We say our hearts are great and cannot yield;
Because they cannot yield, it proves them poor:
Great hearts are task’d beyond their power, but seld
The weakest lion will the loudest roar.
Truth’s school for certain doth this same allow,
High-heartedness doth sometimes teach to bow.
A noble heart doth teach a virtuous scorn,
To scorn to owe a duty overlong;
To scorn to be for benefits forborne,
To scorn to lie, to scorn to do a wrong.
To scorn to bear an injury in mind,
To scorn a free-born heart slave-like to bind.
But if for wrongs we needs revenge must have,
Then be our vengeance of the noblest kind;
Do we his body from our fury save,
And let our hate prevail against our mind?
What can, ’gainst him a greater vengeance be,
Than make his foe more worthy far than he?
Had Mariam scorn’d to leave a due unpaid,
She would to Herod then have paid her love,
And not have been by sullen passion sway’d.
To fix her thoughts all injury above
Is virtuous pride. Had Mariam thus been proud.
Long famous life to her had been allow’d.
Margaret duchess of Newcastle, who died in 1673, “filled nearly twelve volumes folio with plays, poems, orations, philosophical discourses,” and miscellaneous pieces. Her lord also amused himself with his pen. This noble pair were honoured by the ridicule of Horace Walpole, who had more taste than feeling; and, notwithstanding the great qualities of the duke, who sacrificed three quarters of a million in thankless devotion to the royal cause, and, though the virtues of his duchess are unquestionable, the author of “The Dormant and Extinct Baronage of England” joins Walpole in contempt of their affection, and the means they employed to render each other happy during retirement. This is an extract from one of the duchess’s poems:—
Melancholy.
I dwell in groves that gilt are with the sun,
Sit on the banks by which clear waters run;
In summers hot down in a shade I lie.
My music is the buzzing of a fly;
I walk in meadows, where grows fresh green grass,
In fields, where corn is high, I often pass;
Walk up the hills, where round I prospects see,
Some brushy woods, and some all champains be;
Returning back, I in fresh pastures go,
To hear how sheep do bleat, and cows do low;
In winter cold, when nipping frosts come on,
Then I do live in a small house alone;
Altho’ tis plain, yet cleanly ’tis within,
Like to a soul that’s pure and clear from sin;
And there I dwell in quiet and still peace,
Not fill’d with cares how riches to increase;
I wish nor seek for vain and fruitless pleasures,
No riches are, but what the mind intreasures.
Thus am I solitary, live alone.
Yet better lov’d, the more that I am known;
And tho’ my face ill-favour’d at first sight,
After acquaintance it will give delight.
Refuse me not, for I shall constant be,
Maintain your credit and your dignity.
Elizabeth Thomas, (born 1675, died 1730,) in the fifteenth year of her age, was disturbed in her mind, by the sermons she heard in attending her grandmother at meetings, and by the reading of high predestinarian works. She “languished for some time,” in expectation of the publication of bishop Burnet’s work on the Thirty-nine Articles. When she read it, the bishop seemed to her more candid in stating the doctrines of the sects, than explicit in his own opinion; and, in this perplexity, retiring to her closet, she entered on a self-discussion, and wrote the following poem:—
Predestination, or, the Resolution.