Welcome—­though not to those gay flies
    Gilded i’ th’ beams of earthly kings—­
  Slippery souls in smiling eyes—­
    But to poor shepherds, homespun things,
  Whose wealth’s their flocks, whose wit’s to be
  Well read in their simplicity.

  Yet when young April’s husband showers
    Shall bless the fruitful Maia’s bed,
  We’ll bring the firstborn of her flowers
    To kiss thy feet, and crown thy head: 
  To thee, dear Lamb! whose love must keep
  The shepherds while they feed their sheep.

  To thee, meek Majesty, soft king
    Of simple graces and sweet loves,
  Each of us his lamb will bring,
    Each his pair of silver doves. 
  At last, in fire of thy fair eyes,
  Ourselves become our own best sacrifice.

A splendid line to end with! too good for the preceding one.  All temples and altars, all priesthoods and prayers, must vanish in this one and only sacrifice.  Exquisite, however, as the poem is, we cannot help wishing it looked less heathenish.  Its decorations are certainly meretricious.

From a few religious poems of Sir Edward Sherburne, another Roman Catholic, and a firm adherent of Charles I., I choose the following—­the only one I care for.

  AND THEY LAID HIM IN A MANGER.

  Happy crib, that wert, alone,
  To my God, bed, cradle, throne! 
  Whilst thy glorious vileness I
  View with divine fancy’s eye,
  Sordid filth seems all the cost,
  State, and splendour, crowns do boast.

  See heaven’s sacred majesty
  Humbled beneath poverty;
  Swaddled up in homely rags,
  On a bed of straw and flags! 
  He whose hands the heavens displayed,
  And the world’s foundations laid,
  From the world’s almost exiled,
  Of all ornaments despoiled. 
  Perfumes bathe him not, new-born;
  Persian mantles not adorn;
  Nor do the rich roofs look bright
  With the jasper’s orient light.

  Where, O royal infant, be
  The ensigns of thy majesty;
  Thy Sire’s equalizing state;
  And thy sceptre that rules fate? 
  Where’s thy angel-guarded throne,
  Whence thy laws thou didst make known—­
  Laws which heaven, earth, hell obeyed? 
  These, ah! these aside he laid;
  Would the emblem be—­of pride
  By humility outvied.

I pass by Abraham Cowley, mighty reputation as he has had, without further remark than that he is too vulgar to be admired more than occasionally, and too artificial almost to be, as a poet, loved at all.

Andrew Marvell, member of Parliament for Hull both before and after the Restoration, was twelve years younger than his friend Milton.  Any one of some half-dozen of his few poems is to my mind worth all the verse that Cowley ever made.  It is a pity he wrote so little; but his was a life as diligent, I presume, as it was honourable.

  ON A DROP OF DEW.