ROBERT GOMERSALL,

Was born in 1600, and sent to Christ Church, Oxford, 1614, where he was afterwards made a student. Having taken orders, he became a celebrated preacher, and published several sermons. (Vide Wood's Ath. Vol. I. p. 598.) He wrote "the Levite's Revenge, containing Poetical Medita❝tions upon the 19th and 20th chapters of Judges" (a sort of heroic poem), 1628: the "Tragedy of Sforza,” and a few poems, 1633.

SONG.

[From Sforza.]

How I laugh at their fond wish

Whose desire

Aims no higher

Than the baits of Midas' dish!

What is gold but yellow dirt?

Which th' unkind

Heavens refin'd

When they made us love our hurt.

Would to heaven that I might steep

My faint eyes

In the wise,

In the gentle dew of sleep!

Whose effects do pose us so,

That we deem

It does seem

Both death's brother and his foe.

This does always with us keep;

And, being dead,

That's not fled:
Death is but a longer sleep.

[Abridged from 60 lines.]

How we dally out our days!
How we seek a thousand ways
To find death, the which if none
We sought out, would shew us one.

Never was there morning yet (Sweet as is the violet)

Which man's folly did not soon
Wish to be expir'd in noon :
As though such an haste did tend
To our bliss and not our end.

Nay, the young ones in the nest
Suck this folly from the breast:
And no stammering ape but can
Spoil a prayer to be a man.

But suppose that he is heard,
By the sprouting of his beard,
And he hath what he doth seek,
The soft cloathing of the cheek?
Would he yet stay here—or be
Fix'd in this maturity ?

Sooner shall the wandering star
Learn what rest and quiet are:
Sooner shall the slippery rill

Leave his motion and stand still.

Be it joy, or be it sorrow,

We refer all to the morrow;

That, we think, will ease our pain;

That, we do suppose again

Will increase our joy and so Events, the which we cannot know, We magnify, and are (in sum) Enamour'd of the time to come.

Well, the next day comes, and then
Another next, and so to ten,
To twenty we arrive, and find
No more before us than behind
Of solid joy; and yet haste on
To our consummation:

And, at last, of life bereav'd,
Die unhappy and deceiv'd.

SIR KENELM DIGBY.

This celebrated English philosopher, whose life is to be found in all our Biographical Dictionaries, was born in 1603, and died in 1665. His works are carefully enumerated by Wood, (Ath. Vol. II. p. 351) who calls him the "magazine of all arts." The poem from which the following lines are extracted, is attributed to him in a miscellany called "Wit's Interpreter," 1671.

FAME, honour, beauty, state, trains, blood and

birth,

Are but the fading blossoms of the earth.

I would be great; but that the sun doth still
Level his rays against the rising hill.

I would be high; but see the proudest oak
Most subject to the rending thunder-stroke.
I would be rich; but see men, too unkind,
Dig out the bowels of the richest mine.
I would be wise; but that the fox I see
Suspected guilty, while the ass goes free.
I would be fair; but see that champion proud,
The bright sun,
often setting in a cloud.