With treasure from her yielding boughs.


His images are not always distinct; as in the following passage, he
confounds LOVE as a person with LOVE as a passion:


Some other nymphs, with colours faint,
And pencil slow, may Cupid paint,
And a weak heart in time destroy;
She has a stamp, and prints the boy;
Can, with a single look, inflame
The coldest breast, the rudest tame.


His sallies of casual flattery are sometimes elegant and happy, as
that in return for the Silver Pen; and sometimes empty and trifling,
as that upon the Card torn by the Queen. There are a few lines
written in the Duchess's Tasso, which he is said by Fenton to have
kept a summer under correction. It happened to Waller, as to
others, that his success was not always in proportion to his labour.

Of these pretty compositions, neither the beauties nor the faults
deserve much attention. The amorous verses have this to recommend
them, that they are less hyperbolical than those of some other
poets. Waller is not always at the last gasp; he does not die of a
frown, nor live upon a smile. There is, however, too much love, and
too many trifles. Little things are made too important: and the
Empire of Beauty is represented as exerting its influence further
than can be allowed by the multiplicity of human passions, and the