JAMES SHIRLEY.

BORN A.D. 1596; DIED A.D. 1666.

THE three following stanzas, which give such a spirited and forcible description of the vanity of earthly things, are from the pen of James Shirley, a dramatist of note in the reign of Charles I. He was of Cambridge University, and a clergyman at St. Albans, but resigned his living, and followed literary pursuits. His house was burnt in the great fire of London, and in the following month he and his wife both died, it is said, from the effects of the fright and fatigue which they then experienced. In a collection of old ballads in the British Museum, there is one of ten stanzas, the first three of which are Shirley's; the other seven seem to have been added to point out the remedy for the evil described by him. But though the intention is good, the verses are quite destitute of the poetical vigour of the first three, and are not worth printing here.

THE VANITY OF VAIN GLORY.

THE glories of our birth and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;

There is no armour against fate;

Death lays his icy hand on kings.
Sceptre and crown must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal laid

With the poor crooked scythe and spade.

Some men with swords do reap the field,

And plant fresh laurels where they kill;
But their strong nerves at length must yield—
They tame but one another still.

Early or late they bend to fate,

And must yield up their murmuring breath,
Whilst the pale captive bleeds to death.

The garland withers on your brow,

Then boast no more your mighty deeds, For on death's purple altar now

See how the victor victim bleeds.

All heads must come to the cold tomb; Only the actions of the just

Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.

SIR JOHN DAVIES.

BORN A.D. 1570; DIED A.D. 1626.

SIR JOHN DAVIES, the son of a lawyer at Tisbury, in Wiltshire, was educated at Queen's College, Oxford. He became a member of the Middle Temple, and rose to eminence as a lawyer and politician. He sat in Parliament as member for Newcastleunder-Lyme, was for some time a judge in Ireland, and was in expectation of being made Chief Justice of England, when he died suddenly, at the age of fifty-six, A.D. 1626. His principal poem is called "Nosce Teipsum: of the Soul of Man, and the Immortality thereof. It was published in 1592, and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth.

MAN'S IGNORANCE OF HIMSELF.

ALL things without, which round about we see,
We seek to know, and how therewith to do:
But that whereby we reason, live, and be,

Within ourselves, we strangers are thereto.

We seek to know the moving of each sphere,

And the strange cause of th' ebbs and floods of Nile;

But of that clock within our breast we bear,

The subtile motions we forget the while.

We that acquaint ourselves with every zone,
And pass both tropics, and behold both poles,
When we come home are to ourselves unknown,
And unacquainted still with our own souls.

We study speech, but others we persuade;
We leech-craft learn, but others cure with it;
We interpret laws which other men have made,
But read not those which in our hearts are writ.

It is because the mind is like the eye,

Through which it gathers knowledge by degrees, Whose rays reflect not, but spread outwardly;

Not seeing itself when other things it sees.

E'en so man's soul which did God's image bear,
And was at first fair, good, and spotless pure,
Since with her sins her beauties blotted were,
Doth of all sights her own sight least endure.

For e'en at first reflection she espies

Such strange chimeras and such monsters there, Such toys, such antics, and such vanities,

As she retires, and shrinks for shame and fear.

And as the man loves least at home to be

That hath a sluttish house haunted with sprites; So she impatient her own faults to see,

Turns from herself and in strange things delights.

MAN'S GREATNESS AND MISERY.

I know my body's of so frail a kind,
As force without, fevers within can kill:
I know the heavenly nature of my mind,
But 'tis corrupted both in wit and will.

I know my soul hath power to know all things,
Yet is she blind and ignorant in all:

I know I'm one of Nature's little kings,

Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall.

I know my life's a pain and but a span;

I know my sense is mocked in everything; And, to conclude, I know myself a man,

Which is a proud and yet a wretched thing.