gues thou'lt bury in thy grave?
For even now thou seem'st to us
On this gulphs brink a Curtius.
XI.
And now th' art faln (magnanimous Fly)
In, where thine Ocean doth fry,
Like the Sun's son, who blush'd the flood
To a complexion of blood.
XII.
Yet, see! my glad auricular
Redeems thee (though dissolv'd) a star,
Flaggy<78.3> thy wings, and scorch'd thy thighs,
Thou ly'st a double sacrifice.
XIII.
And now my warming, cooling breath
Shall a new life afford in death;
See! in the hospital of my hand
Already cur'd, thou fierce do'st stand.
XIV.
Burnt insect! dost thou reaspire
The moist-hot-glasse and liquid fire?
I see 'tis such a pleasing pain,
Thou would'st be scorch'd and drown'd again.
<78.1> i.e. distil.
<78.2> Lovelace was by no means peculiar in the fondness which
he has shown in this poem and elsewhere for figures drawn from
the language of alchemy.
"Retire into thy grove of eglantine,
Where I will all those ravished sweets distill
Through Love's alembic, and with chemic skill
From the mix'd mass one sovereign balm derive."
Carew's POEMS (1640), ed. 1772, p. 77.
"----I will try
From the warm limbeck of my eye,
In such a method to distil
Tears on thy marble nature----"
Shirley's POEMS (Works by Dyce, vi. 407).
"Nature's Confectioner, the BEE,
Whose suckers are moist ALCHYMIE,
The still of his refining Mould,
Minting the garden into gold."
Cleveland's POEMS, ed. 1669, p. 4.
"Fisher is here with purple wing,
Who brings me to the Spring-head, where
Crystall is Lymbeckt all the year."
Lord Westmoreland's OTIA SACRA, 1648, p. 137,
<78.3> WEAK. The word was once not very uncommon in writings.
Bacon, Spenser, &c. use it; but it is now, I believe, confined
to Somersetshire and the bordering counties.
"LUKE. A south wind
Shall sooner soften marble, and the rain,
That slides down gently from his flaggy wings,
O'erflow the Alps."
Massinger's CITY MADAM, 1658.
FEMALE GLORY.
Mongst the worlds wonders, there doth yet remain
One greater than the rest, that's all those o're again,
And her own self beside: A Lady, whose soft breast
Is with vast honours soul and virtues life possest.
Fair as original light first from the chaos shot,
W
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