If thou wilt bind me living to a course, Sure we were made to grieve: at our first birth, With cries we took possession of the earth; And though the lucky man reputed be Fortune's adopted son, yet only he Is nature's true-born child, who sums his years (Like me) with no arithmetic but tears. 1 THE DIRGE. WHAT is the existence of man's life Till death's cold hand signs his release? Which beats his bark with many a wave, It is a flower, which buds and grows, It is a dream, whose seeming truth Is moralized in age and youth; As wandering as his fancies are; Till in a mist of dark decay Which doth short joys, long woes include: SIC VITA. LIKE to the falling of a star, 10 JAMES SHIRLEY Was born in London, in 1594, and after studying at both Oxford and Cambridge, had a curacy for some time at St. Albans, but embracing the Roman religion, gave up his profession, and after a short career as a schoolmaster, went to London, and became a writer of plays. There are thirty-five pieces in Dyce's edition of his Dramatic Works, recently published. He and his wife died, of grief, or exposure, the day after the great fire in London. DEATH'S CONQUEST. THE glories of our birth and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armor against fate, Death lays his icy hands on kings: Sceptre and crown Must tumble down, And, in the dust, be equal made Some men with swords may reap the field, And plant fresh laurels where they kill: They stoop to fate, And must give up their murm'ring breath, The garlands wither on your brow, Then boast no more your mighty deeds; Upon Death's purple altar now See where the victor victim bleeds; All hands must come To the cold tomb, Only the actions of the just, Smell sweet and blossom in the dust. GEORGE WITHER. THIS poet was born of a good family at Bentworth, near Alton, in 1588, and at sixteen was sent to Oxford, where, says Campbell, he had just begun to fall in love with the mysteries of logic, when his father called him home to hold the plough. He was even afraid of being put to some mechanical trade, when he contrived to escape to London, and with great simplicity had proposed to try his fortune at court. He was surprised to find that to succeed he must be a flatterer; and so, to show his independence, wrote his "Abuses Whipt and Stript," for which he was sent to prison, where he was visited by some of the finest geniuses of the time, and where he wrote his "Shepherd's Hunting." After a while he was liberated, but he continued to be an active religious and political partisan; and though King James, to whom he dedicated his "Hymns and Songs of the Church," made him a captain of horse, and quartermaster-general of his regiment, in the expedition against the Scots, under the Earl of Arundel, no sooner had the civil war broke out than he sold his estate to raise a troop for the Parliament. He was not very fortunate as a soldier, but Cromwell made him a major-general of the horse and foot for the county of Surrey. Upon the restoration, the estates he had acquired were taken from him, and he was cast into prison, where, after being treated with great severity for three years, he died in 1677. Mr. Wilmot has shown, in his "Lives of the Sacred Poets," that there has been very little intelligent criticism of Wither, and that he was a much truer poet and more worthy man than it has been the custom to represent him. The reader of the following extracts will agree to a high estimate of his abilities. EXTRACT FROM A PRISONER'S LAY. FIRST think, my soul, if I have foes Have thus enwrapt me unaware; Thou shouldst by much more careful be, Since greater foes lay wait for thee. By my late hopes that now are crossed, And make the freedom I have lost, Had Christ not thy Redeemer been, Or when through me thou seest a man Think if in that such grief thou see, These iron chains, these bolts of steel, Again, when he that feared to die Then think between thy heart and thee, WHEN with a serious musing I behold Still bending towards him her small slender stalk; |