And little now to make me wants
Or of the fowls, or of the plants.
Give me but wings, as they, and I
Straight floating on the air shall fly;
Or turn me but, and you shall see
I was but an inverted tree.
Already I begin to call

In their most learn'd original;
And where I language want, my signs
The bird upon the bough divines;
And, more attentive, there doth sit,
Than if she were with lime-twigs knit.
No leaf does tremble in the wind,
Which I returning cannot find.
Out of these scattered Sibyl's leaves,
Strange prophecies my fancy weaves;
And in one history consumes,

Like Mexique paintings, all the plumes.
What Rome, Greece, Palestine, e'er said,
I in this light mosaic read.

Thrice happy he, who, not mistook,
Hath read in Nature's mystic book.

And see how chance's better wit
Could with a mask my studies hit!
The oak leaves me embroider all
Between which caterpillars crawl;
And ivy, with familiar trails,

Me licks, and clasps, and curls, and hales.

Under this antic cope I move

Like some great prelate of the grove.

Then, languishing with ease, I toss

On pallets swoln of velvet moss;

While the wind, cooling through the boughs,
Flatters with air my panting brows.
Thanks for my rest, ye mossy banks;
And unto you, cool zephyrs, thanks;
Who, as my hair, my thoughts too shed,
And winnow from the chaff my head.
How safe, methinks, and strong, behind
These trees, have I incamp'd my mind:
Where beauty, aiming at the heart,
Bends in some tree its useless dart ;
And where the world no certain shot
Can make, or me it toucheth not.

But I on it securely play,

And gall its horsemen all the day.
Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines,
Curl me about, ye gadding vines,
And oh, so close your circles lace,

That I may never leave this place:
But, lest your fetters prove too weak,
E'er I your silken bondage break,

Do

you, O brambles, chain me too,
And, courteous briars, nail me through.
Here in the morning tie my chain,
Where the two woods have made a lane;
While, like a guard on either side,
The trees before their lords divide;
This, like a long and equal thread,
Betwixt two labyrinths does lead.
But, where the floods did lately drown,
There at the ev❜ning stake me down.
For now the waves are fall'n and dry'd,
And now the meadows fresher dy'd ;
Whose grass, with moister colour dash'd,
Seems as green silks but newly wash'd.
No serpent new, nor crocodile,
Remains behind our little Nile;
Unless itself you will mistake,
Among these meads the only snake.
See in what wanton harmless folds,
It ev'ry where the meadow holds;
And its yet muddy back doth lick,
Till as a crystal mirror slick;

Where all things gaze themselves, and doubt
If they be in it, or without.

And for his shade which therein shines,

Narcissus-like, the sun too pines.

Oh what a pleasuse 'tis to hedge
My temples here with heavy sedge;
Abandoning my lazy side,

Stretch'd as a bank unto the tide;
Or to suspend my sliding foot
On th' osier's undermined root,
And in its branches tough to hang,
While at my lines the fishes twang!
But now away my hooks, my quills,
And angles, idle utensils.

The young Maria walks to night;
Hide, trifling youth, thy pleasures slight;
"I'were shame that such judicious eyes
Should with such toys a man surprise;
She that already is the law

Of all her sex, her age's awe.
See how loose nature, in respect
To her, itself doth recollect;

And every thing so wish'd, and fine,
Starts forth with it to its bonne mine.
The sun himself, of her aware,
Seems to descend with greater care;
And lest she see him go to bed,
In blushing clouds conceals his head.
So when the shadow's laid asleep,
From underneath these banks do creep,
And on the river as it flows,
With ebon shuts begin to close;
The modest halcyon comes in sight,
Flying betwixt the day and night;
And such an horror calm and dumb,
Admiring nature does benumb,
The viscous air, where'er she fly,
Follows and sucks her azure dye;
The jellying stream compacts below,
If it might fix her shadow so;
The stupid fishes hang, as plain
As flies in crystal overta'en;
And men the silent scene assist,
Charm'd with the sapphire-winged mist.
Maria such, and so doth hush

The world, and through the ev'ning rush.
No new-born comet such a train
Draws through the sky, nor star new-slain.
For straight those giddy rockets fail,
Which from the putrid earth exhale,
But by her flames in heaven try'd,
Nature is wholly vitrify'd..

"Tis she, that to these gardens gave
That wondrous beauty which they have;
She straitness on the woods bestows;
To her the meadow sweetness owes ;
Nothing could make the river be
So crystal-pure, but only she;

She yet more pure, sweet, strait, and fair,

Than gardens, woods, meads, rivers, are.
Therefore what first she on them spent,
They gratefully again present.

The meadow carpets where to tread;
The garden flowers to crown her head:
And for a glass the limpid brook,
Where she may all her beauties look;
But, since she would not have them seen,
The wood about her draws a screen.
For she to higher beauties rais'd,
Disdains to be for lesser prais'd.
She counts her beauty to converse
In all the languages as hers;
Nor yet in those herself employs,
But for the wisdom, not the noise;
Nor yet that wisdom would affect,
But as 'tis Heaven's dialect.

Blest nymph! that couldst so soon prevent
Those trains by youth against thee meant;
Tears (watery shot that pierce the mind;)
And sighs (Love's cannon charg'd with wind;)
True praise (that breaks through all defence;)
And feign'd complying innocence;
But knowing where this ambush lay,
She scap'd the safe, but roughest way.
This 'tis to have been from the first
In a domestic heaven nurst,
Under the discipline severe

face

Of Fairfax, and the starry Vere;
Where not one object can come nigh,
But pure and spotless as the eye;
And goodness doth itself entail
On females, if there want a male.
Go
now, fond sex, that on your
Do all your useless study place,
Nor once at vice your brows dare knit,
Lest the smooth forehead wrinkled sit:
Yet your own face shall at you grin,
Thorough the black-bag of your skin';
When knowledge only could have fill'd
And virtue all those furrows till'd.
Hence she with graces more divine
Supplies beyond her sex the line;
And, like a sprig of misletoe,

On the Fairfacian oak does grow;

Whence, for some universal good,
The priest shall cut the sacred bud;
While her glad parents most rejoice,
And make their destiny their choice.

Mean time, ye fields, springs, bushes, flowers,
Where yet she leads her studious hours,

(Till fate her worthily translates,

And find a Fairfax for our Thwates)
Employ the means you have by her,
And in your kind your selves prefer;
That, as all virgins she precedes,

So you all woods, streams, gardens, meads.
For thou, Thessalian Tempe's seat,
Shall now be scorn'd, as obsolete;
Aranjuez, as less, disdain'd;
The Bel-Retiro, as constrain'd;
But name not the Idalian grove,
For 'twas the seat of wanton love;
Nor e'en the dead's Elysian fields,
Yet nor to them your beauty yields.
'Tis not, as once appear'd, the world,
A heap confus'd together burl'd ;
All negligently overgrown,

Gulphs, desarts, precipices, stone.
Your lesser world contains the same,
But in more decent order tame;
You heaven's centre, nature's lap;
And paradise's only map.

And now the salmon-fishers moist,
Their leathern boats begin to hoist ;

And, like antipodes in shoes,

Have shod their heads in their canoes.

How tortoise-like, but not so slow,

These rational amphibii go

Let's in; for the dark hemisphere

Does now like one of them appear."

The next extract we make is descriptive of those two destructive engines, "eyes and tears," which the society for the abolition of war will, we fear, never get the better of.

EYES AND TEARS.

"How wisely nature did decree,

With the same eyes to weep and see! :

That, having view'd the object vain,

They might be ready to complain.