time still with thee;

And starres thou sow'st, whose harvest dares Promise the Earth to counter-shine

Whatever makes heavn's forehead fine.

The Flaming Heart (upon the book and picture of the Seraphical Saint Teresa, as she is usually expressed with a seraphim biside her ') ends thus :

O thou undanted daughter of desires!
By all thy dowr of lights and fires;
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove;
By all thy lives and deaths of love;
By thy large draughts of intellectuall day,

And by thy thirsts of love more large then they;
By all thy brim-fill'd bowles of feirce desire,
By thy last morning's draught of liquid fire;
By the full kingdome of that finall kisse

That seiz'd thy parting soul, and seal'd thee His;
By all the Heav'n thou hast in Him

(Fair sister of the seraphim!) ;

By all of Him we have in thee,
Leave nothing of my self in me.
Let me so read thy life that I
Unto all life of mine may dy.

The first of the following elaborate similes or little allegories reminds us of a passage in Jeremy Taylor's Holy Dying, and the second of one of Shakespeare's best-known sonnets :

I've seen indeed the hopefull bud
Of a ruddy rose that stood
Blushing to behold the ray
Of the new-saluted Day;

His tender toppe not fully spread;
The sweet dash of a shower new shead,
Invited him no more to hide
Within himselfe the purple pride

Of his forward flower; when lo,
While he sweetly 'gan to shew
His swelling gloryes, Auster spide him;
Cruel Auster thither hy'd him,

And with the rush of one rude blast
Sham'd not spitefully to wast

All his leaves so fresh and sweet,
And lay them trembling at his feet.
I've seen the Morning's lovely ray
Hover o'er the new-borne Day,
With rosie wings, so richly bright,
As if he scorned to thinke of Night,
When a ruddy storme, whose scowle
Made heaven's radiant face looke foule,
Call'd for an untimely night

To blot the newly blossomed light.
But were the roses' blush so rare,
Were the Morning's smile so faire
As is he, nor cloud nor wind

But would be courteous, would be kind. Amidst his visions of angels ascending and descending, Crashaw had little time to devote to earthly love. But the second part of the Steps is mainly secular, and contains elegies, epitaphs, and even verses in praise of women. We quote entire his version of Musick's Duell, based, like the paraphrase in Ford's Lover's Melancholy (see page 481), on the Latin of the Roman Jesuit professor Strada. It is a version, not a translation, and much of the substance is Crashaw's own :

Now westward Sol had spent the richest beams
Of noon's high glory, when, hard by the streams
Of Tiber, on the sceane of a greene plat,
Under protection of an oake there sate
A sweet Lute's-master, in whose gentle aires
He lost the daye's heat, and his owne hot cares.
Close in the covert of the leaves there stood
A Nightingale, come from the neighbouring wood
(The sweet inhabitant of each glad tree,
Their muse, their syren, harmless syren she).
There stood she listning, and did entertaine
The musick's soft report, and mold the same
In her owne murmures, that whatever mood
His curious fingers lent, her voyce made good:
The man perceiv'd his rivall, and her art,
Dispos d to give the light-foot lady sport,
Awakes his lute, and 'gainst the fight to come
Informs it in a sweet præludium

Of closer straines, and ere the warre begin,
He lightly skirmishes on every string,
Charg'd with a flying touch: and streightway she
Carves out her dainty voyce as readily,
Into a thousand sweet distinguish'd tones,
And reckons up in soft divisions

Quicke volumes of wild notes; to let him know
By that shrill taste, she could do something too.

His nimble hands' instinct then taught each string
A capring cheerefullnesse; and made them sing
To their owne dance; now negligently rash

He throwes his arme, and with a long drawne dash
Blends all together; then distinctly tripps
From this to that; then quicke returning skipps
And snatches this again, and pauses there.
Shee measures every measure, every where
Meets art with art; sometimes as if in doubt,
Not perfect yet, and fearing to be out,
Trayles her plaine ditty in one long-spun note
Through the sleeke passage of her open throat,
A cleare unwrinckled song; then doth shee point it
With tender accents, and severely joynt it
By short diminutives, that being rear'd
In controverting warbles evenly shar'd,

