"Come then! and while the slow isicle hangs
At the stifle thatch, and Winter's frosty pangs
Benumme the year, blithe as of old let us
Mid noise and war, of peace and mirth discusse.
This portion thou wert born for. Why should we
Vex at the time's ridiculous miserie?
An age that thus hath fooled itself, and will,
Spite of thy teeth and mine, persist so still.
Let's sit then at this fire; and, while wee steal
A revell in the Town, let others seal,
Purchase, and cheat, and who can let them pay,
Till those black deeds bring on the darksome day.
Innocent spenders wee! a better use
Shall wear out our short lease, and leave the obtuse
Rout to their husks. They and their bags at best
Have cares in earnest. Wee care for a jest!"
When about thirty years of age, he had a long and serious illness,
during which his mind underwent an entire and final change on the most
important of all subjects; and thenceforward he seems to have lived
"soberly, righteously, and godly."
In his Preface to the "_Silex Scintillans_," he says, "The God of the
spirits of all flesh hath granted me a further use of mine than I did
look for in the body; and when I expected and had prepared for a message
of death, then did he answer me with life; I hope to his glory, and my
great advantage; that I may flourish not with leafe only, but with some
fruit also." And he speaks of himself as one of the converts of "that
blessed man, Mr. George Herbert."
Soon after, he published a little volume, called "_Flores Solitudinis_,"
partly prose and partly verse. The prose, as Mr. Lyte justly remarks, is
simple and nervous, unlike his poetry, which is occasionally deformed
with the conceit of his time.
The verses entitled "St. Paulinus to his wife Theresia," have much of
the vigor and thoughtfulness and point of Cowper. In 1655, he published
a second edition, or more correctly a re-issue, for it was not
reprinted, of his _Silex Scintillans_, with a second part added. He
seems not to have given anything after this to the public, during the
next forty years of his life.
He was twice married, and died in 1695, aged 73, at Newton, on the banks
of his beloved Usk, where he had spent his useful, blameless, and, we
doubt not, happy life; living from day to day in the eye of Nature, and
in his solitary rides and walks in that wild and beautiful country,
finding full exercise for that fine sense of the beauty and wondrousness
of all visible things, "the earth and every common sight," the
expression of which he has so worthily embodied in his poems.