CELIA SINGING.

1 Roses in breathing forth their scent,
Or stars their borrowed ornament;
Nymphs in their watery sphere that move,
Or angels in their orbs above;

The winged chariot of the light,

Or the slow, silent wheels of night;
The shade which from the swifter sun
Doth in a swifter motion run,

Or souls that their eternal rest do keep,
Make far less noise than Celia's breath in sleep.

2 But if the angel which inspires

This subtle flame with active fires,

Should mould this breath to words, and those Into a harmony dispose,

The music of this heavenly sphere

Would steal each soul (in) at the ear,
And into plants and stones infuse

A life that cherubim would choose,

And with new powers invert the laws of fate, Kill those that live, and dead things animate.

SPEAKING AND KISSING.

1 The air which thy smooth voice doth break, Into my soul like lightning flies;

My life retires while thou dost speak,

And thy soft breath its room supplies.

2 Lost in this pleasing ecstasy,

I join my trembling lips to thine,
And back receive that life from thee
Which I so gladly did resign.

3 Forbear, Platonic fools! t' inquire

What numbers do the soul compose; No harmony can life inspire,

But that which from these accents flows.

LA BELLE CONFIDANTE.

You earthly souls that court a wanton flame
Whose pale, weak influence

Can rise no higher than the humble name
And narrow laws of sense,
Learn, by our friendship, to create
An immaterial fire,

Whose brightness angels may admire,
But cannot emulate.

Sickness may fright the roses from her cheek,
Or make the lilies fade,

But all the subtle ways that death doth seek Cannot my love invade.

Disdainful Beauty, thou shalt be

So wretched as to know

What joys thou fling'st away with me.

3

As Time or Fortune could not rust;

So firm, that lovers might

Have read thy story in my dust,

And crowned thy name

With laurel verdant as thy youth,

Whilst the shrill voice of Fame

Spread wide thy beauty and my truth.

4

5

6

This thou hast lost,

For all true lovers, when they find
That my just aims were crossed,
Will speak thee lighter than the wind.

And none will lay

Any oblation on thy shrine,

But such as would betray

Thy faith to faiths as false as thine.

Yet, if thou choose

On such thy freedom to bestow,

Affection may excuse,

For love from sympathy doth flow.

NOTE ON ANACREON.

Let's not rhyme the hours away;
Friends! we must no longer play:
Brisk Lyæus-see!-invites
To more ravishing delights.
Let's give o'er this fool Apollo,
Nor his fiddle longer follow:
Fie upon his forked hill,

With his fiddlestick and quill;

And the Muses, though they're gamesome,

They are neither young nor handsome;

And their freaks in sober sadness

Are a mere poetic madness:

Pegasus is but a horse;

He that follows him is worse.

See, the rain soaks to the skin,
Make it rain as well within.

Wine, my boy; we'll sing and laugh,
All night revel, rant, and quaff;

Till the morn, stealing behind us,
At the table sleepless find us.
When our bones, alas! shall have
A cold lodging in the grave;
When swift Death shall overtake us,
We shall sleep and none can wake us.
Drink we then the juice o' the vine
Make our breasts Lyæus' shrine;
Bacchus, our debauch beholding,
By thy image I am moulding,
Whilst my brains I do replenish

With this draught of unmixed Rhenish;
By thy full-branched ivy twine;
By this sparkling glass of wine;
By thy Thyrsus so renowned:

By the healths with which th' art crowned;

By the feasts which thou dost prize;

By thy numerous victories;

By the howls by Monads made;

By this haut-gout carbonade;
By thy colours red and white;
By the tavern, thy delight;
By the sound thy orgies spread;
By the shine of noses red;
By thy table free for all;
By the jovial carnival;
By thy language cabalistic;

By thy cymbal, drum, and his stick;
By the tunes thy quart-pots strike up;
By thy sighs, the broken hiccup;
By thy mystic set of ranters;
By thy never-tamed panthers;
By this sweet, this fresh and free air;
By thy goat, as chaste as we are;

By thy fulsome Cretan lass;
By the old man on the ass;
By thy cousins in mixed shapes;
By the flower of fairest grapes;
By thy bisks famed far and wide;
By thy store of neats'-tongues dried;
By thy incense, Indian smoke;
By the joys thou dost provoke;
By this salt Westphalia gammon;
By these sausages that inflame one;
By thy tall majestic flagons;

By mass, tope, and thy flapdragons;
By this olive's unctuous savour;
By this orange, the wine's flavour;
By this cheese o'errun with mites;
By thy dearest favourites;
To thy frolic order call us,

Knights of the deep bowl install us;
And to show thyself divine,

Never let it want for wine.

ANDREW MARVELL.

THIS noble-minded patriot and poet, the friend of Milton, the Abdiel of a dark and corrupt age,-'faithful found among the faithless, faithful only he,'-was born in Hull in 1620. He was sent to Cambridge, and is said there to have nearly fallen a victim to the proselytising Jesuits, who enticed him to London. His father, however, a clergyman in Hull, went in search of and brought him back to his university, where speedily, by extensive culture and the vigorous exercise of his powerful faculties, he emancipated himself for ever from the dominion, and the danger of the dominion, of superstition and bigotry. We know little more about the early days of our poet. When only twenty,