With her sweet selfe shee wrangles. Hee amazed
That from so small a channell should be rais'd
The torrent of a voyce, whose melody
Could melt into such sweet variety,
Straines higher yet, that tickled with rare art
The tatling strings (each breathing in his part)
Most kindly doe fall out; the grumbling base
In surly groans disdaines the treble's grace;
The high-perch't treble chirps at this, and chides,
Untill his finger (Moderatour) hides
And closes the sweet quarrell, rowsing all,
Hoarce, shrill at once; as when the trumpets call
Hot Mars to th' harvest of Death's field, and woo
Men's hearts into their hands: this lesson too
Shee gives him back; her supple brest thrills out
Sharpe aires, and staggers in a warbling doubt
Of dallying sweetnesse, hovers o're her skill,
And folds in wav'd notes with a trembling bill
The plyant series of her slippery song ;
Then starts shee suddenly into a throng

Of short, thicke sobs, whose thundring volleyes float
And roule themselves over her lubrick throat
In panting murmurs, 'still'd out of her breast,
That ever-bubling spring; the sugred nest
Of her delicious soule, that there does lye
Bathing in streames of liquid melodie;
Musick's best seed-plot, whence in ripen'd aires
A golden-headed harvest fairly reares
His honey-dropping tops, plow'd by her breath,
Which there reciprocally laboureth

In that sweet soyle; it seemes a holy quire
Founded to th' name of great Apollo's lyre,
Whose silver-roofe rings with the sprightly notes
Of sweet-lipp'd angel-imps, that swill their throats
In creame of morning Helicon, and then
Preferre soft-anthems to the eares of men,
To woo them from their beds, still murmuring
That men can sleepe while they their mattens sing
(Most divine service), whose so early lay
Prevents the eye-lidds of the blushing Day!
There you might heare her kindle her soft voyce,
In the close murmur of a sparkling noyse,

And lay the ground-worke of her hopefull song,
Still keeping in the forward streame, so long,
Till a sweet whirle-wind (striving to get out)
Heaves her soft bosome, wanders round about,
And makes a pretty earthquake in her breast,
Till the fledg'd notes at length forsake their nest,
Fluttering in wanton shoales, and to the sky,
Wing'd with their owne wild ecchos, pratling fly.
Shee opes the floodgate, and lets loose a tide
Of streaming sweetnesse, which in state doth ride
On the way'd backe of every swelling straine,
Rising and falling in a pompous traine.
And while she thus discharges a shrill peale
Of flashing aires, she qualifies their zeale
With the coole epode of a graver noat,
Thus high, thus low, as if her silver throat

Would reach the brazen voyce of War's hoarce bird;

Her little soule is ravisht, and so pour'd

Into loose extasies, that she is plac't

Above her selfe, Musick's Enthusiast.

Shame now and anger mixt a double staine
In the Musitian's face; yet once againe,
Mistresse! I come; now reach a straine, my lute,
Above her mocke, or be for ever mute;
Or tune a song of victory to me,

Or to thy selfe, sing thine own obsequie:
So said, his hands sprightly as fire, he flings
And with a quavering coynesse tasts the strings.
The sweet-lip't sisters, musically frighted,
Singing their feares, are fearefully delighted,
Trembling as when Apollo's golden haires
Are fan'd and frizled, in the wanton ayres
Of his own breath, which marryed to his lyre
Doth tune the spheares, and make Heaven's selfe looke
From this to that, from that to this he flyes, [higher.
Feeles Musick's pulse in all her arteryes;
Caught in a net which there Apollo spreads,
His fingers struggle with the vocall threads.
Following those little rills, he sinkes into
A sea of Helicon; his hand does goe
Those pathes of sweetnesse which with nectar drop,
Softer than that which pants in Hebe's cup.
The humourous strings expound his learned touch,
By various glosses; now they seeme to grutch,
And murmur in a buzzing dinne, then gingle
In shrill-tongu'd accents, striving to be single.
Every smooth turne, every delicious stroake
Gives life to some new grace; thus doth h' invoke
Sweetnesse by all her names; thus, bravely thus
(Fraught with a fury so harmonious)

The lute's light genius now does proudly rise,
Heav'd on the surges of swolne rapsodyes,
Whose flourish (meteor-like) doth curle the aire
With flash of high-borne fancyes: here and there
Dancing in lofty measures, and anon
Creeps on the soft touch of a tender tone,
Whose trembling murmurs melting in wild aires
Runs to and fro, complaining his sweet cares,
Because those pretious mysteryes that dwell
In Musick's ravish't soule he dares not tell,
But whisper to the world: thus doe they vary
Each string his note, as if they meant to carry
Their Master's blest soule (snatcht out at his eares
By a strong extasy) through all the spheres
Of Musick's heaven, and seat it there on high
In th' empyræum of pure harmony.

