LANG.

  Come Rosalind, O come; here shady bowers. 
  Here are cool fountains, and here springing flowers. 
  Come Rosalind; here ever let us stay,
  And sweetly waste our live-long time away.

Our other pastoral writer in expressing the same thought, deviates into downright poetry.

  STREPHON.

  In spring the fields, in autumn hills I love,
  At morn the plains, at noon the shady grove,
  But Delia always; forc’d from Delia’s sight,
  Nor plains at morn, nor groves at noon delight.

  DAPHNE.

  Sylvia’s like autumn ripe, yet mild as May,
  More bright than noon, yet fresh as early day;
  Ev’n spring displeases when she shines not here: 
  But blest with her, ’tis spring throughout the year.

In the first of these authors, two shepherds thus innocently describe the behaviour of their mistresses.

  HOBB.

  As Marian bath’d, by chance I passed by;
  She blush’d, and at me cast a side-long eye: 
  Then swift beneath, the crystal waves she tried,
  Her beauteous form, but all in vain, to hide.

  LANG.

  As I to cool me bath’d one sultry day,
  Fond Lydia lurking in the sedges lay,
  The woman laugh’d, and seem’d in haste to fly;
  Yet often stopp’d, and often turn’d her eye.

The other modern (who it must be confess’d has a knack at versifying) has it as follows,

  STREPHON.

  Me gentle Delia beckons from the plain,
  Thus, hid in shades, eludes her eager swain;
  But feigns a laugh, to see me search around,
  And by that laugh the willing fair is found.

  DAPHNE.

  The sprightly Sylvia trips along the green;
  She runs, but hopes she does not run unseen;
  While a kind glance, at her pursuer flies,
  How much at variance are her feet and eyes.

There is nothing the writers of this kind of poetry are fonder of, than descriptions of pastoral presents.

Philips says thus of a Sheep-hook.

  Of season’d elm, where studs of brass appear,
  To speak the giver’s name, the month, and year;
  The hook of polished steel, the handle turn’d,
  And richly by the graver’s skill adorn’d.

The other of a bowl embossed with figures,

—­Where wanton ivy twines,
  And swelling clusters bend the curling vines,
  Four figures rising from the work appear,
  The various seasons of the rolling year;
  And what is that which binds the radiant sky,
  Where twelve bright signs, in beauteous order lye.

The simplicity of the swain in this place who forgets the name of the Zodiac, is no ill imitation of Virgil; but how much more plainly, and unaffectedly would Philips have dressed this thought in his Doric.

  And what that height, which girds the welkin-sheen
  Where twelve gay signs in meet array are seen.