The morning lark, the messenger of day,
Saluted, in her song, the morning gray;
And soon the sun arose with beams so bright,
That all the horizon laugh'd to see the joyous sight.
He, with his tepid rays, the rose renews,
And licks the drooping leaves, and dries the dews;
When Arcite left his bed, resolved to pay
Observance to the month of merry May:
Forth, on his fiery steed, betimes he rode,
That scarcely prints the turf on which he trode:
At ease he seem'd, and prancing o'er the plains,
Turn'd only to the grove his horse's reins,
The grove I named before, and lighting there
A woodbine garland sought to crown his hair;
Then turn'd his face against the rising day,
And raised his voice to welcome in the May:--
For thee, sweet month, the groves green liveries wear,
If not the first, the fairest of the year:
For thee the Graces lead the dancing hours,
And Nature's ready pencil paints the flowers:
When thy short reign is past, the feverish sun
The sultry tropic fears, and moves more slowly on.
So may thy tender blossoms fear no blight,
Nor goats, with venom'd teeth, thy tendrils bite.
As thou shalt guide my wandering feet to find
The fragrant greens I seek my brows to bind.
In Chaucer, Arcite's address to the "mery May" is but of three plain
lines, and they suffice; in Dryden, of ten ornate, and they suffice
too--"alike, but oh! how different!" The plain three are more in
character, for Arcite was thinking of Emelie all the while--but the
ornate ten are in season now, for summer has come at last, and recite
them to yourself and Amaryllis in the shade.
But now for a loftier strain. Palamon and Arcite are about to fight for
Emelie--and lo and behold their auxiliar kings!
Ther maist thou se coming with Palamon
Licurge himself, the grete king of Trace:
Blake was his berd, and manly was his face.
The cercles of his eyen in his head
They gloweden betwixen yelwe and red,
And like a griffon loked he about,
With kemped heres on his browes stout;
His limmes gret, his brawnes hard and stronge,
His shouldres brode, his armes round and longe.
And as the guise was in his countree,
Full high upon a char of gold stood he,
With foure white bolles in the trais.
Instead of cote-armure on his harnais,
With nayles yelwe, and bright as any gold,
He had a beres-skin, cole-blake for old.
His longe here was kempt behind his bak,
As any ravenes fether it shone for blake.
A wreth of gold arm-gret, of huge weight,
Upon his hed sate ful of stones bright,
Of fine rubins and of diamants.
About his char ther wenten white alauns
Twenty and mo, as great as any stere,
To hunten at the leon or the dere,
And folwed him, with mosel fast ybound,
Colered with gold, and torettes filed round.
A hundred lordes had he in his route,
Armed full wel with hertes sterne and stoute.
With Arcite, in stories as men find,
The gret Emetrius, the King of Inde,
Upon a stede bay, trapped in stele,
Covered with cloth of gold diapered well,
Came riding like the god of armes, Mars.
His cote-armure was of a cloth of Tars,
Couched with perles, white, and round, and grete.
His sadel was of brent gold new ybete:
A mantelet upon his shouldres hanging,
Bret-ful of rubies red, as fire sparkling.
His crispe here like ringes was yronne,
And that was yelwe, and glittered as the sonne.
His nose was high, his eyen bright eitrin,
His lippes round, his colour was sanguin,
A fewe fraknes in his face yspreint,
Betwixen yelwe and blake somdel ymeint,
And as a leon he his loking caste.
Of five-and-twenty yere his age I caste.
His berd was wel begonnen for to spring;
His vois was as a trompe thondering.
Upon his hed he wered of laurer grene
A gerlond fresshe, and lusty for to sene.
Upon his hond he bare for his deduit
An egle tame, as any lily whit.
An hundred lordes had he with him there
All armed save hir hedes in all hir gere,
Full richely in alle manere thinges.
For trusteth wel, that erles, dukes, kinges,
Were gathered in this noble compagnie,
For love, and for encrease of chevalrie.
About this king ther ran on every part
Full many a tame leon and leopart.
What a plenitude of brilliant and powerful description! Every verse,
every half verse, adds a characterizing circumstance, a vivifying image.
And what an integrity and self-completeness has the daring and large
conception of either martial king! And how distinguishably the two stand
apart from each other! But above all, what a sudden and rich addition to
our stock of heroic poetical portraitures! Here is no imitation. Neither
Lycurge nor Emetrius is any where in poetry but here. Not in the
_Iliad_-not in the _AEneid_. You cannot compose either of them from the
heroes of antiquity. Each is original--new--self-subsisting. The monarch
of Thrace is invested with more of uncouth and savage terror. He is
bigger, broader. Might for destroying is in his bulk of bone and muscle.
Bulls draw him, and he looks taurine. A bear-skin mantles him; and you
would think him of ursine consanguinity. The huge lump of gold upon his
raven-black head, and the monster hounds, bigger than the dog-kind can
be imagined to produce, that gambol about his chariot, all betoken the
grosser character of power--the power that is in size--material. The
impression of the portentous is made without going avowedly out of the
real. His looking is resembled to that of a griffin, because in that
monster imagined at or beyond the verge of nature, the ferocity of a
devouring, destroying creature can be conceived as more wild, and grim,
and fearful than in nature's known offspring, in all of whom some
kindlier sparkles from the heart of the great mother, some
beneficently-implanted instincts are thought of as tempering and
qualifying the pure animal fierceness and rage.
The opposed King of Inde has also of the prodigious, within the limits
of the apparently natural. He is also a tremendous champion; but he has
more fire, and less of mere thewes, in the furnishing of his warlike
sufficiency. There is more of mind and fancy about him. His fair
complexion at once places him in a more gracious category of
death-doers. Compare to the car drawn by four white bulls, the gallant
bay charger barded with steel, and caparisoned with cloth of gold.
Compare to that yellow-nailed, swart bear-skin, the coat-armour made
with cloth of Tars, the mantelet thick-sown with rubies; for the locks
like the raven's plumage, the curls like Apollo's tresses. He is in the
dazzling prime of youth. Black Lycurge, without question, has more than
twice his years. The beard that yet springs, joined close to the voice
that is like a trumpet, is well found for raising the expression of
native power in that thundering voice. The laurel wreath for the
ponderous golden diadem--the white eagle on the wrist for the snowy
alauns, are all studied to carry through the same opposition. Emetrius
is a son of chivalry; Lycurge might be kin or kith, with a difference
for the better, of that renowned tyrant Diomedes, who put men's limbs
for hay into his manger, and of whom Hercules had, not so long ago,
ridded the world. _His_ looking, too, is paralleled away from humanity,
but it is by the kingly and generous lion. Observe that the companions
of the two kings are described, whether through chance or choice, in
terms correspondingly opposite. The Thracian leads a hundred lords, with
hearts stern and stout. The Indian's following, earls, dukes, kings,
have thronged to him, for the love and increment of chivalry. The lions
and leopards, too, that run about him have been tamed. They finish the
Indian picture.
How does Dryden acquit himself here? Grandly.