SONG.

I.

N mine one monument I lye, And in my self am buried; Sure, the quick lightning of her eye Melted my soul ith' scabberd dead; And now like some pale ghost I walk, And with another's spirit talk.

II.

Nor can her beams a heat convey,

That may my frozen bosome warm,
Unless her smiles have pow'r, as they,
That a cross charm can countercharm.
But this is such a pleasing pain,
I'm loth to be alive again.

ANOTHER.

DID believe I was in heav'n,

When first the heav'n her self was giv'n,
That in my heart her beams did passe
As some the sun keep in a glasse,

So that her beauties thorow me
Did hurt my rival-enemy.

But fate, alas! decreed it so,

That I was engine to my woe:
For, as a corner'd christal spot,
My heart diaphanous was not;
But solid stuffe, where her eye flings
Quick fire upon the catching strings:

Yet, as at triumphs in the night,
You see the Prince's Arms in light,
So, when I once was set on flame,

I burnt all ore the letters of her name.

ODE.

I.

dull fair,

OU are deceiv'd; I sooner may,
Seat a dark Moor in Cassiopea's1 chair,
Or on the glow-worm's uselesse light
Bestow the watching flames of night,
Or give the rose's breath

To executed death,

Ere the bright hiew

Of verse to you;

It is just Heaven on beauty stamps a fame,
And we, alas! its triumphs but proclaim.

II.

What chains but are too light for me, should I
Say that Lucasta in strange arms could lie?

The constellation so called. In old drawings Cassiopeia is represented as a woman sitting in a chair with a branch in her hand, and hence the allusion here. Dixon, in his Canidia, 1683, part i. p. 35, makes his witches say:—

"We put on Berenice's hair,

And sit in Cassiopeia's chair."

Randolph couples it with "Ariadne's Crowne" in the following passage:

"Shine forth a constellation, full and bright,

Bless the poor heavens with more majestick light,

Who in requitall shall present you there

Ariadne's Crowne and Cassiopeia's Chayr."

Poems, ed. 1640, p. 14.

Or that Castara1 were impure;
Or Saccarisa's faith unsure?

That Chloris' love, as hair,

Embrac'd each en'mies air;
That all their good

Ran in their blood?

'Tis the same wrong th' unworthy to inthrone,
As from her proper sphere t' have vertue thrown.

III.

That strange force on the ignoble hath renown;
As Aurum Fulminans, it blows vice down.
'Twere better (heavy one) to crawl
Forgot, then raised, trod on [to] fall.
All your defections now

Are not writ on your brow;
Odes to faults give

A shame must live.

When a fat mist we view, we coughing run;

But, that once meteor drawn, all cry: undone.

IV.

How bright the fair Paulina3 did appear,

When hid in jewels she did seem a star!
But who could soberly behold

A wicked owl in cloath of gold,

1 William Habington published his poems under the name of Castara, a fictitious appellation signifying the daughter of Lord Powis. This lady was eventually his wife. The first edition of Custara appeared in 1634, the second in 1635, and the third in 1640.

2 Waller's Sacharissa, i. e. Lady Dorothy Sydney.

3 Lollia Paulina, who first married Memmius Regulus, and

Or the ridiculous Ape

In sacred Vesta's shape?
So doth agree

Just praise with thee:

For since thy birth gave thee no beauty, know,
No poets pencil must or can do so.

THE DUELL.

I.

OVE drunk, the other day, knockt at my brest,

But I, alas! was not within.

My man, my ear, told me he came t' attest,
That without cause h'd boxed him,

And battered the windows of mine eyes,
And took my heart for one of's nunneries.

II.

I wondred at the outrage safe return'd,

And stormed at the base affront;

And by a friend of mine, bold faith, that burn'd,
I called him to a strict accompt.

He said that, by the law, the challeng'd might
Take the advantage both of arms and fight.

III.

Two darts of equal length and points he sent,
And nobly gave the choyce to me,

subsequently the Emperor Caligula, from both of whom she was divorced. She inherited from her father enormous wealth.

Which I not weigh'd, young and indifferent,

Now full of nought but victorie.

So we both met in one of's mother's groves,
The time, at the first murm'ring of her doves.

IV.

I stript myself naked all o're, as he:

For so I was best arm'd, when bare.
His first pass did my liver rase: yet I
Made home a falsify1 too neer:

For when my arm to its true distance came,
I nothing touch'd but a fantastick flame.

V.

This, this is love we daily quarrel so,

An idle Don-Quichoterie :

We whip our selves with our own twisted wo,
And wound the ayre for a fly.

The only way t' undo this enemy
Is to laugh at the boy, and he will cry.

CUPID FAR GONE.

I.

ZHAT, so beyond all madnesse is the elf,

Now he hath got out of himself!
His fatal enemy the Bee,

Nor his deceiv'd artillerie,

His shackles, nor the roses bough Ne'r half so netled him, as he is now.

"To falsify a thrust," says Phillips (World of Words, ed. 1706, art. falsify)," is to make a feigned pass." Lovelace here employs the word as a substantive rather awkwardly; but the meaning is, no doubt, the same.