ROBERT SOUTHWELL.

BORN 1560; EXECUTED 1595.

SOUTHWELL was a Roman Catholic, and at an early age entered the Society of Jesuits at Rome. Returning to England he employed himself with zeal as a missionary, in the hopeless cause of the abolished religion. He was arrested, and committed to the Tower, where he lingered nearly three years; during which time he was repeatedly put to the torture, in order to draw from him disclosures respecting the conspiracies in which the Papists were at that time engaged against Queen Elizabeth; and finally was tried, and suffered, on a charge of high treason. It is impossible to become acquainted with the literary remains of this author, breathing, as they do, the most ardent and humble piety, in language of great purity and pathos, without wishing that the stain of his blood could be removed from our judicial annals-without lamenting the dire necessity, which, in times of imminent peril to the general weal, calls for the execution of statutes of such a sweeping severity as to involve in equal destruction, as abettors of the same cause, the best and vilest of mankind; the assassin or the incendiary, and the high-souled martyr, though of an erroneous faith.

The works of Southwell, although now rarely met with, were frequently reprinted at the close of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries. The longest of his poems is "St. Peter's Complaint;" of his prose treatises the chief are Mary Magdalene's Funeral Tears," and "The Triumphs over Death a consolatory Epistle for troubled Minds, in the Effects of dying Friends."

ROBERT SOUTHWELL.

TIMES GO BY TURNS.

THE lopped tree in time may grow again;
Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower;
The sorriest wight may find release of pain,
The dryest soil suck in some moistening shower:
Times go by turns, and chances change by course,
From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.

The sea of fortune doth not ever flow,
She draws her favours to the lowest ebb;
Her tides have equal times to come and go,
Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web:
No joy so great, but runneth to an end;
No hap so hard, but may in fine amend.

Not always fall of leaf, nor ever spring,
No endless night, nor yet eternal day :
The saddest birds a season find to sing,
The roughest storm a calm may soon allay.
Thus with succeeding turns God tempereth all,
That man may hope to rise, yet fear to fall.

A chance may win that by mischance was lost,
That net that holds no great, takes little fish;
In some things all, in all things none are crossed;
Few all they need, but none have all they wish;
Unmingled joys here to no man befal :

Who least, hath some, who most, hath never all.

LOOK HOME.

RETIRED thoughts enjoy their own delights,
As beauty doth in self-beholding eye:
Man's mind a mirror is of heavenly sights,
A brief wherein all morals summed lie;

Of fairest forms, and sweetest shapes the store,
Most graceful all, yet thought may grace them more.

The mind a creature is, yet can create,
To nature's patterns adding higher skill:
Of finest works wit better could the state,
If force of wit had equal power of will.
Device of man in working hath no end:
What thought can think, another thought can mend.

Man's soul of endless beauties image is,

Drawn by the work of endless skill and might;
This skilful might gave many sparks of bliss,
And to discern this bliss, a native light:
To frame God's image as his worth required,
His might, his skill, his word, and will conspired.

All that he had, his image should present,
All that it should present, he could afford;
To that he could afford his will was bent,

His will was followed with performing word.
Let this suffice, by this conceive the rest-
He should, he could, he would, he did the best.

SCORN NOT THE LEAST.

WHERE words are weak, and foes encountering strong,

Where mightier do assault than do defend,
The feebler part puts up enforced wrong,

And silent sees what speech could not amend ; Yet higher powers must think, though they repine,

When sun is set, the little stars will shine.

While pike doth range, the silly tench doth fly, And crouch in privy creeks, with smaller fish: Yet pikes are caught when little fish go by; These fleet afloat, while those do fill the dish: There is a time even for the worms to creep, And suck the dew, while all their foes do sleep.

The marline cannot ever soar on high,
Nor greedy greyhound still pursue the chase;
The tender lark will find a time to fly,
And fearful hare to run a quiet race:
He that high growth on cedars did bestow,
Gave also lowly mushrooms leave to grow.

In Haman's pomp poor Mardocheus wept,
Yet God did turn his fate upon his foe;
The lazar pined, while Dives' feast was kept,

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