No sound recalls the hours once fled,
Or roses, being withered.

Nor us, my friend, when we are lost,
Like to a dew, or melted frost.

Then live we mirthful, while we should,
And turn the iron age to gold.
Let's feast and frolic, sing and play,
And thus less last, than live our day.
Whose life with care is overcast,
That man's not said to live, but last:
Nor is't a life, seven years to tell,
But for to live that half seven well:
And that we'll do; as men, who know,'

Some few sands spent, we hence must go,
Both to be blended in the Urn,

From whence there's never a return.

Page 273.

1

NUMBER XLIV.

Agricola incurvo terram dimovit aratro :

Hinc anni labor, hinc patriam, parvosque nepotes Sustinet; hinc armenta boum meritosque juvencos.

Ipse dies agitat festos; fususque per herbam,

Ignis ubi in medio, et socii cratera coronant,
Te libans, Lenæe, vocat.

VIRGILIUS.

The peasant yearly ploughs his native soil;
The lands that blest his fathers bound his toil,
Sustain his herd, his country's wealth increase,
And see his children's children sport in peace.-
He too, at times, where flames the rustic shrine,
And, rang'd around, his gay compeers recline,
In grateful leisure on some festive day
Stretch'd on the turf delights his limbs to lay,
To loose from care his disencumber'd soul,
And hail thee, Bacchus! o'er the circling bowl.
SOTHEBY.

HAD Herrick adopted any arrangement or classification for his poetry, it would probably have experienced a kinder fate. The

reader would then have had the opportunity of choosing the department most congenial to his taste, and without incurring the risque of being seduced into the perusal of matter offensive to his feelings. At present so injudiciously are the contents of his volume disposed, and so totally divested of order and propriety, that it would almost seem the poet wished to pollute and bury his best effusions in a mass of nonsense and obscenity. Nine persons out of ten who should casually dip into the collection, would, in all probability, after glancing over a few trifling epigrams, throw it down with indignation, little apprehending it contained many pieces of a truly moral and pathetic, and of an exquisitely rural and descriptive strain. Such, however, is the case, and I have, therefore, assigned sections in these papers to specimens of a MORAL and DESCRIPTIVE cast.

It has already been observed, that Herrick closes his book with seventy-nine pages of religious poetry, to which is prefixed a separate title page, under the quaint and alliterative appellation of "His Noble Numbers or His Pious Pieces." From these, it might

naturally be supposed, the examples I have to bring forward would be drawn. Our bard, however, like many others who have attempted divine themes, has completely failed to infuse into their structure the smallest portion of poetic fire. It is, therefore, to his "Hesperides," I am solely indebted for the instances I have selected, and these form only a portion of what might be produced, under this head, with equal honour to his memory.

At the commencement of his work are a series of addresses to his Muse, his Book and Verses, one of which, for its imagery, its smoothness of versification, and its pleasing delineation of the bard's content and unambitious mind, is peculiarly worthy of transcription.

HERRICK TO HIS MUSE.

Whither, Mad Maiden! wilt thou roam?
Far safer 'twere to stay at home:
Where thou may'st sit, and piping please

The poor and private Cottages.

Since Cotes and Hamlets best agree

With this thy meaner Minstrelsy.