THE LAY OF THE LEVELER.
Among the less known writings of Francis Quarles, author of the once famous Emblems, is a volume, now become very scarce, entitled The Shepheards Oracles, delivered in certain Eglogues. The copy of it to which I have access was published in 1646, or two years after Quarles's death. This spirited poem must have been perused with intense interest by Quarles's contemporaries. But history is constantly repeating itself with more or less of modification, and The Shepheards Oracles, at least here and there, and with reference to England, reads, but for its quaintness of manner and idiom, like a production of the nineteenth century. In the course of it there occur some verses, put into the mouth of Anarchus, which are well worth resuscitating. These verses, to which I have supplied a title as above, are, in a sufficiently exact transcription, as follows:
Know, then, my brethren, heav'n is cleare,
And all the Clouds are gone;
The Righteous now shall flourish, and
Good dais are coming on.
Come, then, my Brethren, and be glad,
And eke rejoyce with me: