Thomas Stanley:
HIS ORIGINAL LYRICS, COMPLETE,
IN THEIR COLLATED READINGS OF
1647, 1651, 1657.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION, TEXTUAL NOTES,
A LIST OF EDITIONS, AN APPENDIX OF
TRANSLATIONS, AND A PORTRAIT.
EDITED BY

L. I. GUINEY

J. R. TUTIN
HULL
1907
[!-- [v] --][!-- [iv] --]

CONTENTS[!-- [vii] --]

APPENDIX:

PREFATORY NOTE

Thomas Stanley’s quiet life began in 1625, the year of the accession of that King whom English poets have loved most. He came, though in the illegitimate line, from the great Stanleys, Earls of Derby. His father, descended from Edward, third Earl, was Sir Thomas Stanley of Leytonstone, Essex, and Cumberlow, Hertfordshire; and his mother was Mary, daughter to Sir William Hammond of St. Alban’s Court, Nonington, near Canterbury. Following the almost unbroken law of the heredity of genius, Stanley derived his chief mental qualities from his mother; and through her he was nearly related to the poets George Sandys, William Hammond, Sir John Marsham the chronologer, Richard Lovelace and his less famous brother; as, through his father, to a fellow-poet perhaps dearer to him than any of these, Sir Edward Sherburne.

His tutor, at home, not at College, was William Fairfax, son of the translator of Tasso. With translation in his own blood, that accomplished and affectionate gentleman succeeded in inspiring his forward charge with a taste for the same rather thankless game, and with a love of modern foreign classics which he never lost. It was thrown at Stanley, afterwards, that in courting the Muses, he had profited only too well by Fairfax’s aid: but the charge, if ever a serious one at all, was absurdly ill-founded. It may have been based on a wrong reading of that very generous acknowledgement beginning: ‘If we are one, dear friend,’ which is printed in this volume; for the muddled misconstruing mind has existed in every intellectual society. Nothing is plainer than that Stanley, both by right of natural genius and of fastidious scholarship, was more than capable of beating his music out alone.

The boy was sent to Pembroke College, Cambridge, before he was fifteen, and was entered as a gentleman commoner of that University, passing by no means unmarked among a brilliant generation; and there, in 1641 he graduated Master of Arts, being incorporated at Oxford in the same degree. He next set out, like all youths of his rank and age, upon that ‘grand tour’ which was still a perilous business. He returned to England in the full fury of the great Civil contest (his family having emigrated to France, meanwhile), and settled down to work, not forensic, but literary, in the Middle Temple. There he fell to editing Æschylus, turning Anacreon into English, and planning the beginnings of his History of Philosophy. Best of all, he wrote, at leisure and by liking, his charming verses. Contemporaries not a few practised this same notable detachment, building nests, as it were, in the cannon’s mouth. Choosing the contemplative life, Stanley, like William Habington and Drummond of Hawthornden, was shut in with his mental activities, while many others whom they knew and whom we know, poor gay sparks of Parnassus, were dimming and blunting themselves on bloody fields. Like Habington and Drummond also in this, he was, though a passive Royalist, Royalist to the core. His Psalterium Carolinum (Eἰkων Βασιλιkή in metre), published three years before the Restoration, proves at least that if he were a non-combatant for the cause he believed in, he was no timid truckler to the power which crushed it. In London he seems to have lived throughout the war, suffering and surviving in the smallpox epidemic. He had married early, and, according to all evidence, most happily. His wife was Dorothy, daughter and co-heiress of Sir James Enyon, Baronet, of Flore, or Flower, Northamptonshire. (It is curious, one may note in passing, that Thomas Stanley in the Oxford University Register is entered as an incorporated Cantabrigian ‘of Flowre, Northants.’ This was in his seventeenth year, when it is highly improbable that any property there could have been made over to him, unless with reference to his betrothal to Dorothy Enyon, then a child.) One of Stanley’s devoted poetic circle joyfully salutes them on the birth of their second son, Sidney,

‘Ere both the parents forty summers told,’

as equal paragons. ‘You two,’ sings Hammond, ‘who are in worthiness so near allied.’ They enjoyed, together, a comfortable fortune, and gave even more generously, in proportion, than they had received. All Stanley’s tastes and habits were humanistic. He was the loyal and helpful friend of many English men of letters. To name his familiar associates is to call up a bright and thoughtful pageant, for they include, besides Lovelace and Suckling and Sherburne, the Bromes; James Shirley; John Davies of Kidwelly; John Hall of Durham, better remembered now as the friend of Hobbes than as the prodigy his generation thought him; and the genial Edward Phillips, the nephew of Milton. Though Stanley knew how to protest manfully when the profits of his mental labours were in danger of being withdrawn from him, yet he sought none of the usual awards of life, and never increased his patrimony. Indeed, his relative William Wotton said of him long after, in a Latin notice written for Elogia Gallorum, that Stanley lived engrossed in his studies, and let his private interests run to seed. He kept his learning and his liberty, his charity and peace and good repute; and of his troubles and trials he has left, like the gallant philosopher he was, no record at all. A little brass in the chancel pavement of Clothall Church, near Baldock, witnesses to some of these: for there ‘Thomas et Dorothea, parentes moesti,’ laid two little sons to rest ... ‘sit nomen Dñi benedictum.’ They lost other children, later; but one son and three daughters survived their gentle father, when, after a severe illness, he was called away from a society which bitterly deplored him, in April, 1678. He died in Suffolk Street, London, in the parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

Stanley was supposed by his contemporaries to have made himself immortal by his History of Philosophy, long a standard book, though hardly an original one. Indeed, they considered him, chiefly on account of it, ‘the glory and admiration of his time’: the phrase is that of a careful critic, Winstanley. The work went into many editions; his prose was used and read, while his verse was talked of, and passed lightly from hand to hand. As in the case of Petrarca, whose fine Latin tomes quickly perished, while his less regarded vernacular Rime rose to shine ‘on the stretched forefinger of all Time,’ so here was a little remainder of lovely English song to embalm an otherwise soon-buried name. Hardly any poet of his poetic day, to be discovered hereafter, can be appraised on a more intimate understanding, or can awaken a more endearing interest. Yet we know that save for one or two of his pieces extant here or there in anthologies; save for a private reprint in 1814 by that tireless scholar and ‘great mouser,’ Sir Egerton Brydges; save for Mr. A. H. Bullen’s valued reproduction of the Anacreontea, in 1893, Thomas Stanley’s name is utterly unknown to the modern world.

