In numbers thus the wonders we conceive;
The gracious image, seeming to give leave,
Propitious stands, vouchsafing to be seen;
And by our Muse saluted Mighty Queen,
In whom th' extremes of power and beauty move,
The Queen of Britain and the Queen of Love!
As the bright sun (to which we owe no sight
Of equal glory to your beauty's light)
Is wisely placed in so sublime a seat,
T'extend his light, and moderate his heat;
So, happy 'tis you move in such a sphere,
As your high Majesty with awful fear
In human breasts might qualify that fire,

Which, kindled by those eyes, had flamed higher
Than when the scorched world like hazard run,
By the approach of the ill-guided sun.

No other nymphs have title to men's hearts,
But as their meanness larger hope imparts;
Your beauty more the fondest lover moves
With admiration than his private loves;
With admiration! for a pitch so high
(Save sacred Charles his) never love durst fly.
Heaven, that preferr'd a sceptre to your hand,
Favour'd our freedom more than your command;
Beauty had crown'd you, and you must have been
The whole world's mistress, other than a Queen.
All had been rivals, and you might have spared,
Or kill'd, and tyrannised, without a guard;
No power achieved, either by arms or birth,
Equals love's empire both in heaven and earth.
Such eyes as yours on Jove himself have thrown
As bright and fierce a lightning as his own;
Witness our Jove, prevented by their flame
In his swift passage to th' Hesperian dame;

When, like a lion, finding, in his way
To some intended spoil, a fairer prey,
The royal youth pursuing the report
Of beauty, found it in the Gallic court;
There public care with private passion fought
A doubtful combat in his noble thought:
Should he confess his greatness, and his love,
And the free faith of your great brother1 prove;
With his Achates breaking through the cloud
Of that disguise which did their graces shroud;2
And mixing with those gallants at the ball,
Dance with the ladies, and outshine them all;
Or on his journey o'er the mountains ride?—
So when the fair Leucothoë he espied,
To check his steeds impatient Phoebus yearn'd,
Though all the world was in his course concern'd.
What may hereafter her meridian do,
Whose dawning beauty warni'd his bosom so?
Not so divine a flame, since deathless gods
Forbore to visit the defiled abodes

Of men, in any mortal breast did burn;
Nor shall, till piety and they return.

TO AMORET.

1 AMORET! the Milky Way

Framed of many nameless stars!

The smooth stream where none can say

He this drop to that prefers!

Great brother': Louis XIII., King of France. Graces shroud': 'Achates,' the Duke of Buckingham.

2 Amoret! my lovely foe!

Tell me where thy strength does lie?
Where the pow'r that charms us so?
In thy soul, or in thy eye?

3 By that snowy neck alone,

Or thy grace in motion seen,
No such wonders could be done;
Yet thy waist is straight and clean
As Cupid's shaft, or Hermes' rod,
And pow'rful, too, as either god.

TO PHYLLIS.

PHYLLIS! why should we delay
Pleasures shorter than the day?
Could we (which we never can!)
Stretch our lives beyond their span,
Beauty like a shadow flies,
And our youth before us dies.
Or would youth and beauty stay,
Love hath wings, and will away.
Love hath swifter wings than Time,
Change in love to heaven does climb.
Gods, that never change their state,
Vary oft their love and hate.

Phyllis! to this truth we owe
All the love betwixt us two.
Let not you and I inquire
What has been our past desire;
On what shepherds you have smiled,
Or what nymphs I have beguiled;

10

Leave it to the planets too,
What we shall hereafter do;
For the joys we now may prove,
Take advice of present love.

19

TO SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT,

UPON HIS TWO FIRST BOOKS OF GONDIBERT.1

WRITTEN IN FRANCE.

THUS the wise nightingale that leaves her home,
Her native wood, when storms and winter come,
Pursuing constantly the cheerful spring,

To foreign groves does her old music bring.

The drooping Hebrews' banish'd harps, unstrung,
At Babylon upon the willows hung;
Yours sounds aloud, and tells us you excel
No less in courage, than in singing well;
While, unconcern'd, you let your country know
They have impoverish'd themselves, not you;
Who, with the Muses' help, can mock those fates
Which threaten kingdoms, and disorder states.
So Ovid, when from Cæsar's rage he fled,
The Roman Muse to Pontus with him led;
Where he so sung, that we, through pity's glass,
See Nero milder than Augustus was.
Hereafter such, in thy behalf, shall be
Th' indulgent censure of posterity.

To banish those who with such art can sing,

Is a rude crime, which its own curse doth bring;
Ages to come shall ne'er know how they fought,
Nor how to love, their present youth be taught.

Sir William Davenant': Davenant fled to France in fear of the displeasure of the Parliament, and there wrote the two first cantos of Gondibert.

This to thyself.-Now to thy matchless book,
Wherein those few that can with judgment look,
May find old love in pure fresh language told,
Like new-stamp'd coin made out of angel-gold.
Such truth in love as th' antique world did know,
In such a style as courts may boast of now;
Which no bold tales of gods or monsters swell,
But human passions, such as with us dwell.
Man is thy theme; his virtue or his rage
Drawn to the life in each elaborate page.
Mars nor Bellona are not named here,
But such a Gondibert as both might fear;
Venus had here, and Hebe, been outshined
By the bright Birtha and thy Rhodalind.
Such is thy happy skill, and such the odds
Betwixt thy worthies and the Grecian gods!
Whose deities in vain had here come down,
Where mortal beauty wears the Sovereign crown;
Such as of flesh compos'd, by flesh and blood,
Though not resisted, may be understood.

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30

40

TO MY WORTHY FRIEND, MR WASE,

THE TRANSLATOR OF GRATIUS.1

1 THUS, by the music, we may know When noble wits a-hunting go,

Through groves that on Parnassus grow.

2 The Muses all the chase adorn;
My friend on Pegasus is borne;
And young Apollo winds the horn.

1 ''Mr Wase': Wase was a fellow of Cambridge, tutor to Lord Herbert, and translator of Gratius on Hunting,' a very learned man.