What have I brought thee home

For this thy love? have I discharg'd the debt,

Which this day's favour did beget?

My diet, care, and cost,

Do end in bubbles, balls of wind;

Of wind to thee whom I have cross'd, But balls of wild-fire to my troubled mind.

Yet still thou goest on,

And now with darkness closest weary eyes,
Saying to man, it doth suffice:
Henceforth repose, your work is done.

Thus in thy ebony box

Thou dost enclose us, till the day

Put our amendment in our way,

And give new wheels to our disorder'd clocks.

I muse, which shows more love

The day or night: that is the gale, this th' harbour;
That is the walk, and this the arbour;
Or that the garden, this the grove.

My God thou art all love,

Not one poor minute 'scapes thy breast,

But brings a favour from above:

And in this love, more than in bed, I rest.

Herbert.

AN AUTUMN MORNING.

Go! let the diving Negro seek

For gems hid in some forlorn creek;

We all pearls scorn,

Save what the dewy morn

Congeals upon each little spire of grass,

Which careless shepherds beat down as they pass; And gold ne'er here appears,

Save what the yellow Ceres bears?

Sir W. Raleigh.

FAIR DAYS; OR, DAWN'S DECEITFUL.

Fair was the dawn; and but e'en now the skies
Show'd like to cream, inspir'd with strawberries:
But in a sudden all was chang'd and gone,
That smil'd in that first sweet complexion;
Then thunder-claps and lightning did conspire
To tear the world, or set it all on fire.
What! trust to things below, when as we see,
As men, the heavens have their hypocrisy.

Herrick.

SUNDAY.

O day most calm, most bright,
The fruit of this, the next world's bud,
The indorsement of supreme delight,
Writ by a Friend, and with his blood;
The couch of time, care's balm and bay:
The week were dark, but for thy light;
Thy torch doth show the way.

The other days and thou

Make up one man; whose face thou art,
Knocking at heaven with thy brow:
The worky days are the back-part;
The burden of the week lies there,
Making the whole to stoop and bow,
Till thy release appear.

Man had straight forward gone
To endless death: but thou dost pull
And turn us round, to look on one,
Whom, if we were not very dull,
We could not choose but look on still;
Since there is no place, so alone,

The which he doth not fill.

Sundays the pillars are,

On which heaven's palace archéd lies!
The other days fill up the spare
And hollow room with vanities;

They are the fruitful beds and borders
In God's rich garden! that is bare,
Which parts their ranks and orders.

The Sundays of man's life,
Threaded together on Time's string,
Make bracelets to adorn the wife
Of the eternal glorious King.

On Sunday heaven's gate stands ope;
Blessings are plentiful and rife—
More plentiful than hope.

This day my Saviour rose,

And did enclose this light for his;
That, as each beast his manger knows,
Man might not of his fodder miss.
Christ hath took in this piece of ground,
And made a garden there for those
Who want herbs for their wound.

The rest of our creation

Our great Redeemer did remove

With the same shake which, at his passion,
Did the earth and all things with it move.

As Samson bore the doors away,

Christ's hands, though nail'd, wrought our salvation, And did unhinge that day.

The brightness of that day

We sullied by our foul offence:

Wherefore that robe we cast away,

Having a new at his expense,

Whose drops of blood paid the full price,

That was required to make us gay,
And fit for paradise.

Thou art a day of mirth:

And where the week-days trail on ground,
Thy flight is higher, as thy birth:

O let me take thee at the bound,

Leaping with thee from seven to seven,

Till that we both, being toss'd from earth,
Fly hand in hand to heaven.

Herbert.

A LESSON FROM COMPARISONS.

Flame goes to heav'n, from whence it once did come,
Bids earth adieu, and what it hath therefrom
The snuff to ashes, smoke turns into air;

Light's beauty's gone, which sometime was so fair;
When death hath given his last and fatal blow,
Our soul to heaven, our earth to earth doth go;
Riches and honours, which it once did love,
The soul now loathes, and seeks to dwell above:
Learn, mortals, all false pleasure to contemn,
And treasures which the soul must once condemn:
Seek rather for the graces of the mind,

Which you your convoy to the heaven will find.

Fairlie's Lychnocausia;

or, Light's Moral Emblems, 1638.

LIFE A TRAGEDY.

Man's life's a tragedy; his mother's womb
From which he enters is the tiring-room;
This spacious earth the theatre; and the stage
That country which he lives in; passion, rage,