We have indeed travelled far from the ideals of the seventeenth century. Perhaps, after all, that is one of our blunders; for every hour, nowadays, we are busy breaking a backward path through the historic underbrush, in order to speak with those singing gentlemen of ‘the Warres,’ whose art and statecraft and religion some of us (who have seen the end of so much else), find incredibly attractive to our own. Their lawless vision, like that of children, and the mysterious trick of music in all their speech, are things we love instinctively, and never can regain. Out of their political storm, their hard thought, and high spirits, they can somehow give us rest: and it is chiefly rest which we crave of them. We appeal to each of these post-Elizabethans with the invitatory line of one of them:

‘Charm me asleep with thy delicious numbers!’

The pleasure they can still give is inexhaustible, for unconscious genius like theirs, however narrow, is a deeper well than Goethe’s. Cast aside, and contemned, and left in the darkness long ago, the greater number of these English Alexandrians are as alive as the lamp in Tullia’s tomb; and of these Stanley, as a craftsman, is almost first.

He was a born man of letters; he gave his whole life to meditation, to friendship, and to art; he did his beautiful best, and cared nothing for results; and though literary dynasties have come and gone, his work has sufficient vitality to-day to leap abreast of work which has never been out of the sphere of man’s appreciation, and has deserved all the appreciation which it got. Stanley’s fastidious strength, his wayward but concentrated grace, his spirit of liberty and scorn in writing of love (which was one of the novel characteristic notes of Wither’s generation, and of Robert Jones’s before him); the sunny, fearless mental motion, like that of a bird flying not far, but high, seem to our plodding scientific wits as unnatural as a Sibyllic intoxication. He strikes few notes; he recognises his limits and controls his range; but within these, he is for the most part as happy as Herrick, as mellow as Henry King, as free as Carew, and as capable as these were, and as those deeper natures, Crashaw and Vaughan, were not, of a short poem perfect throughout. He is the child of his age, moreover, in that his ingenuity never slumbers, and his speech must ever be concise and knotty. If he sports in the tangles of Neræa’s hair, it is because he likes tangles, and means to add to them. No Carolian poet was ever an idler!

Carew, perhaps, is Stanley’s nearest parallel. The latter shows the very same sort of golden pertness, masked in languid elegance, which goes to unify and heighten Carew’s memorable enchantment, and the same sheer singable felicity of phrase. But, unlike Carew, he has no glorious ungoverned swift-passing raptures; there is in Stanley less fire and less tenderness. Nor has he anything to repent of. His imagination, as John Hall discerningly said of it,

‘Makes soft Ionic turn grave Lydian.’

Except Habington’s, no considerable body of amatory verse in all that century, certainly not even Cowley’s more artificial sequence of 1647, is, on the whole, so free from stain. Stanley’s exemption did not pass unnoticed; and William Fairfax (‘no man fitter!’) is careful to instruct us that Doris, Celinda, and Chariessa were ‘various rays’ of ‘one orient sun,’ and further, that ‘no coy ambitious names may here imagine earthly flames,’ because the poet’s professional and deliberate homage was really paid to inward beauty, and never to ‘roses of the cheek’ alone. Here we run up against a sweet and famous moral of Carew’s, which not Carew, but Stanley, bears out as the better symbolist of the two. Our poet does not appear to have contributed towards the religious literature of a day when the torrent of intense life in human hearts bred so much heaven-mounting spray, as well as so much necessary scum and refuse. But his was a temperament so religious that one almost expects to find somewhere a manuscript volume of ‘pious thoughts,’ the shy fruit of Stanley’s Christian ‘retirements’ at home. It will be noticed that there is one sad devotional poem in this book, ‘The lazy hours move slow’; and as it appears only in John Gamble’s book, 1657, it may fairly be inferred that it was written later than the other lyrics. In 1657 Stanley was two-and-thirty, and his singing-time, so far as we know, was over. He had discharged it well. He fails where any true artist may ever be expected to fail, in verses occasional and complimentary. But, to balance this, he is often exceptionally happy when translating.

His portrait, in middle age, by Faithorne after Lely, commends him to us all as quite worthy of the affection and applause which surrounded him from his youth, and never spoiled him. Brown-haired, hazel-eyed, fresh-cheeked, serene rather than gay, he seems the very incarnation of the ideal for which many others, less fortunate, hungered in that vexed England: the man ‘innocent and quiet,’ whose ‘mind to him a kingdom is,’ whose ‘treasure is in Minerva’s tower,’ and ‘who in the region of himself remains.’ Through the Civil struggle, the Commonwealth, the Restoration, he had followed a way of peace, without blame, and he is almost the only poet of the stormy time who is absolutely unaffected by it. He, at least, need not be discounted as a pathetic broken crystal: he can be judged on his own little plot of ground, without allowances, and by our strictest modern standards. His light bright best, his viridaria, have borne victoriously the lava-drift of nearly three centuries. An amorist of even temper and of malice prepense, a railer with a sound heart, an untyrannic master of his Muse, Stanley sings low to his small jocund lyre, and need not be too curiously questioned about his sincerity. How can it matter? He gives delight; he deserves the bays.

This little book is the first complete reprint of Stanley ever published: it is his original and inclusive output. The text is a new text, inasmuch as it represents the Editor’s choice of readings, among many variants; but variants are noted throughout, and by their number and interest tell their own tale of Stanley’s exacting and sure taste. A few translated lyrics are gathered into an Appendix. The title-pages of his few volumes will be found cited in the accompanying List of Editions.

