THOMAS CAREW.

BORN 1589; DIED 1639.

THIS author was one of the most accomplished gentlemen of the court of Charles I. In grace, playfulness, and polish, he excelled most of the contemporary versifiers: in the coldness of his conceits, the licentiousness of his language, and the entire absence of a noble object, he is but one among "the mob of gentlemen," who, in that age, "wrote with ease.' Besides his miscellaneous poems he wrote, by command of the king, a masque, entitled "Cœlum Britannicum;" which, in parts, rises to a higher strain than those elegant but often unworthy effusions of a mind capable of better things.

Learn from hence, reader, what small trust
We owe this world; where virtue must,
Frail as our flesh, crumble to dust.

TO MR. GEORGE SANDYS,

ON HIS TRANSLATION OF THE PSALMS.

I PRESS not to the choir, nor dare I greet
The holy place with my unhallowed feet;
My unwash'd muse pollutes not things divine,
Nor mingles her profaner notes with thine:
Here, humbly waiting at the porch, she stays,
And with glad ears sucks in thy sacred lays.
So, devout penitents of old were wont,
Some without door, and some beneath the font,
To stand and hear the church's liturgies,

Yet not assist the solemn exercise:
Sufficeth her, that she a lay-place gain,

To trim thy vestments, or but bear thy train: Though nor in tune, nor wing, she reach thy lark,

Her lyric feet may dance before the ark.

Who knows, but that her wandering eyes that

run,

Now hunting glow-worms, may adore the sun:
A pure flame may, shot by Almighty power
Into her breast, the earthly flame devour:
My eyes in penitential dew may steep
That brine, which they for sensual love did weep.
Perhaps my restless soul, tired with pursuit
Of mortal beauty, seeking without fruit

Contentment there, which hath not, when enjoy'd,
Quench'd all her thirst, nor satisfied, though cloy'd;

Weary of her vain search below, above
In the first fair may find the immortal love.
Prompted by thy example then, no more
In moulds of clay will I my God adore;
But tear those idols from my heart, and write
What his blest Spirit, not fond love, shall indite;
Then I no more shall court the verdant bay,
But the dry leafless trunk on Golgotha;

And rather strive to gain from thence one thorn,
Than all the flourishing wreaths by laureats worn.

PLEASURE.

BEWITCHING Syren! gilded rottenness!
Thou hast with cunning artifice display'd
The enamel'd outside, and the honied verge
Of the fair cup where deadly poison lurks.
Within, a thousand sorrows dance the round;
And, like a shell, pain circles thee without.
Grief is the shadow waiting on thy steps,
Which, as thy joys 'gin towards their west decline,
Doth to a giant's spreading form extend
Thy dwarfish stature. Thou thyself art pain,
Greedy intense desire; and the keen edge
Of thy fierce appetite oft strangles thee,
And cuts thy slender thread; but still the terror
And apprehension of thy basty end

Mingles with gall thy most refined sweets;
Yet thy Circean charms transform the world.
Captains that have resisted war and death,
Nations that over fortune have triumph'd,
Are by thy magic made effeminate :
Empires, that knew no limits but the poles,

N

Have in thy wanton lap melted away :
Thou wert the author of the first excess
That drew this reformation on the gods.

Canst thou then dream, those powers, that from heaven

Banish'd the effect, will there enthrone the cause? To thy voluptuous den, fly, witch, from hence; There dwell, for ever drown'd in brutish sense.

THOMAS RANDOLPH.

BORN 1605; DIED 1634.

THIS poet is memorable as the adopted son of Jonson. His genius and acquirements, at an early age, held forth promises of literary eminence, which were frustrated by a premature death. In his remains we find traces equally evident of poetic taste and fancy, and of licentious and immoral habits. Randolph wrote several dramatic pieces-of which two, "Amyntas, or the impossible Dowry," and "The Muses' Looking Glass," are printed with his miscellaneous poems.