SONG.

[From Abdelazar.]

Love in fantastic triumph sate,

Whilst bleeding hearts around him flowed, For whom fresh pains he did create,

And strange tyrannic power he showed; From thy bright eyes he took his fires,

Which round about in sport he hurled; But 'twas from mine he took desires

Enough to undo the amorous world.

From me he took his sighs and tears,
From thee his pride and cruelty,
From me his languishment and fears,

And every killing dart from thee;
Thus thou, and I, the god have armed,
And set him up a deity,

But my poor heart alone is harmed,
While thine the victor is, and free.

THE DREAM.

The grove was gloomy all around,

Murmuring the stream did pass,
Where fond Astræa laid her down
Upon a bed of grass;

I slept and saw a piteous sight,
Cupid a-weeping lay,

Till both his little stars of light

Had wept themselves away. Methought I asked him why he cried ; My pity led me on,

All sighing the sad boy replied,

'Alas! I am undone !

As I beneath yon myrtles lay,
Down by Diana's springs,

Amyntas stole my bow away,

And pinioned both my wings.'

'Alas!' I cried, "twas then thy darts Wherewith he wounded me?

Thou mighty deity of hearts,

He stole his power from thee?
Revenge thee, if a god thou be,
Upon the amorous swain,
I'll set thy wings at liberty,
And thou shalt fly again;
And, for this service on my part,
All I demand of thee,

Is, wound Amyntas' cruel heart,
And make him die for me.'

His silken fetters I untied,

And those gay wings displayed, Which gently fanned, he mounting cried, 'Farewell, fond easy maid!'

At this I blushed, and angry grew
I should a god believe,

And waking found my dream too true,
For I was still a slave.

ON THE DEATH OF WALLER.

How to thy sacred memory shall I bring,
Worthy thy fame, a grateful offering?
I, who by toils of sickness am become
Almost as near as thou art to a tomb,
While every soft and every tender strain
Is ruffled and ill-natured grown with pain?
But at thy name my languished muse revives,
And a new spark in the dull ashes strives;
I hear thy tuneful verse, thy song divine,
And am inspired by every charming line.
But oh!

What inspiration, at the second hand,
Can an immortal elegy command?
Unless, like pious offerings, mine should be
Made sacred, being consecrate to thee.

Eternal as thy own almighty verse,

Should be those trophies that adorn thy hearse,
The thought illustrious and the fancy young,
The wit sublime, the judgment fine and strong,
Soft as thy notes to Sacharissa sung;
Whilst mine, like transitory flowers, decay,
That come to deck thy tomb a short-lived day,
Such tributes are, like tenures, only fit
To show from whom we hold our right to wit.

Long did the untun'd world in ignorance stray,
Producing nothing that was great and gay,
Till taught by thee the true poetic way;
Rough were the tracks before, dull and obscure,
Nor pleasure nor instruction could procure;
Their thoughtless labours could no passion move,
Sure, in that age, the poets knew not love.
That charming god, like apparitions, then,
Was only talked on, but ne'er seen by men.
Darkness was o'er the Muses' land displayed,
And even the chosen tribe unguided strayed,
Till, by thee rescued from the Egyptian night,
They now look up and view the god of light,
That taught them how to love, and how to write.

ROCHESTER.

[JOHN WILMOT, second Earl of Rochester, was born in 1647, and died July 26, 1680. The best edition of his poems appeared posthumously in 1691.]

By a strange and melancholy paradox the finest lyrical poet of the Restoration was also its worst-natured man. Infamous in a lax age for his debaucheries, the Earl of Rochester was unfaithful as a subject, shifting and treacherous as a friend, and untrustworthy as a man of honour. His habitual drunkenness may be taken perhaps as an excuse for the physical cowardice for which he was notorious, and his early decline in bodily strength as the cause of his extreme bitterness of tongue and savage malice. So sullen was his humour, so cruel his pursuit of sensual pleasure, that his figure seems to pass through the social history of his time, like that of a veritable devil. Yet there were points at which the character of this unfortunate and abandoned person was not wholly vile. Within our own age his letters to his wife have surprised the world by their tenderness and quiet domestic humour, and, above all, the finest of his songs reveal a sweetness and purity of feeling for which the legends of his life are very far from preparing us.

The volumes which continued to be reprinted for nearly a century under the title of Rochester's Poems form a kind of 'Parnasse Satyrique' into which a modern reader can scarcely venture to dip. Of this notorious collection a large part was spurious; the offensive matter that had to be removed from the writings of Dorset, Buckinghamshire, Butler, and other less famous profligate poets, found an asylum under the infamy of the name of Rochester. But readers who are fortunate enough to secure the volume edited by the dead poet's friends in 1691 will find no more indiscretions than are familiar in all poetry of the Restoration, and will discover,

what they will not find elsewhere, the exquisite lyrics on which the fame of Rochester should rest. His satires, as trenchant and vigorous as they are foul, are not included in this edition; he uses the English language in them as Poggio and Filelfo had used Latin. As a dramatist he is only known by his adaptation, or travesty, of Fletcher's tragedy of Valentinian; of which the sole point of interest is that he omitted all Fletcher's exquisite songs, including the unequalled 'Hear ye ladies that despise,' and introduced a very good song of his own, the latter as characteristically of the Restoration as the former were Elizabethan.

With Rochester the power of writing songs died in England until the age of Blake and Burns. He was the last of the cavalier lyrists, and in some respects the best. In the qualities that a song demands, simplicity, brevity, pathos and tenderness, he arrives nearer to pure excellence than any one between Carew and Burns. His style is without adornment, and, save in this one matter of song-writing, he is weighed down by the dryness and inefficiency of his age. But by the side of Sedley or of Congreve he seems as fresh as by the side of Dryden he seems light and flowing, turning his trill of song brightly and sweetly, with the consummate artlessness of true art. Occasionally, as in the piece, not quoted here, called The Mistress, he is surprisingly like Donne in the quaint force and ingenuity of his images. But the fact is that the muse of Rochester resembles nothing so much as a beautiful child which has wantonly rolled itself in the mud, and which has grown so dirty that the ordinary wayfarer would rather pass it hurriedly by, than do justice to its native charms.

EDMUND W. GOSSE.