But the only issues taken into account here, for textual purposes, are the three of 1647, 1651, and 1657, of which last a word needs to be said. (The edition of 1652 is an exact copy of 1651, therefore negligible in the preparation of this book.) The often-overlooked Ayres and Dialogues, Gamble’s and Stanley’s, appeared first privately, in 1656, then in 1657. The earlier issue is rare; it figures in the British Museum Music Catalogues, but not in those of the Bodleian Library. There is at Oxford, however, a copy of the later edition, and on this the present editor bases the readings common both to 1656 and 1657. As a general thing these readings of the Gamble Stanley are particularly satisfying, and besides having all the advantages in point of time, may have profited by the author’s careful revision. John Gamble’s music-book is devoted wholly to Stanley’s poems. It has a notably affectionate and, as it happens, a not-much-too-obsequious Preface, in which Gamble well says that he felt it ‘a bold Undertaking to compose words which are so pure Harmonie in themselves, into any other Musick’; yet that he longed to put it to the test, ‘how neer a whole life spent in the study of Musical Compositions could imitate the flowing and naturall Graces which you have created by your Fancie.’ Gamble wrote out no accompaniments to his sweet and spirited settings, nor did he leave Stanley’s titles prefixed to the numbered songs, a good proportion of which are translations, though not indicated as such.

As to the present arrangement, for simplicity’s sake, it is nothing if not frankly chronological. It is divided into six sections; the sixth contains those poems which must have appeared to Stanley to be his best, as they were included by him in every successive edition of his work. Form and method, therefore, are both, after a fashion, novel, but not without their good inherent justification, nor without fullest obedience of spirit to the author’s individual genius and its posthumous dues. The spelling has been modernised, and particular pains have been taken with the punctuation. This reprint is a deferent attempt to set forth Thomas Stanley as a little latter-day classic, in his old rich singing-coat, made strong and whole by means of coloured strands of his own weaving.

L. I. G.

Oxford, August 31, 1905.

The Editor’s best acknowledgements are due to Mr. W. Bailey Kempling, for his painstaking copy, from the 1651 edition of Stanley in the British Museum, of a large number of the poems collated in this book.[!-- [xxii] --]

LYRICS: THOMAS STANLEY

I. LYRICS PRINTED ONLY IN THE EDITION OF 1647.

The Dream.

That I might ever dream thus! that some power
To my eternal sleep would join this hour!
So, willingly deceiv’d, I might possess
In seeming joys a real happiness.
Haste not away: O do not dissipate5
A pleasure thou so lately didst create!
Stay, welcome Sleep; be ever here confin’d:
Or if thou wilt away, leave her behind.

Despair.

No, no, poor blasted Hope!
Since I (with thee) have lost the scope
Of all my joys, I will no more
Vainly implore
The unrelenting Destinies:5
He that can equally sustain
The strong assaults of joy and pain,
May safely laugh at their decrees.

Despair, to thee I bow,
Whose constancy disdains t’allow10
Those childish passions that destroy
Our fickle joy;
How cruel Fates so e’er appear,
Their harmless anger I despise,
And fix’d, can neither fall nor rise,15
Thrown below hope, but rais’d ’bove fear.

The Picture.

Thou that both feel’st and dost admire
The flames shot from a painted fire,
Know Celia’s image thou dost see:
Not to herself more like is she.
He that should both together view5
Would judge both pictures, or both true.
But thus they differ: the best part
Of Nature this is; that of Art.

Opinion.

Whence took the diamond worth? the borrow’d rays
That crystal wears, whence had they first their praise?
Why should rude feet contemn the snow’s chaste white,
Which from the sun receives a sparkling light,
Brighter than diamonds far, and by its birth5
Decks the green garment of the richer earth?
Rivers than crystal clearer, when to ice
Congeal’d, why do weak judgements so despise?
Which, melting, show that to impartial sight
Weeping than smiling crystal is more bright.10
But Fancy those first priz’d, and these did scorn,
Taking their praise the other to adorn.
Thus blind is human sight: opinion gave
To their esteem a birth, to theirs a grave;
Nor can our judgements with these clouds dispense,15
Since reason sees but with the eyes of sense.

II. LYRICS PRINTED ONLY IN THE EDITION OF 1651.

The Cure.

Nymph.

What busy cares, too timely born,
Young swain! disturb thy sleep?
Thy early sighs awake the morn,
Thy tears teach her to weep.

Shepherd.

Sorrows, fair nymph, are full alone,5
Nor counsel can endure.

Nymph.

Yet thine disclose; for, until known,
Sickness admits no cure.

Shepherd.

My griefs are such as but to hear
Would poison all thy joys;10
The pity which thou seem’st to bear
My health, thine own destroys.

Nymph.

How can diseased minds infect?
Say what thy grief doth move!

Shepherd.

Call up thy virtue to protect15
Thy heart, and know—’twas love.

Nymph.

Fond swain!

Shepherd.

By which I have been long
Destin’d to meet with hate.

Nymph.

Fie! shepherd, fie! thou dost love wrong,
To call thy crime thy fate.20

Shepherd.

Alas! what cunning could decline,
What force can love repel?

Nymph.

Yet there’s a way to unconfine
Thy heart.

Shepherd.

For pity, tell.

Nymph.

Choose one whose love may be assur’d25
By thine: who ever knew
Inveterate diseases cur’d
But by receiving new?

Shepherd.

All will, like her, my soul perplex.

Nymph.

Yet try.

Shepherd.

Oh, could there be30
But any softness in that sex,
I’d wish it were in thee!

Nymph.

Thy prayer is heard: learn now t’esteem
The kindness she hath shown,
Who, thy lost freedom to redeem,35
Hath forfeited her own.

To the Countess of S[underland?] with the Holy Court.[1:1]

Since every place you bless, the name
This book assumes may justlier claim.
(What more a court than where you shine?
And where your soul, what more divine?)
You may perhaps doubt at first sight5
That it usurps upon your right;
And praising virtues that belong
To you, in others, doth you wrong.
No, ’tis yourself you read, in all
Perfections earlier ages call10
Their own; all glories they e’er knew
Were but faint prophecies of you.
You then have here sole interest, whom ’tis meant
As well to entertain, as represent.

