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A lily of a day,

Is fairer far, in May,

Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures, life may perfect be.

THE ANTISTROPHE, OR COUNTER-TURN.

ALL, noble Lucius, then for wine,

And let thy looks with gladness shine: Accept this Garland, plant it on thy head, And think, nay know, thy Morison's not dead. He leap'd the present age,

Possest with holy rage,

To see that bright eternal day ;

Of which we priests and poets say

Such truths, as we expect for happy men :
And there, he lives with memory, and Ben.

THE EPODE, or Stand.

ONSON, who sung this of him, ere he went,
Himself, to rest,

Or taste a part of that full joy he meant
To have exprest,

In this bright asterism!

Where it were friendship's schism,

rest of Jonson's "Pindarics" (where are they to be found?) is treated with the most sovereign contempt. "In reading Jonson (it is added) we have often to marvel how his conceptions could have occurred to any human being. Shakspeare is like an ancient statue, the beauty of which, &c. Jonson is the representation of a monster, which is at first only surprising, and ludicrous and disgusting ever after." p. xii.

Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry,

To separate these twi

Lights, the Dioscuri;

And keep the one half from his Harry. But fate doth so alternate the design,

Whilst that in heaven, this light on earth must shine,—

IV.

THE STROPHE, or Turn.

END shine as you exalted are;

Two names of friendship, but one star : Of hearts the union, and those not by chance Made, or indenture, or leased out t' advance The profits for a time.

No pleasures vain did chime,

Of rhymes, or riots, at your feasts,
Orgies of drink, or feign'd protests:

But simple love of greatness and of good,

That knits brave minds and manners, more than blood.

THE ANTISTROPHE, OR COUNTER-TURN.

HIS made you first to know the why
You liked, then after, to apply

That liking; and approach so one the t'other, Till either grew a portion of the other :

Each styled by his end,

The copy of his friend.

You liv'd to be the great sir-names, And titles, by which all made claims Unto the Virtue: nothing perfect done, But as a Cary, or a Morison.

THE EPODE, OR STAND.

ND such a force the fair example had,
As they that saw

The good, and durst not practise it, were glad
That such a law

Was left yet to mankind;

Where they might read and find
Friendship, indeed, was written not in words;
And with the heart, not pen,

Of two so early men

Whose lines her rolls were, and records : Who, ere the first down bloomed on the chin, Had sow'd these fruits, and got the harvest in.

LXXXVIII.

AN EPIGRAM

5

TO WILLIAM EARL OF NEWCASTLE, ON HIS FENCING.

HEY talk of Fencing, and the use of arms,

The art of urging and avoiding harms,

The noble science, and the mastering skill
Of making just approaches how to kill;

To hit in angles, and to clash with time:

As all defence or offence were a chime!
I hate such measured, give me mettled, fire,
That trembles in the blaze, but then mounts higher!
A quick and dazzling motion; when a pair

Of bodies meet like rarified air!

Jonson's connection with the family of this distinguished nobleman was close and of long continuance.

[Here followed, in the edition of 1816, a footnote of ten pages, which it has been thought better to transfer to another part of the volume. See post, MISCELLANEOUS PIECES.]

Their weapons darted with that flame and force,
As they out-did the lightning in the course;
This were a spectacle, a sight to draw
Wonder to valour! No, it is the law
Of daring not to do a wrong; 'tis true
Valour to slight it, being done to you.
To know the heads of danger, where 'tis fit
To bend, to break, provoke, or suffer it;
All this, my lord, is valour: this is yours,"
And was your father's, all your ancestors!
Who durst live great 'mongst all the colds and heats
Of human life; as all the frosts and sweats
Of fortune, when or death appear'd, or bands:
And valiant were, with or without their hands.

LXXXIX.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

THE LORD HIGH TREASURER OF ENGLAND,"

AN EPISTLE MENDICANT, MDCXXXI.

MY LORD,

OOR wretched states, prest by extremities,
Are fain to seek for succours and supplies
Of princes' aids, or good men's charities.

Disease the enemy, and his ingineers,
Want, with the rest of his conceal'd compeers,
Have cast a trench about me, now five years,

All this, my lord, is valour: this is yours, &c.] This was written many years before the earl of Newcastle, (or, as the MS. terms him, of Mansfield) took up arms in the defence of his king and country. Jonson knew his patrons; and it may be added, to the credit of his discernment, that few of them belied his praises. 7 Richard, lord Weston. He was appointed to this office in 1628, and was succeeded at his death, in 1634, by a commission,

And made those strong approaches by false brays,
Redouts, half-moons, horn-works, and such close ways,
The muse not peeps out, one of hundred days;

But lies block'd up, and straiten'd, narrow'd in,
Fix'd to the bed and boards, unlike to win
Health, or scarce breath, as she had never been;
Unless some saving honour of the crown,
Dare think it, to relieve, no less renown,
A bed-rid wit, than a besieged town.

XC.

TO THE KING ON HIS BIRTH-DAY, Nov. 19, MDCXXXII.

AN EPIGRAM ANNIVERSARY.

HIS is king Charles his day. Speak it, thou
Tower,

Unto the ships, and they from tier to tier,
Discharge it 'bout the island in an hour,

As loud as thunder, and as swift as fire.

Let Ireland meet it out at sea, half-way,
Repeating all Great Britain's joy and more,
Adding her own glad accents to this day,
Like Echo playing from the other shore.
What drums or trumpets, or great ordnance can,
The poetry of steeples, with the bells,
Three kingdoms mirth, in light and aëry man,
Made lighter with the wine. All noises else,
At bonfires, rockets, fire-works, with the shouts
That cry that gladness which their hearts would pray,
Had they but grace of thinking, at these routs,

On the often coming of this holy-day:

at the head of which was Laud. This Epistle enables us to ascertain the commencement of that illness which, after a tedious and painful conflict of eleven years, terminated the poet's life in 1637.

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