Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Marc D'Hooghe and the PG
Online Distributed Proofreaders
SPECIMENS WITH MEMOIRS OF THE LESS-KNOWN BRITISH POETS.
With an Introductory Essay,
By
THE REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN.
IN THREE VOLS.
VOL. II.
CONTENTS
SECOND PERIOD--FROM SPENSER TO DRYDEN.
(CONTINUED.)
WILLIAM HABINGTON
Epistle addressed to the Honourable W. E.
To his Noblest Friend, J. C., Esq.
A Description of Castara
JOSEPH HALL, BISHOP OF NORWICH
Satire I.
Satire VII.
RICHARD LOVELACE
Song--To Althea, from Prison
Song
A Loose Saraband
ROBERT HERRICK
Song
Cherry-Ripe
The Kiss: A Dialogue
To Daffodils
To Primroses
To Blossoms
Oberon's Palace
Oberon's Feast
The Mad Maid's Song
Corinna's going a-Maying
Jephthah's Daughter
The Country Life
SIR RICHARD FANSHAWE
The Spring, a Sonnet--From the Spanish
ABRAHAM COWLEY
The Chronicle, a Ballad
The Complaint
The Despair
Of Wit
Of Solitude
The Wish
Upon the Shortness of Man's Life
On the Praise of Poetry
The Motto--'Tentanda via est,' &c
Davideis-Book II
Life
The Plagues of Egypt
GEORGE WITHER
From 'The Shepherd's Hunting'
The Shepherd's Resolution
The Steadfast Shepherd
From 'The Shepherd's Hunting'
SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT
From 'Gondibert'--Canto II
From 'Gondibert'--Canto IV
DR HENRY KING
Sic Vita
Song
Life
JOHN CHALKHILL
Arcadia
Thealma, a Deserted Shepherdess
Priestess of Diana
Thealma in Full Dress
Dwelling of the Witch Orandra
CATHARINE PHILLIPS
The Inquiry
A Friend
MARGARET, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE
Melancholy described by Mirth
Melancholy describing herself
THOMAS STANLEY
Celia Singing
Speaking and Kissing
La Belle Confidante
The Loss
Note on Anacreon
ANDREW MARVELL
The Emigrants
The Nymph complaining of the Death of her Fawn
On 'Paradise Lost'
Thoughts in a Garden
Satire on Holland
IZAAK WALTON
The Angler's Wish
JOHN WILMOT, EARL or ROCHESTER
Song
Song
THE EARL OP ROSCOMMON
From 'An Essay on Translated Verse'
CHARLES COTTON
Invitation to Izaak Walton
A Voyage to Ireland in Burlesque
DR HENRY MORE
Opening of Second Part of 'Psychozoia'
Exordium of Third Part
Destruction and Renovation of all things
A Distempered Fancy
Soul compared to a Lantern
WILLIAM CHAMBERLAYNE
Argalia taken Prisoner by the Turks
HENRY VAUGHAN
On a Charnel-house
On Gombauld's 'Endymion'
Apostrophe to Fletcher the Dramatist
Picture of the Town
The Golden Age
Regeneration
Resurrection and Immortality
The Search
Isaac's Marriage
Man's Fall and Recovery
The Shower
Burial
Cheerfulness
The Passion
Rules and Lessons
Repentance
The Dawning
The Tempest
The World
The Constellation
Misery
Mount of Olives
Ascension-day
Cock-crowing
The Palm-tree
The Garland
Love-sick
Psalm civ
The Timber
The Jews
Palm-Sunday
Providence
St Mary Magdalene
The Rainbow
The Seed Growing Secretly (Mark iv. 26)
Childhood
Abel's Blood
Righteousness
Jacob's Pillow and Pillar
The Feast
The Waterfall
DR JOSEPH BEAUMONT
Hell
Joseph's Dream
Paradise
Eve
To the Memory of his Wife
Imperial Borne Personified
End
MISCELLANEOUS PIECES--
FROM ROBERT HEATH--
What is Love?
Protest of Love
To Clarastella
BY VARIOUS AUTHORS--
My Mind to me a Kingdom is
The Old and Young Courtier
There is a Garden in her Face
Hallo, my Fancy
The Fairy Queen
* * * * *
SPECIMENS WITH MEMOIRS OF THE LESS-KNOWN BRITISH POETS.
SECOND PERIOD--FROM SPENSER TO DRYDEN. (CONTINUED.)
* * * * *
WILLIAM HABINGTON.
This poet might have been expected to have belonged to the 'Spasmodic
school,' judging by his parental antecedents. His father was accused of
having a share in Babington's conspiracy, but was released because he
was godson to Queen Elizabeth. Soon after, however, he was imprisoned a
second time, and condemned to death on the charge of having concealed
some of the Gunpowder-plot conspirators; but was pardoned through the
interest of Lord Morley. His uncle, however, was less fortunate,
suffering death for his complicity with Babington. The poet's mother,
the daughter of Lord Morley, was more loyal than her husband or his
brother, and is said to have written the celebrated letter to Lord
Monteagle, in consequence of which the execution of the Gunpowder-plot
was arrested.
Our poet was born at Hindlip, Worcestershire, on the very day of the
discovery of the plot, 5th November 1605. The family were Papists, and
William was sent to St Omers to be educated. He was pressed to become
a Jesuit, but declined. On his return to England, his father became
preceptor to the poet. As he grew up, instead of displaying any taste
for 'treasons, stratagems, and spoils,' he chose the better part, and
lived a private and happy life. He fell in love with Lucia, daughter of
William Herbert, the first Lord Powis, and celebrated her in his long
and curious poem entitled 'Castara.' This lady he afterwards married,
and from her society appears to have derived much happiness. In 1634,
he published 'Castara.' He also, at different times, produced 'The Queen
of Arragon,' a tragedy; a History of Edward IV.; and 'Observations upon
History.' He died in 1654, (not as Southey, by a strange oversight,
says, 'when he had just completed his fortieth year,') forty-nine years
of age, and was buried in the family vault at Hindlip.
'Castara' is not a consecutive poem, but consists of a great variety of
small pieces, in all sorts of style and rhythm, and of all varieties of
merit; many of them addressed to his mistress under the name of Castara,
and many to his friends; with reflective poems, elegies, and panegyrics,
intermingled with verses sacred to love. Habington is distinguished by
purity of tone if not of taste. He has many conceits, but no obscenities.
His love is as holy as it is ardent. He has, besides, a vein of sentiment
which sometimes approaches the moral sublime. To prove this, in addition
to the 'Selections' below, we copy some verses entitled--
'NOX NOCTI INDICAT SCIENTIAM.'--_David_.
When I survey the bright
Celestial sphere,
So rich with jewels hung, that Night
Doth like an Ethiop bride appear,
My soul her wings doth spread,
And heavenward flies,
The Almighty's mysteries to read
In the large volume of the skies;
For the bright firmament
Shoots forth no flame
So silent, but is eloquent
In speaking the Creator's name.
No unregarded star
Contracts its light
Into so small a character,
Removed far from our human sight,
But if we steadfast look,
We shall discern
In it, as in some holy book,
How man may heavenly knowledge learn.
It tells the conqueror
That far-stretch'd power,
Which his proud dangers traffic for,
Is but the triumph of an hour;
That, from the furthest North,
Some nation may,
Yet undiscover'd, issue forth,
And o'er his new-got conquest sway,--
Some nation, yet shut in
With hills of ice,
May be let out to scourge his sin
Till they shall equal him in vice;
And then they likewise shall
Their ruin brave;
For, as yourselves, your empires fall,
_And every kingdom hath a grave_.
Thus those celestial fires,
Though seeming mute,
The fallacy of our desires,
And all the pride of life, confute;
For they have watch'd since first
The world had birth,
And found sin in itself accurst,
And nothing permanent on earth.
There is something to us particularly interesting in the history of this
poet. Even as it is pleasant to see the sides of a volcano covered with
verdure, and its mouth filled with flowers, so we like to find the
fierce elements, which were inherited by Habington from his fathers,
softened and subdued in him,--the blood of the conspirator mellowed into
that of the gentle bard, who derived all his inspiration from a pure
love and a mild and thoughtful religion.
EPISTLE ADDRESSED TO THE HONOURABLE W.E.
He who is good is happy. Let the loud
Artillery of heaven break through a cloud,
And dart its thunder at him, he'll remain
Unmoved, and nobler comfort entertain,
In welcoming the approach of death, than Vice
E'er found in her fictitious paradise.
Time mocks our youth, and (while we number past
Delights, and raise our appetite to taste
Ensuing) brings us to unflatter'd age,
Where we are left to satisfy the rage
Of threat'ning death: pomp, beauty, wealth, and all
Our friendships, shrinking from the funeral.
The thought of this begets that brave disdain
With which thou view'st the world, and makes those vain
Treasures of fancy, serious fools so court,
And sweat to purchase, thy contempt or sport.
What should we covet here? Why interpose
A cloud 'twixt us and heaven? Kind Nature chose
Man's soul the exchequer where to hoard her wealth,
And lodge all her rich secrets; but by the stealth
Of her own vanity, we're left so poor,
The creature merely sensual knows more.
The learned halcyon, by her wisdom, finds
A gentle season, when the seas and winds
Are silenced by a calm, and then brings forth
The happy miracle of her rare birth,
Leaving with wonder all our arts possess'd,
That view the architecture of her nest.
Pride raiseth us 'bove justice. We bestow
Increase of knowledge on old minds, which grow
By age to dotage; while the sensitive
Part of the world in its first strength doth live.
Folly! what dost thou in thy power contain
Deserves our study? Merchants plough the main
And bring home th' Indies, yet aspire to more,
By avarice in the possession poor.
And yet that idol wealth we all admit
Into the soul's great temple; busy wit
Invents new orgies, fancy frames new rites
To show its superstition; anxious nights
Are watch'd to win its favour: while the beast
Content with nature's courtesy doth rest.
Let man then boast no more a soul, since he
Hath lost that great prerogative. But thee,
Whom fortune hath exempted from the herd
Of vulgar men, whom virtue hath preferr'd
Far higher than thy birth, I must commend,
Rich in the purchase of so sweet a friend.
And though my fate conducts me to the shade
Of humble quiet, my ambition paid
With safe content, while a pure virgin fame
Doth raise me trophies in Castara's name;
No thought of glory swelling me above
The hope of being famed for virtuous love;
Yet wish I thee, guided by the better stars,
To purchase unsafe honour in the wars,
Or envied smiles at court; for thy great race,
And merits, well may challenge the highest place.
Yet know, what busy path soe'er you tread
To greatness, you must sleep among the dead.
TO HIS NOBLEST FRIEND, J.C., ESQ.
I hate the country's dirt and manners, yet
I love the silence; I embrace the wit
And courtship, flowing here in a full tide,
But loathe the expense, the vanity, and pride.
No place each way is happy. Here I hold
Commerce with some, who to my care unfold
(After a due oath minister'd) the height
And greatness of each star shines in the state,
The brightness, the eclipse, the influence.
With others I commune, who tell me whence
The torrent doth of foreign discord flow;
Relate each skirmish, battle, overthrow,
Soon as they happen; and by rote can tell
Those German towns, even puzzle me to spell.
The cross or prosperous fate of princes they
Ascribe to rashness, cunning, or delay;
And on each action comment, with more skill
Than upon Livy did old Machiavel.
O busy folly! why do I my brain
Perplex with the dull policies of Spain,
Or quick designs of France? Why not repair
To the pure innocence o' the country air,
And neighbour thee, dear friend? Who so dost give
Thy thoughts to worth and virtue, that to live
Blest, is to trace thy ways. There might not we
Arm against passion with philosophy;
And, by the aid of leisure, so control
Whate'er is earth in us, to grow all soul?
Knowledge doth ignorance engender, when
We study mysteries of other men,
And foreign plots. Do but in thy own shad
(Thy head upon some flow'ry pillow laid,
Kind Nature's housewifery,) contemplate all
His stratagems, who labours to enthrall
The world to his great master, and you'll find
Ambition mocks itself, and grasps the wind.
Not conquest makes us great. Blood is too dear
A price for glory. Honour doth appear
To statesmen like a vision in the night;
And, juggler-like, works o' the deluded sight.
The unbusied only wise: for no respect
Endangers them to error; they affect
Truth in her naked beauty, and behold
Man with an equal eye, not bright in gold,
Or tall in little; so much him they weigh
As virtue raiseth him above his clay.
Thus let us value things: and since we find
Time bend us toward death, let's in our mind
Create new youth, and arm against the rude
Assaults of age; that no dull solitude
O' the country dead our thoughts, nor busy care
O' the town make us to think, where now we are,
And whither we are bound. Time ne'er forgot
His journey, though his steps we number'd not.
A DESCRIPTION OF CASTARA.
1 Like the violet which, alone,
Prospers in some happy shade,
My Castara lives unknown,
To no looser's eye betray'd,
For she's to herself untrue,
Who delights i' the public view.
2 Such is her beauty, as no arts
Have enrich'd with borrow'd grace;
Her high birth no pride imparts,
For she blushes in her place.
Folly boasts a glorious blood,
She is noblest, being good.
3 Cautious, she knew never yet
What a wanton courtship meant;
Nor speaks loud, to boast her wit;
In her silence eloquent:
Of herself survey she takes,
But 'tween men no difference makes.
4 She obeys with speedy will
Her grave parents' wise commands;
And so innocent, that ill
She nor acts, nor understands:
Women's feet run still astray,
If once to ill they know the way.
5 She sails by that rock, the court,
Where oft Honour splits her mast:
And retiredness thinks the port
Where her fame may anchor cast:
Virtue safely cannot sit,
Where vice is enthroned for wit.
6 She holds that day's pleasure best,
Where sin waits not on delight;
Without mask, or ball, or feast,
Sweetly spends a winter's night:
O'er that darkness, whence is thrust
Prayer and sleep, oft governs lust.
7 She her throne makes reason climb;
While wild passions captive lie:
And, each article of time,
Her pure thoughts to heaven fly:
All her vows religious be,
And her love she vows to me.
JOSEPH HALL, BISHOP OF NORWICH.
This distinguished man must not be confounded with John Hall, of whom
all we know is, that he was born at Durham in 1627,--that he was
educated at Cambridge, where he published a volume of poems,--that he
practised at the bar, and that he died in 1656, in his twenty-ninth
year. One specimen of John's verses we shall quote:--
THE MORNING STAR.
Still herald of the morn: whose ray
Being page and usher to the day,
Doth mourn behind the sun, before him play;
Who sett'st a golden signal ere
The dark retire, the lark appear;
The early cooks cry comfort, screech-owls fear;
Who wink'st while lovers plight their troth,
Then falls asleep, while they are both
To part without a more engaging oath:
Steal in a message to the eyes
Of Julia; tell her that she lies
Too long; thy lord, the Sun, will quickly rise.
Yet it is midnight still with me;
Nay, worse, unless that kinder she
Smile day, and in my zenith seated be,
I needs a calenture must shun,
And, like an Ethiopian, hate my sun.
John's more celebrated namesake, Joseph, was born at Bristowe Park,
parish of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, in 1574. He studied and
took orders at Cambridge. He acted for some time as master of the school
of Tiverton, in Devonshire. It is said that the accidental preaching of
a sermon before Prince Henry first attracted attention to this eminent
divine. Promotion followed with a sure and steady course. He was chosen
to accompany King James to Scotland as one of his chaplains, and
subsequently attended the famous Synod of Dort as a representative of
the English Church. He had before this, while quite a young man, (in
1597,) published, under the title of 'Virgidemiarum,' his Satires. In
the year 1600 he produced a satirical fiction, entitled, 'Mundus alter
et idem;' in which, while pretending to describe a certain _terra
australis incognita_, he hits hard at the existent evils of the actual
world. Hall was subsequently created Bishop of Exeter, where he exposed
himself to obloquy by his mildness to the Puritans. 'Had,' Campbell
justly remarked, 'such conduct been, at this critical period, pursued by
the High Churchmen in general, the history of a bloody age might have
been changed into that of peace; but the violence of Laud prevailed over
the milder counsels of a Hall, an Usher, and a Corbet.' Yet Hall was a
zealous Episcopalian, and defended that form of government in a variety
of pamphlets. In the course of this controversy he carne in collision
with the mighty Milton himself, who, unable to deny the ability and
learning of his opponent, tried to cover him with a deluge of derision.