Drawn For Valentine by the L[ady] D[orothy] S[pencer?].[2:1]

Though ’gainst me Love and Destiny conspire,
Though I must waste in an unpitied fire,
By the same deity, severe as fair,
Commanded adoration and despair;
Though I am mark’d for sacrifice, to tell5
The growing age what dangerous glories dwell
In this bright dawn, who, when she spreads her rays,
Will challenge every heart, and every praise;
Yet she who to all hope forbids my claim,
By Fortune’s taught indulgence to my flame,10
Great Queen of Chance! unjustly we exclude
Thy power an interest in beatitude,
Who with mysterious judgement dost dispense
The bounties of unerring Providence;
Whilst we, to whom the causes are unknown,15
Would style that blindness thine, which is our own.
As kind, in justice to thyself, as me,
Thou hast redeem’d thy name and votary:
Nor will I prize this less for being thine,
Nor longer at my destiny repine.20
Counsel and choice are things below thy state:
Fortune relieves the cruelties of Fate.

III. LYRICS PRINTED ONLY IN THE EDITION OF 1657 [JOHN GAMBLE’S AYRES AND DIALOGUES] HAVING NO TITLES.

On this Swelling Bank.

On this swelling bank, once proud
Of its burden, Doris lay:
Here she smil’d, and did uncloud
Those bright suns eclipse the day;
Here we sat, and with kind art5
She about me twin’d her arms,
Clasp’d in hers my hand and heart,
Fetter’d in those pleasing charms.

Here my love and joys she crown’d,
Whilst the hours stood still before me,10
With a killing glance did wound,
And a melting kiss restore me.
On the down of either breast,
Whilst with joy my soul retir’d,
My reclining head did rest,15
Till her lips new life inspir’d.

Thus, renewing of these sights
Doth with grief and pleasure fill me,
And the thought of these delights
Both at once revive and kill me!20

Dear, fold me once more.

Dear, fold me once more in thine arms!
And let me know
Before I go
There is no bliss but in those charms.
By thy fair self I swear5
That here, and only here,
I would for ever, ever stay:
But cruel Fate calls me away.

How swiftly the light minutes slide!
The hours that haste10
Away thus fast
By envious flight my stay do chide.
Yet, Dear, since I must go,
By this last kiss I vow,
By all that sweetness which dwells with thee,[3:1]15
Time shall move slow, till next I see thee.

The Lazy Hours.

The lazy hours move slow,
The minutes stay;
Old Time with leaden feet doth go,
And his light wings hath cast away.
The slow-pac’d spheres above5
Have sure releas’d
Their guardians, and without help move,
Whilst that the very angels rest.

The number’d sands that slide
Through this small glass,10
And into minutes Time divide,
Too slow each other do displace;
The tedious wheels of light
No faster chime,
Than that dull shade which waits on night:15
For Expectation outruns Time.

How long, Lord, must I stay?
How long dwell here?
O free me from this loathed clay!
Let me no more these fetters wear!20
With far more joy
Shall I resign my breath,
For, to my griev’d soul, not to die
Is every minute a new death.

IV. LYRICS PRINTED ONLY IN EDITIONS OF 1647 AND 1651.

Love’s Innocence.[4:1]

See how this ivy strives to twine[4:2]
Her wanton arms about the vine,
And her coy lover thus restrains,
Entangled in her amorous chains;
See how these neighb’ring palms do bend5
Their heads, and mutual murmurs send,
As whispering with a jealous fear[4:3]
Their loves into each other’s ear.

And like those blessed souls above,
Whose life is harmony and love,
Let us our mutual thoughts betray,15
And in our wills our minds display.
This silent speech is swifter far
Than the ears’ lazy species are;
And the expression it affords
(As our desires,) ’bove reach of words.20
Thus we, my Dear, of these may learn[4:5]
A passion others not discern;
Nor can it shame or blushes move,
Like plants to live, like angels love:
Since all excuse with equal innocence25
What above reason is, or beneath sense.

The Dedication.[5:1]

To Love.

Thou whose sole name all passions doth comprise:
Youngest and eldest of the Deities,
Born without parents, whose unbounded reign
Moves the firm earth, fixeth the floating main,
Inverts the course of heaven, and from the deep5
Awakes those souls that in dark Lethe sleep,
By thy mysterious chains seeking t’unite,
Once more, the long-since-torn hermaphrodite!
He who thy willing prisoner long was vow’d,
And uncompell’d beneath thy sceptre bow’d,10
Returns at last in thy soft fetters bound,
With victory, though not with freedom, crown’d:
And, (of his dangers past a grateful sign,)
Suspends this tablet at thy numerous shrine.

The Glow-Worm.

Stay, fairest Chariessa, stay and mark
This animated gem,[6:1] whose fainter spark
Of fading light, its birth had from the dark:

A star thought by the erring[6:2] passenger
Which falling from its native orb, dropped here,5
And makes the earth, its centre, now its sphere.

Should many of these sparks together be,
He that the unknown light far off should see
Would think it a terrestrial galaxy.

Take ’t up, fair Saint; see how it mocks thy fright;10
The paler flame doth not yield heat, though light,
Which thus deceives[6:3] thy reason, through thy sight.

But see how quickly it, ta’en up, doth fade,
(To shine in darkness only being made),
By th’ brightness of thy light turn’d to a shade,15

And burnt to ashes by thy flaming eyes!
On the chaste altar of thy hand it dies,
As to thy greater light a sacrifice.

To Chariessa,[7:1]

Desiring her to Burn his Verses.

These papers, Chariessa, let thy breath
Condemn, thy hand unto the flames bequeath;
’Tis fit who gave them life, should give them death.

And whilst[7:2] in curled flames to heaven they rise,
Each trembling sheet shall, as it upwards flies,5
Present itself to thee a sacrifice.

Then when above[7:3] its native orb it came,
And reach’d the lesser lights o’ th’ sky, this flame,
Contracted to a star, should wear thy name,

Or falling down on earth from its bright sphere,10
Shall in a diamond’s shape its lustre bear,
And trouble (as it did before) thine ear.

