And for the way I am prepared
To answer every ill with this:
"No way is long, or dark, or hard,
That leads to everlasting bliss."

SOUL.

Then we're agreed; and for thy fare,
It will be every day a feast;
Love plays the cook, and takes the care
Nobly to entertain her guest.

As for the trouble of the way

Which, dark or strait, cannot be long,
Faith will enlarge, turn night to day
So we'll to heaven go in a song.

STANZAS.

What if a day, or a month, or a year,

Crown thy delights with a thousand wisht contentings, May not the chance of a night, or an hour,

Cross those delights with as many sad tormentings?
Fortune, honour, beauty, youth,

Are but blossoms dying;
Wanton pleasure, doting love,
Are but shadows flying.
All our joys

Are but toys,

Idle thoughts deceiving:

None hath power

Half an hour

Of his life's bereaving.

The earth's but a point of the world, and a man
Is but a point of the earth's compared center:
Shall then a point of a point be so vain

As to delight in a silly point's adventer?
All's in hazard that we have,

There is nothing biding;

Days of pleasure are like streams
Through fair meadows gliding.
Weal or woe

Time doth go,

There is no returning.

Secret fates

Guide our states,

Both in mirth and mourning.

What shall a man desire in this world,

Since there is nought in this world that's worth desiring? Let not a man cast his eyes to the earth,

But to the heavens, with his thoughts high aspiring.
Think that living thou must die,

Be assured thy days are told:
Though on earth thou seem to be,
Assure thyself thou art but mould.
All our health

THOMAS HEYWOOD was an actor; and of so great fecundity as a writer of plays that, for prolific production, his name must be placed soon after that of Lope de Vega on the roll of dramatic authors. He claims to have had "an entire hand, or at least a main finger," in no fewer than two hundred and twenty plays, of which only twentythree have survived to our time. Of these perhaps the best known is "A Woman Killed with Kindness," which was produced in the year 1617. He had begun to write for the stage as early as 1596; and his last work, published in 1658, was an "Actor's Vindication." Little is known of the events of his life. The time of his birth is not ascertained; but it appears that he was a native of

Lincolnshire, and a some time fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. The approximate year of his death is given as above by inference from the date of his last work coupled with a remark made by him in the preface to his "Hierarchie" (1635), that Time "will never suffer our brains to leave working till our pulses cease beating." It is with this work, from which the following powerful poem is taken, that we are concerned; and, as it is little known, a short description of it may not be out of place. It was written when the author was already in his old age; when time, to use his own words, had "cast snow upon his head." It is entitled "The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells: their Names, Orders, and Offices. The Fall of Lucifer, with his Angells." The dedication is melancholy for its unrealized expression of confidence in the good fortune of the king: "To the Most Excellent and Incomparable Lady, as famous for her illustrious vertues, as fortunat in her regall issue; Henretta Maria, Queene: The Royall Consort and Spouse of the puissant and invincible Monarch, our dread Soveraigne, King Charles." The nine books into which it is divided treat of (1) Seraphim, (2) Cherubim, (3) The Thrones, (4) The Dominations, (5) The Vertues, (6) the Powers, (7) The Principats, (8) The Arch-Angell, (9) The Angell; and the orders of this hierarchy are represented severally by (1) Uriel, (2) Jophiel, (3) Zaphkiel, (4) Zadkiel, (5) Haniel, (6) Raphael, (7), Chamael, (8) Michael, (9) Gabriel. Each book is followed by "Theological, philosophical, moral, poetical, historical, apothegmatical, hieroglyphical, and emblematical observations to the further illustration of the Former (foregoing) Tractate." The "Search after God" is a poetical "meditation" upon the first book, and is called in the metrical argument of the author"A Quære made the world throughout,

To find the GOD of whom some doubt."

The meditations generally are thoroughly religious, ex

perimental, and often profound.

Heywood's verse is

deficient in harmony; but his directness, earnestness, and solemnity, frequently carry him far in the direction of the sublime.

SEARCH AFTER GOD.

I sought Thee round about, O Thou my God!
To find thy abode.

I said unto the Earth, " Speak, art thou He?"
She answered me,

"I am not." I inquired of creatures all,

In general,

Contained therein;-they with one voice proclaim,
That none amongst them challenged such a name.

I asked the seas, and all the deeps below,
My God to know.

I asked the reptiles, and whatever is
In the abyss;

Even from the shrimp to the Leviathan
Inquiry ran:

But in those deserts which no line can sound
The God I sought for was not to be found.

I asked the air, If that were He? but know
It told me, No.

I, from the towering eagle to the wren,
Demanded then,

If any feathered fowl 'mongst them were such;
But they all, much

Offended with my question, in full quire
Answered, "To find my God I must look higher.”

I asked the heavens, sun, moon, and stars; but they
Said, "We obey

The God thou seek'st." I asked what eye or ear
Could see or hear;

What in the world I might descry or know,

Above, below:

With an unanimous voice all these things said,
"We are not God, but we by Him were made."

I asked the world's great universal mass,
If that God was?

Which with a mighty and strong voice replied,
(As stupified),

"I am not He, O man! for know that I

By Him on high

Was fashioned first of nothing, thus instated
And swayed by Him, by whom I was created."

I did inquire for Him in flourishing peace,
But soon 'gan cease:

For when I saw what vices, what impurity,
Bred by security

(As pride, self-love, lust, surfeit, and excess),
I could no less

Than stay my search; knowing where these abound, God may be sought, but is not to be found.

I thought then I might find Him out in war;
But was as far

As at the first; for in revenge and rage,
In spoil and strage,

Where unjust quarrels are commenced, and might
Takes place 'bove right;

Where zeal and conscience yield way to sedition,
There can be made of God no inquisition.

I sought the court; but smooth-tongued Flattery therc
Deceived each ear:

In the thronged city there was selling, buying,
Swearing, and lying;

In the country, craft in simpleness arrayed:
And then I said,

"Vain is my search, although my pains be great;
Where my God is, there can be no deceit."

All these demands are the true consideration,
Answer, and attestation,

Of creatures, touching God: all which, accited,
With voice united,

Either in air or sea, the earth or sky,

Make this reply:

"To rob Him of his worship none persuade us; Since it was He, and not our own hands made us."

H