LOVE'S SERVILE LOT. LOVE mistress is of many minds, The will she robbeth from the wit, She is delightful in the rind, May never was the month of love; For May is full of flowers; But rather April, wet by kind; For love is full of showers. With soothing words inthralled souls She chains in servile bands! Her eye in silence hath a speech Which eye best understands. Her little sweet hath many sours, Short hap, immortal harms; Her loving looks are murd'ring darts, Her songs bewitching charms. Like winter rose, and summer ice, Her joys are still untimely; Before her hope, behind remorse, Fair first, in fine unseemly. Plough not the seas, sow not the sands, Seek other mistress for your Love's service is in vain. minds, LOOK HOME. RETIRED thoughts enjoy their own delights, more. The mind a creature is, yet can create, Devise of man in working hath no end; What thought can think, another thought can mend. Man's soul of endless beauties image is, Drawn by the work of endless skill and might: And, to discern this bliss, a native light, To frame God's image as his worth required; All that he had, his image should present; THOMAS WATSON, BORN 1560-DIED ABOUT 1592, WAS a native of London, and studied the common law, but from the variety of his productions (Vide Theatrum Poetarum, p. 213), would seem to have devoted himself to lighter studies. Mr. Steevens has certainly overrated his sonnets in preferring them to Shakespeare's. THE NYMPHS TO THEIR MAY QUEEN. From England's Helicon. WITH fragrant flow'rs we strew the way, O beauteous queen of second Troy, Now th' air is sweeter than sweet balm, Now birds record new harmony, SONNET. ACTEON lost, in middle of his sport, What secrets he had seen in passing by. I leave my life, in that each secret thought I dare not name the nymph that works my smart, EDMUND SPENSER, DESCENDED from the ancient and honourable family of Spenser, was born in London, in East Smithfield, by the Tower, probably about the year 1553. He studied at the university of Cambridge, where it appears, from his correspondence, that he formed an intimate friendship with the learned, but pedantic, Gabriel Harvey'. Spenser, with Sir P. Sydney, was, for a time, a convert to Harvey's Utopian scheme for changing the measures of English poetry into those of the Greeks and Romans. Spenser even wrote trimeter iambics sufficiently For an account of Harvey the reader may consult Wood's Athen. Oxon. Vol. I.-Fasti col. 128. 2 A short example of Spenser's Iambicum Trimetrum will suffice, from a copy of verses in one of his letters to Harvey. Unhappy verse! the witness of my unhappy state, Thought, and fly forth unto my love, wheresoever she be. |