Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes
Of sweet-lipp'd angel imps, that swill their throats
In cream of morning Helicon; and then
Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men,
To woo them from their beds, still murmuring
That men can sleep while they their matins sing."

What wealth of imagery and proud association of ideas--the bubbling
spring, the golden, waving harvest, "ploughed by her breath"--the fane of
Apollo suggesting in a word images of Greek maidens in chorus by the white
temple of the God, the dew of Helicon, the soft waking of men from
beneficent repose. It is all very well to talk of a bird doing all this:
we admire nightingales, but Philomela never enchanted us in this way; it
is the sex with which we are charmed. The poet's "light-foot lady" tells
us the secret. We are subdued by the loveliest of prima-donnas.

There is more of this, and as good. The little poem is a poet's dictionary
of musical expression. Its lines, less than two hundred, deserve to be
committed to memory, to rise at times in the mind--the soft assuagement of
cares and sorrows.

A famous poem of Crashaw is "On a Prayer-Book sent to Mrs. M.R." It
breathes a divine ecstasy of the sacred ode:

"Delicious deaths, soft exhalations
Of soul; dear and divine annihilations;
A thousand unknown rites
Of joys, and rarefied delights."

It is human passion sublimated and refined to the uses of heaven, but
human passion still--the very luxury of religion--the rapture of
earth-born seraphs, as he sings with venturous exultation:

"The rich and roseal spring of those rare sweets,
Which with a swelling bosom there she meets,
Boundless and infinite, bottomless treasures
Of pure inebriating pleasures:
Happy proof she shall discover,
What joy, what bliss,
How many heavens at once it is,
To have a God become her lover!"

Mrs. M.R., whether maid or widow we know not--in Crashaw's day virgins
were called Mistress--has another poem addressed to her--"Counsel
concerning her choice." It alludes to some check or hindrance in love, and
asks:

"Dear, heav'n-designed soul!
Amongst the rest
Of suitors that besiege your maiden breast,
Why may not I
My fortune try,
And venture to speak one good word,
Not for myself, alas! but for my dearer Lord?

* * * * *