To which, soft whistles of the wind,
And warbling murmurs of a brook,
And varied notes of leaves that shook,
And harmony of parts did bind.

*

When, with a love none can express,
That mutually happy pair,
Melander and Celinda fair,

The season with their loves did bless.

Walking thus tow'rds a pleasant grove,
Which did, it seem'd, in new delight
The pleasures of the time unite,
To give a triumph to their love,

They staid at last, and on the grass
Reposed so, as o'er his breast

She bow'd her gracious head to rest, Such a weight as no burthen was.

*

Long their fix'd eyes to heaven bent
Unchanged, they did never move,
As if so great and pure a love
No glass but it could represent.

When with a sweet though troubled look

She first brake silence, saying, "Dear friend, O that our love might take no end, Or never had beginning took!

"I speak not this with a false heart;"
Wherewith his hand she gently strain'd;
"Or that would change a love maintain'd
With so much love on either part.

'Nay, I protest, though Death with his Worst counsel should divide us here, His terrors could not make me fear

Το

come where your lov'd

presence is.

"Only, if love's fire with the breath Of life be kindled, I doubt,

With our last air 'twill be breath'd out, And quenched with the cold of death."

Then, with a look, it seem'd denied
All earthly power but hers, yet so
As if to her breath he did owe
This borrow'd life, he thus replied:

"And shall our love, so far beyond That low and dying appetite,

And which so chaste desires unite, Not hold in an eternal bond?

"O no, beloved! I am most sure
Those virtuous habits we acquire,
As being with the soul intire,
Must with it evermore endure.

*

*

"Else should our souls in vain elect; And vainer yet were heaven's laws, When to an everlasting cause

They gave a perishing effect.

"Nor here on earth then, nor above,
Our good affection can impair :
For, where God doth admit the fair,
Think you that he excludeth love?

"These

eyes again thine eyes shall see, And hands again these hands infold ; And all chaste pleasures can be told Shall with us everlasting be.

"For if no use of sense remain

When bodies once this life forsake,

Or they could no delight partake,

Why should they ever rise again?

"Let then no doubt, Celinda, touch,
Much less your fairest mind invade :
Were not our souls immortal made,
Our equal loves can make them such."

The following Epitaph on himself (which is not noticed in Walpole's Life of Lord Herbert) is too characteristic of the writer not to deserve insertion.

THE monument which thou beholdest here

Presents EDWARD LORD HERBERT to thy sight; A man who was so free from either hope or fear To have or lose this ordinary light,

That, when to elements his body turned were,
He knew, that as those elements would fight,
So his immortal soul should find above,

With his Creator, peace, joy, truth, and love.

DABRIDGCOURT BELCHIER,

THE eldest son of William Belchier, of Gillesborough, in Northamptonshire, Esq., born about 1581, entered at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 1597, and afterwards at Christ-Church, Oxford, where he took the degree of B.A. in 1600. Some time after this he went to Utrecht, where he wrote a comedy called " Hans Beer Pot his Invisible Comedy of See me and See me not, acted in the Low Countries by an honest Company of Health Drinkers," 1618, 4to, a work which has little to recommend it except its rarity. But the following song, if it be (like the rest of the comedy) translated from the Dutch, may possibly be thought worth preserving, as a specimen of Batavian fancy.

Belchier died in the Low Countries, 1621, having, according to Wood," wrote several poems, and made other translations."

those banks,

WALKING in a shadowy grove,
Near silver streams fair gliding,
Where trees in ranks did grace
And nymphs had their abiding;
Here as I staid, I saw a maid,
A beauteous lovely creature ;
With angel face, and goddess' grace,
Of such exceeding feature: