Jasper Mayne

Jasper Mayne Poems

Jasper Mayne Biography

Jasper Mayne (1604 – December 6, 1672) was an English clergyman, translator, and a minor poet and dramatist. Mayne was baptized at Hatherleigh, Devon, on November 23, 1604, and educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. He then entered the Church, was given two college livings in Oxfordshire (the vicarages of Cassington near Woodstock, and Pyrton near Watlington), and in 1646 was made a Doctor of Divinity (D.D.). These livings ended under the Commonwealth (1649–1660), when he was turned out of office to become chaplain to the Duke of Devonshire. After the Restoration, he was made canon of Christ Church (1660–1672), Archdeacon of Chichester (1660–1672), and chaplain in ordinary to King Charles II. Burke records that Dr. Mayne gave £500 towards the rebuilding of St. Paul's Cathedral after the Great Fire of London in 1666. Mayne wrote two plays before giving up poetry as unbefitting his station: The City Match (1639), a domestic farce acted at Whitehall by the command of King Charles I; and The Amorous War (1648), a tragicomedy. His other works include a number of poems and sermons; translations of Lucian of Samosata (1638, 1664), and John Donne's Latin Epigrams; and the preface to the 1647 Beaumont and Fletcher first folio. In an amusing anecdote recounted in Blackwood's Magazine, Dr. Mayne is said to have bequeathed a trunk to an old servant, noting that it contained something that would make him drink. When opened, it was found to contain a red herring. Shakespeare scholar Sidney Lee proposed Jasper Mayne as a possible identity of the "I. M." who wrote the fourth commendatory verse in the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays (1623). Yet since Mayne was only nineteen years old at the time the Folio was published, scholars have tended to favor James Mabbe. Mayne died on December 6, 1672 at Oxford, and was interred on the north side of the choir at Christchurch.)

The Best Poem Of Jasper Mayne

Time

TIME is the feather'd thing,
   And, whilst I praise
The sparklings of thy looks and call them rays,
   Takes wing,
   Leaving behind him as he flies
An unperceived dimness in thine eyes.
   His minutes, whilst they're told,
   Do make us old;
   And every sand of his fleet glass,
   Increasing age as it doth pass,
   Insensibly sows wrinkles there
   Where flowers and roses do appear.
   Whilst we do speak, our fire
   Doth into ice expire,
   Flames turn to frost;
   And ere we can
   Know how our crow turns swan,
   Or how a silver snow
   Springs there where jet did grow,
Our fading spring is in dull winter lost.
   Since then the Night hath hurl'd
   Darkness, Love's shade,
   Over its enemy the Day, and made
   The world
   Just such a blind and shapeless thing
As 'twas before light did from darkness spring,
   Let us employ its treasure
   And make shade pleasure:
Let 's number out the hours by blisses,
And count the minutes by our kisses;
   Let the heavens new motions feel
   And by our embraces wheel;
   And whilst we try the way
   By which Love doth convey
   Soul unto soul,
   And mingling so
   Makes them such raptures know
   As makes them entranced lie
   In mutual ecstasy,
Let the harmonious spheres in music roll!

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