Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Restoration Verse. 1910.

Lord Stafford’s Meditations in the Tower

Anonymous

GO empty joys,

With all your noise,

And leave me here alone,

In sad, sweet silence to bemoan

The fickle worldly height

Whose danger none can see aright,

Whilst your false splendours dim the sight.

Go, and ensnare

With your trim ware

Some other worldly wight,

And cheat him with your flattering light;

Rain on his head a shower

Of honour, greatness, wealth, and power;

Then snatch it from him in an hour.

Fill his big mind

With gallant wind

Of insolent applause;

Let him not fear the curbing laws,

Nor king, nor people’s frown;

But dream of something like a crown,

Then, climbing upwards, tumble down.

Let him appear

In his bright sphere

Like Cynthia in her pride,

With starlike troops on every side;

For number and clear light

Such as may soon o’erwhelm him quite,

And blend them both in one dead night.

Welcome, sad night,

Grief’s sole delight,

Thy mourning best agrees

With honour’s funeral obsequies!

In Thetis’ lap he lies,

Mantled with soft securities,

Whose too much sunshine dims his eyes.

Was he too bold,

Who needs would hold

With curbing reins the Day,

And make Sol’s fiery steeds obey?

Therefore as rash was I

Who with Ambition’s wings did fly

In Charles’s Wain too loftily.

I fall, I fall!

Whom shall I call?

Alas! shall I be heard,

Who now is neither loved nor feared?

You, who have vowed the ground

To kiss, where my blest steps were found,

Come, catch me at my last rebound.

How each admires

Heaven’s twinkling fires,

Whilst from their glorious seat

Their influence gives light and heat;

But oh! how few there are,

Though danger from the act be far,

Will run to catch a falling star!

Now ’tis too late

To imitate

Those lights, whose pallidness

Argues no inward guiltiness;

Their course one way is bent;

Which is the cause there’s no dissent

In Heaven’s High Court of Parliament.