When sickness makes him pale and wan.
Oh! mighty love! man is one world, and hath
Another to attend him."
Besides his "Temple," Herbert wrote a prose work, "The Priest to the Temple; or, the Country Parson," which is charmingly full of the simple, child-like piety of the author. He also collected a great number of proverbs, under the title of "Jacula Prudentum."
The third of the trio of poets who seem to class themselves together by their quaintness, their fancy, and their piety, is Francis Quarles, (b., 1592; d., 1644) a man who has been treated by many critics as a mere poetaster, but who is one of the most sterling poets which English genius has produced. Quarles was a gentleman and a scholar; in his youth he was cup-bearer to Elizabeth of Bohemia, and was finally ruined by taking the Royal side in the Civil Wars. He wrote various poetical works; "Argalus and Parthenia," "A Feast for Worms," "Zion's Elegies," and a series of elegies on the death of a friend, the son of Bishop Aylmer. But the great work of Quarles is his "Emblems," which originated in a Latin poem by Herman Hugo, a Jesuit, called "Pia Desideria." This book, condemned and overlooked by the great critics, like Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," has, from generation to generation, adorned with curious woodcuts, circulated amongst the people in town and country, till it has won an extraordinary popularity: and that it has well deserved it, we need only read such verses as these to convince ourselves:—
"I love, and have some cause to love, the earth:
She is my Maker's creature—therefore good;
She is my mother—for she gave me birth;
She is my tender nurse—she gives me food.
But what's a creature, Lord, compared with Thee?