This is yet more indelicate:
As the sweet sweat of roses in a still,
As that which from chas’d musk-cat’s pores doth trill,
As th’ almighty balm of th’ early east;
Such are the sweet drops of my mistress’ breast.
And on her neck her skin such lustre sets,
They seem no sweat drops, but pearl coronets:
Rank, sweaty froth thy mistress’ brow defiles.—Donne.
Their expressions sometimes raise horror, when they intend perhaps to be pathetic:
As men in hell are from diseases free,
So from all other ills am I,
Free from their known formality:
But all pains eminently lie in thee.—Cowley.
They were not always strictly curious, whether the opinions from which they drew their illustrations were true; it was enough that they were popular. Bacon remarks, that some falsehoods are continued by tradition, because they supply commodious allusions.
It gave a piteous groan, and so it broke:
In vain it something would have spoke;
The love within too strong for’t was,
Like poison put into a Venice-glass.—Cowley.
In forming descriptions, they looked out not for images, but for conceits. Night has been a common subject, which poets have contended to adorn. Dryden’s Night is well known; Donne’s is as follows:
Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest:
Time’s dead low-water; when all minds divest
To-morrow’s business; when the labourers have
Such rest in bed, that their last church-yard grave,
Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this;
Now when the client, whose last hearing is
To-morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man,
Who, when he opes his eyes, must shut them the
Again by death, although sad watch he keep;
Doth practise dying by a little sleep:
Thou at this midnight seest me.
It must be, however, confessed of these writers, that if they are upon common subjects often unnecessarily and unpoetically subtle; yet, where scholastic speculation can be properly admitted, their copiousness and acuteness may justly be admired. What Cowley has written upon Hope shows an unequalled fertility of invention:
Hops, whose weak being mind is,
Alike if it succeed and if it miss;
Whom good or ill does equally confound,
And both the horns of fate’s dilemma wound;
Vain shadow! which dust vanish quite,
Both at full noon and perfect night!
The stars have not a possibility
Of blessing thee;
If things then from their end we happy call
’Tis Hope is the most hopeless thing of all.
Hope, thou bold tester of delight,
Who, whilst thou shouldst but taste, devour’st it quite!
Thou bring’st us an estate, yet leav’st us poor
By clogging it with legacies before!
The joys, which we entire should wed,
Come deflowr’d virgins to our bed;
Good fortunes without gain imported be,
Such mighty custom’s paid to thee:
For joy, like wine kept close, does better taste
If it take air before its spirits waste.