IV.

Foolish boy! resolve me now

What 'tis to sigh and not be heard?
He weeping kneel'd, and made a vow:
The world shall love as yon' fast two;
So on his sing'd wings up he steer'd.

A LOOSE SARABAND.

SET BY MR. HENRY LAWES.

I.

H me! the little tyrant theefe!
As once my heart was playing,
He snatcht it up and flew away,
Laughing at all my praying.

II.

Proud of his purchase,1 he surveys

And curiously sounds it,

And though he sees it full of wounds,
Cruel one, still he wounds it.

'Prize. It is not uncommonly used by the early dramatists in this sense; but the verb to purchase is more usually found than the noun.

"Yet having opportunity, he tries,

Gets her goodwill, and with his purchase flies."

WITHER'S Abuses Stript and Whipt, 1613.

2 Here I have hazarded an emendation of the text. In original we read, cruell still on. Lovelace's poems were evidently printed without the slightest care.

III.

And now this heart is all his sport,

Which as a ball he boundeth

From hand to breast, from breast to lip,
And all its rest confoundeth.

And pitifully whips it;

Sometimes he cloathes it gay and fine,
Then straight againe he strips it.

V.

He cover'd it with false reliefe,
Which gloriously show'd it;
And for a morning-cushionet
On's mother he bestow'd it.

VI.

Each day, with her small brazen stings,
A thousand times she rac'd it;

But then at night, bright with her gemmes,
Once neere her breast she plac'd it.

VII.

There warme it gan to throb and bleed;
She knew that smart, and grieved;
At length this poore condemned heart
With these rich drugges repreeved.

Original reads it's.

2

Original has beliefe.

VIII.

She washt the wound with a fresh teare,
Which my Lucasta dropped,

And in the sleave1-silke of her haire
"Twas hard bound up and wrapped.

IX.

She proab'd it with her constancie,
And found no rancor nigh it;
Only the anger of her eye

Had wrought some proud flesh by it.

X.

Then prest she narde in ev'ry veine,
Which from her kisses trilled;
And with the balme heald all its paine,
That from her hand distilled.

XI.

But yet this heart avoyds me still,
Will not by me be owned;
But's fled to its physitian's breast;
There proudly sits inthroned.

ORPHEUS TO WOODS.

SONG.

SET BY MR. CURTES.

EARK! Oh heark! you guilty trees,
In whose gloomy galleries

Was the cruell'st murder done,

That e're yet eclipst the sunne.
Be then henceforth in your twigges
Blasted, e're you sprout to sprigges;
Feele no season of the yeere,

But what shaves off all

your

haire,

Nor carve any from your wombes

Ought but coffins and their tombes.

ORPHEUS1 TO BEASTS.

SONG.

SET BY MR. CURTES.

2

I.

ERE, here, oh here! Euridice,

Here was she slaine;

Her soule 'still'd through a veine:

The gods knew lesse

1 By Orpheus we may perhaps understand Lovelace himself, and by Euridice, the lady whom he celebrates under the name of Lucasta. Grainger mentions (Biog. Hist. ii. 74) a portrait of

That time divinitie,

Then ev'n, ev'n these

Of brutishnesse.

II.

Oh! could you view the melodie

Of ev'ry grace,
And musick of her face,1

You'd drop a teare,

Seeing more harmonie

In her bright eye,

Then now you heare.

Lovelace by Gaywood, in which he is represented as Orpheus. I have not seen it. The old poets were rather fond of likening themselves to this legendary personage, or of designating themselves his poetical children :

"We that are Orpheus' sons, and can inherit

By that great title "—

DAVENANT'S Works, 1673, p. 215. Many other examples might be given. Massinger, in his City Madam, 1658, makes Sir John Frugal introduce a representation of the story of the Thracian bard at an entertainment given to Luke Frugal.

2 A lutenist. Wood says that after the Restoration he became gentleman or singing-man of Christ Church, Oxford. He was one of those musicians who, after the abolition of organs, &c. during the civil war, met at a private house at Oxford for the purpose of taking his part in musical entertainments.

"Such was Zuleika; such around her shone
The nameless charms unmark'd by her alone;
The light of love, the purity of grace,
The mind, the music breathing from her face."

BYRON'S Bride of Abydos, canto 1.

(Works, ed. 1825, ii. 299.)