Before her hope, behind remorse,
Fair first, in fine unseemly.

Plough not the seas, sow not the sands,
Leave off your idle pain;

Seek other mistress for your

Love's service is in vain.

minds,

LOOK HOME.

RETIRED thoughts enjoy their own delights,
As beauty doth in self-beholding eye:
Man's mind a mirror is of heavenly sights,
A brief wherein all miracles summed lie;
Of fairest forms, and sweetest shapes the store,
Most graceful all, yet thought may grace them

more.

The mind a creature is, yet can create,
To nature's patterns adding higher skill

Of finest works; wit better could the state,
If force of wit had equal power of will.

Devise of man in working hath no end;

What thought can think, another thought can mend.

Man's soul of endless beauties image is,

Drawn by the work of endless skill and might:
This skilful might gave many sparks of bliss,

And, to discern this bliss, a native light,

To frame God's image as his worth required;
His might, his skill, his word and will conspired.

All that he had, his image should present;
All that it should present, he could afford;
To that he could afford his will was bent;
His will was followed with performing word.
Let this suffice, by this conceive the rest,
He should, he could, he would, he did the best.

THOMAS WATSON,

BORN 1560-DIED ABOUT 1592,

WAS a native of London, and studied the common law, but from the variety of his productions (Vide Theatrum Poetarum, p. 213), would seem to have devoted himself to lighter studies. Mr. Steevens has certainly overrated his sonnets in preferring them to Shakespeare's.

THE NYMPHS TO THEIR MAY QUEEN.

From England's Helicon.

WITH fragrant flow'rs we strew the way,
And make this our chief holiday;
For though this clime was blest of yore,
Yet was it never proud before.

O beauteous, queen of second Troy,
Accept of our unfeigned joy.

Now th' air is sweeter than sweet balm,
And satyrs dance about the palm;
Now earth, with verdure newly dight,
Gives perfect signs of her delight:
O beauteous queen!

Now birds record new harmony,
And trees do whistle melody;
And every thing that nature breeds
Doth clad itself in pleasant weeds.

SONNET.

ACTEON lost, in middle of his sport,
Both shape and life, for looking but awry:
Diana was afraid he would report
What secrets he had seen in passing by.
To tell the truth, the self-same hurt have I,
By viewing her for whom I daily die;

I leese my wonted shape, in that my mind
Doth suffer wreck upon the stony rock
Of her disdain, who, contrary to kind,
Does bear a breast more hard than any stock;
And former form of limbs is changed quite
By cares in love, and want of due delight.

I leave my life, in that each secret thought
Which I conceive through wanton fond regard,
Doth make me say that life availeth nought,
Where service cannot have a due reward.

I dare not name the nymph that works my smart,
Though love hath grav'n her name within my heart.

EDMUND SPENSER,

DESCENDED from the ancient and honourable family of Spenser, was born in London, in East Smithfield, by the Tower, probably about the year 1553. He studied at the university of Cambridge, where it appears, from his correspondence, that he formed an intimate friendship with the learned, but pedantic, Gabriel Harvey1. Spenser, with Sir P. Sydney, was, for a time, a convert to Harvey's Utopian scheme for changing the measures of English poetry into those of the Greeks and Romans.

Spenser even wrote trimeter iambics sufficiently

1 For an account of Harvey the reader may consult Wood's Athen. Oxon. Vol. I.-Fasti col. 128.

2 A short example of Spenser's Iambicum Trimetrum will suffice, from a copy of verses in one of his letters to Harvey.

Unhappy verse! the witness of my unhappy state,
Make thyself fluttering wings of thy fast flying

Thought, and fly forth unto my love, wheresoever she be.

bad to countenance the English hexameters of his friend; but the Muse would not suffer such a votary to be lost in the pursuit after chimeras, and recalled him to her natural strains. From Cambridge Spenser went to reside with some relations in the north of England, and, in this retirement, conceived a passion for a mistress, whom he has celebrated under the name of Rosalind. It appears, however, that she trifled with his affection, and preferred a rival.

Harvey, or Hobinol, (by so uncouth a name did the shepherd of hexameter memory, the learned Harvey, deign to be called in Spenser's eclogues), with better judgment than he had shewn in poetical matters, advised Spenser to leave his rustic obscurity, and introduced him to Sir Philip Sydney, who recommended him to his uncle, the Earl of Leicester. The poet was invited to the family seat of Sydney, at Penshurst, in Kent, where he is supposed to have assisted the Platonic studies of his gallant and congenial friend. To him he dedicated his "Shepheard's Calendar." Sydney did not bestow unqualified praise on those eclogues; he allowed that they contained much poetry, but condemned the antique rusticity of the language. It was of these eclogues, and not of the Fairy Queen (as has been frequently misstated), that Ben Jonson said, that

Whether lying restless in heavy bed, or else
Sitting so cheerless at the cheerful board, or else
Playing alone, careless, on her heavenly virginals.