THE SNAIL.

WISE emblem of our politic world,

Sage Snail, within thine own self curled,
Instruct me softly to make haste,
Whilst these my feet go slowly fast.

Compendious Snail thou seem'st to me Large Euclid's strict epitome;

And in each diagram dost fling

Thee from the point unto the ring.

A figure now triangular,

And oval now, and now a square,

And then a serpentine, dost crawl;

Now a straight line, now crook'd, now all.

Preventing rival of the day,

Thou art up and openest thy ray;
And, ere the morn cradles the moon,
Thou art broke into a beauteous noon.
Then, when the Sun sups in the deep,
Thy silver horns ere Cynthia's peep;
And thou, from thine own liquid bed,
New Phoebus, heav'st thy pleasant head.

Who shall a name for thee create,
Deep riddle of mysterious state?
Bold Nature, that gives common birth
To all products of seas and earth,
Of thee, as earthquakes, is afraid,

Nor will thy dire delivery aid.

Thou, thine own daughter, then, and sire,

That son and mother art entire,

That big still with thy self dost go,
And liv'st an aged embryo;

That, like the cubs of India,.
Thou from thyself awhile dost play;
But, frighted with a dog or gun,
In thine own belly thou dost run,

And as thy house was thine own womb,
So thine own womb concludes thy tomb

But now I must (anàlysed king)
Thy economic virtues sing;
Thou great staid husband still within,
Thou thee (that's thine) dost discipline;
And, when thou art to progress bent,
Thou mov'st thy self and tenement.
As warlike Scythians travelled, you
Remove your men and city too.

Then, after a sad dearth and rain,
Thou scatterest thy silver train ;
And, when the trees grow nak'd and old,
Thou cloathest them with cloth of gold,
Which from thy bowels thou dost spin,
And draw from the rich mines within.

Now hast thou changed thee saint, and made
Thyself a fane that's cupulaed;

And in thy wreathed cloister thou

Walkest thine own grey-friar too;

Strict and locked up, thou art hood all o'er,
And ne'er eliminat'st thy door.

On salads thou dost feed severe,

And 'stead of beads thou dropp'st a tear.
And, when to rest each calls the bell,
Thou sleep'st within thy marble cell,
Where, in dark contemplation placed,
The sweets of Nature thou dost taste;
Who now, with Time, thy days resolve,
And in a jelly thee dissolve,-
Like a shot star, which doth repair
Upward, and rarify the air.

THOMAS STANLEY.

[Son of a knight in Hertfordshire: born in 1620, died in 1678. Author of a laborious History of Philosophy, and of various poetical compositions, including translations from the classic and some modern languages].

NOTE ON ANACREON.

LET'S not rhyme the hours away;
Friends! we must no longer play:
Brisk Lyæus-see!-invites
To more ravishing delights.

Let's give o'er this fool Apollo,

Nor his fiddle longer follow :

Fie upon his forked hill,

With his fiddlestick and quill!

And the Muses, though they're gamesome,

They are neither young nor handsome;

And their freaks, in sober sadness,

Are a mere poetic madness:

Pegasus is but a horse;

He that follows him is worse.

See, the rain soaks to the skin,—

Make it rain as well within.

Wine, my boy! we'll sing and laugh,

All night revel, rant, and quaff;

Till the morn, stealing behind us,
At the table sleepless find us.
When our bones, alas! shall have
A cold lodging in the grave,

When swift Death shall overtake us,
We shall sleep and none can wake us.
Drink we then the juice o' the vine,
Make our breasts Lyæus' shrine.
Bacchus, our debauch beholding,—
By thy image I am moulding,
Whilst my brains I do replenish

With this draught of unmixed Rhenish;
By thy full-branched ivy-twine;

By this sparkling glass of wine;

By thy thyrsus so renowned;

By the healths with which thou'rt crowned;

By the feasts which thou dost prize;

By thy numerous victories;

By the howls by Mænads made;

By this haut-gout carbonade;
By thy colours red and white;
By the tavern, thy delight;
By the sound thy orgies spread;
By the shine of noses red;
By thy table free for all;
By the jovial carnival;

By thy language cabalistic;

