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SEVENTEENTH CENTURY LYRICS

Among the lyrics of the earlier part of the seventeenth century, one discerns, somewhat clearly, at least three poetical manners, which emanated, respectively, from Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, and John Donne. I The sensuous beauty, playful imagery, and fluent melody of Spenser are clearly present in the poems of William Browne and George Wither. The fine finish, poise, and chastened sweetness of Jonson are a refining influence in the shorter lyrics of Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, John Suckling, and Richard Lovelace. In John Donne, incisive and subtle thinking finds fantastic, and sometimes harsh, expression in far-fetched analogies, mystifying metaphors, and dimly suggestive images. The poetical apparatus of Donne, often, and his fancy, still more often, are essential in the passionate, soaring, and mystical outbursts of George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, and Henry Vaughan. One notices, however, that Spenser, Jonson, and Donne did not exclusively dominate the poetical output of their conscious or unconscious disciples.

Toward the middle of the century appears a new influence in poetical form, the heroic,' or 'closed,' couplet, practiced by Edmund Waller, John Denham, Abraham Cowley, and Andrew Marvell. This verse-form, best adapted to epic and satire, had no important influence upon lyric, except, indirectly, through repression.

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SONG: TO CELIA

Come, my Celia, let us prove,

While we can, the sports of love.
Time will not be ours for ever;
He, at length, our good will sever;
Spend not then his gifts in vain.
Suns that set may rise again;
But if once we lose this light,
'Tis with us perpetual night.
Why should we defer our joys?
Fame and rumor are but toys.
Cannot we delude the eyes

Of a few poor household spies?
Or his easier ears beguile,
Thus removed by our wile?
'Tis no sin love's fruits to steal;
But the sweet theft to reveal,
To be taken, to be seen,

These have crimes accounted been.

TO HEAVEN

10

15

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Upon the Muses' anvil; turn the same (And himself with it) that he thinks to frame,

Or, for the laurel, he may gain a scorn; For a good poet's made, as well as born. And such wert thou! Look how the father's face 65

Lives in his issue, even so the race

Of Shakspere's mind and manners brightly shines

In his well turnèd, and true filed lines;
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandished at the eyes of ignorance. 70
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of
Thames,

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To sordid flatteries, acts of strife, And sunk in that dead sea of life, So deep, as he did then death's waters sup, But that the cork of title buoyed him up.

The Antistrophe, or Counter-Turn Alas! but Morison fell young!

He never fell,- thou fall'st, my tongue. He stood a soldier to the last right end, 45 A perfect patriot and a noble friend;

But most, a virtuous son.

All offices were done

By him, so ample, full, and round,

In weight, in measure, number, sound, 50 As, though his age imperfect might appear, His life was of humanity the sphere.

The Epode, or Stand

Go now, and tell our days summed up with

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The Antistrophe, or Counter-Turn
Call, noble Lucius, then, for wine,
And let thy looks with gladness shine;
Accept this garland, plant it on thy head,
And think, nay know, thy Morison's not
dead.

He leaped the present age,
Possest with holy rage,

To see that bright eternal day;
Of which we priests and poets say

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Such truths as we expect for happy men; And there he lives with memory and Ben

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And keep the one half from his Harry. But fate doth so alternate the design, Whilst that in heaven, this light on earth must shine,

IV

The Strophe, or Turn And shine as you exalted are;

Two names of friendship, but one star: Of hearts the union, and those not by

chance

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