And when in froward mood
    She proves an angry foe: 
  Small gain I found to let her come,
    Less loss to let her go.

There is just one stanza in a poem of Daniel, who belongs by birth to this group, which I should like to print by itself, if it were only for the love Coleridge had to the last two lines of it.  It needs little stretch of scheme to let it show itself amongst religious poems.  It occurs in a fine epistle to the Countess of Cumberland.  Daniel’s writing is full of the practical wisdom of the inner life, and the stanza which I quote has a certain Wordsworthian flavour about it.  It will not make a complete sentence, but must yet stand by itself: 

  Knowing the heart of man is set to be
  The centre of this world, about the which
  These revolutions of disturbances
  Still roll; where all th’ aspects of misery
  Predominate; whose strong effects are such
  As he must bear, being powerless to redress;
  And that unless above himself he can
  Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!

Later in the decade, comes Sir Henry Wotton.  It will be seen that I have arranged my singers with reference to their birth, not to the point of time at which this or that poem was written or published.  The poetic influences which work on the shaping fantasy are chiefly felt in youth, and hence the predominant mode of a poet’s utterance will be determined by what and where and amongst whom he was during that season.  The kinds of the various poems will therefore probably fall into natural sequence rather after the dates of the youth of the writers than after the years in which they were written.

Wotton was better known in his day as a politician than as a poet, and chiefly in ours as the subject of one of Izaak Walton’s biographies.  Something of artistic instinct, rather than finish, is evident in his verses.  Here is the best and the best-known of the few poems recognized as his: 

  THE CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE.

  How happy is he born and taught,
    That serveth not another’s will;
  Whose armour is his honest thought,
    And silly truth his highest skill;

  Whose passions not his masters are;
    Whose soul is still prepared for death,
  Untied to the world with care
    Of prince’s grace or vulgar breath;

  Who hath his life from humours freed;
    Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
  Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
    Nor ruin make accusers great;

  Who envieth none whom chance doth raise
    Or vice; who never understood
  How swords give slighter wounds than praise. 
    Nor rules of state, but rules of good;

  Who God doth late and early pray
    More of his grace than gifts to lend;
  And entertains the harmless day
    With a well-chosen book or friend.

  This man is free from servile bands
    Of hope to rise, or fear to fall: 
  Lord of himself, though not of lands
    And having nothing, yet hath all.