.
But ah, the sickle! golden eares are cropt;
CERES and BACCHUS bid good-night;
Sharpe frosty fingers all your flowrs have topt,
And what sithes spar'd, winds shave off quite.

V.
Poore verdant foole! and now green ice, thy joys
Large and as lasting as thy peirch<41.7> of grasse,
Bid us lay in 'gainst winter raine, and poize
Their flouds with an o'erflowing glasse.

VI.
Thou best of men and friends? we will create
A genuine summer in each others breast;
And spite of this cold Time and frosen Fate,
Thaw us a warme seate to our rest.

VII.
Our sacred harthes shall burne eternally
As vestal flames; the North-wind, he
Shall strike his frost-stretch'd winges, dissolve and flye
This Aetna in epitome.

VIII.
Dropping December shall come weeping in,
Bewayle th' usurping of his raigne;
But when in show'rs of old Greeke<41.8> we beginne,
Shall crie, he hath his crowne againe!

IX.
Night as cleare Hesper shall our tapers whip
From the light casements, where we play,
And the darke hagge from her black mantle strip,
And sticke there everlasting day.

X.
Thus richer then untempted kings are we,
That asking nothing, nothing need:
Though lord of all what seas imbrace, yet he
That wants himselfe, is poore indeed.

<41.1> Charles Cotton the elder, father of the poet. He died
in 1658. This poem is extracted in CENSURA LITERARIA, ix. 352,
as a favourable specimen of Lovelace's poetical genius. The
text is manifestly corrupt, but I have endeavoured to amend it.
In Elton's SPECIMENS OF CLASSIC POETS, 1814, i. 148, is a
translation of Anacreon's Address to the Cicada, or Tree-Locust
(Lovelace's grasshopper?), which is superior to the modern poem,
being less prolix, and more natural in its manner. In all
Lovelace's longer pieces there are too many obscure and feeble
conceits, and too many evidences of a leaning to the metaphysical
and antithetical school of poetry.

<41.2> Original has HAIRE.

<41.3> i.e. a beard of oats.

<41.4> Meleager's invocation to the tree-locust commences thus
in Elton's translation:--

"Oh shrill-voiced insect! that with dew-drops sweet
Inebriate----"

See also Cowley's ANACREONTIQUES, No. X. THE GRASSHOPPER.

<41.5> i.e. horizontal lines tinged with gold. See Halliwell's
GLOSSARY OF ARCHAIC WORDS, 1860, art. PLAT (seventh and ei