Besides these pamphlets, the Bishop produced a number of Epistles
in prose, of Sermons, of Paraphrases, and a remarkable series of
'Occasional Meditations,' which became soon, and continue to be,
popular.
Hall, who had in his early days struggled hard with narrow circumstances
and neglect, seemed to reach the climax of prosperity when he was, in
1641, created by the King Bishop of Norwich. But having, soon after,
unfortunately added his name to the Protest of the twelve prelates
against the authority of any laws which should be passed during their
compulsory absence from Parliament, he was thrown into the Tower, and
subsequently threatened with sequestration. After enduring great
privations, he at last was permitted to retire to Higham, near Norwich,
where, reduced to a very miserable allowance, he continued to labour as
a pastor, with unwearied assiduity, till, in 1656, death closed his
eyes, at the advanced age of eighty-two. Bishop Hall, if not fully
competent to mate with Milton, was nevertheless a giant, conspicuous
even in an age when giants were rife. He has been called the Christian
Seneca, from the pith and clear sententiousness of his prose style. His
'Meditations,' ranging over almost the whole compass of Scripture, as
well as an incredible variety of ordinary topics, are distinguished by
their fertile fancy, their glowing language, and by thought which, if
seldom profound, is never commonplace, and seems always the spontaneous
and easy outcome of the author's mind. In no form of composition does
excellence depend more on spontaneity than in the meditation. The ruin
of such writers as Hervey, and, to some extent, Boyle, has been, that
they seem to have set themselves elaborately and convulsively to extract
sentiment out of every object which met their eye. They seem to say,
'We will, and we must meditate, whether the objects be interesting or
not, and whether our own moods be propitious to the exercise, or the
reverse.' Hence have come exaggeration, extravagance, and that shape
of the ridiculous which mimics the sublime, and has been so admirably
exposed in Swift's 'Meditation on a Broomstick.' Hall's method is, in
general, the opposite of this. The objects on which he muses seem to
have sought him, and not he them. He surrounds himself with his thoughts
unconsciously, as one gathers burs and other herbage about him by the
mere act of walking in the woods. Sometimes, indeed, he is quaint and
fantastic, as in his meditation
'UPON THE SIGHT OF TWO SNAILS.'
'There is much variety even in creatures of the same kind. See these
two snails: one hath a house, the other wants it; yet both are snails,
and it is a question whether case is the better; that which hath a
house hath more shelter, but that which wants it hath more freedom;
the privilege of that cover is but a burden--you see if it hath but a
stone to climb over with what stress it draws up that artificial load,
and if the passage proves strait finds no entrance, whereas the empty
snail makes no difference of way. Surely it is always an ease and
sometimes a happiness to have nothing. No man is so worthy of envy as
he that can be cheerful in want.'
In a very different style he discourses
'UPON HEARING OF MUSIC BY NIGHT.'
'How sweetly doth this music sound in this dead season! In the daytime
it would not, it could not so much affect the ear. All harmonious
sounds are advanced by a silent darkness: thus it is with the glad
tidings of salvation. The gospel never sounds so sweet as in the night
of preservation or of our own private affliction--it is ever the same,
the difference is in our disposition to receive it. O God, whose praise
it is to give songs in the night, make my prosperity conscionable and
my crosses cheerful!'
Hall fulfilled one test of lofty genius: he was in several departments
an originator. He first gave an example of epistolary composition in
prose,--an example the imitation of which has produced many of the most
interesting, instructive, and beautiful writings in the language. He
is our first popular author of Meditations and Contemplations, and a
large school has followed in his path--too often, in truth, _passibus
iniquis_. And he is unquestionably the father of British satire. It is
remarkable that all his satires were written in youth. Too often the
satirical spirit grows in authors with the advance of life; and it is a
pitiful sight, that of those who have passed the meridian of years and
reputation, grinning back in helpless mockery and toothless laughter
upon the brilliant way they have traversed, but to which they can return
no more. Hall, on the other hand, exhausted long ere he was thirty the
sarcastic material that was in him; and during the rest of his career,
wielded his powers with as much lenity as strength.
Perhaps no satirist had a more thorough conception than our author of
what is the real mission of satire in the moral history of mankind;
--_that_ is, to shew vice its own image--to scourge impudent imposture
--to expose hypocrisy--to laugh down solemn quackery of every kind--to
create blushes on brazen brows and fears of scorn in hollow hearts--to
make iniquity, as ashamed, hide its face--to apply caustic, nay cautery,
to the sores of society--and to destroy sin by shewing both the ridicule
which attaches to its progress and the wretched consequences which are
its end. But various causes prevented him from fully realising his own
ideal, and thus becoming the best as well as the first of our satirical
poets. His style--imitated from Persius and Juvenal--is too elliptical,
and it becomes true of him as well as of Persius that his points are
often sheathed through the remoteness of his allusions and the perplexity
of his diction. He is very recondite in his images, and you are sometimes
reminded of one storming in English at a Hindoo--it is pointless fury,
boltless thunder. At other times the stream of his satiric vein flows
on with a blended clearness and energy, which has commanded the warm
encomium of Campbell, and which prompted the diligent study of Pope.
There is more courage required in attacking the follies than the vices of
an age, and Hall shews a peculiar daring when he derides the vulgar forms
of astrology and alchymy which were then prevalent, and the wretched
fustian which infected the language both of literature and the stage.
Whatever be the merits or defects of Hall's satires, the world is
indebted to him as the founder of a school which were itself sufficient
to cover British literature with glory, and which, in the course of ages,
has included such writers as Samuel Butler, with his keen sense of the
grotesque and ridiculous--his wit, unequalled in its abundance and
point--his vast assortment of ludicrous fancies and language--and his
form of versification, seemingly shaped by the Genius of Satire for his
own purposes, and resembling heroic rhyme broken off in the middle by
shouts of laughter;--Dryden, with the ease, the _animus_, and the
masterly force of his satirical dissections--the vein of humour which
is stealthily visible at times in the intervals of his wrathful mood
--and the occasional passing and profound touches, worthy of Juvenal,
and reminding one of the fires of Egypt, which ran along the ground,
scorching all things while they pursued their unabated speed;--the
spirit of satire, strong as death, and cruel as the grave, which became
incarnate in Swift;--Pope, with his minute and microscopic vision
of human infirmities, his polish, delicate strokes, damning hints,
and annihilating whispers, where 'more is meant than meets the ear;'
--Johnson, with his crushing contempt and sacrificial dignity of scorn;
--Cowper, with the tenderness of a lover combined in his verse with the
terrible indignation of an ancient prophet;--Wolcot, with his infinite
fund of coarse wit and humour;--Burns, with that strange mixture of jaw
and genius--the spirit of a _caird_ with that of a poet--which marked all
his satirical pieces;--Crabbe, with his caustic vein and sternly-literal
descriptions, behind which are seen, half-skulking from view, kindness,
pity, and love;--Byron, with the clever Billingsgate of his earlier, and
the more than Swiftian ferocity of his later satires;--and Moore, with
the smartness, sparkle, tiny splendour, and minikin speed of his witty
shafts. In comparison with even these masters of the art, the good Bishop
does not dwindle; and he challenges precedence over most of them in the
purpose, tact, and good sense which blend with the whole of his satiric
poetry.
SATIRE I.
Time was, and that was term'd the time of gold,
When world and time were young, that now are old,
(When quiet Saturn sway'd the mace of lead,
And pride was yet unborn, and yet unbred;)
Time was, that whiles the autumn fall did last,
Our hungry sires gaped for the falling mast
Of the Dodonian oaks;
Could no unhusked acorn leave the tree,
But there was challenge made whose it might be;
And if some nice and liquorous appetite
Desired more dainty dish of rare delight,
They scaled the stored crab with clasped knee,
Till they had sated their delicious eye:
Or search'd the hopeful thicks of hedgy rows,
For briary berries, or haws, or sourer sloes:
Or when they meant to fare the fin'st of all,
They lick'd oak-leaves besprint with honey fall.
As for the thrice three-angled beech nutshell,
Or chestnut's armed husk, and hide kernel,
No squire durst touch, the law would not afford,
Kept for the court, and for the king's own board.
Their royal plate was clay, or wood, or stone;
The vulgar, save his hand, else he had none.
Their only cellar was the neighbour brook:
None did for better care, for better look.
Was then no plaining of the brewer's 'scape,
Nor greedy vintner mix'd the stained grape.
The king's pavilion was the grassy green,
Under safe shelter of the shady treen.
Under each bank men laid their limbs along,
Not wishing any ease, not fearing wrong:
Clad with their own, as they were made of old,
Not fearing shame, not feeling any cold.
But when by Ceres' huswifery and pain,
Men learn'd to bury the reviving grain,
And father Janus taught the new-found vine
Rise on the elm, with many a friendly twine:
And base desire bade men to delven low,
For needless metals, then 'gan mischief grow.
Then farewell, fairest age, the world's best days,
Thriving in all as it in age decays.
Then crept in pride, and peevish covetise,
And men grew greedy, discordous, and nice.
Now man, that erst hail-fellow was with beast,
Wox on to ween himself a god at least.
Nor aery fowl can take so high a flight,
Though she her daring wings in clouds have dight;
Nor fish can dive so deep in yielding sea,
Though Thetis' self should swear her safëty;
Nor fearful beast can dig his cave so low,
As could he further than earth's centre go;
As that the air, the earth, or ocean,
Should shield them from the gorge of greedy man.
Hath utmost Ind ought better than his own?
Then utmost Ind is near, and rife to gone,
O nature! was the world ordain'd for nought
But fill man's maw, and feed man's idle thought?
Thy grandsire's words savour'd of thrifty leeks,
Or manly garlic; but thy furnace reeks
Hot steams of wine; and can aloof descry
The drunken draughts of sweet autumnitie.
They naked went; or clad in ruder hide,
Or home-spun russet, void of foreign pride:
But thou canst mask in garish gauderie
To suit a fool's far-fetched livery.
A French head join'd to neck Italian:
Thy thighs from Germany, and breast from Spain:
An Englishman in none, a fool in all:
Many in one, and one in several.
Then men were men; but now the greater part
Beasts are in life, and women are in heart.
Good Saturn self, that homely emperor,
In proudest pomp was not so clad of yore,
As is the under-groom of the ostlery,
Husbanding it in work-day yeomanry.
Lo! the long date of those expired days,
Which the inspired Merlin's word foresays;
When dunghill peasants shall be dight as kings,
Then one confusion another brings:
Then farewell, fairest age, the world's best days,
Thriving in ill, as it in age decays.
SATIRE VII.
Seest thou how gaily my young master goes,
Vaunting himself upon his rising toes;
And pranks his hand upon his dagger's side,
And picks his glutted teeth since late noontide?
'Tis Ruffio: Trow'st thou where he dined to-day?
In sooth I saw him sit with Duke Humphray.
Many good welcomes, and much gratis cheer,
Keeps he for every straggling cavalier,
And open house, haunted with great resort;
Long service mix'd with musical disport.
Many fair younker with a feather'd crest,
Chooses much rather be his shot-free guest,
To fare so freely with so little cost,
Than stake his twelvepence to a meaner host.
Hadst thou not told me, I should surely say
He touch'd no meat of all this livelong day.
For sure methought, yet that was but a guess,
His eyes seem'd sunk for very hollowness;
But could he have (as I did it mistake)
So little in his purse, so much upon his back?
So nothing in his maw? yet seemeth by his belt,
That his gaunt gut no too much stuffing felt.
Seest thou how side it hangs beneath his hip?
Hunger and heavy iron makes girdles slip;
Yet for all that, how stiffly struts he by,
All trapped in the new-found bravery.
The nuns of new-won Calais his bonnet lent,
In lieu of their so kind a conquerment.
What needed he fetch that from furthest Spain.
His grandam could have lent with lesser pain?
Though he perhaps ne'er pass'd the English shore,
Yet fain would counted be a conqueror.
His hair, French-like, stares on his frighted head,
One lock, Amazon-like, dishevelled,
As if he meant to wear a native cord,
If chance his fates should him that bane afford.
All British bare upon the bristled skin,
Close notched is his beard both lip and chin;
His linen collar labyrinthian set,
Whose thousand double turnings never met:
His sleeves half hid with elbow pinionings,
As if he meant to fly with linen wings.
But when I look, and cast mine eyes below,
What monster meets mine eyes in human show?
So slender waist with such an abbot's loin,
Did never sober nature sure conjoin,
Lik'st a strawn scarecrow in the new-sown field,
Rear'd on some stick, the tender corn to shield;
Or if that semblance suit not every deal,
Like a broad shake-fork with a slender steel.
Despised nature, suit them once aright,
Their body to their coat, both now misdight.
Their body to their clothës might shapen be,
That nill their clothës shape to their body.
Meanwhile I wonder at so proud a back,
Whiles the empty guts loud rumblen for long lack:
The belly envieth the back's bright glee,
And murmurs at such inequality.
The back appears unto the partial eyne,
The plaintive belly pleads they bribed been:
And he, for want of better advocate,
Doth to the ear his injury relate.
The back, insulting o'er the belly's need,
Says, Thou thyself, I others' eyes must feed.
The maw, the guts, all inward parts complain
The back's great pride, and their own secret pain.
Ye witless gallants, I beshrew your hearts,
That sets such discord 'twixt agreeing parts,
Which never can be set at onement more,
Until the maw's wide mouth be stopt with store.
RICHARD LOVELACE.
This unlucky cavalier and bard was born in 1618. He was the son of Sir
William Lovelace, of Woolwich, in Kent. He was educated some say at
Oxford, and others at Cambridge--took a master's degree, and was
afterwards presented at Court. Anthony Wood thus describes his personal
appearance at the age of sixteen:--'He was the most amiable and
beautiful person that eye ever beheld,--a person also of innate modesty,
virtue, and courtly deportment, which made him then, but especially
after when he retired to the great city, much admired and adored by the
fair sex.' Soon after this, he was chosen by the county of Kent to
deliver a petition from the inhabitants to the House of Commons, praying
them to restore the King to his rights, and to settle the government.
Such offence was given by this to the Long Parliament, that Lovelace was
thrown into prison, and only liberated on heavy bail. His paternal
estate, which amounted to £500 a-year, was soon exhausted in his efforts
to promote the royal cause. In 1646, he formed a regiment for the
service of the King of France, became its colonel, and was wounded at
Dunkirk. Ere leaving England, he had formed a strong attachment to a
Miss Lucy Sacheverell, and had written much poetry in her praise,
designating her as _Lux-Casta_. Unfortunately, hearing a report that
Lovelace had died at Dunkirk of his wounds, she married another, so
that, on his return home in 1648, he met a deep disappointment; and to
complete his misery, the ruling powers cast him again into prison, where
he lay till the death of Charles. Like some other men of genius, he
beguiled his confinement by literary employment; and in 1649, he
published a book under the title of 'Lucasta,' consisting of odes,
sonnets, songs, and miscellaneous poems, most of which had been
previously composed. After the execution of the King, he was liberated;
but his funds were exhausted, his heart broken, and his constitution
probably injured. He gradually sunk; and Wood says that he became very
poor in body and purse, was the object of charity, 'went in ragged
clothes, and mostly lodged in obscure and dirty places.' Alas for the
Adonis of sixteen, the beloved of Lucasta, and the envied of all! Some
have doubted these stories about his extreme poverty; and one of his
biographers asserts, that his daughter and sole heir (but who, pray, was
his wife and her mother?) married the son of Lord Chief-Justice Coke,
and brought to her husband the estates of her father at Kingsdown, in
Kent. Aubrey however, corroborates the statements of Wood; and, at all
events, Lovelace seems to have died, in 1658, in a wretched alley near
Shoe Lane.
