"Come kiss me with those lips of thine,
For better are thy loves than wine;
And as the pourèd ointments be
Such is the savour of thy name,
And for the sweetness of the same
The virgins are in love with thee."

Compare the following almost unbelievable rubbish—

"As we with water wash away
Uncleanness from our flesh,
And sometimes often in a day
Ourselves are fain to wash."

Even in his earlier and purely secular work there is something, though less of this inequality, and its cause is not at all dubious. No poet, certainly no poet of merit, seems to have written with such absolute spontaneity and want of premeditation as Wither. The metre which was his favourite, and which he used with most success—the trochaic dimeter catalectic of seven syllables—lends itself almost as readily as the octosyllable to this frequently fatal fluency; but in Wither's hands, at least in his youth and early manhood, it is wonderfully successful, as here:—

"And sometimes, I do admire
All men burn not with desire.
Nay, I muse her servants are not
Pleading love: but O they dare not:
And I, therefore, wonder why
They do not grow sick and die.
Sure they would do so, but that,
By the ordinance of Fate,
There is some concealed thing
So each gazer limiting,
He can see no more of merit
Than beseems his worth and spirit.
For, in her, a grace there shines
That o'erdaring thoughts confines,
Making worthless men despair
To be loved of one so fair.
Yea the Destinies agree
Some good judgments blind should be:
And not gain the power of knowing
Those rare beauties, in her growing.
Reason doth as much imply,
For, if every judging eye
Which beholdeth her should there
Find what excellences are;
All, o'ercome by those perfections
Would be captive to affections.
So (in happiness unblest)
She for lovers should not rest."

Nor had he at times a less original and happy command of the rhymed decasyllabic couplet, which he sometimes handles after a fashion which makes one almost think of Dryden, and sometimes after a fashion (as in the lovely description of Alresford Pool at the opening of Philarete) which makes one think of more modern poets still. Besides this metrical proficiency and gift, Wither at this time (he thought fit to apologise for it later) had a very happy knack of blending the warm amatory enthusiasm of his time with sentiments of virtue and decency. There is in him absolutely nothing loose or obscene, and yet he is entirely free from the milk-and-water propriety which sometimes irritates the reader in such books as Habington's Castara. Wither is never mawkish, though he is never loose, and the swing of his verse at its best is only equalled by the rush of thought and feeling which animates it. As it is perhaps necessary to justify this high opinion, we may as well give the "Alresford Pool" above noted. It is like Browne, but it is better than anything Browne ever did; being like Browne, it is not unlike Keats; it is also singularly like Mr. William Morris.

"For pleasant was that Pool; and near it, then,
Was neither rotten marsh nor boggy fen.
It was not overgrown with boisterous sedge,
Nor grew there rudely, then, along the edge
A bending willow, nor a prickly bush,
Nor broad-leafed flag, nor reed, nor knotty rush:
But here, well ordered, was a grove with bowers;
There, grassy plots, set round about with flowers.
Here, you might, through the water, see the land
Appear, strewed o'er with white or yellow sand.
Yon, deeper was it; and the wind, by whiffs,
Would make it rise, and wash the little cliffs;
On which, oft pluming, sate, unfrighted then
The gagling wild goose, and the snow-white swan,
With all those flocks of fowl, which, to this day
Upon those quiet waters breed and play."

When to this gift of description is added a frequent inspiration of pure fancy, it is scarcely surprising that—

"Such a strain as might befit
Some brave Tuscan poet's wit,"

to borrow a couplet of his own, often adorns Wither's verse.