But thou wilt cruel even in mercy be,
Unequal in thy justice, who dost free
Things without sense from flames, and yet not me!15

On Mr. Fletcher’s Works [1647].[8:1]

Fletcher, whose fame no age can ever waste,
(Envy of ours, and glory of the last,)
Is now alive again; and with his name
His sacred ashes wak’d into a flame
Such as before could[8:2] by a secret charm5
The wildest heart subdue, the coldest warm,
And lend the ladies’ eyes a power more bright,
Dispensing thus, to either, heat and light.
He to a sympathy those souls betray’d
Whom love or beauty never could persuade;10
And in each mov’d spectator did[8:3] beget
A real passion by a counterfeit.
When first Bellario bled, what lady there
Did not for every drop let fall a tear?
And when Aspasia wept, not any eye15
But seem’d to wear the same sad livery;
By him inspir’d, the feign’d Lucina drew
More streams of melting sorrow than the true;
But then The Scornful Lady did[8:4] beguile
Their easy griefs, and teach them all to smile.20
Thus he affections could or raise or lay;
Love, grief, and mirth thus did his charms obey:
He Nature taught her passions to out-do,
How to refine the old, and create new;
Which such a happy likeness seem’d to bear,25
As if that Nature Art, Art Nature were.
Yet all had nothing been, obscurely kept
In the same urn wherein his dust hath slept;
Nor had he risen[8:5] the Delphic wreath to claim,
Had with[8:6] the dying scene expir’d his name.30
O the indulgent justice of this age,
To grant the press what it denies the stage!
Despair our joy hath doubled: he is come
Twice welcome by this post liminium.
His loss preserv’d him; they that silenc’d wit35
Are now the authors to eternize it.
Thus poets are in spite of Fate reviv’d,
And plays, by intermission, longer liv’d.

To the Lady D[ormer].[9:1]

Madam! the blushes I betray,
When at your feet I humbly lay
These papers, beg you would excuse
Th’ obedience of a bashful Muse,
Who, bowing to your strict command,5
Trusts her own errors to your hand,
Hasty abortives, which, laid by,
She meant, ere they were born, should die:
But since the soft power of your breath
Hath call’d them back again from death,10
To your sharp judgement now made known,
She dares for hers no longer own;
The worst she must not: these resign’d
She hath to th’ fire; and where you find
Those your kind charity admir’d,15
She writ but what your eyes inspir’d.

To Mr. W[illiam] Hammond.

Thou best of Friendship, Knowledge, and of Art!
The charm of whose lov’d name preserves my heart
From female vanities, (thy name, which there
Till time dissolves the fabric, I must wear!)
Forgive a crime which long my soul oppress’d,5
And crept by chance in my unwary breast,
So great, as for thy pardon were unfit,
And to forgive were worse than to commit,
But that the fault and pain were so much one,
The very act did expiate what was done.10
I, who so often sported with the flame,
Play’d with the Boy, and laugh’d at both as tame,
Betray’d by idleness and beauty, fell
At last in love, love both the sin and hell:
No punishment great as my fault esteem’d,15
But to be that which I so long had seem’d.
Behold me such: a face, a voice, a lute;
The sentence in a minute execute.
I yield, recant; the faith which I before
Deny’d, profess; the power I scorn’d, implore.20
Alas, in vain! no prayers, no vows can bow
Her stubborn heart, who neither will allow.
But see how strangely what was meant no less
Than torment, prov’d my greatest happiness;
Delay, that should have sharpen’d, starv’d Desire,25
And Cruelty not fann’d, but quench’d my fire.
Love bound me; now, by kind Disdain set free,
I can despise that Love as well as she.
That sin to friendship I away have thrown!
My heart thou may’st without a rival own,[10:1]30
While such as willingly themselves beguile,
And sell away their freedoms for a smile,
Blush to confess our joys as far above
Their hopes, as friendship’s longer-liv’d than love.

On Mr. Shirley’s Poems [1646].[11:1]

When, dearest Friend, thy verse doth re-inspire
Love’s pale decaying torch with brighter fire,
Whilst everywhere thou dost dilate thy flame,
And to the world spread thy Odelia’s name,
The justice of all ages must remit5
To her the prize of beauty, thee of wit.
Then, like some skilful artist, that to wonder[11:2]
Framing some[11:3] piece, displeas’d, takes it asunder,
Thou Beauty dost depose, her charms deny,
And all the mystic chains of Love untie.10
Thus thy diviner Muse a power ’bove Fate
May boast, that can both make and uncreate.
Next, thou call’st back to life that love-sick boy,
To the kind-hearted nymphs less fair than coy,
Who, by reflex beams burnt with vain desire,15
Did, phœnix-like, in his own flames expire;
But should he view his shadow drawn by thee,
He with himself once more in love would be.
Echo, (who though she words[11:4] pursue, her haste
Can only overtake and stop the last,)20
Shall her first speech and human voice[11:5] obtain,
To sing thy softer numbers o’er again.
Thus, into dying poetry, thy Muse
Doth full perfection and new life infuse.
Each line deserves a laurel, and thy praise25
Asks not a garland, but a grove of bays;
Nor can ours raise thy lasting trophies higher,
Who only reach at merit to admire.
But I must chide thee, friend: how canst thou be
A patron, yet a foe to Poesy?[11:6]30

And hast so far all future times surpass’d,[11:8]
That none dare write: thus, being first and last,
All their abortive Muses will suppress,35
And Poetry, by this increase, grow less.

On Mr. Sherburne’s Translation of Seneca’s Medea, and Vindication of the Author [1647-8].[12:1]

That wise philosopher who had design’d
To [th’] life the various passions of the mind,
Did wrong’d Medea’s jealousy prefer
To entertain the Roman theatre;
Both to instruct the soul, and please the sight,5
At once begetting horror and delight.
This cruelty thou dost once more express
Though in a strange, no less becoming dress;
And her revenge hast robb’d of half its pride,
To see itself thus by itself outvied,10
That boldest ages past may say, our times
Can speak, as well as act, their highest crimes.
Nor was’t enough to do his scene this right,
But what thou gav’st to us, with equal light
Thou wouldst bestow on him, nor wert more just15
Unto the author’s work, than to his dust.
Thou dost make good his title, aid his claim,
Both vindicate his poem and his name,
So shar’st a double wreath; for all that we
Unto the poet[12:2] owe, he owes to thee.20
Though change of tongues stol’n praise to some afford,
Thy version hath not borrow’d, but restor’d.