There is not much to be said about his poetry. It may be compared to his
person--beautiful, but dressed in a stiff mode. We do not, in every
point, homologate the opinions of Prynne, as to the 'unloveliness of
love-locks;' but we do certainly look with a mixture of contempt and
pity on the self-imposed trammels of affectation in style and manner
which bound many of the poets of that period. The wits of Charles II.
were more disgustingly licentious; but their very carelessness saved
them from the conceits of their predecessors; and, while lowering the
tone of morality, they raised unwittingly the standard of taste. Some of
the songs of Lovelace, however, such as 'To Althea, from Prison,' are
exquisitely simple, as well as pure. Sir Egerton Brydges has found out
that Byron, in one of his be-praised paradoxical beauties, either
copied, or coincided with, our poet. In the 'Bride of Abydos' he says of
Zuleika--
'The mind, the _music_ breathing from her face.'
Lovelace had, long before, in the song of 'Orpheus Mourning for his
Wife,' employed the words--
'Oh, could you view the melody
Of every grace,
And _music of her face_,
You'd drop a tear;
Seeing more harmony
In her bright eye
Than now you hear.'
While many have praised, others have called this idea nonsense;
although, if we are permitted to speak of the harmony of the tones of a
cloud, why not of the harmony produced by the consenting lines of a
countenance, where every grace melts into another, and the various
features and expressions fluctuate into a fine whole? Whatever, whether
it be the beauty of the human face, or the quiet lustre of statuary, or
the mild glory of moonlight, gives the effects of music, and, like that
divine art,
'Pours on mortals a beautiful disdain,'
may surely become music's metaphor and poetic analogy.
SONG.
TO ALTHEA, FROM PRISON.
1 When Love, with unconfined wings,
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at my grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair,
And fetter'd to her eye,
The birds, that wanton in the air,
Know no such liberty.
2 When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free,
Fishes, that tipple in the deep,
Know no such liberty.
3 When, like committed linnets, I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
And glories of my king;[1]
When I shall voice aloud how good
He is, how great should be,
Enlarged winds, that curl the flood,
Know no such liberty.
4 Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage.
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.
[1] Charles I., in whose cause Lovelace was then in prison.
SONG.
1 Amarantha, sweet and fair,
Forbear to braid that shining hair;
As my curious hand or eye,
Hovering round thee, let it fly:
2 Let it fly as unconfined
As its ravisher, the wind,
Who has left his darling east,
To wanton o'er this spicy nest.
3 Every tress must be confess'd
But neatly tangled at the best,
Like a clew of golden thread
Most excellently ravelled:
4 Do not then wind up that light
In ribands, and o'ercloud the night;
Like the sun in his early ray,
But shake your head and scatter day.
A LOOSE SARABAND.
1 Ah me! the little tyrant thief,
As once my heart was playing,
He snatch'd it up, and flew away,
Laughing at all my praying.
2 Proud of his purchase, he surveys,
And curiously sounds it;
And though he sees it full of wounds,
Cruel, still on he wounds it.
3 And now this heart is all his sport,
Which as a ball he boundeth,
From hand to hand, from breast to lip,
And all its rest confoundeth.
4 Then as a top he sets it up,
And pitifully whips it;
Sometimes he clothes it gay and fine,
Then straight again he strips it.
5 He cover'd it with false belief,
Which gloriously show'd it;
And for a morning cushionet
On's mother he bestow'd it.
6 Each day with her small brazen stings
A thousand times she raced it;
But then at night, bright with her gems,
Once near her breast she placed it.
7 Then warm it 'gan to throb and bleed,
She knew that smart, and grieved;
At length this poor condemned heart,
With these rich drugs reprieved.
8 She wash'd the wound with a fresh tear,
Which my Lucasta dropped;
And in the sleeve silk of her hair
'Twas hard bound up and wrapped.
9 She probed it with her constancy,
And found no rancour nigh it;
Only the anger of her eye
Had wrought some proud flesh nigh it.
10 Then press'd she hard in every vein,
Which from her kisses thrilled,
And with the balm heal'd all its pain
That from her hand distilled.
11 But yet this heart avoids me still,
Will not by me be owned;
But, fled to its physician's breast,
There proudly sits enthroned.
ROBERT HERRICK.
This poet--a bird with tropical plumage, and norland sweetness of song
--was born in Cheapside, London, in 1591. His father, was an eminent
goldsmith. Herrick was sent to Cambridge; and having entered into holy
orders, and being patronised by the Earl of Exeter, he was, in 1629,
presented by Charles I. to the vicarage of Dean Prior, in Devonshire.
Here he resided for twenty years, till ejected by the civil war. He
seems all this time to have felt little relish either for his profession
or parishioners. In the former, the cast of his poems shews that he must
have been 'detained before the Lord;' and the latter he describes as a
'wild, amphibious race,' rude almost as 'salvages,' and 'churlish as the
seas.' When he quitted his charge, he became an author at the mature age
of fifty-six--publishing first, in 1647, his 'Noble Numbers; or, Pious
Pieces;' and next, in 1648, his 'Hesperides; or, Works both Human and
Divine of Robert Herrick, Esq.'--his ministerial prefix being now laid
aside. Some of these poems were sufficiently unclerical--being wild and
licentious in cast--although he himself alleges that his life was,
sexually at least, blameless. Till the Restoration he lived in Westminster,
supported by the rich among the Royalists, and keeping company with the
popular dramatists and poets. It would seem that he had been in the habit
of visiting London previously, while still acting as a clergyman, and had
become a boon companion of Ben Jonson. Hence his well-known lines--
'Ah, Ben!
Say how or when
Shall we, thy guests,
Meet at those lyric feasts,
Made at the "Sun,"
The "Dog," the "Triple Tun,"
Where we such clusters had
As made us nobly wild, not mad?
And yet each verse of thine
Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine.
My Ben!
Or come again,
Or send to us,
Thy wit's great overplus.
But teach us yet
Wisely to husband it;
Lest we that talent spend,
And having once brought to an end
That precious stock, the store
Of such a wit, the world should have no more.'
With the Restoration, fortune began again to smile on our poet. He was
replaced in his old charge, and seems to have spent the rest of his life
quietly in the country, enjoying the fresh air and the old English
sports--'repenting at leisure moments,' as Shakspeare has it, of the
early pruriencies of his muse; or, as the same immortal bard says of
Falstaff, 'patching up his old body' for a better place. The date of his
death is not exactly ascertained; but he seems to have got considerably
to the shady side of seventy years of age.
Herrick's poetry was for a long time little known, till worthy Nathan
Drake, in his 'Literary Hours,' performed to him, as to some others,
the part of a friendly resurrectionist. He may be called the English
Anacreon, and resembles the Greek poet, not only in graceful, lively,
and voluptuous elegance and richness, but also in that deeper sentiment
which often underlies the lighter surface of his verse. It is a great
mistake to suppose that Anacreon was a mere contented sensualist and
shallow songster of love and wine. Some of his odes shew that, if he
yielded to the destiny of being a Cicada, singing amidst the vines of
Bacchus, it was despair--the despair produced by a degraded age and a
bad religion--which reduced him to the necessity. He was by nature an
eagle; but he was an eagle in a sky where there was no sun. The cry of
a noble being, placed in the most untoward circumstances, is here and
there heard in his verses, and reminds you of the voice of one of the
transmuted victims of Circe, or of Ariel from that cloven pine, where he
'howl'd away twelve winters.'
Herrick might be by constitution a voluptuary,--and he has unquestionably
degraded his genius in not a few of his rhymes,--but in him, as well as
in Anacreon, Horace, and Burns, there lay a better and a higher nature,
which the critics have ignored, because it has not found a frequent or
full utterance in his poetry. In proof that our author possessed profound
sentiment, mingling and sometimes half-lost in the loose, luxuriant
leafage of his imagery, we need only refer our readers to his 'Blossoms'
and his 'Daffodils.' Besides gaiety and gracefulness, his verse is
exceedingly musical--his lines not only move but dance.
SONG.
1 Gather the rose-buds, while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
2 The glorious lamp of heaven, the Sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.
3 The age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse and worst
Times, still succeed the former.
4 Then be not coy, but use your time,
And, whilst ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.
CHERRY-RIPE.
Cherry-ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry;
Full and fair ones; come, and buy!
If so be you ask me where
They do grow? I answer, there,
Where my Julia's lips do smile;
There's the land or cherry isle,
Whose plantations fully show,
All the year, where cherries grow.
THE KISS: A DIALOGUE.
1. Among thy fancies, tell me this:
What is the thing we call a kiss?--
2. I shall resolve ye what it is:
It is a creature, born and bred
Between the lips, all cherry red;
By love and warm desires 'tis fed;
_Chor_.--And makes more soft the bridal bed:
2. It is an active flame, that flies
First to the babies of the eyes,
And charms them there with lullabies;
_Chor_.--And stills the bride too when she cries:
2. Then to the chin, the cheek, the ear,
It frisks and flies; now here, now there;
'Tis now far off, and then 'tis near;
_Chor_.--And here, and there, and everywhere.
1. Has it a speaking virtue?--2. Yes.
1. How speaks it, say?--2. Do you but this,
Part your join'd lips, then speaks your kiss;
_Chor_.--And this love's sweetest language is.
1. Has it a body?--2. Aye, and wings,
With thousand rare encolourings;
And, as it flies, it gently sings,
_Chor_.--Love honey yields, but never stings.
TO DAFFODILS.
1 Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain'd his noon:
Stay, stay
Until the hast'ning day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray'd together, we
Will go with you along!
2 We have short time to stay, as you;
We have as short a spring,
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything:
We die,
As your hours do; and dry
Away
Like to the summer's rain,
Or as the pearls of morning dew
Ne'er to be found again.
TO PRIMROSES.
1 Why do ye weep, sweet babes? Can tears
Speak grief in you,
Who are but born
Just as the modest morn
Teem'd her refreshing dew?
Alas! you have not known that shower
That mars a flower;
Nor felt the unkind
Breath of a blasting wind;
Nor are ye worn with years;
Or warp'd, as we,
Who think it strange to see
Such pretty flowers, like to orphans young,
To speak by tears before ye have a tongue.
2 Speak, whimpering younglings; and make known
The reason why
Ye droop and weep.
Is it for want of sleep,
Or childish lullaby?
Or that ye have not seen as yet
The violet?
Or brought a kiss
From that sweetheart to this?
No, no; this sorrow shown
By your tears shed,
Would have this lecture read,
'That things of greatest, so of meanest worth,
Conceived with grief are, and with tears brought forth.'
TO BLOSSOMS.
1 Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,
Why do ye fall so fast?
Your date is not so past,
But you may stay yet here awhile
To blush and gently smile
And go at last.
2 What, were ye born to be
An hour or half's delight,
And so to bid good night?
'Tis pity Nature brought ye forth
Merely to show your worth,
And lose you quite.
3 But you are lovely leaves, where we
May read how soon things have
Their end, though ne'er so brave:
And after they have shown their pride,
Like you, awhile, they glide
Into the grave.
OBERON'S PALACE.
Thus to a grove
Sometimes devoted unto love,
Tinsell'd with twilight, he and they,
Led by the shine of snails, a way
Beat with their num'rous feet, which by
Many a neat perplexity,
Many a turn, and many a cross
Tract, they redeem a bank of moss,
Spongy and swelling, and far more
Soft than the finest Lemster ore,
Mildly disparkling like those fires
Which break from the enjewell'd tires
Of curious brides, or like those mites
Of candied dew in moony nights;
Upon this convex all the flowers
Nature begets by the sun and showers,
Are to a wild digestion brought;
As if Love's sampler here was wrought
Or Cytherea's ceston, which
All with temptation doth bewitch.
Sweet airs move here, and more divine
Made by the breath of great-eyed kine
Who, as they low, impearl with milk
The four-leaved grass, or moss-like silk.
The breath of monkeys, met to mix
With musk-flies, are the aromatics
Which cense this arch; and here and there,
And further off, and everywhere
Throughout that brave mosaic yard,
Those picks or diamonds in the card,
With pips of hearts, of club, and spade,
Are here most neatly interlaid.
Many a counter, many a die,
Half-rotten and without an eye,
Lies hereabout; and for to pave
The excellency of this cave,
Squirrels' and children's teeth, late shed,
Are neatly here inchequered
With brownest toadstones, and the gum
That shines upon the bluer plumb.
* * * * *
Art's
Wise hand enchasing here those warts
Which we to others from ourselves
Sell, and brought hither by the elves.
The tempting mole, stolen from the neck
Of some shy virgin, seems to deck
The holy entrance; where within
The room is hung with the blue skin
Of shifted snake, enfriezed throughout
With eyes of peacocks' trains, and trout--
Flies' curious wings; and these among
Those silver pence, that cut the tongue
Of the red infant, neatly hung.
The glow-worm's eyes, the shining scales
Of silvery fish, wheat-straws, the snail's
Soft candlelight, the kitling's eyne,
Corrupted wood, serve here for shine;
No glaring light of broad-faced day,
Or other over-radiant ray
Ransacks this room, but what weak beams
Can make reflected from these gems,
And multiply; such is the light,
But ever doubtful, day or night.
By this quaint taper-light he winds
His errors up; and now he finds
His moon-tann'd Mab as somewhat sick,
And, love knows, tender as a chick.
Upon six plump dandelions high-
Rear'd lies her elvish majesty,
Whose woolly bubbles seem'd to drown
Her Mabship in obedient down.
* * * * *
And next to these two blankets, o'er-
Cast of the finest gossamer;
And then a rug of carded wool,
Which, sponge-like, drinking in the dull
Light of the moon, seem'd to comply,
Cloud-like, the dainty deity:
Thus soft she lies; and overhead
A spinner's circle is bespread
With cobweb curtains, from the roof
So neatly sunk, as that no proof
Of any tackling can declare
What gives it hanging in the air.
* * * * *
OBERON'S FEAST.
Shapcot, to thee the fairy state
I with discretion dedicate;
Because thou prizest things that are
Curious and unfamiliar.
Take first the feast; these dishes gone,
We'll see the fairy court anon.
A little mushroom table spread;
After short prayers, they set on bread,
A moon-parch'd grain of purest wheat,
With some small glittering grit, to eat
His choicest bits with; then in a trice
They make a feast less great than nice.
But, all this while his eye is served,
We must not think his ear was starved;
But there was in place, to stir
His spleen, the chirring grasshopper,
The merry cricket, puling fly,
The piping gnat, for minstrelsy.
And now we must imagine first
The elves present, to quench his thirst,
A pure seed-pearl of infant dew,
Brought and besweeten'd in a blue
And pregnant violet; which done,
His kitling eyes begin to run
Quite through the table, where he spies
The horns of pap'ry butterflies,
Of which he eats; and tastes a little
Of what we call the cuckoo's spittle:
A little furze-ball pudding stands
By, yet not blessed by his hands--
That was too coarse; but then forthwith
He ventures boldly on the pith
Of sugar'd rush, and eats the sag
And well-bestrutted bee's sweet bag;
Gladding his palate with some store
Of emmets' eggs: what would he more
But beards of mice, a newt's stew'd thigh,
A bloated earwig, and a fly:
With the red-capp'd worm, that is shut
Within the concave of a nut,
Brown as his tooth; a little moth,
Late fatten'd in a piece of cloth;
With wither'd cherries; mandrakes' ears;
Moles' eyes; to these, the slain stag's tears;
The unctuous dewlaps of a snail;
The broke heart of a nightingale
O'ercome in music; with a wine
Ne'er ravish'd from the flatt'ring rine,
But gently press'd from the soft side
Of the most sweet and dainty bride,
Brought in a dainty daisy, which
He fully quaffs up to bewitch
His blood to height? This done, commended
Grace by his priest, the feast is ended.
THE MAD MAID'S SONG.
