And burnt to ashes by thy flaming eyes,
On the chaste altar of thy hand it dies,
As to thy greater light a sacrifice.
The Glow-worm.] Sir Egerton Brydges thought that 'A stile of poetry so full of quaint and far-fetched conceits cannot be commended as the most chaste and classical'; but that, 'among trifles of this kind, The Glow-worm is singularly elegant and happy'. Perhaps a later judgement, while waiving the indispensableness, or even pre-eminence, of chastity and classicality in verse, may doubt whether The Glow-worm itself is not rather too 'elegant' to be as 'happy' as some other things even of its author's. The last verse redeems it, though, to some extent.
2 1647 'This living star of earth'. I suppose Stanley did not like the recurrence of 'star', or he may have thought that the same sound (-ar) recurred still more excessively in the rhymes. In itself the earlier reading is certainly the better.
4 erring] deceiv'd 1647.
12 'Which doth deceive' 1647.
15 thy] the 1647.