By thy cymbal, drum, and his stick ;

By the tunes thy quart-pots strike up ;

By thy sighs, the broken hiccup;
By thy mystic set of ranters;

By thy never-tamèd panthers;

By this sweet, this fresh and free air;

By thy goat, as chaste as we are;
By thy fulsome Cretan lass;
By the old man on the ass;
By thy cousins in mixed shapes;

By the flower of fairest grapes;
By thy bisks famed far and wide;
By thy store of neats'-tongues dried ;
By thy incense, Indian smoke;
By the joys thou dost provoke;
By this salt Westphalia gammon ;
By these sausages that inflame one ;
By thy tall majestic flagons;
By mass, tope, and thy flapdragons;
By this olive's unctuous savour;
By this orange, the wine's flavour;
By this cheese o'errun with mites;
By thy dearest favourites ;-

To thy frolic order call us,
Knights of the deep bowl install us ;
And, to show thyself divine,
Never let it want for wine.

ANDREW MARVELL.

[Born at Hull, 1620; died on 16th August 1678, with some vague suspicion of poison. He became assistant to Milton as Cromwell's Latin secretary, and was afterwards (1660) elected to Parliament, where he continued till the close of his life-a zealous delegate of his constituents, and opponent of arbitrary measures. Marvell appears, in biographic and political record, as a thoroughly manly person; and the same is the prevailing character of his poetic work. We observe vigorous strenuous lines, a bluff and sometimes boisterous humour, keen fencing-play of wit, a strong temper, as ready to overstate a prejudice as to pile a panegyric; often too a sharp thrill of tenderness, and a full sense and full power of expressing beauty].

MOURNING.

You that decipher out the fate

Of human offsprings from the skies,
What mean these infants which of late
Spring from the stars of Chlora's eyes?
Her eyes, confused and doubled o'er
With tears suspended ere they flow,
Seem bending upwards, to restore

To heaven, whence it came, their woe :

When, moulding of the watery spheres,
Slow drops untie themselves away;
As if she, with those precious tears,

Would strew the ground where Strephon lay.

Yet some affirm, pretending art,

Her eyes have so her bosom drowned,

Only to soften, near her heart,

A place to fix another wound.

And, while vain pomp does her restrain
Within her solitary bower,
She courts herself in amorous rain;
Herself both Danae and the shower.

Nay, others, bolder, hence esteem
Joy now so much her master grown

That whatsoever does but seem

Like grief is from her windows thrown ;—

Nor that she pays, while she survives,

To her dead love this tribute due;

But casts abroad these donatives

At the installing of a new.

How wide they dream! the Indian slaves
Who sink for pearl through seas profound
Would find her tears yet deeper waves,

And not of one the bottom sound.
I yet my silent judgment keep,
Disputing not what they believe :
But sure, as oft as women weep,
It is to be supposed they grieve.

THE CHARACTER OF HOLLAND.
HOLLAND, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but the offscouring of the British sand,
And so much earth as was contributed

By English pilots when they heaved the lead,
Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion fell,
Of shipwrecked cockle and the mussel-shell,-
This indigested vomit of the sea

Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.

Glad then, as miners who have found the ore, They, with mad labour, fished the land to shore, And dived as desperately for each piece Of earth as if't had been of ambergreece; Collecting anxiously small loads of clay, Less than what building swallows bear away, Or than those pills which sordid beetles roll, Transfusing into them their dunghill soul.

How did they rivet, with gigantic piles, Thorough the centre their new-catched miles, And to the stake a struggling country bound, Where barking waves still bait the forced ground; Building their watery Babel far more high, To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky! Yet still his claim the injured ocean laid, And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played; As if on purpose it on land had come To show them what's their mare liberum. A daily deluge over them does boil; The earth and water play at level-coyl. The fish oft-times the burgher dispossessed, And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest ; And oft the tritons and the sea-nymphs saw Whole shoals of Dutch served up for cabillau ; Or, as they over the new level ranged,

For pickled herring, pickled heeren changed. Nature, it seemed, ashamed of her mistake, Would throw their land away at duck and drake : Therefore necessity, that first made kings, Something like government among them brings. For, as with pygmies, who best kills the crane,