On Mr. Hall’s Essays [Horae Vacivae, 1646].[13:1]

Wits that matur’d by time have courted praise,
Shall see their works outdone in these essays,
And blush to know thy earlier years display
A dawning clearer than their brightest day.[13:2]
Yet I’ll not praise thee, for thou hast outgrown5
The reach of all men’s praises but thine own.
Encomiums to their objects are exact:
To praise, and not at full, is to detract.
And with most justice are the best forgot;
For praise is bounded when the theme is not:10
Since mine is thus confin’d, and far below
Thy merit, I forbear it, nor will show
How poor the autumnal pride of some appears,[13:3]
To the ripe fruit thy vernal season bears!
Yet though I mean no praise, I come t’invite15
Thy forward aims still to advance their flight.
Rise higher yet; what though thy spreading wreath
Lessen, to their dull sight who stay beneath?
To thy full learning how can all allow
Just praise, unless that all were learn’d as thou?20
Go on, in spite of such low souls, and may
Thy growing worth know age, though not decay,
Till thou pay back thy theft, and live to climb
As many years as thou hast snatch’d from Time.

On Sir J[ohn] S[uckling] his Picture and Poems [1646].[14:1]

Suckling, whose numbers could invite
Alike to wonder and delight,
And with new spirit did inspire
The Thespian scene, and Delphic lyre,
Is thus express’d in either part,5
Above the humble reach of Art.
Drawn by the pencil, here you find
His form; by his own pen, his mind.

Answer [to “The Union,” Poem addressed to Stanley by his Friend and Tutor, William Fairfax].[15:1]

If we are one, dear Friend! why shouldst thou be
At once unequal to thyself and me?
By thy release thou swell’st my debt the more,
And dost but rob thyself to make me poor.
What part can I have in thy luminous cone,5
What flame, since my love’s thine, can call my own,
(The palest star is less the son of night,)
Who but thy borrow’d know no native light?[15:2]
Was’t not enough thou freely didst bestow
The Muse, but thou must[15:3] give the laurel too,10
And twice my aims by thy assistance raise,
Conferring first the merit, then the praise?
But I should do thee greater injury,
Did I believe this praise were meant to me,
Or thought, though thou hast worth enough to spare15
T’enrich another soul, that mine should share.
Thy Muse, seeming to lend, calls home her fame,
And her due wreath doth, in renouncing, claim.

V. LYRICS PRINTED ONLY IN EDITIONS OF 1647 AND 1657 [GAMBLE].

The Blush.

So fair Aurora doth herself discover
(Asham’d o’ th’ aged bed of her cold lover,)
In modest blushes, whilst the treacherous light
Betrays her early shame to the world’s sight.
Such a bright colour doth the morning rose5
Diffuse, when she her soft self doth disclose
Half drown’d in dew, whilst on each leaf a tear
Of night doth like a dissolv’d pearl appear;
Yet ’twere in vain a colour out to seek
To parallel my Chariessa’s cheek;10
Less are compar’d[16:1] with greater, and these seem
To blush like her, not she to blush like them.
But whence, fair soul, this passion? what pretence
Had guilt to stain thy spotless innocence?
Those only this feel who have guilty been,15
Not any blushes know, but who know[16:2] sin.
Then blush no more; but let thy chaster flame,
That knows no cause, know no effects of shame.

The Cold Kiss.

Such icy kisses, anchorites that live
Secluded from the world, to dead skulls give;
And those[17:1] cold maids on whom Love never spent
His flame, nor know what by desire is meant,
To their expiring fathers such bequeath,5
Snatching their fleeting spirits in that breath:
The timorous priest doth with such fear and nice
Devotion touch the Holy Sacrifice.

Fie, Chariessa! whence so chang’d of late,
As to become in love a reprobate?10
Quit, quit this dulness, Fairest, and make known
A flame unto me equal with mine[17:2] own.
Shake off this frost, for shame, that dwells upon
Thy lips; or if it will not so be gone,
Let’s once more join our lips,[17:3] and thou shalt see15
That by the flame of mine ’twill melted be.

The Idolater.

Think not, pale lover, he who dies
Burnt in the flames of Celia’s eyes,
Is unto Love a sacrifice;

Or, by the merit of this pain,
Thou shalt the crown of martyrs gain!5
Those hopes are, as thy passion, vain.

For when, by death, from[18:1] these flames free,
To greater thou condemn’d shalt be,
And punish’d for idolatry,

Since thou, Love’s votary before,10
(Whilst she[18:2] was kind,) dost him no more,
But, in his shrine, Disdain adore.

Nor will this fire the gods prepare
To punish scorn, that cruel Fair,
Though now from flames exempted, spare;15

But as together both shall die,
Both burnt alike in flames shall lie,
She in thy heart,[18:3] thou in her eye.

The Magnet.

Ask the empress of the night
How the Hand which guides her sphere,
Constant in unconstant light,
Taught the waves her yoke to bear,
And did thus by loving force5
Curb or tame the rude sea’s course.

Ask the female palm how she
First did woo her husband’s love;
And the magnet, ask how he[19:1]
Doth th’ obsequious iron move;10
Waters, plants, and stones know this:
That they love; not what Love is.

Be not thou[19:2] less kind than these,
Or from Love exempt alone!
Let us twine like amorous trees,15
And like rivers melt in one.
Or, if thou more cruel prove,
Learn of steel and stones to love.

On a Violet in her Breast.

See how this violet, which before
Hung sullenly her drooping head,
As angry at the ground that bore
The purple treasure which she spread,
Doth smilingly erected grow,5
Transplanted to those hills of snow.

