Yet are the trunks, which do to us derive
Things, in proportion fit, by perspective
Deeds of good men; for by their living

here,
Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near.

Who would imagine it possible that in a very few lines so many remote ideas could be brought together :

Since 'tis my doom, Love's undershrieve,

Why this reprieve?
Why doth my She Advowson fly

Incumbency?
To sell thyself dost thou intend

By candle's end,
And hold the contrast thus in doubt,

Life's taper out?
Think but how soon the market fails,
Your sex lives faster than the males;
As if to measure age's span,
The sober Julian were th' account of man,
Whilft

you
live by the fleet Gregorian.

CLEVELAND.

OF enormous and disgusting hyperboles,

be examples:

1

these

may

By every wind, that comes this way,
Send me at least a sigh or two,
Such and so I'll

In tears I'll waste these

eyes
By love so vainly fed ;
So lust of old the Deluge punished.

Cowley.

All arm'd in brass, the richest dress of war,
(A dismal glorious fight) he shone afar.
The sun himself started with sudden fright,
To see his beams return so dismal bright.

Cowley.

An universal consternation: His bloody eyes he hurls round, his sharp paws Tear up the ground; then runs he wild about, Lashing his angry tail and roaring out. . Beasts creep into their dens, and tremble there; Trees, thono wind is stirring, shake with

fear;

Silence and horrour fill the place around:
Echo itself dares scarce repeat the sound.

COWLEY.

THEIR

HEIR fictions were often violent and unnatural.

Of his Mistress bathing: The fish around her crouded, as they do To the false light that treach'rous fishers

shew,
And all with as much ease might taken be,

As she at first took me:
For ne'er did light so clear

Among the waves appear,
Tho' ev'ry night the sun himself set there

Cowley.

The

The poetical effect of a Lover's name upon glass :

My name engrav'd herein,
Doth contribute my firmness to this glass ;

Which, ever since that charm, hath been
As hard, as that which grav'd it, was.

DONNE.

THEIR

HEIR conceits were sometimes flight and
trifling :

On an inconftant woman.
He enjoys thy calmy sunshine now,

And no breath stirring hears,
In the clear heaven of thy brow,
No smallest cloud appears.

He sees thee gentle, fair and gay,
And trusts the faithless April of thy May.

Cowley. Upon a paper written with the juice of lemon, and read by the fire :

Nothing yet in thee is seen,

But when a genial heat warms thee within, A new-born wood of various lines there grows;

Here buds an L, and there a B,

Here sprouts a V, and there a T,
And all the fourishing letters stand in rows.

Cowley.
As

they fought only for novelty, they did not much enquire whether their allusions were to things high or low, elegant or gross; whether they compared the little to the great, or the great to the little.

Physick

Physick and Chirurgery for a Lover. Gently, ah gently, madam, touch

The wound, which you yourself have made; That pain must needs be very much,

Which makes me of your hand afraid.
Cordials of pity give me now,
For I too weak for purgings grow.

COWLEY.

The World and a Clock.

Mahol, th' inferior world's fantastic face,
Thro' all the turns of matter's maze did trace;
Great Nature's well-set clock in pieces took ;
On all the springs and smallest wheels did look
Of life and motion; and with equal art
Made up again the whole of every part.

COWLEY,

A coal-pit has not often found its poet; but that it may not want its due honour, Cleveland has paralleled it with the Sun: The mod'rate value of our guiltless ore, Makes no man atheist, nor no woman whore. Yet why should hallow'd vestals sacred shrine, Deserve more honour than a flaming mine? These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be Than a few embers for a deity.

Had he our pits, the Persian would admire No sun, but warm's devotion at our fire : He'd leave the trotting whipster, and prefer Our profound Vulcan 'bove that waggoner. For wants he heat ? or light? or would have

Itore? Or both ? 'tis here : and what can suns give more D

Nay,

Nay, what's the sun, but in a different name,
A coal-pit rampant, or a mine on flame !
Then let this truth reciprocally run,
The sun's heaven's coalery, and coals oursun.

Death, a Voyage :

No family
Ere rigg'd a soul for heaven's discovery,
With whom more venturers might boldly dare
Venture their stakes, with him in joy to share.

DONNE.

Their

HEIR thoughts and expressions were sometimes grossly absurd, and such as no figures or licence can reconcile to the understanding.

A lover neither dead nor alive :

Then down I laid my head,
Down on cold earth ; and for a while was

dead,
And my freed soul to a strange somewhere

fled :
Ah sottish foul, said I,
When back to its cage again I saw it fly:

Fool to resume her broken chain !
And row her galley here again!

Fool, to that body to return
Where it condemnd and destin'd is to burn !

Once dead, how can it be,
Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee,
That thou shouldst come to live it o'er again
in me?

COWLEY.
A lover's