CELIA SINGING. 1 Roses in breathing forth their scent, The winged chariot of the light, Or the slow, silent wheels of night; Or souls that their eternal rest do keep, 2 But if the angel which inspires This subtle flame with active fires, Should mould this breath to words, and those Into a harmony dispose, The music of this heavenly sphere Would steal each soul (in) at the ear, A life that cherubim would choose, And with new powers invert the laws of fate, Kill those that live, and dead things animate. SPEAKING AND KISSING. 1 The air which thy smooth voice doth break, Into my soul like lightning flies; My life retires while thou dost speak, And thy soft breath its room supplies. 2 Lost in this pleasing ecstasy, I join my trembling lips to thine, 3 Forbear, Platonic fools! t' inquire What numbers do the soul compose; No harmony can life inspire, But that which from these accents flows. LA BELLE CONFIDANTE. You earthly souls that court a wanton flame Can rise no higher than the humble name Whose brightness angels may admire, Sickness may fright the roses from her cheek, But all the subtle ways that death doth seek Cannot my love invade. Disdainful Beauty, thou shalt be So wretched as to know What joys thou fling'st away with me. 3 As Time or Fortune could not rust; So firm, that lovers might Have read thy story in my dust, And crowned thy name With laurel verdant as thy youth, Whilst the shrill voice of Fame Spread wide thy beauty and my truth. 4 5 6 This thou hast lost, For all true lovers, when they find And none will lay Any oblation on thy shrine, But such as would betray Thy faith to faiths as false as thine. Yet, if thou choose On such thy freedom to bestow, Affection may excuse, For love from sympathy doth flow. NOTE ON ANACREON. Let's not rhyme the hours away; With his fiddlestick and quill; And the Muses, though they're gamesome, They are neither young nor handsome; And their freaks in sober sadness Are a mere poetic madness: Pegasus is but a horse; He that follows him is worse. See, the rain soaks to the skin, Wine, my boy; we'll sing and laugh, Till the morn, stealing behind us, With this draught of unmixed Rhenish; By the healths with which th' art crowned; By the feasts which thou dost prize; By thy numerous victories; By the howls by Monads made; By this haut-gout carbonade; By thy cymbal, drum, and his stick; By thy fulsome Cretan lass; By mass, tope, and thy flapdragons; Knights of the deep bowl install us; Never let it want for wine. ANDREW MARVELL. THIS noble-minded patriot and poet, the friend of Milton, the Abdiel of a dark and corrupt age,-'faithful found among the faithless, faithful only he,'-was born in Hull in 1620. He was sent to Cambridge, and is said there to have nearly fallen a victim to the proselytising Jesuits, who enticed him to London. His father, however, a clergyman in Hull, went in search of and brought him back to his university, where speedily, by extensive culture and the vigorous exercise of his powerful faculties, he emancipated himself for ever from the dominion, and the danger of the dominion, of superstition and bigotry. We know little more about the early days of our poet. When only twenty, |