At length (after so long, so loud a strife
Of all the strings, still breathing the best life

Of blest variety, attending on

His fingers fairest revolution

In many a sweet rise, many as sweet a fall) A full-mouth'd diapason swallowes all.

This done, he lists what she would say to this, And she, (although her breath's late exercise Had dealt too roughly with her tender throate,) Yet summons all her sweet powers for a noate. Alas! in vaine! for while (sweet soule!) she tryes To measure all those wild diversities

Of chatt'ring strings, by the small size of one Poore simple voyce, rais'd in a naturall tone; She failes, and failing grieves, and grieving dyes. She dyes and leaves her life the Victor's prise, Falling upon his lute: O, fit to have

:

(That liv'd so sweetly) dead so sweet a grave!

Wishes.

To his Supposed Mistresse.

Who ere she be,

That not impossible she

That shall command my heart and me;

Where ere she lye,

Lock't up from mortall eye,

In shady leaves of Destiny;

Till that ripe birth

Of studied Fate stand forth,

And teach her faire steps tread our Earth ;

Till that divine

Idæa take a shrine

Of chrystall flesh, through which to shine;

Meet you her, my wishes,
Bespeake her to my blisses,

And be ye call'd, my absent kisses.

I wish her beauty

That owes not all its duty

To gaudy tire or glistring shoo-tye.

More than the spoyle

Of shop, or silkeworme's toyle, Or a bought blush, or a set smile.

A face that's best

By its owne beauty drest,

And can alone commend the rest.

A cheeke where Youth,
And blood, with pen of Truth

Write what their reader sweetly ru'th.

Lipps, where all day

A lover's kisse may play,

Yet carry nothing thence away.

Eyes, that displace

The neighbour diamond, and out-face

That sunshine, by their own sweet grace.

Tresses, that weare

Jewells but to declare

How much themselves more pretious are. . .

Heark hither, reader! wilt thou see

Nature her own physician be?
Wilt see a man all his own wealth,
His own musick, his own health?
A man whose sober soul can tell
How to wear her garments well?
Her garments, that upon her sit,
As garments should do, close and fit?
A well-clothed soul that 's not opprest
Nor choked with what she should be drest?
A soul sheath'd in a crystall shrine,
Through which all her bright features shine?
As when a piece of wanton lawn,

A thin aërial vail, is drawn

O're Beauty's face, seeming to hide,

More sweetly shews the blushing bride;

A soul whose intellectual beams

No mists do mask, no lazie steams?

A happie soul, that all the way

To Heav'n hath a Summer's day?

Would'st see a man whose well-warmed bloud Bathes him in a genuine floud?

A man whose tuned humours be

A seat of rarest harmonie?

Would'st see blithe looks, fresh cheeks, beguile
Age? Would'st see December smile?
Would'st see a nest of roses grow

In a bed of reverend snow?
Warm thoughts, free spirits flattering
Winter's self into a Spring?

In sum, would'st see a man that can

Live to be old, and still a man?
Whose latest and most leaden houres
Fall with soft wings, stuck with soft flowres,
And when Life's sweet fable ends,

His soul and bodie part like friends;

No quarrels, murmures, no delay;

A kisse, a sigh, and so away?

This rare one, reader, wouldst thou see,

Heark hither and thyself be he.

Part of an ode præfixed to a little prayer-book

given to a young gentlewoman.

Lo! here a little volume, but great book (Feare it not, sweet,

It is no hipocrit),

Much larger in itselfe than in its looke.
A nest of new-born sweets;
Whose native fires, disdaining

To ly thus folded and complaining
Of these ignoble sheets,
Affect more comly bands

(Fair one) from thy kind hands;
And confidently look

To find the rest

Of a rich binding in your breast.

