[1] ‘Lord Andover’:  the eldest son of the Earl of Berkshire.

EPITAPH UNFINISHED.

Great soul! for whom Death will no longer stay,
But sends in haste to snatch our bliss away. 
O cruel Death! to those you take more kind,
Than to the wretched mortals left behind! 
Here beauty, youth, and noble virtue shined,
Free from the clouds of pride that shade the mind. 
Inspired verse may on this marble live,
But can no honour to thy ashes give—­

DIVINE POEMS.[1]

OF DIVINE LOVE.  A POEM IN SIX CANTOS.

Floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia libant,
Sic nos Scripturae depascimur aurea dicta;
Aurea! perpetua semper dignissima vita! 
Nam divinus amor cum coepit vociferari,
Diffugiunt animi terrores.... Lucretius, lib. iii.

Exul eram, requiesque mihi, non fama, petita est,
Mens intenta suis ne foret usque malis: 
Namque ubi mota calent sacra mea pectora Musa,
Altior humano spiritua ille malo est. 
                              OVID. De Trist. lib. iv. el.  I.

ARGUMENTS.

I. Asserting the authority of the Scripture, in which this love is revealed.—­II.  The preference and love of God to man in the creation.—­ III.  The same love more amply declared in our redemption.—­IV.  How necessary this love is to reform mankind, and how excellent in itself.—­ V. Showing how happy the world would be, if this love were universally embraced.—­VI.  Of preserving this love in our memory, and how useful the contemplation thereof is.

[1] These were Waller’s latest poems, composed when he was eighty-two.

CANTO I.

The Grecian Muse has all their gods survived,
Nor Jove at us, nor Phoebus is arrived;
Frail deities! which first the poets made,
And then invoked, to give their fancies aid. 
Yet if they still divert us with their rage,
What may be hoped for in a better age,
When not from Helicon’s imagined spring,
But Sacred Writ, we borrow what we sing? 
This with the fabric of the world begun,
Elder than light, and shall outlast the sun. 10
Before this oracle, like Dagon, all
The false pretenders, Delphos, Ammon, fall;
Long since despised and silent, they afford
Honour and triumph to th’Eternal Word.

As late philosophy[1] our globe has graced,
And rolling earth among the planets placed,
So has this book entitled us to heaven,
And rules to guide us to that mansion given;
Tells the conditions how our peace was made,
And is our pledge for the great Author’s aid. 20
His power in Nature’s ample book we find,
But the less volume does express his mind.