The Certain Hour (Dizain des Poëtes)

  CONCERNING CORINNA

  "_Dr. Herrick told me that, in common with all the Enlightened orIlluminated Brothers, of which prying sect the age breeds so many, hetrusted the great lines of Nature, not in the whole, but in part, asthey believed Nature was in certain senses not true, and a betrayer,and that she was not wholly the benevolent power to endow, as accordedwith the prevailing deceived notion of the vulgar. But he wished notto discuss more particularly than thus, as he had drawn up to himself acertain frontier of reticence; and so fell to petting a great blackpig, of which he made an unseemly companion, and to talking idly._"

  A Gyges ring they bear about them still, To be, and not, seen when and where they will;

  They tread on clouds, and though they sometimes fall, They fall like dew, and make no noise at all:

  So silently they one to th' other come As colors steal into the pear or plum;

  And air-like, leave no pression to be seen Where'er they met, or parting place has been.

  ROBERT HERRICK.--_My Lovers how They Come and Part_.