1 Good-morrow to the day so fair;
Good-morning, sir, to you;
Good-morrow to mine own torn hair,
Bedabbled with the dew:
2 Good-morning to this primrose too;
Good-morrow to each maid,
That will with flowers the tomb bestrew
Wherein my love is laid.
3 Ah, woe is me; woe, woe is me!
Alack, and well-a-day!
For pity, sir, find out this bee
Which bore my love away.
4 I'll seek him in your bonnet brave,
I'll seek him in your eyes;
Nay, now I think they've made his grave
I' th' bed of strawberries:
5 I'll seek him there; I know ere this
The cold, cold earth doth shake him;
But I will go, or send a kiss
By you, sir, to awake him.
6 Pray hurt him not; though he be dead,
He knows well who do love him,
And who with green turfs rear his head,
And who do rudely move him.
7 He's soft and tender, pray take heed,
With bands of cowslips bind him,
And bring him home;--but 'tis decreed
That I shall never find him!
CORINNA'S GOING A-MAYING.
1 Get up, get up for shame; the blooming morn
Upon her wings presents the god unshorn:
See how Aurora throws her fair
Fresh-quilted colours through the air:
Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see
The dew bespangling herb and tree:
Each flower has wept, and bow'd toward the east,
Above an hour since; yet you are not drest;
Nay, not so much as out of bed;
When all the birds have matins said,
And sung their thankful hymns; 'tis sin,
Nay, profanation, to keep in;
When as a thousand virgins on this day,
Spring sooner than the lark, to fetch in May!
2 Rise and put on your foliage, and be seen
To come forth like the spring-time, fresh and green,
And sweet as Flora. Take no care
For jewels for your gown, or hair:
Fear not, the leaves will strew
Gems in abundance upon you:
Besides, the childhood of the day has kept,
Against you come, some orient pearls unwept:
Come and receive them, while the light
Hangs on the dew-locks of the night,
And Titan on the eastern hill
Retires himself, or else stands still
Till you come forth. Wash, dress, be brief in praying;
Few beads are best, when once we go a-Maying!
3 Come, my Corinna, come; and, coming, mark
How each field turns a street, each street a park
Made green, and trimm'd with trees; see how
Devotion gives each house a bough,
Or branch; each porch, each door, ere this
An ark, a tabernacle is
Made up of whitethorn newly interwove,
As if here were those cooler shades of love.
Can such delights be in the street
And open fields, and we not see't?
Come, we'll abroad; and let's obey
The proclamation made for May,
And sin no more, as we have done, by staying;
But, my Corinna, come, let's go a-Maying!
4 There's not a budding boy or girl this day
But is got up, and gone to bring in May:
A deal of youth, ere this, is come
Back, and with whitethorn laden home:
Some have despatch'd their cakes and cream,
Before that we have left to dream;
And some have wept, and woo'd, and plighted troth,
And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth:
Many a green gown has been given;
Many a kiss, both odd and even;
Many a glance too has been sent
From out the eye, love's firmament;
Many a jest told of the key's betraying
This night, and locks pick'd; yet we're not a-Maying!
5 Come, let us go, while we are in our prime,
And take the harmless folly of the time:
We shall grow old apace, and die
Before we know our liberty:
Our life is short, and our days run
As fast away as does the sun:
And, as a vapour, or a drop of rain,
Once lost, can ne'er be found again,
So when or you, or I, are made
A fable, song, or fleeting shade,
All love, all liking, all delight
Lies drown'd with us in endless night.
Then, while time serves, and we are but decaying,
Come, my Corinna, come, let's go a-Maying!
JEPHTHAH'S DAUGHTER.
1 O thou, the wonder of all days!
O paragon and pearl of praise!
O Virgin Martyr! ever bless'd
Above the rest
Of all the maiden train! we come,
And bring fresh strewings to thy tomb.
2 Thus, thus, and thus we compass round
Thy harmless and enchanted ground;
And, as we sing thy dirge, we will
The daffodil
And other flowers lay upon
The altar of our love, thy stone.
3 Thou wonder of all maids! list here,
Of daughters all the dearest dear;
The eye of virgins, nay, the queen
Of this smooth green,
And all sweet meads, from whence we get
The primrose and the violet.
4 Too soon, too dear did Jephthah buy,
By thy sad loss, our liberty:
His was the bond and cov'nant; yet
Thou paid'st the debt,
Lamented maid! He won the day,
But for the conquest thou didst pay.
5 Thy father brought with him along
The olive branch and victor's song:
He slew the Ammonites, we know,
But to thy woe;
And, in the purchase of our peace,
The cure was worse than the disease.
6 For which obedient zeal of thine,
We offer thee, before thy shrine,
Our sighs for storax, tears for wine;
And to make fine
And fresh thy hearse-cloth, we will here
Four times bestrew thee every year.
7 Receive, for this thy praise, our tears;
Receive this offering of our hairs;
Receive these crystal vials, fill'd
With tears distill'd
From teeming eyes; to these we bring,
Each maid, her silver filleting,
8 To gild thy tomb; besides, these cauls,
These laces, ribands, and these fauls,
These veils, wherewith we used to hide
The bashful bride,
When we conduct her to her groom:
All, all, we lay upon thy tomb.
9 No more, no more, since thou art dead,
Shall we e'er bring coy brides to bed;
No more at yearly festivals
We cowslip balls
Or chains of columbines shall make
For this or that occasion's sake.
10 No, no; our maiden pleasures be
Wrapt in a winding-sheet with thee;
'Tis we are dead, though not i' th' grave,
Or if we have
One seed of life left,'tis to keep
A Lent for thee, to fast and weep.
11 Sleep in thy peace, thy bed of spice,
And make this place all paradise:
May sweets grow here! and smoke from hence
Fat frankincense.
Let balm and cassia send their scent
From out thy maiden-monument.
12 May no wolf howl or screech-owl stir
A wing upon thy sepulchre!
No boisterous winds or storms
To starve or wither
Thy soft, sweet earth! but, like a spring,
Love keep it ever flourishing.
13 May all thy maids, at wonted hours,
Come forth to strew thy tomb with flowers:
May virgins, when they come to mourn,
Male-incense burn
Upon thine altar! then return
And leave thee sleeping in thy urn.
THE COUNTRY LIFE.
Sweet country life, to such unknown
Whose lives are others', not their own!
But serving courts and cities, be
Less happy, less enjoying thee!
Thou never plough'st the ocean's foam
To seek and bring rough pepper home;
Nor to the Eastern Ind dost rove,
To bring from thence the scorched clove:
Nor, with the loss of thy loved rest,
Bring'st home the ingot from the West.
No: thy ambition's masterpiece
Flies no thought higher than a fleece;
Or how to pay thy hinds, and clear
All scores, and so to end the year;
But walk'st about thy own dear bounds,
Not envying others' larger grounds:
For well thou know'st, 'tis not the extent
Of land makes life, but sweet content.
When now the cock, the ploughman's horn,
Calls forth the lily-wristed morn,
Then to thy corn-fields thou dost go,
Which though well-soil'd, yet thou dost know
That the best compost for the lands
Is the wise master's feet and hands.
There at the plough thou find'st thy team,
With a hind whistling there to them;
And cheer'st them up by singing how
The kingdom's portion is the plough.
This done, then to th' enamell'd meads,
Thou go'st; and as thy foot there treads,
Thou seest a present godlike power
Imprinted in each herb and flower;
And smell'st the breath of great-eyed kine,
Sweet as the blossoms of the vine.
Here thou behold'st thy large sleek neat
Unto the dewlaps up in meat;
And, as thou look'st, the wanton steer,
The heifer, cow, and ox, draw near,
To make a pleasing pastime there.
These seen, thou go'st to view thy flocks
Of sheep, safe from the wolf and fox;
And find'st their bellies there as full
Of short sweet grass, as backs with wool;
And leav'st them as they feed and fill;
A shepherd piping on a hill.
For sports, for pageantry, and plays,
Thou hast thy eves and holidays;
On which the young men and maids meet,
To exercise their dancing feet;
Tripping the comely country round,
With daffodils and daisies crown'd.
Thy wakes, thy quintels, here thou hast;
Thy May-poles too, with garlands graced;
Thy morris-dance, thy Whitsun-ale,
Thy shearing feast, which never fail;
Thy harvest-home, thy wassail-bowl,
That's toss'd up after fox i' the hole;
Thy mummeries, thy Twelfth-night kings
And queens, thy Christmas revellings;
Thy nut-brown mirth, thy russet wit;
And no man pays too dear for it.
To these thou hast thy times to go,
And trace the hare in the treacherous snow;
Thy witty wiles to draw, and get
The lark into the trammel net;
Thou hast thy cockrood, and thy glade
To take the precious pheasant made;
Thy lime-twigs, snares, and pitfalls, then,
To catch the pilfering birds, not men.
O happy life, if that their good
The husbandmen but understood!
Who all the day themselves do please,
And younglings, with such sports as these;
And, lying down, have nought to affright
Sweet sleep, that makes more short the night.
SIR RICHARD FANSHAWE.
This gallant knight was son to Sir Henry Fanshawe, who was Remembrancer
to the Irish Exchequer, and brother to Thomas Lord Fanshawe. He was born
at Ware, in Hertfordshire, in 1607-8. He became a vehement Royalist, and
acted for some time as Secretary to Prince Rupert, and was, in truth, a
kindred spirit, worthy of recording the orders of that fiery spirit--the
Murat of the Royal cause--to whom the dust of the _mêlée_ of battle was
the very breath of life. After the Restoration, Fanshawe was appointed
ambassador to Spain and Portugal. He acted in this capacity at Madrid in
1666. He had issued translations of the 'Lusiad' of Camoens, and the
'Pastor Fido' of Guarini. Along with the latter, which appeared in 1648,
he published some original poems of considerable merit. He holds
altogether a respectable, if not a very high place among our early
translators and minor poets.
THE SPRING, A SONNET.
FROM THE SPANISH.
Those whiter lilies which the early morn
Seems to have newly woven of sleaved silk,
To which, on banks of wealthy Tagus born,
Gold was their cradle, liquid pearl their milk.
These blushing roses, with whose virgin leaves
The wanton wind to sport himself presumes,
Whilst from their rifled wardrobe he receives
For his wings purple, for his breath perfumes.
Both those and these my Caelia's pretty foot
Trod up; but if she should her face display,
And fragrant breast, they'd dry again to the root,
As with the blasting of the mid-day's ray;
And this soft wind, which both perfumes and cools,
Pass like the unregarded breath of fools.
ABRAHAM COWLEY.
The 'melancholy' and musical Cowley was born in London in the year 1618.
He was the posthumous son of a worthy grocer, who lived in Fleet Street,
near the end of Chancery Lane, and who is supposed, from the omission of
his name in the register of St Dunstan's parish, to have been a
Dissenter. His mother was left poor, but had a strong desire for her
son's education, and influence to get him admitted as a king's scholar
into Westminster. His mind was almost preternaturally precocious, and
received early a strong and peculiar stimulus. A copy of Spenser lay in
the window of his mother's apartment, and in it he delighted to read,
and became the devoted slave of poetry ever after. When only ten he
wrote 'The Tragical History of Pyramus and Thisbe,' and at twelve
'Constantia and Philetus.' Pope wrote a lampoon about the same age as
Cowley these romantic narratives; and we have seen a pretty good copy of
verses on Napoleon, written at the age of seven, by one of the most
distinguished rising poets of our own day. When fifteen (Johnson calls
it thirteen, but he and some other biographers were misled by the
portrait of the poet being, by mistake, marked thirteen) Cowley
published some of his early effusions, under the title of 'Poetical
Blossoms.' While at school he produced a comedy of a pastoral kind,
entitled, 'Love's Riddle,' but it was not published till he went to
Cambridge. To that university he proceeded in 1636, and two years after,
there appeared the above-mentioned comedy, with a poetical dedication to
Sir Kenelm Digby, one of the marvellous men of that age; and also
'Naufragium Joculare,' a comedy in Latin, inscribed to Dr Comber, master
of the college. When the Prince of Wales afterwards visited Cambridge,
the fertile Cowley got up the rough draft of another comedy, called 'The
Guardian,' which was repeated to His Royal Highness by the scholars.
This was afterwards, to the poet's great annoyance, printed during his
absence from the country. In 1643 he took his degree of A.M., and was,
the same year, through the prevailing influence of the Parliament,
ejected, with many others, from Cambridge. He took refuge in St John's
College, Oxford, where he published a satire, entitled 'The Puritan and
Papist,' and where, by his loyalty and genius, he gained the favour of
such distinguished courtiers as Lord Falkland. During this agitated
period he resided a good deal in the family of the Lord St Albans; and
when Oxford fell into the hands of the Parliament he followed the Queen
to Paris, and there acted as Secretary to the same noble lord. He
remained abroad about ten years, and during that period made various
journeys in the furtherance of the Royal cause, visiting Flanders,
Holland, Jersey, Scotland, &c. His chief employment, however, was
carrying on a correspondence in cipher between the King and the Queen.
Sprat says, 'he ciphered and deciphered with his own hand the greatest
part of the letters that passed between their Majesties, and managed a
vast intelligence in other parts, which, for some years together, took
up all his days and two or three nights every week.' This does not seem
employment very suitable to a man of genius. He seems, however, to have
found time for more congenial avocations; and, in 1647, he published his
'Mistress,' a work which seems to glow with amorous fire, although
Barnes relates of the author that he was never in love but once, and
then had not resolution to reveal his passion. And yet he wrote 'The
Chronicle,' from which we might infer that his heart was completely
tinder, and that his series of love attachments had been an infinite
one!
In 1556, being of no more use in Paris, Cowley was sent back to England,
that 'under pretence of privacy and retirement he might take occasion of
giving notice of the posture of things in this nation.' For some time he
lay concealed in London, but was at length seized by mistake for another
gentleman of the Royal party; and being thus discovered, he was continued
in confinement, was several times examined, and ultimately succeeded,
although with some difficulty, in obtaining his liberation, Dr Scarborough
becoming his bail for a thousand pounds. In the same year he published a
collection of his poems, with a querulous preface, in which he expresses
a strong desire to 'retire to some of the American plantations, and to
forsake the world for ever.' Meanwhile he gave himself out as a physician
till the death of Cromwell, when he returned to France, resumed his former
occupation, and remained till the Restoration. In 1657 he was created
Doctor of Medicine at Oxford. Having studied botany to qualify himself for
his physician's degree, he was induced to publish in Latin some books on
plants, flowers, and trees.
The Restoration brought him less advantage than he had anticipated.
Probably he expected too much, and had expressed his sanguine hopes in a
song of triumph on the occasion. He had been promised, both by Charles
I. and Charles II., the Mastership of the Savoy, (a forgotten sinecure
office;) but lost it, says Wood, 'by certain persons, enemies to the
Muses.' He brought on the stage at this time his old comedy of 'The
Guardian,' under the title of 'Cutter of Coleman Street;' but it was
thought a satire on the debauchery of the King's party, and was received
with coldness. Cowley, according to Dryden, 'received the news of his
ill success not with so much firmness as might have been expected from
so great a man.' There are few who, like Dr Johnson, have been able to
declare, after the rejection of a play or poem, that they felt 'like the
Monument.' Cowley not only entertained, but printed his dissatisfaction,
in the form of a poem called 'The Complaint,' which, like all selfish
complaints, attracted little sympathy or attention. In this he calls
himself the 'melancholy Cowley,' an epithet which has stuck to his
memory.