It is, in one choise handfull, Heavn and all
Heavn's royall host incampt thus small;
To prove that true, schooles use to tell,
Ten thousand angels in one point can dwell.
It is Love's great artillery,

Which here contracts it self, and comes to ly

Close couch't in your white bosom, and from thence,

As from a snowy fortress of defence,

Against the ghostly foe to take your part,

And fortify the hold of your chast heart.

It is an armory of light:

Let constant use but keep it bright,

You'l find it yields

To holy hands and humble hearts,
More swords and sheilds

Than sin hath snares or Hell hath darts.
Only be sure

The attending World, to wait Thy rise,
First turn'd to eyes;

And then, not knowing what to doe,
Turn'd them to teares, and spent them too.
Come, royall Name! and pay the expence
Of all this pretious patience :
O come away

And kill the death of this delay!

O see, so many worlds of barren yeares
Melted and measur'd out in seas of teares:
Oh, see the weary liddes of wakefull hope
(Love's eastern windowes) all wide ope
With curtains drawn,

To catch the daybreak of Thy dawn.
Oh, dawn at last, long-lookt-for day!
Take Thine own wings and come away.
Lo, where aloft it comes ! It comes among
The conduct of adoring spirits, that throng
Like diligent bees, and swarm about it.

O, they are wise,

And know what sweetes are suck't from out it. It is the hive

By which they thrive,

Where all their hoard of hony lies.

Lo, where it comes, upon the snowy Dove's
Soft back, and brings a bosom big with loves.
Welcome to our dark world, thou womb of Day!
Unfold Thy fair conceptions, and display
The birth of our bright joyes

Sweet Name! in Thy each syllable

A thousand blest Arabias dwell;
A thousand hills of frankincense;
Mountains of myrrh and beds of spices,
And ten thousand paradises,

The soul that tasts Thee takes from thence.
How many unknown worlds there are
Of comforts, which Thou hast in keeping!
How many thousand mercyes there
In Pitty's soft lap ly a-sleeping!
Happy he who has the art

To awake them,

And to take them

Home, and lodge them in his heart.

Oh, that it were as it was wont to be!

When Thy old freinds, on fire all full of Thee,
Fought against frowns with smiles; gave glorious chase
To persecutions; and against the face

Of Death and feircest dangers, durst with brave

And sober pace march on to meet a grave!

On their bold brests about the world they bore Thee,

And to the teeth of Hell stood up to teach Thee;
In centre of their inmost soules they wore Thee,
Where rackes and torments striv'd in vain to reach Thee.
Little, alas, thought they

Who tore the fair breasts of Thy freinds,
Their fury but made way

For Thee, and serv'd them in Thy glorious ends.
What did their weapons, but with wider pores
Inlarge Thy flaming-brested lovers,

More freely to transpire

That impatient fire

The heart that hides Thee hardly covers?
What did their weapons but sett wide the doores
For Thee? fair purple doores of Love's devising;

The ruby windowes which inricht the east

Of Thy so oft-repeated rising!

Each wound of theirs was Thy new morning,
And re-enthroned Thee in Thy rosy nest,
With blush of Thine Own blood Thy day adorning :
It was the witt of love oreflowd the bounds

Of wrath, and made Thee way through all these wounds.
Welcome, dear, all-adored Name!

For sure there is no knee

That knows not Thee;

Or if there be such sonns of shame,
Alas! what will they doe

When stubborn rocks shall bow,

And hills hang down their heavn-saluting heads
To seek for humble beds

Of dust, where, in the bashfull shades of night,
Next to their own low Nothing they may ly,

And couch before the dazeling light of Thy dread
Majesty.

They that by Love's mild dictate now

Will not adore Thee,

Shall then with just confusion bow

And break before thee.

The Steps of 1646 were reprinted in 1648; and as Carmen Deo Nostro (from one of the poems), with twelve vignettes from Crashaw's own designs, but without the translations from Marino and Strada, in 1652. There are poorer editions or selections (1670, 1775, and 1858), but the fullest is that by Grosart (for the Fuller Worthies Library, 1872). W. Tutin published a selection from the Poems in 1887 and 1893; the English Poems, almost quite complete, in 2 vols. in 1900; and, separately, the secular poems as The Delights of the Muses (1 vol. 1900). And see Professor Dowden's Puritan and Anglican (1901).

