Love and Death o’ th’ way once meeting,
Having past a friendly greeting,
Sleep their weary eye-lids closing,
Lay them down, themselves reposing;
When this fortune did befall ’em,
Which after did so much appal ’em;
Love, whom divers cares molested,
Could not sleep; but, whilst Death rested,
All away in haste he posts him.
But his haste full dearly costs him;
For it chanced, that, going to sleeping,
Both had giv’n their darts in keeping
Unto Night; who (Error’s Mother)
Blindly knowing not th’ one from th’ other,
Gave Love Death’s, and ne’er perceiv’d it,
Whilst as blindly Love receiv’d it:
Since which time, their darts confounding,
Love now kills, instead of wounding;
Death, our hearts with sweetness filling,
Gently wounds, instead of killing.
[From “Andronicus,” a Tragedy, by Philonax Lovekin, 1661.]
Effect of Religious Structures on different minds.
Crato. I grieve the Chapel was defaced; ’twas stately.
Cleobulus. I love no such triumphant Churches—
They scatter my devotion; whilst my sight
Is courted to observe their sumptuous cost,
I find my heart lost in my eyes;
Whilst that a holy horror seems to dwell
Within a dark obscure and humble cell.
Crato. But I love Churches, mount up to the skies
For my devotion rises with their roof:
Therein my soul doth heav’n anticipate.
Song for Sleep.
Come, Somnus, with thy potent charms,
And seize this Captive in thy arms;
And sweetly drop on every sense
Thy soul-refreshing influence.
His sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste,
Unto the peace do thou bind fast.—
On working brains, at school all day,
At night thou dost bestow a play,
And troubled minds thou dost set free;
Thou mak’st both friends and foes agree:
All are alike, who live by breath,
In thee, and in thy brother Death.
[From “Don Quixote,” a Comedy, in three parts, by Thomas D’Urfey, 1694.]