He had always, according to his own statement, loved retirement. When he
was a young boy at school, instead of running about on holidays, and
playing with his fellows, he was wont to steal from them, and walk into
the fields alone with a book. This passion had been overlaid, but not
extinguished, during his public life; and now, swelled by disgust, it
came back upon him in great strength. He seems, too, if we can believe
Sprat, to have had an extraordinary attachment to Nature, as it 'was
God's;' to the whole 'compass of the creation, and all the wonderful
effects of the Divine wisdom.' At all events, he retired first to Barn
Elms, and then to Chertsey in Surrey. He had obtained, through Lord St
Albans and the Duke of Buckingham, the lease of some lands belonging to
the Queen, which brought him in an income of £300 a year. Here, then,
having, at the age of forty-two, reached the peaceful hermitage,' he set
himself with all his might to enjoy it. He cultivated his fields, and
renewed his botanical studies in his woods and garden. He wrote letters
to his friends, which are said to have been admirable, and might have
ranked with those of Gray and Cowper, but unfortunately they have not
been preserved. He renewed his intimacy with the Greek and Latin poets,
and he set himself to retouch the 'Davideis,' which he had begun in
early youth, but which he never lived to finish, and to compose his
beautiful prose essays. But he soon found that Chertsey, no more than
Paris, was Paradise. He had no wife nor children. He had sweet solitude,
but no one near him to whom to whisper 'how sweet this solitude is!' The
peasants were boors. His tenants would pay him no rent, and the cattle
of his neighbours devoured his meadows. He was troubled with rheums and
colds. He met a severe fall when he first came to Chertsey, of which he
says, half in jest and half in earnest--'What this signifies, or may
come to in time, God knows; if it be ominous, it can end in nothing less
than hanging.' Robert Hall said of Bishop Watson that he seemed to have
wedded political integrity in early life, and to have spent all the rest
of his days in quarrelling with his wife. So Cowley wedded his long-
sought-for bride, Solitude, and led a miserable life with her ever
after. Fortunately for him, if not for the world, his career soon came
to a close.
One hot day in summer, he stayed too long among his labourers in the
meadows, and was seized with a cold, which, being neglected, carried him
off on the 28th of July 1667. He was not forty-nine years old. He died
at the Porch House, Chertsey, and his remains were buried with great
pomp near Chaucer and Spenser; and King Charles, who had neglected him
during life, pronounced his panegyric after death, declaring that 'Mr
Cowley had not left behind him a better man in England.' It was in
keeping with the character of Charles to make up for his deficiency in
action, by his felicity of phrase.
If we may differ from such a high authority as 'Old Rowley,' we would
venture to doubt whether Cowley was the best--certainly he was not the
greatest--man then in England. Milton was alive, and the 'Paradise Lost'
appeared in the very year when the author of the 'Davideis' departed.
Cowley gives us the impression of having been an amiable and blameless,
rather than a good or great man. At all events, there was nothing
_active_ in his goodness, and his greatness could not be called
magnanimity. He was a scholar and a poet misplaced during early life;
and when he gained that retirement for which he sighed, he had, by his
habits of life, lost his capacity of relishing it. 'He that would enjoy
solitude,' it has been said, 'must either be a wild beast or a god;' and
Cowley was neither. How different his grounds of dissatisfaction with
the world from those of Milton! Cowley was wearied of ciphering, and his
'Cutter of Coleman Street' had been cut; that was nearly the whole
matter of his complaint; while Milton had fallen from being the second
man in England into poverty, blindness, contempt, danger, and the
disappointment of the most glorious hopes which ever heaved the bosom of
patriot or saint.
We find the want of greatness which marked the man characterising the
poet. Infinite ingenuity, a charming flexibility and abundance of fancy,
a perception of remote analogies almost unrivalled, great command of
versification and language, learning without bounds, and an occasional
gracefulness and sparkling ease (as in 'The Chronicle') superior to even
Herrick or Suckling, are qualities that must be conceded to Cowley. But
the most of his writings are cold and glittering as the sun-smitten
glacier. He is seldom warm, except when he is proclaiming his own
merits, or bewailing his own misfortunes. Hence his 'Wish,' and even his
'Complaint,' are very pleasing and natural specimens of poetry. But his
'Pindaric Odes,' his 'Hymn to Light,' and most of his 'Davideis,' while
displaying great power, shew at least equal perversion, and are more
memorable for their faults than for their beauties. In the 'Davideis,'
he describes the attire of Gabriel in the spirit and language of a
tailor; and there is no path so sacred or so lofty but he must sow it
with conceits,--forced, false, and chilly. His 'Anacreontics,' on the
other hand, are in general felicitous in style and aerial in motion. And
in his Translations, although too free, he is uniformly graceful and
spirited; and his vast command of language and imagery enables him often
to improve his author--to gild the refined gold, to paint the lily, and
to throw a new perfume on the violet, of the Grecian and Roman masters.
In prose, Cowley is uniformly excellent. The prefaces to his poems,
especially his defence of sacred song in the prefix to the 'Davideis,'
his short autobiography, the fragments of his letters which remain, and
his posthumous essays, are all distinguished by a rich simplicity of
style and by a copiousness of matter which excite in equal measure
delight and surprise. He had written, it appears, three books on the
Civil War, to the time of the battle of Newbury, which he destroyed. It
is a pity, perhaps, that he had not preserved and completed the work.
His intimacy with many of the leading characters and the secret springs
of that remarkable period,--his clear and solid judgment, always so
except when he was following the Daedalus Pindar upon waxen Icarian
wings, or competing with Dr Donne in the number of conceits which he
could stuff, like cloves, into his subject-matter,--and the bewitching
ease and elegance of his prose style, would have combined to render it
an important contribution to English history, and a worthy monument of
its author's highly-accomplished and diversified powers.
THE CHRONICLE, A BALLAD.
1 Margarita first possess'd,
If I remember well, my breast,
Margarita first of all;
But when a while the wanton maid
With my restless heart had play'd,
Martha took the flying ball.
2 Martha soon did it resign
To the beauteous Catharine:
Beauteous Catharine gave place
(Though loth and angry she to part
With the possession of my heart)
To Eliza's conquering face.
3 Eliza till this hour might reign,
Had she not evil counsels ta'en:
Fundamental laws she broke
And still new favourites she chose,
Till up in arms my passions rose,
And cast away her yoke.
4 Mary then, and gentle Anne,
Both to reign at once began;
Alternately they sway'd,
And sometimes Mary was the fair,
And sometimes Anne the crown did wear,
And sometimes both I obey'd.
5 Another Mary then arose,
And did rigorous laws impose;
A mighty tyrant she!
Long, alas! should I have been
Under that iron-sceptred queen,
Had not Rebecca set me free.
6 When fair Rebecca set me free,
'Twas then a golden time with me:
But soon those pleasures fled;
For the gracious princess died
In her youth and beauty's pride,
And Judith reign'd in her stead.
7 One month, three days, and half an hour,
Judith held the sovereign power:
Wondrous beautiful her face,
But so weak and small her wit,
That she to govern was unfit,
And so Susanna took her place.
8 But when Isabella came,
Arm'd with a resistless flame,
And the artillery of her eye,
Whilst she proudly march'd about,
Greater conquests to find out,
She beat out Susan by the bye.
9 But in her place I then obey'd
Black-eyed Bess, her viceroy made,
To whom ensued a vacancy.
Thousand worst passions then possess'd
The interregnum of my breast.
Bless me from such an anarchy!
10 Gentle Henrietta then,
And a third Mary, next began:
Then Joan, and Jane, and Audria;
And then a pretty Thomasine,
And then another Catharine,
And then a long _et caetera_.
11 But should I now to you relate
The strength and riches of their state,
The powder, patches, and the pins,
The ribands, jewels, and the rings,
The lace, the paint, and warlike things,
That make up all their magazines:
12 If I should tell the politic arts
To take and keep men's hearts,
The letters, embassies, and spies,
The frowns, the smiles, and flatteries,
The quarrels, tears, and perjuries,
Numberless, nameless mysteries!
13 And all the little lime-twigs laid
By Mach'avel the waiting-maid;
I more voluminous should grow
(Chiefly if I like them should tell
All change of weathers that befell)
Than Holinshed or Stow.
14 But I will briefer with them be,
Since few of them were long with me.
An higher and a nobler strain
My present Emperess does claim,
Heleonora! first o' the name,
Whom God grant long to reign.
THE COMPLAINT.
In a deep vision's intellectual scene,
Beneath a bower for sorrow made,
The uncomfortable shade
Of the black yew's unlucky green,
Mixed with the mourning willow's careful gray,
Where rev'rend Cam cuts out his famous way,
The melancholy Cowley lay;
And, lo! a Muse appeared to his closed sight
(The Muses oft in lands of vision play,)
Bodied, arrayed, and seen by an internal light:
A golden harp with silver strings she bore,
A wondrous hieroglyphic robe she wore,
In which all colours and all figures were
That Nature or that Fancy can create.
That Art can never imitate,
And with loose pride it wantoned in the air,
In such a dress, in such a well-clothed dream,
She used of old near fair Ismenus' stream
Pindar, her Theban favourite, to meet;
A crown was on her head, and wings were on her feet.
She touched him with her harp and raised him from the ground;
The shaken strings melodiously resound.
'Art thou returned at last,' said she,
'To this forsaken place and me?
Thou prodigal! who didst so loosely waste
Of all thy youthful years the good estate;
Art thou returned here, to repent too late?
And gather husks of learning up at last,
Now the rich harvest-time of life is past,
And winter marches on so fast?
But when I meant to adopt thee for my son,
And did as learned a portion assign
As ever any of the mighty nine
Had to their dearest children done;
When I resolved to exalt thy anointed name
Among the spiritual lords of peaceful fame;
Thou changeling! thou, bewitch'd with noise and show,
Wouldst into courts and cities from me go;
Wouldst see the world abroad, and have a share
In all the follies and the tumults there;
Thou wouldst, forsooth, be something in a state,
And business thou wouldst find, and wouldst create:
Business! the frivolous pretence
Of human lusts, to shake off innocence;
Business! the grave impertinence;
Business! the thing which I of all things hate;
Business! the contradiction of thy fate.
'Go, renegado! cast up thy account,
And see to what amount
Thy foolish gains by quitting me:
The sale of knowledge, fame, and liberty,
The fruits of thy unlearned apostasy.
Thou thoughtst, if once the public storm were past,
All thy remaining life should sunshine be:
Behold the public storm is spent at last,
The sovereign is tossed at sea no more,
And thou, with all the noble company,
Art got at last to shore:
But whilst thy fellow-voyagers I see,
All marched up to possess the promised land,
Thou still alone, alas! dost gaping stand,
Upon the naked beach, upon the barren sand.
As a fair morning of the blessed spring,
After a tedious, stormy night,
Such was the glorious entry of our king;
Enriching moisture dropped on every thing:
Plenty he sowed below, and cast about him light.
But then, alas! to thee alone
One of old Gideon's miracles was shown,
For every tree, and every hand around,
With pearly dew was crowned,
And upon all the quickened ground
The fruitful seed of heaven did brooding lie,
And nothing but the Muse's fleece was dry.
It did all other threats surpass,
When God to his own people said,
The men whom through long wanderings he had led,
That he would give them even a heaven of brass:
They looked up to that heaven in vain,
That bounteous heaven! which God did not restrain
Upon the most unjust to shine and rain.
'The Rachel, for which twice seven years and more,
Thou didst with faith and labour serve,
And didst (if faith and labour can) deserve,
Though she contracted was to thee,
Given to another, thou didst see, who had store
Of fairer and of richer wives before,
And not a Loah left, thy recompense to be.
Go on, twice seven years more, thy fortune try,
Twice seven years more God in his bounty may
Give thee to fling away
Into the court's deceitful lottery:
But think how likely 'tis that thou,
With the dull work of thy unwieldy plough,
Shouldst in a hard and barren season thrive,
Shouldst even able be to live;
Thou! to whose share so little bread did fall
In the miraculous year, when manna rain'd on all.'
Thus spake the Muse, and spake it with a smile,
That seemed at once to pity and revile:
And to her thus, raising his thoughtful head,
The melancholy Cowley said:
'Ah, wanton foe! dost thou upbraid
The ills which thou thyself hast made?
When in the cradle innocent I lay,
Thou, wicked spirit, stolest me away,
And my abused soul didst bear
Into thy new-found worlds, I know not where,
Thy golden Indies in the air;
And ever since I strive in vain
My ravished freedom to regain;
Still I rebel, still thou dost reign;
Lo, still in verse, against thee I complain.
There is a sort of stubborn weeds,
Which, if the earth but once it ever breeds,
No wholesome herb can near them thrive,
No useful plant can keep alive:
The foolish sports I did on thee bestow
Make all my art and labour fruitless now;
Where once such fairies dance, no grass doth ever grow.
'When my new mind had no infusion known,
Thou gavest so deep a tincture of thine own,
That ever since I vainly try
To wash away the inherent dye:
Long work, perhaps, may spoil thy colours quite,
But never will reduce the native white.
To all the ports of honour and of gain
I often steer my course in vain;
Thy gale comes cross, and drives me back again,
Thou slacken'st all my nerves of industry,
By making them so oft to be
The tinkling strings of thy loose minstrelsy.
Whoever this world's happiness would see
Must as entirely cast off thee,
As they who only heaven desire
Do from the world retire.
This was my error, this my gross mistake,
Myself a demi-votary to make.
Thus with Sapphira and her husband's fate,
(A fault which I, like them, am taught too late,)
For all that I give up I nothing gain,
And perish for the part which I retain.
Teach me not then, O thou fallacious Muse!
The court and better king t' accuse;
The heaven under which I live is fair,
The fertile soil will a full harvest bear:
Thine, thine is all the barrenness, if thou
Makest me sit still and sing when I should plough.
When I but think how many a tedious year
Our patient sovereign did attend
His long misfortune's fatal end;
How cheerfully, and how exempt from fear,
On the Great Sovereign's will he did depend,
I ought to be accursed if I refuse
To wait on his, O thou fallacious Muse!
Kings have long hands, they say, and though I be
So distant, they may reach at length to me.
However, of all princes thou
Shouldst not reproach rewards for being small or slow;
Thou! who rewardest but with popular breath,
And that, too, after death!'
THE DESPAIR.
1 Beneath this gloomy shade,
By Nature only for my sorrows made,
I'll spend this voice in cries,
In tears I'll waste these eyes,
By love so vainly fed;
So lust of old the deluge punished.
Ah, wretched youth, said I;
Ah, wretched youth! twice did I sadly cry;
Ah, wretched youth! the fields and floods reply.
2 When thoughts of love I entertain,
I meet no words but Never, and In vain:
Never! alas! that dreadful name
Which fuels the infernal flame:
Never! my time to come must waste;
In vain! torments the present and the past:
In vain, in vain! said I,
In vain, in vain! twice did I sadly cry;
In vain, in vain! the fields and floods reply.
3 No more shall fields or floods do so,
For I to shades more dark and silent go:
All this world's noise appears to me
A dull, ill-acted comedy:
No comfort to my wounded sight,
In the sun's busy and impert'nent light.
Then down I laid my head,
Down on cold earth, and for a while was dead,
And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled.
4 Ah, sottish soul! said I,
When back to its cage again I saw it fly:
Fool! to resume her broken chain,
And row her galley here again!
Fool! to that body to return,
Where it condemned and destined is to burn!
Once dead, how can it be
Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee,
That thou shouldst come to live it o'er again in me?
OF WIT.
1 Tell me, O tell! what kind of thing is Wit,
Thou who master art of it;
For the first matter loves variety less;
Less women love it, either in love or dress:
A thousand different shapes it bears,
Comely in thousand shapes appears:
Yonder we saw it plain, and here 'tis now,
Like spirits, in a place, we know not how.
2 London, that vends of false ware so much store,
In no ware deceives us more:
For men, led by the colour and the shape,
Like Zeuxis' birds, fly to the painted grape.
Some things do through our judgment pass,
As through a multiplying-glass;
And sometimes, if the object be too far,
We take a falling meteor for a star.
3 Hence 'tis a wit, that greatest word of fame,
Grows such a common name;
And wits by our creation they become,
Just so as tit'lar bishops made at Rome.
'Tis not a tale, 'tis not a jest,
Admired with laughter at a feast,
Nor florid talk, which can that title gain;
The proofs of wit for ever must remain.
4 'Tis not to force some lifeless verses meet
With their five gouty feet;
All everywhere, like man's, must be the soul,
And reason the inferior powers control.
Such were the numbers which could call
The stones into the Theban wall.
