Or do but heare, how love-bang Kate
In pantry darke for freage of mate,

wood shapes,

With edge of steele the square
And Dido1 to it chaunts or scrapes.
The merry Phaeton oth' carre
You'l vow makes a melodious jarre;
Sweeter and sweeter whisleth He

To un-anointed2 axel-tree;

Such swift notes he and 's wheels do run;
For me, I yeeld him Phæbus son.

Say, faire Comandres, can it be

You should ordaine a mutinie?

1 This must refer, I suppose, to the ballad of QUEEN DIDO, which the woman sings as she works. The signification of lovebang is not easily determined. Bang, in Suffolk, is a term applied to a particular kind of cheese; but I suspect that "lovebang Kate" merely signifies "noisy Kate" here. As to the old ballad of Dido, see Stafford Smith's Musica Antiqua, i. 10, ii. 158; and Collier's Extracts from the Registers of the Stationers' Company, i. 98. I subjoin the first stanza of "Dido" as printed in the Musica Antiqua. :

"Dido was the Carthage Queene,

And lov'd the Troian knight,

That wandring many coasts had seene,

And many a dreadfull fight.

As they a-hunting road, a show'r

Drove them in a loving bower,

Down to a darksome cave:

Where Enæas with his charmes

Lock't Queene Dido in his armes

And had what he would have."

A somewhat different version is given in Durfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy, vi. 192-3.

2 An unanoynted-MS.

K

For where I howle, all accents fall,
As kings harangues, to one and all.1

Ulisses art is now withstood: 2
You ravish both with sweet and good;
Saint Syren, sing, for I dare heare,
But when I ope', oh, stop your eare.

Far lesse be't æmulation

To passe me, or in trill or3 tone,
Like the thin throat of Philomel,
And the smart lute who should excell,
As if her soft chords should begin,
And strive for sweetnes with the pin.5

Yet can I musick too; but such
As is beyond all voice or touch;
My minde can in faire order chime,
Whilst my true heart still beats the time;
My soule['s] so full of harmonie,

That it with all parts can agree;

If you winde up to the highest fret,7
It shall descend an eight from it,

And when you shall vouchsafe to fall,

Sixteene above you it shall call,

This and the three preceding lines are not in MS.

2 Alluding of course to the very familiar legend of Ulysses

and the Syrens.

3 A quaver (a well-known musical expression).

ece of wire attached to the finger-board of a guitar.

And yet, so dis-assenting one,
They both shall meet in1 unison.

Come then, bright cherubin, begin!
My loudest musick is within.

Take all notes with your skillfull eyes;
Hearke, if mine do not sympathise !
Sound all my thoughts, and see exprest
The tablature of my large brest;
Then you'l admit, that I too can
Musick above dead sounds of man;
Such as alone doth blesse the spheres,
Not to be reacht with humane eares.

VALIANT LOVE.

I.

OW fie upon that everlasting life! I dye!
She hates! Ah me! It makes me mad;
As if love fir'd his torch at a moist eye,

Or with his joyes e're crown'd the sad. Oh, let me live and shout, when I fall on ;

Let me ev'n triumph in the first attempt! Loves duellist from conquest 's not exempt, When his fair murdresse shall not gain one groan, And he expire ev'n in ovation.

'Original and MS. read an.

2 The tablature of Lovelace's time was the application of letters, of the alphabet or otherwise, to the purpose of expressing the sounds or notes of a composition.

II.

Let me make my approach, when I lye downe
With counter-wrought and travers eyes;1
With peals of confidence batter the towne;
Had ever beggar yet the keyes?

No, I will vary stormes with sun and winde;
Be rough, and offer calme condition;

March in and pread, or starve the garrison.
Let her make sallies hourely yet I'le find
(Though all beat of) shee's to be undermin'd.

III.

Then may it please your little excellence
Of hearts t' ordaine, by sound of lips,
That henceforth none in tears dare love comence
(Her thoughts ith' full, his, in th' eclipse);
On paine of having 's launce broke on her bed,
That he be branded all free beauties' slave,

And his own hollow eyes be domb'd his

grave: Since in your hoast that coward nere was fed, Who to his prostrate ere was prostrated.

This seems to be a phrase borrowed by the poet from his military vocabulary. He wishes to express that he had fortified his eyes to resist the glances of his fair opponent.

2 Original reads

(and pray'd) or, &c.

most unintelligibly and absurdly March in To pread is to pillage.

LA BELLA BONA ROBA.1

TO MY LADY H.

ODE.

I.

ELL me, ye subtill judges in loves treasury,
Inform me, which hath most inricht mine eye,
This diamonds greatnes, or its clarity?

II.

Ye cloudy spark lights, whose vast multitude
Of fires are harder to be found then view'd,
Waite on this star in her first magnitude.

III.

Calmely or roughly! Ah, she shines too much;
That now I lye (her influence is such),

Chrusht with too strong a hand, or soft a touch.

IV.

Lovers, beware! a certaine, double harme

Waits your proud hopes, her looks al-killing charm Guarded by her as true victorious arme.

V.

Thus with her eyes brave Tamyris spake dread, Which when the kings dull breast not entered, Finding she could not looke, she strook him dead.

This word, though generally used in a bad sense by early writers, does not seem to bear in the present case any offensive meaning. The late editors of Nares quote a passage from one of Cowley's Essays, in which that writer seems to imply by the term merely a fine woman.