A CELEBRATION OF CHARIS.

I.

HIS EXCUSE FOR LOVING.

PET it not your wonder move,
Less your laughter, that I love.
Though I now write fifty years,'
I have had, and have my peers;
Poets, though divine, are men :
Some have loved as old again.
And it is not always face,

Clothes, or fortune, gives the grace;

1 Though I now write fifty years.] This fixes the date of this little collection to 1624, the last year of health, perhaps, which the poet ever enjoyed.

There is a considerable degree of ease and elegance in these effusions; and, indeed, it may be observed in general, of our poet's lyrics, that a vein of sprightliness and fancy runs through them which a reader of his epistles, &c., is scarcely prepared to expect. In the latter, Jonson, like several other poets of his age, or rather of his school, who also succeeded in lyrics, sedulously reigns in the imagination, and contents himself with strength of sentiment and thought, in simple but vigorous language, and unambitious rhyme. His" Charis" has all the vivid colouring of the best ages of antiquity; and it is truly delightful to mark the grace and ease with which this great poet plays with the boundless mass of his literary acquisitions.

Or the feature, or the youth:
But the language, and the truth,
With the ardour, and the passion,
Gives the lover weight and fashion.
If you then will read the story,
First, prepare you to be sorry,
That you never knew till now,
Either whom to love, or how:
But be glad, as soon with me,
When you know that this is she,
Of whose beauty it was sung,
She shall make the old man young,
Keep the middle age at stay,
And let nothing high decay;
Till she be the reason, why,
All the world for love may die.

II.

HOW HE SAW HER.

BEHELD her on a day,

When her look out-flourish'd May: And her dressing did out-brave All the pride the fields then have : Far I was from being stupid,

For I ran and call'd on Cupid;—

Love, if thou wilt ever see

Mark of glory, come with me;
Where's thy quiver? bend thy bow;
Here's a shaft,-thou art too slow!
And, withal, I did untie

Every cloud about his eye;

But he had not gain'd his sight
Sooner than he lost his might,
Or his
courage; for
for away

Straight he ran, and durst not stay,

Letting bow and arrow fall :
Not for any threat, or call,

Could be brought once back to look.
I fool-hardy, there up took
Both the arrow he had quit,
And the bow, with thought to hit
This my object; but she threw
Such a lightning, as I drew,
At my face, that took my sight,
And my motion from me quite;
So that there I stood a stone,
Mock'd of all, and call'd of one,
(Which with grief and wrath I heard,)
Cupid's statue with a beard;

Or else one that play'd his

In a Hercules his shape.

ape,

III.

WHAT HE SUFFERED.

FTER many scorns like these,
Which the prouder beauties please;
She content was to restore

Eyes and limbs, to hurt me more,

And would, on conditions, be
Reconciled to Love and me.
First, that I must kneeling yield
Both the bow and shaft I held
Unto her; which Love might take
At her hand, with oaths, to make
Me the scope of his next draft,
Aimed, with that self-same shaft.
He no sooner heard the law,
But the arrow home did draw,
And, to gain her by his art,
Left it sticking in my heart: