(O my despite!) with his divinest glories?
And rising with rich spoils upon his breast,
With his fair triumphs fill all future stories?
Must the bright arms of heaven rebuke these
eyes ?
Mock me, and dazzle my dark mysteries?
Art thou not Lucifer? to whom the droves
Of stars that gild the morn in charge were given ?
The nimblest of the lightning-winged loves?
The fairest, and the first-born smile of Heaven?
Look in what pomp the mistress planet moves,
Rev'rently circled by the lesser seven ;
Such and so rich, the flames that from thine eyes
Oppressed the common people of the skies.
Ah, wretch! what boots thee to cast back thy eyes
Where dawning hope no beam of comfort shows?
While the reflection of thy forepast joys
Renders thee double to thy present woes.
Rather make up to thy new miseries,
And meet the mischief that upon thee grows.
If hell must mourn, heaven sure shall sympathize;
What force can not effect, fraud shall devise.
And yet what force fear I? have I so lost
Myself? my strength too with my innocence ?
Come, try, who dares? heaven, earth, whate'er dost boast
A borrow'd being, make thy bold defence.
Come thy Creator too, what though it cost
Me yet a second fall? we'd try our strengths:
Heaven saw us struggle once: as brave a fight
Earth now shall see, and tremble at the sight.
Love, brave Virtue's younger brother,
Erst had made my heart a mother.
She consults the conscious spheres,
To calculate her young son's years;
She asks if sad or saving powers
Gave omen to his infant hours;
She asks each star that then stood by
If poor Love shall live or die.
Ah, my heart! is that the way ?
Are these the beams that rule thy day?
Thou know'st a face; in whose each look
Beauty lays ope Love's fortune-book:
On whose fair revolutions wait
Th' obsequious motions of Love's fate.
Ah, my heart! her eyes and she
Have taught thee new astrology!
Howe'er Love's native hours were set,
Whatever starry synod met,
'Tis in the mercy of her eye,
poor Love shall live or die.
If those sharp rays, putting on
Points of death, did Love begone,
(Though the heavens in council sate
To crown an uncontrolled fate;
Though their best aspects, twin'd upon
The kindest constellation,
Cast amorous glances on his birth,
And whisper'd the confederate earth
To pave his paths with all the good
That warms the bed of youth and blood ;),
Love has no plea against her eye:
Beauty frowns, and Love must die.
But if her milder influence move,
And gild the hopes of humble Love;
(Thou heaven's inauspicious eye
Lay black on Love's nativity:
Though every diamond in Jove's crown
Fixt his forehead to a frown ;)
Her eye a strong appeal can give:
Beauty smiles; and Love shall live.
Denham and Waller, says Prior, improved our versification, and Dryden perfected it: and Dryden says, the excellence and dignity of rhyme were never fully known till Mr. Waller taught it in lyric, and Sir John Denham in epic poesy. The opinion that Waller and Denham were the "fathers of English versification,” was sanctioned by the assertions and practice of Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith, and the whole race of poets who have "touch'd upon the art of poetry, or made selections from our poets," but it is as absurd as it is general. The versification of Chaucer, of Spenser, and Shakspeare has not been essentially improved in the least particular.
Denham improved upon the couplet; he was the first to perfect the sense in couplets, and to give a fullness and a rounded close to his periods. He possessed great strength of thought, good sound sense, and much ease and grace of versification. Pope emulated him in the finish and harmony of his numbers, in strength and condensation of thought. He designed a new scheme of poetry, the object of which is to describe local scenery, and which may be termed landscape poetry. In this he has been followed by Garth, Pope, Goldsmith, and others, till local and particular scenery has become the common inheritance of poetry.
Sure there are poets which did never dream
Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream
Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose
Those made not poets, but the poets those:
And as courts make not kings, but kings the court,
So where the Muses and their train resort
Parnassus stands; if I can be to thee
A poet, thou Parnassus art to me.
Nor wonder if (advantag'd in my flight
By taking wing from thy auspicious height,)
Through untraced ways, and airy paths I fly,
More boundless in my fancy than my eye;
My eye, which swift as thought contracts the space
That lies between, and first salutes the place,
Crown'd with that sacred pile, so vast, so high,
That whether 'tis a part of earth or sky,
Uncertain seems and may though be a proud
Aspiring mountain, or descending cloud;
Paul's, the late theme of such a Muse, whose flight
Has bravely reached and soar'd above thy height;
Now shalt thou stand, though sword, or time or fire,
Or zeal, more fierce than they, thy fall conspire,
Secure, whilst thee the best of poets sings
Preserv'd from ruin by the best of kings.
My eye, descending from the hill, surveys
Where Thames among the wanton vallies strays;
Thames the most loved of all the Ocean's sons,
By his old sire, to his embraces runs,
Hast'ning to pay his tribute to the sea,
Like mortal life to meet eternity.
Though with those storms he no resemblance hold,
Whose foam is amber and their gravel gold:
His genuine and less justly wealth t' explore,
Search not his bottom but survey his shore.
Here Nature, whether more intent to please
Us or herself with strange varieties,
(For things of wonder give no less delight
To the wise Maker, than beholder's sight;
Though these delights from several causes move,
For so our children, thus our friends we love)
Wisely she knew the harmony of things.
As well as that of sounds, from discord springs.
Such was the discord which did first disperse
Form, order, beauty through the universe.
While dryness, moisture, coldness, heat resists
All that we have, and that we are subsists;
While the steep horrid roughness of the wood
Strives with the gentle calmness of the flood,
Such huge extremes, when nature doth unite
Wonder from thence results, from thence delights.
Morpheus, the humble god, that dwells
In cottages and smoky cells,
Hates gilded roofs, and beds of down;
And, though he fears no prince's frown,
Flies from the circle of a crown.
Come, I say, thou powerful God,
And thy leaden charming rod,
Dipp'd in the Lethean lake,
O'er his wakeful temples shake,
Lest he should sleep, and never wake.
Nature, alas! why art thou so
Obliged to thy greatest foe?
Sleep, that is thy best repast,
Yet of death it bears a taste,
And both are the same thing at last.
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