Constantin Huyghens wrote light
verse with intricate metres, and an occasional epigram. Here is one:--
_On Peter's Poetry_.
When Peter condescends to write,
His verse deserves to see the _light_.
If any further you inquire,
I mean--the candle or the fire.
Also a practical statesman, it was to Huyghens that Holland owes the
beautiful old road from The Hague to Scheveningen in which Jacob Cats
built his house.
Among these friends Anna and Tesselschade grew into cultured
women of quick and sympathetic intellect. Both wrote poetry, but
Tesselschade's is superior to her sister's. Among Anna's early work
were some additions to a new edition of her father's _Zinne-Poppen_,
one of her poems running thus in the translation by Mr, Edmund Gosse
in the very pleasant essay on Tesselschade in his _Studies in the
Literature of Northern Europe_:--
A wife that sings and pipes all day,
And never puts her lute away,
No service to her hand finds she;
Fie, fie! for this is vanity!
But is it not a heavenly sight
To see a woman take delight
With song or string her husband dear,
When daily work is done, to cheer?
Misuse may turn the sweetest sweet
To loathsome wormwood, I repeat;
Yea, wholesome medicine, full of grace,
May prove a poison--out of place.
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