Dear soul, be strong;
Mercy will come ere long,

And bring her bosom full of blessings-
Flowers of never-fading graces,

To make immortal dressings,

For worthy souls whose wise embraces
Store up themselves for Him who is alone
The spouse of virgins, and the Virgin's son.

From Hymn to the Name of Jesus.'
Come, lovely name! life of our hope!

Lo, we hold our hearts wide ope!

Unlock thy cabinet of day,

Dearest sweet, and come away.

Lo, how the thirsty lands

Gasp for thy golden showers, with long-stretched hands! Lo, how the labouring earth,

That hopes to be

All heaven by thee,
Leaps at thy birth!

The attending world, to wait thy rise,

First turned to eyes;

And then, not knowing what to do,
Turned them to tears, and spent them too.
Come, royal name! and pay the expense
Of all this precious patience:

Oh, come away

And kill the death of this delay.

O see, so many worlds of barren years
Melted and measured out in seas of tears!
Oh, see the weary lids of wakeful hope-
Love's eastern windows-all wide ope
With curtains drawn,

To catch the day break of thy dawn!
Oh, dawn at last, long-looked-for day!
Take thine own wings and come away.
Lo, where aloft it comes! It comes, among
The conduct of adoring spirits, that throng
Like diligent bees, and swarm about it.
Oh, they are wise,

And know what sweets are sucked from out it.
It is the hive

By which they thrive,

Where all their hoard of honey lies.

Lo, where it comes, upon the snowy dove's
Soft back, and brings a bosom big with loves.
Welcome to our dark world, thou womb of day!

Unfold thy fair conceptions; and display
The birth of our bright joys.

Sweet name! in thy each syllable

A thousand blest Arabias dwell;

A thousand hills of frankincense;

Mountains of myrrh and beds of spices,

And ten thousand paradises,

The soul that tastes thee takes from thence.

How many unknown worlds there are

Of comforts, which thou hast in keeping!

How many thousand mercies there

In Pity's soft lap lie a-sleeping!

Happy he who has the art

To awake them,

And to take them

Home, and lodge them in his heart!

Oh, that it were as it was wont to be,

When thy old friends, on fire all full of thee,

Fought against frowns with smiles; gave glorious chase
To persecutions; and against the face

Of death and fiercest dangers, durst with brave

And sober pace march on to meet a grave!

On their bold breasts about the world they bore thee,

And to the teeth of hell stood up to teach thee;

In centre of their inmost souls they wore thee,

Where racks and torments strived in vain to reach thee.
Little, alas! thought they

Who tore the fair breasts of thy friends,

Their fury but made way

For thee, and served them in thy glorious ends.
What did their weapons, but with wider pores
Enlarge thy flaming-breasted lovers,

More freely to transpire

That impatient fire

The heart that hides thee hardly covers?
What did their weapons, but set wide the doors
For thee? fair purple doors, of love's devising;
The ruby windows which enriched the east
Of thy so oft-repeated rising.

Each wound of theirs was thy new morning,
And re-enthroned thee in thy rosy nest,

With blush of thine own blood thy day adorning:

It was the wit of love o'erflowed the bounds

Of wrath, and made the way through all these wounds.
Welcome, dear, all-adored name!

For sure there is no knee

That knows not thee;

Or if there be such sons of shame,
Alas! what will they do,

When stubborn rocks shall bow,

And hills hang down their heaven-saluting heads
To seek for humble beds

Of dust, where, in the bashful shades of night,

Next to their own low nothing they may lie,

And couch before the dazzling light of thy dread Majesty.
They that by love's mild dictate now

Will not adore thee,

Shall then, with just confusion, bow
And break before thee.

DR. WILLIAM STRODE.

He

This accomplished divine (whose scattered poetical pieces deserve collection) was born near Plympton, Devonshire, about 1598. studied at Christchurch, Oxford, took orders in 1621, and was installed canon of Christchurch in 1638. He died April 10, 1644.

Answer to the 'Lover's Melancholy.'

Return, my joys! and hither bring
A tongue not made to speak, but sing,
A jolly spleen, an inward feast;
A causeless laugh without a jest;
A face which gladness doth anoint;
An arm for joy, flung out of joint;

A sprightful gait that leaves no print,
And makes a feather of a flint;

A heart that's lighter than the air;
An eye still dancing in its sphere;
Strong mirth which nothing shall control;
A body nimbler than a soul;

Free wandering thoughts not tied to muse,

Which, thinking all things, nothing choose,

Which, ere we see them come, are gone;

These life itself doth feed upon.
Men take no care but only to be jolly;
To be more wretched than we must, is
folly.

Kisses.

My love and I for kisses played;

She would keep stakes-I was content;
But when I won, she would be paid;

This made me ask her what she meant.

