"From toil and pressing cares

How may ye respite find,

A sanctuary from soul-thralling snares,
A port to harbour sure,

In spite of waves and wind,

Which shall when Time's hour-glass is run, endure?

"Not happy is that life

Which ye as happy hold;

No; but a sea of fears, a field of strife,

Charged on a throne to sit,

With diadems of gold,

Preserved by force, and still observed by wit.

"Huge treasures to enjoy,

Of all her gems spoil Inde,

All Seres' silk in garments to employ,
Deliciously to feed,

The phoenix' plumes to find

To rest upon, or deck your purple bed;

"Frail beauty to abuse,

And, wanton Sybarites,

On past or present touch of sense to muse;
Never to hear of noise

But what the ear delights,

Sweet music's charms, or charming flatterer's voice.

"Nor can it bliss you bring

Hid nature's depths to know,

Why matter changeth, whence each form doth spring: Nor that your fame should range,

And after-worlds it blow

From Tanäis to Nile, from Nile to Gange.

"All these have not the power

To free the mind from fears,

Nor hideous horror can allay one hour,

When Death in stealth doth glance,

In sickness lurk, or years,

And wakes the soul from out her mortal trance.

"No, but blest life is this:

With chaste and pure desire

To turn unto the load-star of all blis

On God the mind to rest, Burnt up with sacred fire, Poscessing Him, to be by Hir

"When to the balmy east,

Sun doth his light impart,

Or when he diveth in the lowly west,
And ravisheth the day,

With spotless hand and heart,

Him cheerfully to praise, and to Him pray.

"To heed each action so

As ever in his sight,

More fearing doing ill than passive woe;

Not to seem other thing

Than what ye are aright;

Never to do what may repentance bring.

"Not to be blown with pride,

Nor moved at glory's breath,

Which shadow-like, on wings of time doth glide; So malice to disarm,

And conquer hasty wrath,

As to do good to those that work your harm.

"To hatch no base desires,

Or gold or land to gain,

Well pleased with what by virtue one acquires; To have the wit and will

Consorting in one strain,

Than what is good to have no higher skill.

"Never on neighbour's well

With cockatrice's eye

To look, nor make another's heaven your hell;
Nor be to beauty thrall;

All fruitless love to fly,

Yet loving still a love transcending all.

"A love which while it burns

The soul with fairest beams,

To that uncreated Sun the soul it turns,
And makes such beauty prove

That, if sense saw her gleams

All lookers-on would pine and die for love.

"Who such a life doth live,

Ye happy even may call,

Ere ruthless Death a wishéd end him give;
And after then, when given,

Move happy by his fall,

For human's earth enjoying angels' heaven.

"Swift is your mortal race,

And glassy is the field;

Vast are desires not limited by grace:
Life a weak taper is:

Then, while it light doth yield,

Leave flying toys, embrace this lasting bliss."

This when the nymph had said,

She dived within the flood,

Whose face with smiling curls long after staid;
Then sighs did zephyrs press,

Birds

sang from every wood,

And echoes rang-"This was true happiness."

THE following verses offer a by no means unhappy example of that disposition to discern and separate the various parts, functions, or forces of nature, or of human nature, and to pit them argumentatively against each other, which in our own time has culminated in Tennyson's "Two Voices."

The work of conviction and of triumph on the part of the soul is not long in doubt; but of course the body is justly represented as impulsive rather than polemical. We are indebted for these lines to a work entitled, "Select Poetry, chiefly sacred, of the reign of King James I.," collected and edited in 1847, by Mr. Edward Farr, who thus speaks of the volume from which the piece called "The Convert Soul" is taken: "The pages derived from this author are from MSS. in the possession of the editor. The volume, which consists of about eighty pages, ap

pears to have been written about 1620. It consists of songs and spiritual lays, the whole of which have poetical merit; but carnal thoughts and heavenly desires occasionally strangely agglomerate."

The "Stanzas" which succeed the dialogue are to be found amongst the "Excerpta Poetica" of the times of Elizabeth and James I. in the "Restituta" of Sir Egerton Brydges, who printed them from a manuscript placed at his disposal by the Rev. H. J. Todd, editor of the works of Milton.

THE CONVERT SOUL.

Peace, caitiff body, earth possest,
Cease to pretend to things too high;
"Tis not thy place of peace and rest,
For thou art mortal, and must die.

BODY.

Poor soul, one Spirit made us both,
Both from the womb of nothing came;
And though to yield aught thou art loth,
Yet I the elder brother am.

I, as at home, can hear and see,
And feel a taste of every good;
But thou, a stranger, envyest me,

My ease and pleasure, health and food.

Then dream of shadows, make thy coat
Of tinselled cobwebs; get thy head
Lined with chimæras got by rote;
And for thy food eat fairy bread.

SOUL.

Stay, if thou canst, thy mad career;
Repress the storm of fruitless words;
He that would by thy compass steer
Must hear what reason truth affords.

'Tis true thou elder brother art;

So worms and beasts thy elders are; Rude nature's first-then polisht artThe chaos was before a star.

My food and cloth are most divine;

The bread of angels, robes of glory: Whilst all that sensual stuff of thine Is of a vain life the sad story. Senses I have, but so refined,

As well become their mother soul, Which suit the pleasures of the mind, And scale the heavens without controul.

I little care for such a feast,

Which beasts can taste as well as I;
Nor am content to set my rest

On goods in show, in deed a lie.
Such cates and joys do I bequeath
To thee, fond body, which must die;
For I pretend unto a wreath

Wherein is writ eternity.

Thou to thy earth must straight return; Whilst I, whose birth is from above,

Shall upward move, and ever burn

In gentle flames of heavenly love.

BODY.

But I one person am with thee,

And at the first was formed by God;

Then must I needs for ever be

Dead ashes, or a senseless clod?

SOUL.

Or that, or worse; but quit thy sense
To boast all body; learn to fly

Up with me, and for recompense
At length thou blest shall be as I.

BODY.

Then farewell, pleasures; I nor care

you

What you pretend, or what
I'll henceforth feed on angels' fare,
For I an angel will be too.

do;