A judgment! that could make so fair a choice;
So high a subject to employ his voice;

Still as it grows, how sweetly will he sing
The growing greatness of our matchless king!

LONG AND SHORT LIFE.

CIRCLES are praised, not that abound
In largeness, but th' exactly round:
So life we praise that does excel
Not in much time, but acting well.

TRANSLATED OUT OF SPANISH.

THOUGH We may seem importunate,
While your compassion we implore;
They whom you make too fortunate,
May with presumption vex you more.

TRANSLATED OUT OF FRENCH.

FADE, flowers! fade, Nature will have it so;
"Tis but what we must in our autumn do!
And as your leaves lie quiet on the ground,
The loss alone by those that loved them found;
So in the grave shall we as quiet lie,
Miss'd by some few that loved our company;
But some so like to thorns and nettles live,
That none for them can, when they perish, grieve.

SOME VERSES OF AN IMPERFECT COPY,

DESIGNED FOR A FRIEND, ON HIS TRANSLATION OF OVID'S 'FASTI.'

ROME's holy-days you tell, as if a guest
With the old Romans you were wont to feast.
Numa's religion, by themselves believed,
Excels the true, only in show received.

They made the nations round about them bow,
With their dictators taken from the plough;
Such power has justice, faith, and honesty!
The world was conquer'd by morality.
Seeming devotion does but gild a knave,
That's neither faithful, honest, just, nor brave;
But where religion does with virtue join,
It makes a hero like an angel shine.

ON THE STATUE OF KING CHARLES I.,

AT CHARING CROSS, IN THE YEAR 1674.

THAT the First Charles does here in triumph ride,
See his son reign where he a martyr died,
And people pay that rev'rence as they pass,
(Which then he wanted!) to the sacred brass,
Is not the effect of gratitude alone,

To which we owe the statue and the stone;
But Heaven this lasting monument has wrought,
That mortals may eternally be taught
Rebellion, though successful, is but vain,
And kings so kill'd rise conquerors again.
This truth the royal image does proclaim,
Loud as the trumpet of surviving Fame.

PRIDE.

NOT the brave Macedonian youth1 alone,
But base Caligula, when on the throne,
Boundless in power, would make himself a god,
As if the world depended on his nod.

The Syrian king 2 to beasts was headlong thrown,
Ere to himself he could be mortal known.

The meanest wretch, if Heaven should give him line,
Would never stop till he were thought divine.
All might within discern the serpent's pride,
If from ourselves nothing ourselves did hide.
Let the proud peacock his gay
feathers spread,
And woo the female to his painted bed;

Let winds and seas together rage and swell

This Nature teaches, and becomes them well.
'Pride was not mado for men;'3 a conscious sense
Of guilt, and folly, and their consequence,
Destroys the claim, and to beholders tells,
Here nothing but the shape of manhood dwells.

EPITAPII ON SIR GEORGE SPEKE.

UNDER this stone lies virtue, youth,
Unblemish'd probity, and truth,
Just unto all relations known,
A worthy patriot, pious son;
Whom neighb'ring towns so often sent
To give their sense in Parliament;
With lives and fortunes trusting one

Who so discreetly used his own.

Macedonian youth': Alexander.- 'Syrian king': Nebuchadnezzar.—

36 For men': Ecclus. x. 18.

Sober he was, wise, temperate,
Contented with an old estate,
Which no foul avarice did increase,
Nor wanton luxury make less.
While yet but young his father died,
And left him to a happy guide;
Not Lemuel's mother with more care
Did counsel or instruct her heir,
Or teach with more success her son
The vices of the time to shun.
An heiress she; while yet alive,
All that was hers to him did give;
And he just gratitude did show
To one that had obliged him so;
Nothing too much for her he thought,
By whom he was so bred and taught.
So (early made that path to tread,
Which did his youth to honour lead)
His short life did a pattern give

How neighbours, husbands, friends, should live.
The virtues of a private life

Exceed the glorious noise and strife

Of battles won; in those we find

The solid int'rest of mankind.

Approved by all, and loved so well,

Though young, like fruit that's ripe, he fell.

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EPITAPH ON COLONEL CHARLES CAVENDISII.1

HERE lies Charles Ca'ndish; let the marble stone
That hides his ashes make his virtue known.

Charles Cavendish': younger son of the Earl of Devonshire, and brother of Lady Rich; slain in 1643 at Gainsborough, fighting on the king's side, in the twenty-third year of his age.

Beauty and valour did his short life grace,
The grief and glory of his noble race!
Early abroad he did the world survey,
As if he knew he had not long to stay;
Saw what great Alexander in the East,
And mighty Julius conquer'd in the West;
Then, with a mind as great as theirs, he came
To find at home occasion for his fame;
Where dark confusion did the nations hide,
And where the juster was the weaker side.
Two loyal brothers took their sov'reign's part,
Employ'd their wealth, their courage, and their

art;

The elder1 did whole regiments afford;

The younger brought his conduct and his sword.
Born to command, a leader he begun,
And on the rebels lasting honour won.
The horse, instructed by their general's worth,
Still made the king victorious in the north.
Where Ca'ndish fought, the Royalists prevail'd;
Neither his courage nor his judgment fail'd.
The current of his vict'ries found no stop,
Till Cromwell came, his party's chiefest prop.
Equal success had set these champions high,
And both resolved to conquer or to die.
Virtue with rage, fury with valour strove;
But that must fall which is decreed above!
Cromwell, with odds of number and of fate,
Removed this bulwark of the church and state;
Which the sad issue of the war declared,
And made his task, to ruin both, less hard.
So when the bank, neglected, is o'erthrown,
The boundless torrent does the country drown.

1 The elder': afterwards Earl of Devonshire.

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