Where sleeps the north wind when the south inspires
Life in the Spring, and gathers into quires
The scatter'd nightingales; whose subtle ears
Heard first the harmonious language of the spheres;
Whence hath the stone magnetic force t'allure
Th'enamour'd iron; from a seed impure.
Or natural, did first the mandrake grow;
What power in the ocean makes it flow;
What strange materials is the azure sky
Compacted of; of what its brightest eye
The ever flaming sun; what people are
In th' unknown world; what worlds in every star:—
Let curious fancies at these secrets rove;
Castara, what we know we'll practise—love.
The "Lines on her fainting;" those on "The fear of death,"—
Why should we fear to melt away in death?
May we but die together! &c.
On her sigh,—
Were but that sigh a penitential breath
That thou art mine, it would blow with it death,
T' inclose me in my marble, where I 'd be
Slave to the tyrant worms to set thee free!
His self-congratulation on his own happiness, in his epistle to his uncle, Lord Morley; are all in the same strain of gentle and elegant feeling. The following are among the last addressed to his wife.
Give me a heart, where no impure
Disorder'd passions rage;
Which jealousie doth not obscure,
Nor vanity t' expense engage;
Not wooed to madness by quaint oathes,
Or the fine rhetorick of cloathes;
Which not the softness of the age
To vice or folly doth decline;
Give me that heart, Castara, for 'tis thine.
Take thou a heart, where no new look
Provokes new appetite;
With no fresh charm of beauty took,
Or wanton stratagem of wit;
Not idly wandering here and there,
Led by an am'rous eye or ear;
Aiming each beauteous mark to hit;
Which virtue doth to one confine:
Take thou that heart, Castara, for 'tis mine.
It was owing to his affection for his wife, as well as his own retired and studious habits, that Habington lived through the civil wars without taking any active part on either side. It should seem that, at such a period, no man of a lofty and generous spirit could have avoided joining the party or principles, either of Falkland and Grandison, or of Hampden and Hutchinson. But Habington's family had already suffered, in fortune and in fame, by their interference with State matters; and without, in any degree, implicating himself with either party, he passed through those stormy and eventful times,
As one who dreams
Of idleness, in groves Elysian;