Why then should lovers (most will say)
Expect so much th' enjoying day?

Love is like youth: he thirsts for age,
He scorns to be his mother's page:
But when proceeding times assuage
The former heat, he will complain,
And wish those pleasant hours again.

We know that Hope and Love are twins;
Hope gone, fruition now begins:
But what is this? unconstant, frail,
In nothing sure, but sure to fail,
Which, if we lose it, we bewail;
And when we have it, still we bear
The worst of passions, daily fear!

When Love thus in his centre ends,
Desire and Hope, his inward friends,
Are shaken off; while Doubt and Grief,

The weakest givers of relief,

Stand in his council as the chief.

And now he, to his period brought,

From Love becomes some other thought.

These lines I write not to remove

United souls from serious love:

The best attempts by mortals made Reflect on things which quickly fade; Yet never will I men persuade To leave affections, where may shine Impressions of the love divine.

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

John Fletcher, son of the bishop of London, was born in 1576, and Francis Beaumont in 1585; but it is impossible to separate two names so closely united during their lives. It is generally supposed that Fletcher was superior in wit and imagination, Beaumont, (though the younger man) in taste and judgment. Their earliest composition was "The Woman hater," printed in 1707, 4to. Beaumont died in the twenty-ninth, and Fletcher in the forty-ninth year of his age. They were both educated in the University of Cambridge.

SONG.

[In "The Knight of the Burning Pestle."]
'Tis mirth that fills the veins with blood,
More than wine, or sleep, or food.
Let each man keep his heart at ease :
No man dies of that disease.

He that would his body keep
From diseases must not weep:
But whoever laughs and sings,
Never he his body brings
Into fevers, gouts, or rheums,
Or lingeringly his lungs consumes;
Or meets with aches in the bone,
Or catarrhs, or griping stone:

But contented lives for

aye:

The more he laughs the more he

may.

SONG.

[In" The Nice Valour."]

HENCE all you vain delights,

As short as are the nights
Wherein you spend your folly!
There's nought in this life sweet,
If men were wise to see't,

But only melancholy,

Oh sweetest melancholy!

Welcome folded arms, and fixed eyes;
A sigh that, piercing, mortifies;
A look that's fasten'd to the ground;
A tongue chain'd up without a sound!

Fountain-heads and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves;
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls
Are warmly hous'd save bats and owls!
A midnight bell, a parting groan,
These are the sounds we feed upon!
Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley:
Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.

SONG.

[In "The Masque," &c.]

YE should stay longer if we durst-
Away. Alas, that he that first
Gave Time wild wings, to fly away,

Has now no power to make him stay!

But though these games must needs be play'd, I would this pair, when they are laid,

And not a creature nigh them,

Could catch his scythe as he doth pass,
And clip his wings, and break his glass,
And keep him ever by them.

A sad Song.

[In "The Queen of Corinth."]

WEEP no more, nor sigh, nor groan

!

Sorrow calls no time that's gone.

Violets pluck'd the sweetest rain
Makes not fresh nor grow again.
Trim thy locks, look cheerfully;
Fate's hidden ends eyes cannot see..