And whilst the pillows of thy breast
Do her reclining head sustain,
She swells with pride to be so blest,
And doth all other flowers disdain;10
Yet weeps that dew which kissed her last,
To see her odours so surpass’d.

Poor flower! how far deceiv’d thou wert,
To think the riches of the morn
Or all the sweets she can impart.15
Could these or sweeten or adorn,
Since thou from them dost borrow scent,
And they to thee lend ornament!

Song.

Foolish Lover, go and seek
For the damask of the rose,
And the lilies white dispose
To adorn thy mistress’ cheek;

Steal some star out of the sky,5
Rob the phœnix, and the east
Of her wealthy sweets divest,
To enrich her breath or eye!

We thy borrow’d pride despise:
For this wine to which we are10
Votaries, is richer far
Than her cheek, or breath, or eyes.

And should that coy fair one view
These diviner beauties, she
In this flame would rival thee,15
And be taught to love thee too.

Come, then, break thy wanton chain,
That when this brisk wine hath spread
On thy paler cheek a red,
Thou, like us, may’st Love disdain.20

Love, thy power must yield to wine!
And whilst thus ourselves we arm,
Boldly we defy thy charm:
For these flames extinguish[20:1] thine.

The Parting.

I go, dear Saint, away,
Snatch’d from thy arms
By far less pleasing charms,
Than those I did[21:1] obey;
But if hereafter thou shalt know5
That grief hath kill’d me, come,[21:2]
And on my tomb
Drop, drop a tear or two;
Break with thy sighs the silence of my sleep,
And I shall smile in death to see thee weep.10

Thy tears may have the power
To reinspire
My ashes with new fire,
Or change me to some flower,
Which, planted ’twixt thy breasts, shall grow:15
Veil’d in this shape, I will
Dwell with thee still,
Court, kiss, enjoy thee too:
Securely we’ll contemn[21:3] all envious force,
And thus united be by death’s divorce.20

Counsel.

When deceitful lovers lay
At thy feet their suppliant hearts,
And their snares spread to betray
Thy best treasure[22:1] with their arts,
Credit not their flatt’ring vows:5
Love such perjury allows.

When they with the[22:2] choicest wealth
Nature boasts of, have possess’d thee;
When with flowers (their verses’ stealth),
Stars, or jewels they invest thee,[22:3]10
Trust not to their borrow’d store:
’Tis but lent to make thee poor.

When with poems[22:4] they invade thee,
Sing thy praises or disdain;
When they weep, and would persuade thee15
That their flames beget that rain;
Let thy breast no baits let in:
Mercy’s only here a sin!

Let no tears or offerings move thee,
All those cunning charms avoid;20
For that wealth for which they love thee,
They would slight if once enjoy’d.

Expostulation with Love, in Despair.

Must all are to thy hell condemn’d sustain5
A double torture of despair and pain?
Is’t not enough vainly to hope and woo,
That thou shouldst thus deny that vain hope too?
It were some joy,[23:2] Ixion-like, to fold
The empty air, or feed on thoughts as cold;[23:3]10
But if thou to my passion this deny,
Thou may’st be starv’d to death as well as I;
For how can thy pale sickly flame burn clear
When death and cold despair inhabit here?[23:4]
Then let thy dim heat warm, or else expire;[23:5]15
Dissolve this frost, or let that quench the[23:6] fire.
Thus let me not desire, or else possess!
Neither, or both, are equal happiness.[23:7]

Song.

Faith, ’tis not worth thy pains and care
To seek t’ensnare
A heart so poor as mine:[24:1]
Some fools there be
Hate liberty,5
Who[m] with more ease thou may’st confine.

Alas! when with much charge thou hast
Brought it at last
Beneath thy power to bow,
It will adore10
Some twenty more,
And that, perhaps, you’d[24:2] not allow.

No, Chloris, I no more will prove
The curse of love,
And now can boast a heart15
Hath learn’d of thee
Inconstancy,
And cozen’d women of their art.

Expectation.

Chide, chide no more away
The fleeting daughters of the day,
Nor with impatient thoughts outrun
The lazy sun,
Nor[25:1] think the hours do move too slow;5
Delay is kind,
And we too soon shall find
That which we seek, yet fear to know.

The mystic dark decrees
Unfold not of the Destinies,10
Nor boldly seek to antedate
The laws of Fate;
Thy anxious search awhile forbear,
Suppress thy haste,
And know that Time at last15
Will crown thy hope, or fix thy fear.

VI. LYRICS PRINTED IN ALL ORIGINAL EDITIONS OF STANLEY.

The Breath.

Favonius, the milder breath o’ th’ Spring,
When proudly bearing on his softer wing
Rich odours, which from the Panchean groves
He steals, as by the phœnix-pyre he moves,
Profusely doth his sweeter theft dispense5
To the next rose’s blushing innocence;
But from the grateful flower, a richer scent
He doth receive[26:1] than he unto it lent.
Then, laden with his odour’s richest store,
He to thy breath hastes, to which these are poor;10
Which, whilst the amorous wind[26:2] to steal essays,
He like a wanton lover ’bout thee plays,
And sometimes cooling thy soft cheek doth lie,
And sometimes burning at thy flaming eye:
Drawn in at last by that breath we implore,15
He now[26:3] returns far sweeter than before,
And rich by being robb’d, in thee he finds
The burning sweets of pyres, the cool of winds.

The Night: A Dialogue.

Chariessa.[27:1] What if Night
Should betray us, and reveal
To the light
All the pleasures that we steal?

Philocharis. Fairest! we5
Safely may this fear despise:
How can she
See our actions, who wants eyes?

Chariessa. Each dim star,
And the clearer lights, we know,10
Night’s eyes are:
They were blind that thought her so!

Philocharis. Those pale fires
Only burn to yield a light
T’ our desires;15
And, though blind, to give us sight.

Chariessa. By this shade
That surrounds us, might our flame
Be betray’d!
And the day disclose its name.20

Philocharis. Dearest Fair!
These dark witnesses, we find,
Silent are:
Night is dumb, as well as blind.

Chorus.

