stanzas to Marquise de Gorla.

But verses in the English tongue are more worthy of our attention. Mr.
Locker begins his collection of them, _Lyra Elegantiarum_ (no longer a
very rare book in England), as far back as Skelton's age, and as Thomas
Wyat's, and Sidney's; but those things, the lighter lyrics of that day,
are rather songs than poems, and probably were all meant to be sung to
the virginals by our musical ancestors.

"Drink to me only with thine eyes," says the great Ben Jonson, or sings
it rather. The words, that he versified out of the Greek prose of
Philostratus, cannot be thought of without the tune. It is the same with
Carew's "He that loves a rosy cheek," or with "Roses, their sharp spines
being gone." The lighter poetry of Carew's day is all powdered with gold
dust, like the court ladies' hair, and is crowned and diapered with
roses, and heavy with fabulous scents from the Arabian phoenix's nest.
Little Cupids flutter and twitter here and there among the boughs, as in
that feast of Adonis which Ptolemy's sister gave in Alexandria, or as in
Eisen's vignettes for Dorat's _Baisers_:

"Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love did Heaven prepare
These powders to enrich your hair."

It would be affectation, Gifted, if _you_ rhymed in that fashion for the
lady of your love, and presented her, as it were, with cosmical
cosmetics, and compliments drawn from the starry spaces and deserts, from
skies, phoenixes, and angels. But it was a natural and pretty way of
writing when Thomas Carew was young. I prefer Herrick the inexhaustible