Pray, since I see,' quoth she, 'your wrangling vein,
Take your own kisses; give me mine again.'

ROBERT HERRICK.

One of the most exquisite of our early lyrical poets was ROBERT HERRICK, born in Cheapside, London, in 1591. He studied at Cambridge, and having entered into holy orders, was presented by Charles I. in 1629, to the vicarage of Dean Prior, in Devonshire. After about twenty years' residence in this rural parish, Herrick was ejected from his living by the storms of the civil war, which, as Jeremy Taylor says, 'dashed the vessel of the church and state all in pieces.' Whatever regret the poet may have felt on being turned adrift on the world, he could have experienced little on parting with his parishioners, for he describes them in much the same way as Crabbe portrayed the natives of Suffolk, among whom he was cast in early life, as a wild amphibious race,' rude almost as salvages,' and churlish as the seas.' Herrick gives us a glimpse of his own character:

Born I was to meet with age,
And to walk life's pilgrimage:
Much, I know, of time is spent ;
Tell I can't what 's resident.

Howsoever, cares adieu!

I'll have nought to say to you;
But I'll spend my coming hours
Drinking wine and crowned with flowers.

This light and genial temperament would enable the poet to ride out the storm in composure. About the time that he lost his vicarage, Herrick appears to have published his works. His Noble Numbers,' or 'Pious Pieces,' are dated 1647; his Hesperides,' or the Works, both Humane and Divine, of Robert Herrick, Esquire,' in 1648. The clerical prefix to his name seems now to have been abandoned by the poet; and there are certainly many pieces in the second volume which would not become one ministering at the altar, or belonging to the sacred profession. Herrick lived in Westminster, and was supported or assisted, by the wealthy royalists. He associated with the jovial spirits of the age. He quaffed the mighty bowl' with Ben Jonson, but could not, he tells us, 'thrive in frenzy,' like rare Ben, who seems to have excelled all his fellow-compotators in sallies of wild wit and high imaginations. The recollection of these brave translunary scenes' of the poets inspired the muse of Herrick in the following strain:

After the Restoration, Herrick was replaced in his Devonshire vicarage. How he was received by the rude salvages' of Dean Prior, or how he felt on quitting the gaieties of the metropolis, to resume his clerical duties and seclusion, is not recorded. He was now about seventy years of age, and was probably tired of canary sack and tavern jollities. He had an undoubted taste for the pleasures of a country life, if we may judge from his works, and the fondness with which he dwells on old English festivals and rural customs. Though his rhymes were sometimes wild, he says his life was chaste, and he repented of his errors:

For these my unbaptised rhymes,
Writ in my wild unhallowed times,
For every sentence, clause, and word,
That's not inlaid with thee, O Lord!
Forgive me, God, and blot each line
Out of my book that is not thine;
But if, 'mongst all, thou findest one
Worthy thy benediction,

That one of all the rest shall be
The glory of my work and me.

The poet would better have evinced the sincerity and depth of his contrition by blotting out the unbaptised rhymes himself, or not reprinting them; but the vanity of the author probably triumphed over the penitence of the Christian. Gaiety was the natural element of Herrick. His muse was a goddess fair and free, that did not move happily in serious numbers. The time of the poet's death was long unknown; but the parish register shews that he was interred at Dean Prior, on the 15th of October, 1674.

The poetical works of Herrick lay neglected for many years after his death. They are now again in esteem, especially his shorter lyrics, some of which have been set to music, and are sung and quoted by all lovers of song. His verses' Cherry Ripe,' and 'Gather the Rose-buds while ye may'-though the sentiment and many of the expressions of the latter are taken from Spenser-possess a delicious mixture of playful fancy and natural feeling. Those To Blossoms,' To Daffodils,' and 'To Primroses,' have a tinge of pathos that wins its way to the heart. They abound, like all Herrick's poems, in lively imagery and conceits; but the pensive moral feeling predominates, and we feel that the poet's smiles might as well be tears. Shakspeare and Jonson had scattered such delicate fancies

and snatches of lyrical melody among their plays and masks-Milton's Comus' and the 'Arcades' had also been published-Carew and Suckling were before him-Herrick was, therefore, not without models of the highest excellence in this species of composition. There is, however, in his songs and anacreontics, an unforced gaiety and natural tenderness, that shew he wrote chiefly from the impulses of his own cheerful and happy nature. The select beauty and picturesqueness of Herrick's language, when he is in his happiest vein, is worthy of his fine conceptions; and his versification is harmony itself. His verses bound and flow like some exquisite lively melody, that echoes nature by wood and dell, and presents new beauties at every turn and winding. The strain is short, and sometimes fantastic; but the notes long linger in the mind, and take their place for ever in the memory. One or two words, such as 'gather the rosebuds,' call up a summer landscape, with youth, beauty, flowers. and music. This is, and ever must be, true poetry.