Then whilst these black shades conceal us,25
We will scorn
Th’ envious morn,
And the sun that would reveal us.
Our flames shall thus their mutual light betray,
And night, with these joys crown’d, outshine the day.30

Unalter’d by Sickness.

Could all thy malice but impair5
One o’ th’ sweets which crown her fair;[28:2]
Or steal the spirits from her eye;
Or kiss into a paler dye
The blooming[28:3] roses of her cheek;
Our suffering[28:4] hopes might justly seek10
Redress from thee, and thou mightst save
Thousands of lovers from the grave.
But such assaults are vain, for she
Is too divine to stoop to thee,
Blest with a form as much too high15
For any change, as[28:5] Destiny,
Which no attempt can violate:
For what’s her beauty is our fate.

To Celia.

EXCUSE FOR WISHING HER LESS FAIR.[29:1]

Why thy passion should it move
That I wished thy beauty less?
Fools desire what is above
Power of nature to express;
And to wish it had been more5
Had been to outwish her store.

If the flames within thine eye
Did not too great heat inspire,

And might on thy weaker light
Gaze, and yet not lose their sight.

Nor wouldst thou less fair appear,
For detraction adds to thee;
If some parts less beauteous were,15
Others would much fairer be;
Nor can any part we know
Best be styl’d, when all are so.

Thus this great excess of light,
Which now dazzles our weak eyes,20
Would, eclips’d, appear more bright;
And the only way to rise,
Or to be more fair, for[29:3] thee,
Celia! is less fair to be.

Celia, Sleeping or Singing.[30:1]

Roses, in breathing forth their scent,
Or stars their borrowed ornament;
Nymphs in the watery sphere that move,
Or angels in their orbs above;
The winged chariot of the light,5
Or the slow silent wheels of night;
The shade which from the swifter sun
Doth in a circular motion run,
Or souls that their eternal rest do keep,
Make far more[30:2] noise than Celia’s breath in sleep.10

But if the angel which inspires
This subtle frame[30:3] with active fires,
Should mould this[30:4] breath to words, and those
Into a harmony dispose,
The music of this heavenly sphere15
Would steal each soul out at the ear,
And into plants and stones infuse
A life that cherubim[30:5] would choose,
And with new powers[30:6] invert the laws of fate:
Kill those that live, and dead things animate.20

Palinode.[31:1]

Beauty, thy harsh imperious chains
As a scorn’d weight, I here untie,
Since thy proud empire those disdains
Of reason or philosophy,
That would[31:2] within tyrannic laws5
Confine the power of each free cause.

Forc’d by the potent[31:3] influence
Of thy disdain, I back return:
Thus with those flames I do dispense
Which, though they would not light, did burn,10
And rather will through cold expire,
Than languish at[31:4] a frozen fire.

But whilst I the insulting pride
Of thy vain beauty do despise,
Who gladly wouldst be deified15
By making me thy sacrifice,
May Love thy heart which to his charm
Approach’d, seem’d cold, at distance warm!

The Return.

Beauty, whose soft magnetic chains
Nor time nor absence can untie,[32:1]
Thy power the narrow bound[32:2] disdains
Of Nature or Philosophy;
Thou[32:3] canst by unconfined laws5
A motion, though at distance, cause.

Drawn by the powerful[32:4] influence
Of thy bright eyes, I back return;
And since I nowhere can dispense
With flames that[32:5] do in absence burn,10
I rather choose ’twixt[32:6] them t’expire,
Than languish by a hidden fire.

But if thou th’[32:7] insulting pride
Of vulgar beauties dost despise,
Who, by vain triumphs deified,15
Their votaries do sacrifice,
Then let those flames, whose magic charm
At distance scorch’d, approach’d, but warm.

Chang’d, Yet Constant.

Wrong me no more
In thy complaint,
Blam’d for inconstancy:
I vow’d t’ adore
The fairest Saint,5
Nor chang’d whilst thou wert she:
But if another thee outshine,
Th’ inconstancy is only thine!

To be by such
Blind fools admir’d10
Gives thee but small esteem,
By whom as much
Thou’dst be desir’d,
Didst thou less beauteous seem.
Sure, why they love they know not well,15
Who why they should not, cannot tell!

Women are by
Themselves betray’d,
And to their short joys cruel,
Who foolishly20
Themselves persuade
Flames can outlast their fuel;
None (though platonic their pretence),
With reason love, unless by sense.

And he,[33:1] by whose25
Command to thee
I did my heart resign,
Now bids me choose
A deity
Diviner far than thine;30
No power can Love from Beauty sever:
I’m still Love’s subject; thine was, never.

The fairest she
Whom none surpass,
To love hath only right;35
And such to me
Thy beauty was,
Till one I found more bright;
But ’twere as impious to adore
Thee now, as not to have done ’t before.40

Nor is it just
By rules of Love,
Thou shouldst deny to quit
A heart that must
Another’s prove45
Even in thy right to it;
Must not thy subjects captives be
To her who triumphs over thee?

Cease, then, in vain
To blot my name50
With forg’d apostasy!
Thine is that stain
Who dar’st to claim
What others ask of thee.
Of lovers they are only true55
Who pay their hearts where hearts[33:2] are due.

To Chariessa,

Beholding herself in a Glass.[34:1]

Cast, Chariessa, cast that glass away;
Not in its crystal face thine own survey.
What can be free from Love’s imperious laws,
When painted shadows real flames can cause?
The fires may burn thee from this mirror rise,5
By the reflected beams of thine own eyes;
And thus at last fall’n with thyself in love,
Thou wilt my rival, thine own[34:2] martyr, prove.
But if thou dost desire thy form to view,
Look in my heart, where Love thy picture drew,10
And then, if pleas’d with thine own shape thou be,
Learn how to love thyself by[34:3] loving me.

Song.

When I lie burning in thine eye,
Or freezing in thy breast,
What martyrs, in wish’d flames that die,
Are half so pleas’d or blest?

When thy soft accents through mine ear5
Into my soul do fly,
What angel would not quit his sphere,
To hear such harmony?

Or when the kiss thou gav’st me last
My soul stole in its breath,10
What life would sooner be embrac’d
Than so desir’d a death?