No tear-floods nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys,
To tell the laity of our love.
"Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent."
George Wither (b., 1588; d., 1667) has much less of what a contemporary happily styled the "Occult School." He says himself that he took "little pleasure in rhymes, fictions, or conceited compositions for their own sakes," but preferred "such as flowed forth without study;" and indeed, he has far more nature. He was confined for years in the Marshalsea prison, for publishing a biting satire, called "Abuses Stripped and Whipped," and there he wrote a long allegorical poem, called "The Shepherds' Hunting," in which his description of Poetry is a perfect gem of fancy and natural feeling:—
"By the murmur of a spring,
Or the least boughs rustling,