What mean, dull souls! in this high measure

To haberdash

In earth's base wares, whose greatest treasure
Is dross and trash!

The height of whose enchanting pleasure
Is but a flash!

Are these the goods that thou suppliest
Us mortals with? Are these the high'st?

Can these bring cordial peace? False world, thou liest!

DELIGHT IN GOD ONLY.

I love (and have some cause to love) the earth:
She is my Maker's creature-therefore good;
She is my mother, for she gave me birth;
She is my tender nurse-she gives me food.

But what's a creature, Lord, compared with thee?
Or what's my mother or my nurse to me?

I love the air: her dainty sweets refresh
My drooping soul, and to new sweets invite me;
Her shrill-mouthed quire sustain me with their

flesh,

And with their polyphonian notes delight me: But what's the air, or all the sweets that she Can bless my soul withal, compared to thee?

I love the sea: she is my fellow-creature,
My careful purveyor; she provides me store;
She walls me round; she makes my diet greater;
She wafts my treasure from a foreign shore:
But, Lord of oceans, when compared with thee,
What is the ocean or her wealth to me?

To heaven's high city I direct my journey,
Whose spangled suburbs entertain mine eye;
Mine eye, by contemplation's great attorney,
Transcends the crystal pavement of the sky:

But what is heaven, great God, compared to thee?
Without thy presence, heaven's no heaven to me.

Without thy presence earth gives no refection;
Without thy presence sea affords no treasure;
Without thy presence air's a rank infection;
Without thy presence heaven itself no pleasure:
If not possessed, if not enjoyed in thee,
What's earth, or sea, or air, or heaven to me?

The highest honors that the world can boast
Are subjects far too low for my desire;
The brightest beams of glory are at most
But dying sparkles of thy living fire;

The loudest flames that earth can kindle be But nightly glow-worms, if compared to thee.

Without thy presence wealth is bags of cares; Wisdom but folly; joy disquiet, sadness; Friendship is treason, and delights are suares; Pleasures but pains, and mirth but pleasing mad

ness:

Without thee, Lord, things be not what they be, Nor have they being, when compared with thee.

In having all things, and not thee, what have I?
Not having thee, what have my labors got?
Let me enjoy but thee, what further crave I?
And having thee alone, what have I not?
I wish nor sea nor land; nor would I be
Possessed of heaven, heaven unpossessed of thee.

Henry King.

King, bishop of Chichester (1591-1669), was the author of poems, elegies, and sonnets. His monody on his wife, who died before her twenty-fifth year, is beautiful and tender, containing the germ of some famous passages by modern poets.

FROM THE EXEQUY ON HIS WIFE.
Accept, thou shrine of my dead saint,
Instead of dirges this complaint;

And for sweet flowers to crown thy hearse,
Receive a strew of weeping verse

From thy grieved friend, whom thou might'st see
Quite melted into tears for thee.

Dear loss! since thy untimely fate,
My task has been to meditate

On thee, on thee: thou art the book,
The library, whereon I look,

Though almost blind. For thee, loved clay,

I languish out, not live, the day,
Using no other exercise

But what I practise with mine eyes,
By which wet glasses I find out
How lazily time creeps about
To one that mourns; this, only this,
My exercise and business is:
So I compute the weary hours
With sighs dissolvéd into showers.

Till age, or grief, or sickness must
Marry my body to that dust

It so much loves, and fill the room
My heart keeps empty in thy tomb.
Stay for me there: I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
And think not much of my delay;
I am already on the way,

And follow thee with all the speed
Desire can make or sorrows breed.
Each minute is a short degree,
And every hour a step toward thee.
At night when I betake to rest,
Next morn I rise nearer my west
Of life almost by eight hours' sail

Than when sleep breathed his drowsy gale.
Thus from the sun my bottom steers,
And my day's compass downward bears,
Nor labor I to stem the tide
Through which to thee I swiftly glide.