Such miracles are ceased; and now we see
No towns or houses raised by poetry.
5 Yet 'tis not to adorn and gild each part;
That shows more cost than art.
Jewels at nose and lips but ill appear;
Rather than all things wit, let none be there.
Several lights will not be seen,
If there be nothing else between.
Men doubt, because they stand so thick i' the sky,
If those be stars which paint the galaxy.
6 'Tis not when two like words make up one noise,
Jests for Dutch men and English boys;
In which who finds out wit, the same may see
In an'grams and acrostics poetry.
Much less can that have any place
At which a virgin hides her face;
Such dross the fire must purge away; 'tis just
The author blush there where the reader must.
7 'Tis not such lines as almost crack the stage,
When Bajazet begins to rage:
Nor a tall met'phor in the bombast way,
Nor the dry chips of short-lunged Seneca:
Nor upon all things to obtrude
And force some old similitude.
What is it then, which, like the Power Divine,
We only can by negatives define?
8 In a true piece of wit all things must be,
Yet all things there agree:
As in the ark, joined without force or strife,
All creatures dwelt, all creatures that had life.
Or as the primitive forms of all,
If we compare great things with small,
Which without discord or confusion lie,
In that strange mirror of the Deity.
OF SOLITUDE.
1 Hail, old patrician trees, so great and good!
Hail, ye plebeian underwood!
Where the poetic birds rejoice,
And for their quiet nests and plenteous food
Pay with their grateful voice.
2 Hail the poor Muse's richest manor-seat!
Ye country houses and retreat,
Which all the happy gods so love,
That for you oft they quit their bright and great
Metropolis above.
3 Here Nature does a house for me erect,
Nature! the fairest architect,
Who those fond artists does despise
That can the fair and living trees neglect,
Yet the dead timber prize.
4 Here let me, careless and unthoughtful lying,
Hear the soft winds above me flying,
With all their wanton boughs dispute,
And the more tuneful birds to both replying,
Nor be myself, too, mute.
5 A silver stream shall roll his waters near,
Gilt with the sunbeams here and there,
On whose enamelled bank I'll walk,
And see how prettily they smile,
And hear how prettily they talk.
6 Ah! wretched, and too solitary he,
Who loves not his own company!
He'll feel the weight of it many a day,
Unless he calls in sin or vanity
To help to bear it away.
7 O Solitude! first state of humankind!
Which bless'd remained till man did find
Even his own helper's company:
As soon as two, alas! together joined,
The serpent made up three.
8 Though God himself, through countless ages, thee
His sole companion chose to be,
Thee, sacred Solitude! alone,
Before the branchy head of number's tree
Sprang from the trunk of one;
9 Thou (though men think thine an unactive part)
Dost break and tame the unruly heart,
Which else would know no settled pace,
Making it move, well managed by thy art,
With swiftness and with grace.
10 Thou the faint beams of reason's scattered light
Dost, like a burning glass, unite,
Dost multiply the feeble heat,
And fortify the strength, till thou dost bright
And noble fires beget.
11 Whilst this hard truth I teach, methinks I see
The monster London laugh at me;
I should at thee, too, foolish city!
If it were fit to laugh at misery;
But thy estate I pity.
12 Let but thy wicked men from out thee go,
And all the fools that crowd thee so,
Even thou, who dost thy millions boast,
A village less than Islington wilt grow,
A solitude almost.
THE WISH.
I.
Lest the misjudging world should chance to say
I durst not but in secret murmurs pray,
To whisper in Jove's ear
How much I wish that funeral,
Or gape at such a great one's fall;
This let all ages hear,
And future times in my soul's picture see
What I abhor, what I desire to be.
II.
I would not be a Puritan, though he
Can preach two hours, and yet his sermon be
But half a quarter long;
Though from his old mechanic trade
By vision he's a pastor made,
His faith was grown so strong;
Nay, though he think to gain salvation
By calling the Pope the Whore of Babylon.
III.
I would not be a Schoolmaster, though to him
His rods no less than Consuls' fasces seem;
Though he in many a place,
Turns Lily oftener than his gowns,
Till at the last he makes the nouns
Fight with the verbs apace;
Nay, though he can, in a poetic heat,
Figures, born since, out of poor Virgil beat.
IV.
I would not be a Justice of Peace, though he
Can with equality divide the fee,
And stakes with his clerk draw;
Nay, though he sits upon the place
Of judgment, with a learned face
Intricate as the law;
And whilst he mulcts enormities demurely,
Breaks Priscian's head with sentences securely.
V.
I would not be a Courtier, though he
Makes his whole life the truest comedy;
Although he be a man
In whom the tailor's forming art,
And nimble barber, claim more part
Than Nature herself can;
Though, as he uses men, 'tis his intent
To put off Death too with a compliment.
VI.
From Lawyers' tongues, though they can spin with ease
The shortest cause into a paraphrase,
From Usurers' conscience
(For swallowing up young heirs so fast,
Without all doubt they'll choke at last)
Make me all innocence,
Good Heaven! and from thy eyes, O Justice! keep;
For though they be not blind, they're oft asleep.
VII.
From Singing-men's religion, who are
Always at church, just like the crows, 'cause there
They build themselves a nest;
From too much poetry, which shines
With gold in nothing but its lines,
Free, O you Powers! my breast;
And from astronomy, which in the skies
Finds fish and bulls, yet doth but tantalise.
VIII.
From your Court-madam's beauty, which doth carry
At morning May, at night a January;
From the grave City-brow
(For though it want an R, it has
The letter of Pythagoras)
Keep me, O Fortune! now,
And chines of beef innumerable send me,
Or from the stomach of the guard defend me.
IX.
This only grant me, that my means may lie
Too low for envy, for contempt too high.
Some honour I would have,
Not from great deeds, but good alone:
The unknown are better than ill known:
Rumour can ope the grave.
Acquaintance I would have, but when 't depends
Not from the number, but the choice of friends.
X.
Books should, not business, entertain the light,
And sleep, as undisturbed as death, the night.
My house a cottage more
Than palace, and should fitting be
For all my use, not luxury;
My garden, painted o'er
With Nature's hand, not Art's, that pleasure yield
Horace might envy in his Sabine field.
XI.
Thus would I double my life's fading space;
For he that runs it well twice runs his race;
And in this true delight,
These unbought sports, and happy state,
I would not fear, nor wish my fate,
But boldly say each night,
To-morrow let my sun his beams display,
Or in clouds hide them, I have lived to-day.
UPON THE SHORTNESS OF MAN'S LIFE.
1 Mark that swift arrow, how it cuts the air,
How it outruns thy following eye!
Use all persuasions now, and try
If thou canst call it back, or stay it there.
That way it went, but thou shalt find
No track is left behind.
2 Fool! 'tis thy life, and the fond archer thou.
Of all the time thou'st shot away,
I'll bid thee fetch but yesterday,
And it shall be too hard a task to do.
Besides repentance, what canst find
That it hath left behind?
3 Our life is carried with too strong a tide,
A doubtful cloud our substance bears,
And is the horse of all our years:
Each day doth on a winged whirlwind ride.
We and our glass run out, and must
Both render up our dust.
4 But his past life who without grief can see,
Who never thinks his end too near,
But says to Fame, Thou art mine heir;
That man extends life's natural brevity--
This is, this is the only way
To outlive Nestor in a day.
ON THE PRAISE OF POETRY.
'Tis not a pyramid of marble stone,
Though high as our ambition;
'Tis not a tomb cut out in brass, which can
Give life to the ashes of a man,
But verses only; they shall fresh appear,
Whilst there are men to read or hear,
When time shall make the lasting brass decay,
And eat the pyramid away,
Turning that monument wherein men trust
Their names, to what it keeps, poor dust;
Then shall the epitaph remain, and be
New graven in eternity.
Poets by death are conquered, but the wit
Of poets triumph over it.
What cannot verse? When Thracian Orpheus took
His lyre, and gently on it strook,
The learned stones came dancing all along,
And kept time to the charming song.
With artificial pace the warlike pine,
The elm and his wife, the ivy-twine,
With all the better trees which erst had stood
Unmoved, forsook their native wood.
The laurel to the poet's hand did bow,
Craving the honour of his brow;
And every loving arm embraced, and made
With their officious leaves a shade.
The beasts, too, strove his auditors to be,
Forgetting their old tyranny.
The fearful hart next to the lion came,
And wolf was shepherd to the lamb.
Nightingales, harmless Syrens of the air,
And Muses of the place, were there;
Who, when their little windpipes they had found
Unequal to so strange a sound,
O'ercome by art and grief, they did expire,
And fell upon the conquering lyre.
Happy, oh happy they! whose tomb might be,
Mausolus! envied by thee!
THE MOTTO.
TENTANDA VIA EST, ETC.
What shall I do to be for ever known,
And make the age to come my own?
I shall like beasts or common people die,
Unless you write my elegy;
Whilst others great by being born are grown,
Their mother's labour, not their own.
In this scale gold, in the other fame does lie;
The weight of that mounts this so high.
These men are Fortune's jewels, moulded bright,
Brought forth with their own fire and light.
If I, her vulgar stone, for either look,
Out of myself it must be strook.
Yet I must on: What sound is't strikes mine ear?
Sure I Fame's trumpet hear:
It sounds like the last trumpet, for it can
Raise up the buried man.
Unpass'd Alps stop me, but I'll cut through all,
And march, the Muse's Hannibal.
Hence, all the flattering vanities that lay
Nets of roses in the way;
Hence, the desire of honours or estate,
And all that is not above Fate;
Hence, Love himself, that tyrant of my days,
Which intercepts my coming praise.
Come, my best friends! my books! and lead me on,
'Tis time that I were gone.
Welcome, great Stagyrite! and teach me now
All I was born to know:
Thy scholar's victories thou dost far outdo;
He conquered th' earth, the whole world you,
Welcome, learn'd Cicero! whose bless'd tongue and wit
Preserves Rome's greatness yet;
Thou art the first of orators; only he
Who best can praise thee next must be.
Welcome the Mantuan swan! Virgil the wise,
Whose verse walks highest, but not flies;
Who brought green Poesy to her perfect age,
And made that art which was a rage.
Tell me, ye mighty Three! what shall I do
To be like one of you?
But you have climb'd the mountain's top, there sit
On the calm flourishing head of it,
And whilst, with wearied steps, we upward go,
See us and clouds below.
DAVIDEIS.
BOOK II.
THE CONTENTS.
The friendship betwixt Jonathan and David; and, upon that occasion,
a digression concerning the nature of love. A discourse between
Jonathan and David, upon which the latter absents himself from court,
and the former goes thither to inform himself of Saul's resolution.
The feast of the New-moon; the manner of the celebration of it; and
therein a digression of the history of Abraham. Saul's speech upon
David's absence from the feast, and his anger against Jonathan.
David's resolution to fly away. He parts with Jonathan, and falls
asleep under a tree. A description of Fancy. An angel makes up a
vision in David's head. The vision itself; which is a prophecy of
all the succession of his race, till Christ's time, with their most
remarkable actions. At his awaking, Gabriel assumes a human shape,
and confirms to him the truth of his vision.
But now the early birds began to call
The morning forth; up rose the sun and Saul:
Both, as men thought, rose fresh from sweet repose;
But both, alas! from restless labours rose:
For in Saul's breast Envy, the toilsome sin,
Had all that night active and tyrannous been:
She expelled all forms of kindness, virtue, grace,
Of the past day no footstep left, or trace;
The new-blown sparks of his old rage appear,
Nor could his love dwell longer with his fear.
So near a storm wise David would not stay,
Nor trust the glittering of a faithless day:
He saw the sun call in his beams apace,
And angry clouds march up into their place:
The sea itself smooths his rough brow awhile,
Flatt'ring the greedy merchant with a smile;
But he whose shipwrecked bark it drank before,
Sees the deceit, and knows it would have more.
Such is the sea, and such was Saul;
But Jonathan his son, and only good,
Was gentle as fair Jordan's useful flood;
Whose innocent stream, as it in silence goes,
Fresh honours and a sudden spring bestows
On both his banks, to every flower and tree;
The manner how lies hid, the effect we see:
But more than all, more than himself, he loved
The man whose worth his father's hatred moved;
For when the noble youth at Dammin stood,
Adorned with sweat, and painted gay with blood,
Jonathan pierced him through with greedy eye,
And understood the future majesty
Then destined in the glories of his look:
He saw, and straight was with amazement strook,
To see the strength, the feature, and the grace
Of his young limbs; he saw his comely face,
Where love and reverence so well-mingled were,
And head, already crowned with golden hair:
He saw what mildness his bold sp'rit did tame,
Gentler than light, yet powerful as a flame:
He saw his valour by their safety proved;
He saw all this, and as he saw, he loved.
What art thou, Love! thou great mysterious thing?
From what hid stock does thy strange nature spring?
'Tis thou that movst the world through every part,
And holdst the vast frame close, that nothing start
From the due place and office first ordained;
By thee were all things made, and are sustained.
Sometimes we see thee fully, and can say
From hence thou tookst thy rise, and wentst that way;
But oftener the short beams of Reason's eye
See only there thou art, not how, nor why.
How is the loadstone, Nature's subtle pride,
By the rude iron woo'd, and made a bride?
How was the weapon wounded? what hid flame
The strong and conquering metal overcame?
Love (this world's grace) exalts his natural state;
He feels thee, Love! and feels no more his weight.
Ye learned heads whom ivy garlands grace,
Why does that twining plant the oak embrace?
The oak, for courtship most of all unfit,
And rough as are the winds that fight with it.
How does the absent pole the needle move?
How does his cold and ice beget hot love?
Which are the wings of lightness to ascend?
Or why does weight to the centre downwards bend?
Thus creatures void of life obey thy laws,
And seldom we, they never, know the cause.
In thy large state, life gives the next degree,
Where sense and good apparent places thee;
But thy chief palace is man's heart alone;
Here are thy triumphs and full glories shown:
Handsome desires, and rest, about thee flee,
Union, inheritance, zeal, and ecstasy,
With thousand joys, cluster around thine head,
O'er which a gall-less dove her wings does spread:
A gentle lamb, purer and whiter far
Than consciences of thine own martyrs are,
Lies at thy feet; and thy right hand does hold
The mystic sceptre of a cross of gold.
Thus dost thou sit (like men, ere sin had framed
A guilty blush) naked, but not ashamed.
What cause, then, did the fab'lous ancients find,
When first their superstition made thee blind?
'Twas they, alas! 'twas they who could not see,
When they mistook that monster, Lust, for thee.
Thou art a bright, but not consuming, flame;
Such in the amazed bush to Moses came,
When that, secure, its new-crown'd head did rear,
And chid the trembling branches' needless fear;
Thy darts are healthful gold, and downwards fall,
Soft as the feathers that they are fletched withal.
Such, and no other, were those secret darts
Which sweetly touched this noblest pair of hearts:
Still to one end they both so justly drew,
As courteous doves together yoked would do:
No weight of birth did on one side prevail;
Two twins less even lie in Nature's scale:
They mingled fates, and both in each did share;
They both were servants, they both princes were.
If any joy to one of them was sent,
It was most his to whom it least was meant;
And Fortune's malice betwixt both was cross'd,
For striking one, it wounded the other most.
Never did marriage such true union find,
Or men's desires with so glad violence bind;
For there is still some tincture left of sin,
And still the sex will needs be stealing in.
Those joys are full of dross, and thicker far;
These, without matter, clear and liquid are.
Such sacred love does heaven's bright spirits fill,
Where love is but to understand and will,
With swift and unseen motions such as we
Somewhat express in heighten'd charity.
O ye bless'd One! whose love on earth became
So pure, that still in heaven 'tis but the same!
There now ye sit, and with mix'd souls embrace,
Gazing upon great Love's mysterious face,
And pity this base world, where friendship's made
A bait for sin, or else at best a trade.
Ah, wondrous prince! who a true friend couldst be
When a crown flatter'd, and Saul threaten'd thee!
