Though every day he walk the round, Those tulips that such wealth display But I would see myself appear The discontented morn hath shed. Within their buds let roses sleep, I' th' centre of my ground, compose Present my arbour, and my tomb. No birds shall live within my pale To charm me with their shames of art, Unless some wandering nightingale Come here to sing and break her heart; Upon whose death I'll try to write An epitaph in some funeral stone, So sad and true, it may invite Myself to die, and prove mine own. [From "the Contention of Ajax and Ulysses for the "Armor of Achilles."] THE glories of our blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against fate; Death lays his icy hand on kings. Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade. Some men with swords may reap the field, Early or late, They stoop to fate, And must give up their murmuring breath, When they, pale captives, creep to death. The garlands wither on your brow, Then boast no more your mighty deeds; Upon death's purple altar now, See where the victor-victim bleeds. Your heads must come To the cold tomb; Only the actions of the just Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust. THOMAS MAY, A celebrated poet and historian, born about 1596, in Sussex, of a worshipful but decayed family, says Fuller; bred fellow-commoner in Sidney College, Cambridge, and afterwards resident in Westminster and about the court. He died suddenly in 1652, and lies buried in Westminster Abbey. See his character in lord Clarendon's History. His Latin Supplement, and English translation of Lucan's Pharsalia, have been much esteemed; besides which he wrote metrical histories of Henry II. and Edward III, a History of the Parliament, in prose, and five plays. SONG. [From "the Old Couple," 1658, 4to.] DEAR, do not your fair beauty wrong, Your cherry lip, red, soft, and sweet, PATRICK HANNAY. From his poems, 1622. Hannay appears to have served in a military capacity, under Sir Andrew Gray, knt. a colonel of foot, and general of artillery to the king of Bohemia. His "Happy Husband, with a Wife's Behaviour after Mar66 riage," was printed in 1619, and again, with “ Philomela, "the Nightingale," "Sheretine and Mariana," "Elegies," "Songs and Sonnets," in 1622. These productions he describes to be the "fruit of some hours he with the Muses "spent." SONG. Amantium ira amoris redintegratio est. CELIA jealous, lest I did In my heart affect another, Me her company forbid. Women cannot passion smother. The dearer love, the more disdain, I vow'd (in anger) to abstain. She found her fault, and me invited. |