2 Fair Venus! in thy soft arms
   The God of Rage confine;
   For thy whispers are the charms
   Which only can divert his fierce design.

3 What though he frown, and to tumult do incline? 
   Thou the flame
   Kindled in his breast canst tame,
   With that snow which unmelted lies on thine.

4 Great goddess! give this thy sacred island rest;
   Make heaven smile,
   That no storm disturb us while
   Thy chief care, our halcyon, builds her nest.

5 Great Gloriana! fair Gloriana! 
   Bright as high heaven is, and fertile as earth,
   Whose beauty relieves us,
   Whose royal bed gives us
   Both glory and peace,
   Our present joy, and all our hopes’ increase.

[1] ’Puerperium ’:  Fenton conjectures that this poem was written in
    1640, when the Queen was delivered of her fourth son, the Duke of
    Gloucester.

A LA MALADE.

Ah, lovely Amoret! the care
Of all that know what’s good or fair! 
Is heaven become our rival too? 
Had the rich gifts conferr’d on you
So amply thence, the common end
Of giving lovers—­to pretend? 
  Hence, to this pining sickness (meant
To weary thee to a consent
Of leaving us) no power is given 9
Thy beauties to impair; for heaven
Solicits thee with such a care,
As roses from their stalks we tear,
When we would still preserve them new
And fresh, as on the bush they grew.

With such a grace you entertain,
And look with such contempt on pain,
That languishing you conquer more,
And wound us deeper than before. 
So lightnings which in storms appear,
Scorch more than when the skies are clear. 20

And as pale sickness does invade
Your frailer part, the breaches made
In that fair lodging, still more clear
Make the bright guest, your soul, appear. 
So nymphs o’er pathless mountains borne,
Their light robes by the brambles torn
From their fair limbs, exposing new
And unknown beauties to the view
Of following gods, increase their flame
And haste to catch the flying game. 30

UPON THE DEATH OF MY LADY RICH.[1]

May those already cursed Essexian plains,
Where hasty death and pining sickness reigns,
Prove all a desert! and none there make stay,
But savage beasts, or men as wild as they! 
There the fair light which all our island graced,
Like Hero’s taper in the window placed,
Such fate from the malignant air did find, 7
As that exposed to the boist’rous wind.