Who held'st him dear whose stars thy birth did cross,
And bought'st him nobly at a kingdom's loss!
Israel's bright sceptre far less glory brings,
There have been fewer friends on earth than kings.
To this strong pitch their high affections flew,
Till Nature's self scarce looked on them as two.
Hither flies David for advice and aid,
As swift as love and danger could persuade;
As safe in Jonathan's trust his thoughts remain,
As when himself but dreams them o'er again.
'My dearest lord! farewell,' said he, 'farewell;
Heaven bless the King; may no misfortune tell
The injustice of his hate when I am dead:
They're coming now; perhaps my guiltless head
Here, in your sight, must then a-bleeding lie,
And scarce your own stand safe for being nigh.
Think me not scared with death, howe'er 't appear;
I know thou canst not think so: it is a fear
From which thy love and Dammin speaks me free;
I've met him face to face, and ne'er could see
One terror in his looks to make me fly
When virtue bids me stand; but I would die
So as becomes my life, so as may prove
Saul's malice, and at least excuse your love.'
He stopped, and spoke some passion with his eyes.
'Excellent friend!' the gallant prince replies;
'Thou hast so proved thy virtues, that they're known
To all good men, more than to each his own.
Who lives in Israel that can doubtful be
Of thy great actions? for he lives by thee.
Such is thy valour, and thy vast success,
That all things but thy loyalty are less;
And should my father at thy ruin aim,
'Twould wound as much his safety as his fame.
Think them not coming, then, to slay thee here,
But doubt mishaps as little as you fear;
For, by thy loving God, whoe'er design
Against thy life, must strike at it through mine,
But I my royal father must acquit
From such base guilt, or the low thought of it.
Think on his softness, when from death he freed
The faithless king of Am'lek's cursed seed;
Can he t' a friend, t' a son, so bloody grow,
He who even sinned but now to spare a foe?
Admit he could; but with what strength or art
Could he so long close and seal up his heart?
Such counsels jealous of themselves become,
And dare not fix without consent of some;
Few men so boldly ill great sins to do,
Till licensed and approved by others too.
No more (believe it) could he hide this from me,
Than I, had he discovered it, from thee.'
Here they embraces join, and almost tears,
Till gentle David thus new-proved his fears:
'The praise you pleased, great prince! on me to spend,
Was all outspoken, when you styled me friend:
That name alone does dangerous glories bring,
And gives excuse to the envy of a king.
What did his spear, force, and dark plots, impart
But some eternal rancour in his heart?
Still does he glance the fortune of that day
When, drowned in his own blood, Goliath lay,
And covered half the plain; still hears the sound
How that vast monster fell, and strook the around:
The dance, and, David his ten thousand slew,
Still wound his sickly soul, and still are new.
Great acts t' ambitious princes treason grow,
So much they hate that safety which they owe.
Tyrants dread all whom they raise high in place;
From the good danger, from the bad disgrace.
They doubt the lords, mistrust the people's hate,
Till blood become a principle of state.
Secured not by their guards nor by their right,
But still they fear even more than they affright,
Pardon me, sir; your father's rough and stern;
His will too strong to bend, too proud to learn.
Remember, sir, the honey's deadly sting!
Think on that savage justice of the King,
When the same day that saw you do before
Things above man, should see you man no more.
'Tis true, the accursed Agag moved his ruth;
He pitied his tall limbs and comely youth;
Had seen, alas! the proof of Heaven's fierce hate,
And feared no mischief from his powerless fate;
Remember how the old seer came raging down,
And taught him boldly to suspect his crown.
Since then, his pride quakes at the Almighty's rod,
Nor dares he love the man beloved by God.
Hence his deep rage and trembling envy springs;
Nothing so wild as jealousy of kings.
Whom should he counsel ask, with whom advise,
Who reason and God's counsel does despise?
Whose headstrong will no law or conscience daunt,
Dares he not sin, do you think, without your grant?
Yes, if the truth of our fixed love he knew,
He would not doubt, believe it, to kill even you.'
The prince is moved, and straight prepares to find
The deep resolves of his grieved father's mind.
The danger now appears, love can soon show it,
And force his stubborn piety to know it.
They agree that David should concealed abide,
Till his great friend had the Court's temper tried;
Till he had Saul's most sacred purpose found,
And searched the depth and rancour of his wound.
'Twas the year's seventh-born moon; the solemn feast,
That with most noise its sacred mirth express'd.
From opening morn till night shuts in the day,
On trumpets and shrill horns the Levites play:
Whether by this in mystic type we see
The new-year's day of great eternity,
When the changed moon shall no more changes make,
And scattered death's by trumpets' sound awake;
Or that the law be kept in memory still,
Given with like noise on Sinai's shining hill;
Or that (as some men teach) it did arise
From faithful Abram's righteous sacrifice,
Who, whilst the ram on Isaac's fire did fry,
His horn with joyful tunes stood sounding by;
Obscure the cause, but God his will declared,
And all nice knowledge then with ease is spared.
At the third hour Saul to the hallowed tent,
'Midst a large train of priests and courtiers, went;
The sacred herd marched proud and softly by,
Too fat and gay to think their deaths so nigh.
Hard fate of beasts more innocent than we!
Prey to our luxury and our piety!
Whose guiltless blood on boards and altars spilt,
Serves both to make and expiate, too, our guilt!
Three bullocks of free neck, two gilded rams,
Two well-washed goats, and fourteen spotless lambs,
With the three vital fruits, wine, oil, and bread,
(Small fees to Heaven of all by which we're fed)
Are offered up: the hallowed flames arise,
And faithful prayers mount with them to the skies.
From thence the King to the utmost court is brought,
Where heavenly things an inspired prophet taught,
And from the sacred tent to his palace gates,
With glad kind shouts the assembly on him waits;
The cheerful horns before him loudly play,
And fresh-strewed flowers paint his triumphant way.
Thus in slow pace to the palace-hall they go,
Rich dressed for solemn luxury and show:
Ten pieces of bright tapestry hung the room,
The noblest work e'er stretched on Syrian loom,
For wealthy Adriel in proud Sidon wrought,
And given to Saul when Saul's best gift he sought,
The bright-eyed Merab; for that mindful day
No ornament so proper seemed as they.
There all old Abram's story you might see,
And still some angel bore him company.
His painful but well-guided travels show
The fate of all his sons, the church below.
Here beauteous Sarah to great Pharaoh came;
He blushed with sudden passion, she with shame:
Troubled she seemed, and labouring in the strife,
'Twixt her own honour and her husband's life.
Here on a conquering host, that careless lay,
Drowned in the joys of their new-gotten prey,
The patriarch falls; well-mingled might you see
The confused marks of death and luxury.
In the next piece bless'd Salem's mystic king
Does sacred presents to the victor bring;
Like Him whose type he bears, his rights receives,
Strictly requires his due, yet freely gives:
Even in his port, his habit, and his face,
The mild and great, the priest and prince, had place.
Here all their starry host the heavens display;
And, lo! a heavenly youth, more fair than they,
Leads Abram forth; points upwards; 'Such,' said he,
'So bright and numberless thy seed shall be.'
Here he with God a new alliance makes,
And in his flesh the marks of homage takes:
Here he the three mysterious persons feasts,
Well paid with joyful tidings by his guests:
Here for the wicked town he prays, and near,
Scarce did the wicked town through flames appear:
And all his fate, and all his deeds, were wrought,
Since he from Ur to Ephron's cave was brought.
But none 'mongst all the forms drew then their eyes
Like faithful Abram's righteous sacrifice:
The sad old man mounts slowly to the place,
With Nature's power triumphant in his face
O'er the mind's courage; for, in spite of all,
From his swoln eyes resistless waters fall.
The innocent boy his cruel burden bore
With smiling looks, and sometimes walked before,
And sometimes turned to talk: above was made
The altar's fatal pile, and on it laid
The hope of mankind: patiently he lay,
And did his sire, as he his God, obey.
The mournful sire lifts up at last the knife,
And on one moment's string depends his life,
In whose young loins such brooding wonders lie.
A thousand sp'rits peeped from the affrighted sky,
Amazed at this strange scene, and almost fear'd,
For all those joyful prophecies they'd heard;
Till one leaped nimbly forth, by God's command,
Like lightning from a cloud, and stopped his hand.
The gentle sp'rit smiled kindly as he spoke;
New beams of joy through Abram's wonder broke
The angel points to a tuft of bushes near,
Where an entangled ram does half appear,
And struggles vainly with that fatal net,
Which, though but slightly wrought, was firmly set:
For, lo! anon, to this sad glory doomed,
The useful beast on Isaac's pile consumed;
Whilst on his horns the ransomed couple played,
And the glad boy danced to the tunes he made.
Near this hall's end a shittim table stood,
Yet well-wrought plate strove to conceal the wood;
For from the foot a golden vine did sprout,
And cast his fruitful riches all about.
Well might that beauteous ore the grape express,
Which does weak man intoxicate no less.
Of the same wood the gilded beds were made,
And on them large embroidered carpets laid,
From Egypt, the rich shop of follies, brought;
But arts of pride all nations soon are taught.
Behold seven comely blooming youths appear,
And in their hands seven silver washpots bear,
Curled, and gay clad, the choicest sons that be
Of Gibeon's race, and slaves of high degree.
Seven beauteous maids marched softly in behind,
Bright scarves their clothes, their hair fresh garlands bind,
And whilst the princes wash, they on them shed
Rich ointments, which their costly odours spread
O'er the whole room; from their small prisons free,
With such glad haste through the wide air they flee.
The King was placed alone, and o'er his head
A well-wrought heaven of silk and gold was spread,
Azure the ground, the sun in gold shone bright,
But pierced the wandering clouds with silver light.
The right-hand bed the King's three sons did grace,
The third was Abner's, Adriel's, David's place:
And twelve large tables more were filled below,
With the prime men Saul's court and camp could show.
The palace did with mirth and music sound,
And the crowned goblets nimbly moved around:
But though bright joy in every guest did shine,
The plenty, state, music, and sprightful wine,
Were lost on Saul: an angry care did dwell
In his dark breast, and all gay forms expel.
David's unusual absence from the feast,
To his sick sp'rit did jealous thoughts suggest:
Long lay he still, nor drank, nor ate, nor spoke,
And thus at last his troubled silence broke.
'Where can he be?' said he. 'It must be so.'
With that he paused awhile. 'Too well we know
His boundless pride: he grieves, and hates to see
The solemn triumphs of my court and me.
Believe me, friends! and trust what I can show
From thousand proofs; the ambitious David now
Does those vast things in his proud soul design,
That too much business give for mirth or wine.
He's kindling now, perhaps, rebellious fire
Among the tribes, and does even now conspire
Against my crown, and all our lives, whilst we
Are loth even to suspect what we might see.
By the Great Name 'tis true.'
With that he strook the board, and no man there,
But Jonathan, durst undertake to clear
The blameless prince: and scarce ten words he spoke,
When thus his speech the enraged tyrant broke:
'Disloyal wretch! thy gentle mother's shame!
Whose cold, pale ghost even blushes at thy name!
Who fears lest her chaste bed should doubted be,
And her white fame stained by black deeds of thee!
Canst thou be mine? A crown sometimes does hire
Even sons against their parents to conspire;
But ne'er did story yet, or fable, tell
Of one so wild who, merely to rebel,
Quitted the unquestioned birthright of a throne,
And bought his father's ruin with his own.
Thou need'st not plead the ambitious youth's defence;
Thy crime clears his, and makes that innocence:
Nor can his foul ingratitude appear,
Whilst thy unnatural guilt is placed so near.
Is this that noble friendship you pretend?
Mine, thine own foe, and thy worst enemy's friend?
If thy low spirit can thy great birthright quit,
The thing's but just, so ill deserv'st thou it.
I, and thy brethren here, have no such mind,
Nor such prodigious worth in David find,
That we to him should our just rights resign,
Or think God's choice not made so well as thine.
Shame of thy house and tribe! hence from mine eye;
To thy false friend and servile master fly;
He's ere this time in arms expecting thee;
Haste, for those arms are raised to ruin me.
Thy sin that way will nobler much appear,
Than to remain his spy and agent here.
When I think this, Nature, by thee forsook,
Forsakes me too.' With that his spear he took
To strike at him: the mirth and music cease;
The guests all rise this sudden storm t' appease.
The prince his danger and his duty knew,
And low he bowed, and silently withdrew.
To David straight, who in a forest nigh
Waits his advice, the royal friend does fly.
The sole advice, now, like the danger clear,
Was in some foreign land this storm t' outwear.
All marks of comely grief in both are seen,
And mournful kind discourses passed between.
Now generous tears their hasty tongues restrain;
Now they begin, and talk all o'er again:
A reverent oath of constant love they take,
And God's high name their dreaded witness make:
Not that at all their faiths could doubtful prove,
But 'twas the tedious zeal of endless love.
Thus, ere they part, they the short time bestow
In all the pomp friendship and grief could show.
And David now, with doubtful cares oppressed,
Beneath a shade borrows some little rest;
When by command divine thick mists arise,
And stop the sense, and close the conquered eyes.
There is a place which man most high doth rear,
The small world's heaven, where reason moves the sphere;
Here in a robe which does all colours show,
(The envy of birds, and the clouds' gaudy bow,)
Fancy, wild dame, with much lascivious pride,
By twin-chameleons drawn, does gaily ride:
Her coach there follows, and throngs round about
Of shapes and airy forms an endless rout.
A sea rolls on with harmless fury here;
Straight 'tis a field, and trees and herbs appear.
Here in a moment are vast armies made,
And a quick scene of war and blood displayed.
Here sparkling wines, and brighter maids come in,
The bawds for Sense, and lying baits of sin.
Some things arise of strange and quarrelling kind,
The forepart lion, and a snake behind.
Here golden mountains swell the covetous place,
And Centaurs ride themselves, a painted race.
Of these slight wonders Nature sees the store,
And only then accounts herself but poor.
Hither an angel comes in David's trance,
And finds them mingled in an antique dance;
Of all the numerous forms fit choice he takes,
And joins them wisely, and this vision makes.
First, David there appears in kingly state,
Whilst the Twelve Tribes his dread commands await:
Straight to the wars with his joined strength he goes,
Settles new friends, and frights his ancient foes.
To Solima, Canaan's old head, they came,
(Since high in note, then not unknown to Fame,)
The blind and lame the undoubted wall defend,
And no new wounds or dangers apprehend.
The busy image of great Joab there
Disdains the mock, and teaches them to fear:
He climbs the airy walls, leaps raging down,
New-minted shapes of slaughter fill the town.
They curse the guards their mirth and bravery chose,
All of them now are slain, or made like those.
Far through an inward scene an army lay,
Which with full banners a fair Fish display.
From Sidon plains to happy Egypt's coast
They seem all met, a vast and warlike host.
Thither hastes David to his destined prey,
Honour and noble danger lead the way.
The conscious trees shook with a reverent fear
Their unblown tops: God walked before him there.
Slaughter the wearied Rephaims' bosom fills,
Dead corpse emboss the vale with little hills.
On the other side, Sophenes' mighty king
Numberless troops of the bless'd East does bring:
Twice are his men cut off, and chariots ta'en;
Damascus and rich Adad help in vain;
Here Nabathaean troops in battle stand,
With all the lusty youth of Syrian land;
Undaunted Joab rushes on with speed,
Gallantly mounted on his fiery steed;
He hews down all, and deals his deaths around;
The Syrians leave, or possess, dead, the ground.
On the other wing does brave Abishai ride,
Reeking in blood and dust: on every side
The perjured sons of Ammon quit the field;
Some basely die, and some more basely yield.
Through a thick wood the wretched Hanun flies,
And far more justly then fears Hebrew spies.
Moloch, their bloody god, thrusts out his head,
Grinning through a black cloud: him they'd long fed
In his seven chambers, and he still did eat
New-roasted babes, his dear delicious meat.
Again they rise, more angered and dismayed;
Euphrates and swift Tigris sends them aid:
In vain they send it, for again they're slain,
And feast the greedy birds on Healy plain.