Henry Vaughan (1622–95), long regarded with disdain as 'one of the harshest of the inferior order of the poetic school of conceits,' is now classed with George Herbert and Crashaw as a religious poet of exquisite feeling and fancy, tender and delicate expression, and meditative mysticism ; though much of what he wrote is uncouth and obscure, dull and tedious, broken only occasionally by noble thoughts. Born at the farmhouse of Newton, near Skethiog, in the parish of Llansaintffraed in Brecon, on 17th April 1622, he called himself Silurist' as a native of the territory of the ancient Silures; and he was twin-brother of Thomas Vaughan (1622-66), the alchemist. The brothers studied at Jesus College, Oxford, and shared the loyalty of their family for the royal cause. Both of them suffered imprisonment and deprivation, although only Thomas actually bore arms for the king. Early a devoted admirer of Ben Jonson, Randolph, and the other poets of the day, in 1646 he published his first Poems, with the Tenth Satyre of Juvenal Englished. He now studied medicine, became M.D., and settled down to practise first at Brecon, and then at his birthplace. Olor Iscanus (Swan of Usk'), a collection of poems and translations, was sent to his brother in Oxford, and published without authority in 1651. A serious illness deepened his religious convictions, and henceforward time and eternity, sin and grace, were his main themes. Silex Scintillans (‘Sparks from the Flint;' two parts, 1650–55) are religious poems and meditations. Flores Solitudinis and The Mount of Olives (1652) are devotional prose

pieces. Thalia Rediviva: the Pastimes and Diversions of a Countrey Muse (1678), is a collection of poems by the twin-brothers-elegies, translations, religious verses. Henry Vaughan died 23rd April 1695; and his grave in Llansaintffraed churchyard was restored in 1896. The close similarity between Vaughan's Retreate and Wordsworth's famous ode on Intimations of Immortality has often and justly been dwelt on. The earlier poem is at least an intimation or forerunner of the more famous one. The Retreate and Beyond the Veil are universally counted amongst the purest and most exquisite reflective pieces of the age in which Vaughan lived. He complains of the proverbial poverty and suffering of poets:

As they were merely thrown upon the stage,
The mirth of fools, and legends of the age.

But he was not without hopes of renown, and he wished the river of his native vale, the Usk, to share in the distinction:

When I am laid to rest hard by thy streams,
And my sun sets where first it sprang in beams,
I'll leave behind me such a large kind light
As shall redeem thee from oblivious night,
And in these vows which, living yet, I pay,
Shed such a precious and enduring ray,
As shall from age to age thy fair name lead
Till rivers leave to run, and men to read!

Early Rising and Prayer.
When first thy eyes unveil, give thy soul leave
To do the like; our bodies but forerun
The spirit's duty: true hearts spread and heave
Unto their God, as flowers do to the sun :
Give Him thy first thoughts then, so shalt thou keep
Him company all day, and in Him sleep.

Yet never sleep the sun up; prayer shou'd
Dawn with the day: there are set awful hou
'Twixt heaven and us; the manna was not good
After sunrising; fair day sullies flowres :
Rise to prevent the sun; sleep doth sins glut,
And heaven's gate opens when this world's is shut.

Walk with thy fellow-creatures; note the hush
And whispers amongst them. There's not a spring
Or leafe but hath his morning-hymn; each bush
And oak doth know I AM. Canst thou not sing?
O leave thy cares and follies! Go this way,
And thou art sure to prosper all the day.

Serve God before the world; let Him not go
Until thou hast a blessing; then resigne
The whole unto Him; and remember who
Prevailed by wrestling ere the sun did shine.
Pour oyl upon the stones, weep for thy sin,
Then journey on, and have an eie to heav'n.

Mornings are mysteries; the first world's youth,
Man's resurrection, and the future's bud,
Shroud in their births; the crown of life, light, truth,
Is styled their 'starre,' the 'stone,' and 'hidden food."
Three blessings wait upon them, two of which
Should move; they make us holy, happy, rich.