lene.

* * * * *

"Every morn from hence,
A brisk cherub something sips,
Whose soft influence
Adds sweetness to his sweetest lips;
Then to his music, and his song
Tastes of this breakfast all day long.

"Not in the evening's eyes,
When they red with weeping are
For the sun that dies,
Sits sorrow with a face so fair.
Nowhere but here did ever meet
Sweetness so sad, sadness so sweet.

"When Sorrow would be seen
In her brightest majesty,
For she is a queen,
Then is she drest by none but thee.
Then, and only then, she wears
Her richest pearls, I mean thy tears.

"The dew no more will weep,
The primrose's pale cheek to deck;
The dew no more will sleep,
Nuzzled in the lily's neck.
Much rather would it tremble here,
And leave them both to be thy tear."

These are some of Crashaw's "Steps to the Temple"--verily he walked
thither on velvet.

"Wishes to his supposed Mistress," is more than a pretty enumeration of
the good qualities of woman as they rise in the heart of a noble, gallant
lover:

"Whoe'er she be,
That not impossible she,
That shall command my heart and me:

"Where'er she lie,
Locked up from mortal eye,
In shady leaves of destiny:

"Till that ripe birth
Of studied fate, stand forth,
And teach her fair steps to our earth:

"Till that divine
Idea take a shrine
Of crystal flesh, through which to shine:

"Meet you her, my wishes,
Bespeak her to my blisses,
And be ye call'd my absent kisses."

We are not reprinting Crashaw, and must forbear further quotation. It is
enough if we have presented to the reader a lily or a rose from his pages,
and have given a clue to that treasure-house--

"A box where sweets compacted lie."

A generation nurtured in poetic susceptibility by the genius of Keats and
Tennyson, should not forget the early muse of Crashaw. His verse is the
very soul of tenderness and imaginative luxury: less intellectual, less
severe in the formation of a broad, manly character than Herbert; catching
up the brighter inspirations of Vaughan, and excelling him in richness--it
has a warm, graceful garb of its own. It is tinged with the glowing hues
of Spenser's fancy; baptized in the fountains of sacred love, it draws an
earthly inspiration from t