Tis true, with shame and grief I yield,
Thou, like the van, first took'st the field,
And gotten hast the victory,
In thus adventuring to die

Before me, whose more years might crave
A just precedence in the grave.
But hark! my pulse, like a soft drum,
Beats my approach, tells thee I come;
And slow howe'er my marches be,
I shall at last sit down by thee.
The thought of this bids me go on,
And wait my dissolution

With hope and comfort. Dear (forgive
The crime!), I am content to live
Divided, with but half a heart,
Till we shall meet and never part.

SIC VITA.

Like to the falling of a star,
Or as the flights of eagles are;
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue,
Or silver drops of morning dew;
Or like a wind that chafes the flood,
Or bubbles which on water stood-
Even such is man, whose borrowed light
Is straight called in and paid to-night.
The wind blows ont; the bubble dies;
The spring entombed in autumn lies;
The dew dries up; the star is shot;
The flight is past-and man forgot!

Down, pickaxe! to the depths for gold let's go; We'll undermine Peru. Isn't heaven below?

Who gripes too much casts all upon the ground; Too great a greatness greatness doth confound.

All things are wonder since the world began: The world's a riddle, and the meaning's man.

Father of gifts, who to the dust didst give Life, say to these my meditations, Live!

James Shirley.

Shirley (1596-1666), born in London, was the last of the Elizabethan dramatists. Indications of the true poet flash out in many passages of his plays. But his narrow circumstances probably prevented him from giving his genius fair scope. He wrote for bread, and lived on into the reign of Charles II. The great fire of 1666 burnt him out of house and home; and a little after, in one of the suburbs of London, his wife and he died on the same day. Shirley took orders in the English Church, but left his living on being converted to the Church of Rome. "Gentle, modest, and full of sensibility," says his biog rapher, "he seems to have conciliated the affection of all his associates."

DEATH'S CONQUESTS.

This famous little poem appears in Shirley's one-act drama of "The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses," and is supposed to be recited or sung by Calchas before the dead body of Ajax. Oldys refers to it as "the fine song which old Bowman used to sing to King Charles II., and which he has often sung to me."

The glories of our blood and state

Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armor against fate;

Death lays his icy hands on kings.

Sceptre and crown

Must tumble down,

And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crookéd scythe and spade.

Some men with swords may reap the field, And plant fresh laurels where they kill; But their strong nerves at last must yield; They tame but one another still.

Early or late,

They stoop to fate,

And must give up their murmuring breath, When they, pale captives, creep to death.

The garlands wither on your brow,

Then boast no more your mighty deeds;

Upon Death's purple altar now,

See where the victor-victim bleeds.
Your heads must come
To the cold tomb;

Only the actions of the just

Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust.

George Herbert.

Herbert (1593-1633) was the brother of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the deistic mystic. Disappointed in court advancement by the death of James I., George took holy orders, and earned the appellation of "Holy" by his exemplary discharge of his sacred office. His style, like that of so many of his brother poets, is founded on the manner of his friend Donne. The volume of his poems, still often republished, is entitled "The Temple." He died at the early age of thirty-nine.

MAN.

My God! I heard this day That none doth build a stately habitation But he that means to dwell therein. What house more stately hath there been, Or can be, than is Man, to whose creation All things are in decay?

For Man is everything,

And more: he is a tree, yet bears no fruit;
A beast, yet is, or should be, more:
Reason and speech we only bring.
Parrots may thank us, if they are not mute,
They go upon the score.

Man is all symmetry,

Full of proportions, one limb to another,
And all to all the world besides:

Each part may call the farthest brother; For head with foot hath private amity, And both with moons and tides.

Nothing has got so far

But Man hath caught and kept it as his prey. His eyes dismount the highest star;

He is in little all the sphere;

Herbs gladly cure his flesh, because that they Find their acquaintance there.

For us the winds do blow,

The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow: