.

<88.16> i.e. no difference. A compliment to Lely's spirituality.

AN ANNIVERSARY ON THE HYMENEALS OF MY NOBLE KINSMAN,<89.1>
THO. STANLEY, ESQUIRE.<89.2>

I.
The day is curl'd about agen
To view the splendor she was in;
When first with hallow'd hands
The holy man knit the mysterious bands
When you two your contracted souls did move
Like cherubims above,
And did make love,
As your un-understanding issue now,
In a glad sigh, a smile, a tear, a vow.

II.
Tell me, O self-reviving Sun,
In thy perigrination
Hast thou beheld a pair
Twist their soft beams like these in their chast air?
As from bright numberlesse imbracing rayes
Are sprung th' industrious dayes,
So when they gaze,
And change their fertile eyes with the new morn,
A beauteous offspring is shot forth, not born.

III.
Be witness then, all-seeing Sun,
Old spy, thou that thy race hast run
In full five thousand rings;<89.3>
To thee were ever purer offerings
Sent on the wings of Faith? and thou, O Night,<89.4>
Curtain of their delight,
By these made bright,
Have you not mark'd their coelestial play,
And no more peek'd the gayeties of day?

IV.
Come then, pale virgins, roses strow,
Mingled with Ios as you go.
The snowy ox is kill'd,
The fane with pros'lyte lads and lasses fill'd,
You too may hope the same seraphic joy,
Old time cannot destroy,
Nor fulnesse cloy;
When, like these, you shall stamp by sympathies
Thousands of new-born-loves with your chaste eyes.

<89.1> Lovelace was connected with the Stanleys through the
Auchers. The Kentish families, about this time, intermarried
with each other to a very large extent, partly to indemnify
themselves from the consequences of gravelkind tenure (though
many had procured parliamentary relief); and the Lovelaces,
the Stanleys, the Hammonds, the Sandyses, were all more or less
bound together by the ties of kindred. See the tree prefixed
by Sir Egerton Brydges to his edition of HAMMOND'S POEMS, 1816,
and the Introduction to STANLEY'S POEMS, 1814. Sir William
Lovelace, the poet's grandfather, married Elizabeth, daughter
of Edward Aucher, Esq., of Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury, while
Sir William Hammond, of St. Alban's Court, married, as his second
wife, Elizabeth, da