known that he was dead, and his great heart was cold. He returned to England in 1648, to find her married, and to undergo again the horrors of imprisonment; for immediately on their landing, he and his brother, Dudley, were confined in Peter House. He bore up manfully under this double calamity, and busied himself in preparing his poems for the press, but his heart was broken.

"After the murther of Charles I.," says Anthony à Wood, "Lovelace was set at liberty, and having by that time consumed all his estate, grew very melancholy, (which brought him at length into a consumption;) became very poor in body and purse; was the object of charity; went in ragged cloathes, (whereas, when he was in his glory he wore cloth of gold and silver,) and mostly lodged in obscure and dirty places, more befitting the worst of beggars and poorest of servants, &c. He died in a mean lodging in Gunpowder-alley, near Shoe-lane, and was buried at the west end of the Church of S. Bride, alias Bridget, in London, near to the body of his kinsman Will. Lovelace of Grays-Inn, esqr., in sixteen hundred fifty and eight." Aubrey says that he died in a cellar in Long Acre. "Mr. Edm. Wyld had made collections for him, and given him money." "Geo. Petty, haberdasher in Fleet-street, carried XXs to him every Monday morning from Sir Many and Charles Cotton esqr., for months, but was never repayd." He also adds that "he was an extraordinary handsome man, but prowd.” Poor Lovelace!

His poems were published in 1649, under the title of "LUCASTA: EPODES, Odes, SONNETS, SONGS, etc." They were very popular at the time, and are so still with poets, though not so generally known as they deserve to be, owing to their not being included in any of the popular collections of English poetry. "A man may discern therein," says Edward Phillips, "sometimes those sparks of a Poetic fire, which had they been the main design, and not Parergon in some work of Heroic argument, might happily have blazed out into the perfection of sublime Poesy."

TO LUCASTA.

THE ROSE.

Sweet, serene, sky-like flower,
Haste to adorn her bower:

From thy long cloudy bed,
Shoot forth thy damask head.

New-startled blush of Flora!
The grief of pale Aurora,

Who will contest no more;
Haste, haste to strew her floor.

Vermilion ball that's given
From lip to lip in heaven;
Love's couch's coverlid;

Haste, haste to make her bed.

Dear offspring of pleased Venus,
And jolly, plump Silenus;

Haste, haste to deck the hair
Of th' only, sweetly fair.

See! rosy is her bower,

Her floor is all this flower;

Her bed a rosy nest

By a bed of roses pressed.

But early as she dresses,

Why fly you her bright tresses?

Ah, I have found, I fear:
Because her cheeks are near.

TO LUCASTA.

GOING BEYOND THE SEAS.

If to be absent were to be
Away from thee;

Or that, when I am gone,
You or I were alone;

Then, my Lucasta, might I crave

Pity from blustering wind, or swallowing wave.

But I'll not sigh one blast or gale,

To swell my sail,

'Or pay a tear to 'suage

The foaming blue-god's rage;

For whether he will let me pass

Or not, I'm still as happy as I was.

Though seas and land be 'twixt us both,
Our faith and troth,

Like separated souls,

All time and space controls:

Above the highest sphere we meet
Unseen, unknown, and greet as angels greet.

So then we do anticipate

Our after fate,

And are alive i' th' skies,

If thus our lips and eyes

Can speak like spirits unconfined
In heaven, their earthly bodies left behind.

TO ALTHEA, FROM PRISON.

When love with unconfinéd wings
Hovers within my gates,

And my divine Althea brings

To whisper at my grates;

When I lie tangled in her hair,
And fettered with her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air,
Know no such liberty.

When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,

When healths and draughts go free,
Fishes, that tipple in the deep,
Know no such liberty.

When, like committed linnets, I
With shriller throat shall sing

The mercy, sweetness, majesty,
And glories of my king;

When I shall voice aloud how good
He is, how great should be,
Enlarged winds, that curl the flood,
Know no such liberty.

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an heritage:

If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.

SONG.

[The last three stanzas of this spirited lyric being a little too free for quotation, I have

omitted them.]

Amarantha, sweet and fair,

Ah! braid no more that shining hair!

As my curious hand or eye,
Hovering round thee, let it fly.

Let it fly as unconfined

As its calm ravisher, the Wind;

Who hath left his darling, th' east,

To wanton o'er that spicy nest.

Every tress must be confessed,
But neatly tangled at the best;
Like a clue of golden thread,
Most excellently ravelléd.

Do not, then, wind up that light
In ribands, and o'ercloud in night,
Like the Sun in 's early ray,

But shake your head, and scatter day!

TO LUCASTA, ON GOING TO THE WARS.

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery

Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind,
To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such

As you, too, shall adore;

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more.

THE SCRUTINY.

Why should you say I am forsworn,

Since thine I vowed to be?

Lady, it is already morn,

And 't was last night I swore to thee
That fond impossibility.

Have I not loved thee much, and long,
A tedious twelve hours' space?

I must all other beauties wrong,

And rob thee of a new embrace,
Could I still dote upon thy face.

Not but all joy in thy brown hair
By others may be found;
But I must search the black and fair,

Like skillful mineralists that sound

For treasure in unploughed-up ground.