With winged vows,

Makes haste to meet her morning Spouse,
And close with his immortal kisses!
Happy soul! who never misses
To improve that precious hour;
And every day

Seize her sweet prey,

All fresh and fragrant as he rises,
Dropping with a balmy shower,
A delicious dew of spices.

Oh, let that happy soul hold fast
Her heavenly armful: she shall taste
At once ten thousand paradises;

She shall have power

To rifle and deflower

The rich and roseal spring of those rare sweets,
Which with a swelling bosom there she meets;
Boundless and infinite, bottomless treasures

Of pure inebriating pleasures.

Happy soul! she shall discover
What joy, what bliss,

How many heavens at once it is,
To have a God become her lover.

AN EPITAPH UPON MR. ASHTON.

THE modest front of this small floor,
Believe me, reader, can say more
Than many a braver marble can-
"Here lies a truly honest man ;"
One whose conscience was a thing
That troubled neither church nor king.

One of those few that, in this town,
Honour all preachers, hear their own.
Sermons he heard; yet not so many
As left no time to practise any:
He heard them reverently, and then
His practice preached them o'er again.
His parlour-sermons rather were
Those to the eye, than to the ear:
His prayers took their price and strength,
Not from the loudness, nor the length.
He was a Protestant at home;
Not, only in despite of Rome:

He loved his father, yet his zeal
Tore not off his mother's veil.

To the Church he did allow her dress,
True beauty to true holiness.

Peace, which he loved in life, did lend
Her hand to bring him to his end:
When age and death call'd for the score,
No surfeits were to reckon for;
Death tore not (therefore) but sans strife
Gently untwined his thread of life.
What remains, then, but that thou
Write these lines, reader, in thy brow,
And by his fair example's light,
Burn in thy imitation bright.

So while these lines can but bequeath
A life perhaps unto his death,
His better epitaph shall be,
His life still kept alive in thee.

WILLIAM CARTWRIGHT.

BORN 1611; DIED 1643.

THE early death of this brilliant young man put a period to a career of the highest promise. His diligence was equal to the vivacity of his parts; he was thought equally admirable as a poet and a preacher : the wits, the courtiers, and the divines of his time joined in his praise while living; and all who could feel, or desired to be thought to feel, for the departure of learning and genius, were emulous to hang a garland upon his tomb. The writings of CARTWRIGHT possess ease, sweetness, and playfulness of fancy; but, judging them with the impartial coolness of posthumous criticism, it is impossible not to ascribe a considerable portion of their effect upon his contemporaries to the prejudice raised in favour of the poet, by the fascinating temper and conversation which were universally acknowledged in the man. Like most of the wits of those times, Cartwright wrote for the stage.