deformity to
any one who has the sense of poetical form. It is an unwearying delight to
read and re-read the second of his poems, the "Persuasions to Love,"
addressed to a certain A. L. That the sentiment is common enough matters
little; the commonest things in poetry are always the best. But the
delicate interchange of the catalectic and acatalectic dimeter, the
wonderful plays and changes of cadence, the opening, as it were, of fresh
stops at the beginning of each new paragraph of the verse, so that the
music acquires a new colour, the felicity of the several phrases, the
cunning heightening of the passion as the poet comes to "Oh! love me then,
and now begin it," and the dying fall of the close, make up to me, at
least, most charming pastime. It is not the same kind of pleasure, no
doubt, as that given by such an outburst as Crashaw's, to be mentioned
presently, or by such pieces as the great soliloquies of Shakespere. Any
one may say, if he likes to use words which are question-begging, when not
strictly meaningless, that it is not such a "high" kind. But it is a kind,
and in that kind perfect.

Carew's best pieces, besides _The Rapture_, are the beautiful "Ask me no
more," the first stanza of which is the weakest; the fine couplet poem,
"The Cruel Mistress," whose closing distich--

"Of such a goddess no times leave record,
That burned the temple where she was adored"--

Dryden conveyed with the wise and unblushing boldness which great poets
use; the "Deposition from love," written in one of those combinations of
eights and sixes, the melodious charm of which seems to have died with the
seventeenth century; the song, "He that loves a rosy cheek," which, by the
unusual morality of its sentiments, has perhaps secured a fame not quite
due to its poetical merits; the epitaph on Lady Mary Villers; the song
"Would you know what's soft?" the song to his inconstant mistress:

"When thou, poor excommunicate
From all the joys of love, shalt see
The full reward, and glorious fate
Which my strong faith shall purchase me,
Then curse thine own inconstancy.

"A fairer hand than thine shall cure
That heart which thy false oaths did wound;
And to my soul, a soul more pure
Than thine, shall by love's hand be bound,
And both with equal glory crown'd.

"Then shalt thou weep, entreat, complain
To Love, as I did once to thee;
When all thy tears shall be as vain
A