49 Orgo I so receive as I am taught By duty to esteem whate'er you love; 50 For though but twice he has approached my sight, He twice made haste to drown me in my tears: But now I am above his planet's spite, And as for sin beg pardon for my fears.’ 51 Thus spake she: and with fixed, continued sight The Duke did all her bashful beauties view; Then they with kisses sealed their sacred plight, Like flowers, still sweeter as they thicker grew. 52 Yet must these pleasures feel, though innocent, The sickness of extremes, and cannot last; For power, love's shunned impediment, has sent To tell the Duke his monarch is in haste: 53 And calls him to that triumph which he fears 54 He often takes his leave, with love's delay, And bids her hope he with the King shall find, By now appearing forward to obey, A means to serve him less in Rhodalind. 55 She weeping to her closet window hies, Where she with tears doth Rhodalind survey; As dying men, who grieve that they have eyes, When they through curtains spy the rising day. DR HENRY KING. Or this poetical divine we know nothing, except that he was born in 1591, and died in 1669,—that he was chaplain to James I., and Bishop of Chichester,—and that he indited some poetry as pious in design as it is pretty in execution. SIC VITA. Like to the falling of a star, The wind blows out, the bubble dies; SONG. 1 Dry those fair, those crystal eyes, To drown their banks! Grief's sullen brooks Thy lovely face was never meant 2 Then clear those waterish stars again, Lest the clouds which settle there LIFE. 1 What is the existence of man's life 2 It is a storm-where the hot blood Which beats the bark with many a wave, 3 It is a flower-which buds, and grows, 4 It is a dream-whose seeming truth 5 It is a dial-which points out 6 It is a weary interlude Which doth short joys, long woes, include: JOHN CHALKHILL. THIS author was of the age of Spenser, and is said to have been an acquaintance and friend of that poet. It was not, however, till 1683 that good old Izaak Walton published 'Thealma and Clearchus,' a pastoral romance, which, he stated, had been written long since by John Chalkhill, Esq. He says of the author, 'that he was in his time a man generally known, and as well beloved; for he was humble and obliging in his behaviour-a gentleman, a scholar, very innocent and prudent, and indeed his whole life was useful, quiet, and virtuous.' Some have suspected that this production proceeded from the pen of Walton himself. This, however, is rendered extremely unlikely-first, by the fact that Walton, when he printed Thealma,' was ninety years of age; and, secondly, by the difference in style and purpose between that poem and Walton's avowed productions. The mind of Walton was quietly ingenious; that of the author of 'Thealma' is adventurous and fantastic. Walton loved the green pastures and the still waters' of the Present; the other, the golden groves and ideal wildernesses of the Golden Age in the Past. 'Thealma and Clearchus' may be called an 'Arcadia' in rhyme. It resembles that work of Sir Philip Sidney, not only in subject, but in execution. Its plot is dark and puzzling, its descriptions are rich to luxuriance, its narrative is tedious, and its characters are mere shadows. But although a dream, it is a dream of genius, and brings beautifully before our imagination that early period in the world's history, in which poets and painters have taught us to believe, when the heavens were nearer, the skies clearer, the fat of the earth richer, the foam of the sea brighter, than in our degenerate days;-when shepherds, reposing under broad, umbrageous oaks, saw, or thought they saw, in the groves the shadow of angels, and on the mountainsummits the descending footsteps of God. Chalkhill resembles, of all our modern poets, perhaps Shelley most, in the ideality of his conception, the enthusiasm of his spirit, and the unmitigated gorgeousness of his imagination. ARCADIA. Arcadia, was of old, a state, Subject to none but their own laws and fate; |