Our paper, pen, and ink, and we,
Roll up and down our ships at sea.
With a fa, &c.

Then if we write not by each post,
Think not we are unkind;
Nor yet conclude your ships are lost
By Dutchmen, or by wind;

Our tears we'll send a speedier way,
The tide shall bring them twice a-day.
With a fa, &c.

The king with wonder and surprise,
Will swear the seas grow bold;
Because the tides will higher rise
Than e'er they used of old:

But let him know, it is our tears
Bring floods of grief to Whitehall stairs.
With a fa, &c.

Should foggy Opdam chance to know

Our sad and dismal story;

The Dutch would scorn so weak a foe,

And quit their fort at Goree :

For what resistance can they find

From men who've left their hearts behind!

With a fa, &c.

Let wind and weather do its worst,

Be you to us but kind;

Let Dutchmen vapour, Spaniards curse,

No sorrow we shall find:

"Tis then no matter how things go,

Or who's our friend, or who's our foe.

With a fa, &c.

To pass our tedious hours away,
We throw a merry main;
Or else at serious ombre play;
But, why should we in vain
Each other's ruin thus pursue?
We were undone when we left you.
With a fa, &c.

But now our fears tempestuous grow,

And cast our hopes away;

Whilst you, regardless of our woe,
Sit careless at a play:

Perhaps permit some happier man
To kiss your hand, or flirt your fan.
With a fa, &c.

When any mournful tune you hear,
That dies in every note;

As if it sigh'd with each man's care
For being so remote;

Think how often love we've made

To you, when all those tunes were play'd. With a fa, &c.

In justice you cannot refuse

To think of our distress;

When we for hopes of honour lose

Our certain happiness;

All those designs are but to prove
Ourselves more worthy of your love.
With a fa, &c.

And now we've told you all our loves,
And likewise all our fears;
In hopes this declaration moves
Some pity from your tears;
Let's hear of no inconstancy,
We have too much of that at sea.
With a fa, &c.

SONG.

DORINDA'S sparkling wit and eyes,
United, cast too fierce a light,
Which blazes high, but quickly dies,

Pains not the heart, but hurts the sight.

Love is a calmer, gentler joy,

Smooth are his looks, and soft his pace;

Her Cupid is a blackguard boy,

That runs his link full in your face.

SIR CHARLES SEDLEY, the son of Sir John Sedley, of Aylesford, in Kent, was born about 1639. The first four-and-twenty years of his life were passed in the country. It was not until 1663 that he joined the court of Charles the Second, and became a man of wit and pleasure upon town. His singular advantages of personal address, and his inimitable conversational talent, speedily won for him the most unenvious admiration of his companions, as well as the highest favour from the king. A poem was never thought complete till Sedley had approved. Rochester, Wycherley, Butler, and Buckingham all solicited his judgment; and Charles, laughing, asked him whether nature had not given him a patent to be Apollo's viceroy. He afterwards wrote verses of his own. It is an excellent test of their merit that the author's judgment continued to be looked up to. Sedley's fortune, mean time, while his life thus passed carelessly and not unpleasantly away, passed away also. He had not lost his independence with his morals, in the sink of Charles the Second's court. He never solicited money from that prince, who was consequently, after the fashion of all mean natures, so much the less inclined to give it. In the early part of James the Second's reign, however, Sedley's struggles with poverty, and his abandoned tendency to pleasure, had both found an end. A member of the House of Commons, he was exerting himself strenuously against the encroachments of the monarchy, in fast league with the Whig patriots of the time. His services were justly held in repute, and he was an excellent as well as frequent speaker. He lived many years after this in a country retirement. At the commencement of the reign of Anne, having reached his ninetieth year, and outlived all the associates of his youth, except his own wit and humour, Sir Charles Sedley died. He had latterly, redeeming the licentiousness of his youth, commanded uni. versal respect and esteem. "He was a man," says one of his friends," of the first class of wit and gallantry. His friendship was courted by every body, and nobody went out of his company but pleased and improved. He was every thing that an English gentleman could be."

Sedley deserves a place in this collection, not less for his own sake than to mark the progress of poetical literature in its ascents and descendings. He gave expression to certain feelings which the wits of his day could not conceal from themselves, though they seldom confessed them in their verses, and has thus, while joining in other respects the general fashion of the age, supplied us with the means of better understanding it. He professed to be as gay as others; he fell easily in love, and as easily out of it; he inculcated feeling as a farce, yet as frequently betrayed that it was not so. Without the brilliancy of Rochester's genius, he had a tenderness which gave peculiar and inimitable grace to the loosest and most amorous solicitations. His poetry, therefore, generally carried with it its own antidote, for there was something in the soft tenderness of his style which bore off the noxious particles of his professed design. If he succeeded, we may suppose that his success had something of virtue in it. It is certain that, when in his poem to Phillis we read that delightful

stanza

"Were I of all the woods the lord,

One berry from Thy hand,
More solid pleasure would afford,
Than all my large command!"*

it is no longer difficult to understand the Duke of Buckingham when he talks of "Sedley's witchcraft," or those lines by the Earl of Rochester, commencing-"Sedley has that prevailing gentle art." His art was truly gentle while it prevailed. In his poem of the Happy Pair, which is one of his longest and best performances, there are abundant evidences of truth and tenderness, and of that manly and delicate sense of honour which more particularly distinguished the close of the life of Sedley. Few pictures have exceeded that of the rustic bride and bridegroom as the storm arises"When clamorous storms, and pitchy tempests rise, Cheek clings to cheek, and swimming eyes to eyes! When jarring winds and dreadful thanders roar,

It serves to make them press and love the more ! "

Sedley was a very accomplished scholar, and made some capital translations; he wrote for the stage, also, but though his dramatic pieces have passages of great tenderness and undoubted wit, they are not generally successful.

SEDLEY.

SONG.

LOVE still has something of the sea,
From whence his mother rose;
No time his slaves from doubt can free,
Nor give their thoughts repose:

They are becalm'd in clearest days,
And in rough weather tost;
They wither under cold delays,
Or are in tempests lost.

PP

One while they seem to touch the port,
Then straight into the main,
Some angry wind in cruel sport
The vessel drives again.

At first disdain and pride they fear,
Which if they chance to 'scape,
Rivals and falsehood soon appear
In a more dreadful shape.

By such degrees to joy they come,
And are so long withstood,
So slowly they receive the sum,
It hardly does them good.

'Tis cruel to prolong a pain,
And to defer a joy;
Believe me, gentle Celemene
Offends the winged boy.

An hundred thousand oaths your fears
Perhaps would not remove;

And if I gaz'd a thousand years
I could no deeper love.

THE INDIFFERENCE.

THANKS, fair Urania, to your scorn,
I now am free as I was born;

Of all the pain that I endur'd,

By your late coldness, I am cur'd.

In losing me, proud nymph, you lose

The humblest slave your beauty knows;
In losing you, I but throw down
A cruel tyrant from her throne.

My ranging love did never find

Such charms of person and of mind;
Y'ave beauty, wit, and all things know,
But where you should your love bestow.

I unawares my freedom gave,
And to those tyrants grew a slave;
Wou'd you have kept what you had won,
You should have more compassion shewn.