Here Rabba with proud towers affronts the sky,
And round about great Joab's trenches lie:
They force the walls, and sack the helpless town;
On David's head shines Ammon's massy crown.
'Midst various torments the cursed race expires;
David himself his severe wrath admires.
Next upon Israel's throne does bravely sit
A comely youth, endowed with wondrous wit:
Far, from the parched line, a royal dame,
To hear his tongue and boundless wisdom, came:
She carried back in her triumphant womb
The glorious stock of thousand kings to come.
Here brightest forms his pomp and wealth display;
Here they a temple's vast foundations lay;
A mighty work; and with fit glories filled,
For God to inhabit, and that King to build.
Some from the quarries hew out massy stone,
Some draw it up with cranes; some breathe and groan
In order o'er the anvil; some cut down
Tall cedars, the proud mountain's ancient crown;
Some carve the trunks, and breathing shapes bestow,
Giving the trees more life than when they grow.
But, oh! alas! what sudden cloud is spread
About this glorious King's eclipsed head?
It all his fame benights, and all his store,
Wrapping him round; and now he's seen no more.
When straight his son appears at Sichem crown'd,
With young and heedless council circled round;
Unseemly object! but a falling state
Has always its own errors joined with Fate.
Ten tribes at once forsake the Jessian throne,
And bold Adoram at his message stone;
'Brethren of Israel!'--More he fain would say,
But a flint stopped his mouth, and speech in the way.
Here this fond king's disasters but begin;
He's destined to more shame by his father's sin.
Susac comes up, and under his command
A dreadful army from scorched Afric's sand,
As numberless as that: all is his prey;
The temple's sacred wealth they bear away;
Adrazar's shields and golden loss they take;
Even David in his dream does sweat and shake.
Thus fails this wretched prince; his loins appear
Of less weight now than Solomon's fingers were.
Abijah next seeks Israel to regain,
And wash in seas of blood his father's stain.
Ne'er saw the aged sun so cruel sight;
Scarce saw he this, but hid his bashful light.
Nebat's cursed son fled with not half his men;
Where were his gods of Dan and Bethel then?
Yet could not this the fatal strife decide;
God punished one, but blessed not the other side.
Asan, a just and virtuous prince, succeeds,
High raised by Fame for great and godly deeds:
He cut the solemn groves where idols stood,
And sacrificed the gods with their own wood.
He vanquished thus the proud weak powers of hell;
Before him next their doting servants fell:
So huge an host of Zerah's men he slew,
As made even that Arabia desert too.
Why feared he then the perjured Baasha's sight?
Or bought the dangerous aid of Syrian's might?
Conquest, Heaven's gift, cannot by man be sold;
Alas! what weakness trusts he? man and gold.
Next Josaphat possessed the royal state;
A happy prince, well worthy of his fate:
His oft oblations on God's altar, made
With thousand flocks, and thousand herds, are paid,
Arabian tribute! What mad troops are those,
Those mighty troops that dare to be his foes?
He prays them dead; with mutual wounds they fall;
One fury brought, one fury slays them all.
Thus sits he still, and sees himself to win,
Never o'ercome but by his friend Ahab's sin;
On whose disguise Fates then did only look,
And had almost their God's command mistook:
Him from whose danger Heaven securely brings,
And for his sake too ripely wicked kings.
Their armies languish, burnt with thirst, at Seere,
Sighs all their cold, tears all their moisture there:
They fix their greedy eyes on the empty sky,
And fancy clouds, and so become more dry.
Elisha calls for waters from afar
To come; Elisha calls, and here they are.
In helmets they quaff round the welcome flood,
And the decrease repair with Moab's blood.
Jehoram next, and Ochoziah, throng
For Judah's sceptre; both shortlived too long.
A woman, too, from murder title claims;
Both with her sins and sex the crown she shames.
Proud, cursed woman! but her fall at last
To doubting men clears Heaven for what was past.
Joas at first does bright and glorious show;
In life's fresh morn his fame did early crow:
Fair was the promise of his dawning ray,
But prophet's angry blood o'ercast his day:
From thence his clouds, from thence his storms, begin,
It cries aloud, and twice lets Aram in.
So Amaziah lives, so ends his reign,
Both by their traitorous servants justly slain.
Edom at first dreads his victorious hand;
Before him thousand captives trembling stand.
Down a precipice, deep down he casts them all;
The mimic shapes in several postures fall:
But then (mad fool!) he does those gods adore,
Which when plucked down had worshipped him before.
Thus all his life to come is loss and shame:
No help from gods, who themselves helped not, came.
All this Uzziah's strength and wit repairs,
Leaving a well-built greatness to his heirs;
Till leprous scurf, o'er his whole body cast,
Takes him at first from men, from earth at last.
As virtuous was his son, and happier far;
Buildings his peace, and trophies graced his war:
But Achaz heaps up sins, as if he meant
To make his worst forefathers innocent:
He burns his son at Hinnon, whilst around
The roaring child drums and loud trumpets sound:
This to the boy a barbarous mercy grew,
And snatched him from all miseries to ensue.
Here Peca comes, and hundred thousands fall;
Here Rezin marches up, and sweeps up all;
Till like a sea the great Belochus' son
Breaks upon both, and both does overrun.
The last of Adad's ancient stock is slain,
Israel captived, and rich Damascus ta'en;
All his wild rage to revenge Judah's wrong;
But woe to kingdoms that have friends too strong!
Thus Hezekiah the torn empire took,
And Assur's king with his worse gods forsook;
Who to poor Judah worlds of nations brings,
There rages, utters vain and mighty things.
Some dream of triumphs, and exalted names,
Some of dear gold, and some of beauteous dames;
Whilst in the midst of their huge sleepy boast,
An angel scatters death through all the host.
The affrighted tyrant back to Babel hies,
There meets an end far worse than that he flies.
Here Hezekiah's life is almost done!
So good, and yet, alas! so short 'tis spun.
The end of the line was ravelled, weak, and old;
Time must go back, and afford better hold,
To tie a new thread to it of fifteen years.
'Tis done; the almighty power of prayer and tears!
Backward the sun, an unknown motion, went;
The stars gazed on, and wondered what he meant.
Manasses next (forgetful man!) begins,
Enslaved and sold to Ashur by his sins;
Till by the rod of learned Misery taught,
Home to his God and country both he's brought.
It taught not Ammon, nor his hardness brake,
He's made the example he refused to take.
Yet from this root a goodly scion springs,
Josiah! best of men, as well as kings.
Down went the calves, with all their gold and cost;
The priests then truly grieved, Osiris lost.
These mad Egyptian rites till now remained;
Fools! they their worser thraldom still retained!
In his own fires Moloch to ashes fell,
And no more flames must have besides his hell.
Like end Astartes' horned image found,
And Baal's spired stone to dust was ground.
No more were men in female habit seen,
Or they in men's, by the lewd Syrian queen;
No lustful maids at Benos' temple sit,
And with their body's shame their marriage get.
The double Dagon neither nature saves,
Nor flies she back to the Erythraean waves.
The travelling sun sees gladly from on high
His chariots burn, and Nergal quenched lie.
The King's impartial anger lights on all,
From fly-blown Accaron to the thundering Baal.
Here David's joy unruly grows and bold,
Nor could sleep's silken chain its violence hold,
Had not the angel, to seal fast his eyes,
The humours stirred, and bid more mists arise;
When straight a chariot hurries swift away,
And in it good Josiah bleeding lay:
One hand's held up, one stops the wound; in vain
They both are used. Alas! he's slain, he's slain.
Jehoias and Jehoiakim next appear;
Both urge that vengeance which before was near.
He in Egyptian fetters captive dies,
This by more courteous Anger murdered lies.
His son and brother next to bonds sustain,
Israel's now solemn and imperial chain.
Here's the last scene of this proud city's state;
All ills are met, tied in one knot of Fate.
Their endless slavery in this trial lay;
Great God had heaped up ages in one day:
Strong works around the walls the Chaldees build,
The town with grief and dreadful business filled:
To their carved gods the frantic women pray,
Gods which as near their ruin were as they:
At last in rushes the prevailing foe,
Does all the mischief of proud conquest show.
The wondering babes from mothers' breasts are rent,
And suffer ills they neither feared nor meant.
No silver reverence guards the stooping age,
No rule or method ties their boundless rage.
The glorious temple shines in flames all o'er,
Yet not so bright as in its gold before.
Nothing but fire or slaughter meets the eyes;
Nothing the ear but groans and dismal cries.
The walls and towers are levelled with the ground,
And scarce aught now of that vast city's found,
But shards and rubbish, which weak signs might keep,
Of forepast glory, and bid travellers weep.
Thus did triumphant Assur homewards pass,
And thus Jerus'lem left, Jerusalem that was!
Thus Zedechia saw, and this not all;
Before his face his friends and children fall,
The sport of insolent victors: this he views,
A king and father once: ill Fate could use
His eyes no more to do their master spite;
All to be seen she took, and next his sight.
Thus a long death in prison he outwears,
Bereft of grief's last solace, even his tears.
Then Jeconiah's son did foremost come,
And he who brought the captived nation home;
A row of Worthies in long order passed
O'er the short stage; of all old Joseph last.
Fair angels passed by next in seemly bands,
All gilt, with gilded baskets in their hands.
Some as they went the blue-eyed violets strew,
Some spotless lilies in loose order threw.
Some did the way with full-blown roses spread,
Their smell divine, and colour strangely red;
Not such as our dull gardens proudly wear,
Whom weather's taint, and wind's rude kisses tear.
Such, I believe, was the first rose's hue,
Which, at God's word, in beauteous Eden grew;
Queen of the flowers, which made that orchard gay,
The morning-blushes of the Spring's new day.
With sober pace an heavenly maid walks in,
Her looks all fair, no sign of native sin
Through her whole body writ; immoderate grace
Spoke things far more than human in her face:
It casts a dusky gloom o'er all the flowers,
And with full beams their mingled light devours.
An angel straight broke from a shining cloud,
And pressed his wings, and with much reverence bowed;
Again he bowed, and grave approach he made,
And thus his sacred message sweetly said:
'Hail! full of grace! thee the whole world shall call
Above all bless'd; thee, who shall bless them all.
Thy virgin womb in wondrous sort shall shroud
Jesus the God; (and then again he bowed)
Conception the great Spirit shall breathe on thee:
Hail thou! who must God's wife, God's mother be.'
With that his seeming form to heaven he reared,
(She low obeisance made) and disappeared.
Lo! a new star three Eastern sages see;
(For why should only earth a gainer be?)
They saw this Phosphor's infant light, and knew
It bravely ushered in a sun as new;
They hasted all this rising sun t' adore;
With them rich myrrh, and early spices, bore.
Wise men! no fitter gift your zeal could bring;
You'll in a noisome stable find your king.
Anon a thousand devils run roaring in;
Some with a dreadful smile deform'dly grin;
Some stamp their cloven paws, some frown, and tear
The gaping snakes from their black-knotted hair;
As if all grief, and all the rage of hell
Were doubled now, or that just now they fell:
But when the dreaded maid they entering saw,
All fled with trembling fear and silent awe:
In her chaste arms the Eternal Infant lies,
The Almighty Voice changed into feeble cries.
Heaven contained virgins oft, and will do more;
Never did virgin contain Heaven before.
Angels peep round to view this mystic thing,
And halleluiah round, all halleluiah sing.
No longer could good David quiet bear
The unwieldy pleasure which o'erflowed him here:
It broke the fetter, and burst ope his eye;
Away the timorous Forms together fly.
Fixed with amaze he stood, and time must take,
To learn if yet he were at last awake.
Sometimes he thinks that Heaven this vision sent,
And ordered all the pageants as they went:
Sometimes that only 'twas wild Fancy's play,
The loose and scattered relics of the day.
When Gabriel (no bless'd sp'rit more kind or fair)
Bodies and clothes himself with thickened air;
All like a comely youth in life's fresh bloom,
Rare workmanship, and wrought by heavenly loom!
He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright
That e'er the mid-day sun pierced through with light;
Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spread,
Washed from the morning beauty's deepest red;
A harmless flaming meteor shone for hair,
And fell adown his shoulders with loose care:
He cuts out a silk mantle from the skies.
Where the most sprightly azure please the eyes;
This he with starry vapours spangles all,
Took in their prime ere they grow ripe, and fall:
Of a new rainbow, ere it fret or fade,
The choicest piece took out, a scarf is made;
Small streaming clouds he does for wings display,
Not virtuous lovers' sighs more soft than they;
These he gilds o'er with the sun's richest rays,
Caught gliding o'er pure streams on which he plays.
Thus dressed, the joyful Gabriel posts away,
And carries with him his own glorious day
Through the thick woods; the gloomy shades a while
Put on fresh, looks, and wonder why they smile;
The trembling serpents close and silent lie;
The birds obscene far from his passage fly;
A sudden spring waits on him as he goes,
Sudden as that which by creation rose.
Thus he appears to David; at first sight
All earth-bred fears and sorrows take their flight:
In rushes joy divine, and hope, and rest;
A sacred calm shines through his peaceful breast.
'Hail, man belov'd! from highest heaven,' said he.
'My mighty Master sends thee health by me.
The things thou saw'st are full of truth and light,
Shaped in the glass of the divine foresight.
Even now old Time is harnessing the Years
To go in order thus: hence, empty fears!
Thy fate's all white; from thy bless'd seed shall spring
The promised Shilo, the great mystic King.
Round the whole earth his dreaded Name shall sound.
And reach to worlds that must not yet be found:
The Southern clime him her sole Lord shall style,
Him all the North, even Albion's stubborn isle.
My fellow-servant, credit what I tell.'
Straight into shapeless air unseen he fell.
LIFE.
'NASCENTES MORIMUR.'--_Manil_.
1 We're ill by these grammarians used:
We are abused by words, grossly abused;
From the maternal tomb
To the grave's fruitful womb
We call here Life; but Life's a name
That nothing here can truly claim:
This wretched inn, where we scarce stay to bait,
We call our dwelling-place;
We call one step a race:
But angels in their full-enlightened state,
Angels who live, and know what 'tis to be,
Who all the nonsense of our language see,
Who speak things, and our words their ill-drawn picture scorn.
When we by a foolish figure say,
Behold an old man dead! then they
Speak properly, and cry, Behold a man-child born!
2 My eyes are opened, and I see
Through the transparent fallacy:
Because we seem wisely to talk
Like men of business, and for business walk
From place to place,
And mighty voyages we take,
And mighty journeys seem to make
O'er sea and land, the little point that has no space;
Because we fight, and battles gain,
Some captives call, and say the rest are slain;
Because we heap up yellow earth, and so
Rich, valiant, wise, and virtuous seem to grow;
Because we draw a long nobility
From hieroglyphic proofs of heraldry,
And impudently talk of a posterity;
And, like Egyptian chroniclers,
Who write of twenty thousand years,
With maravedies make the account,
That single time might to a sum amount;
We grow at last by custom to believe
That really we live;
Whilst all these shadows that for things we take,
Are but the empty dreams which in death's sleep we make.
3 But these fantastic errors of our dream
Lead us to solid wrong;
We pray God our friends' torments to prolong.
And wish uncharitably for them
To be as long a-dying as Methusalem.
The ripened soul longs from his prison to come,
But we would seal and sew up, if we could, the womb.
We seek to close and plaster up by art
The cracks and breaches of the extended shell,
And in that narrow cell
Would rudely force to dwell
The noble, vigorous bird already winged to part.
THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT.
I.
Is this thy bravery, Man! is this thy pride!
Rebel to God, and slave to all beside!
Captived by everything! and only free
To fly from thine own liberty!
All creatures, the Creator said, were thine;
No creature but might since say, Man is mine!
In black Egyptian slavery we lie,
And sweat and toil in the vain dru
Of tyrant Sin,
To which we trophies raise, and wear out all our breath
In building up the monuments of death.
We, the choice race, to God and angels kin!
In vain the prophets and apostles come
To call us home,
Home to the promised Canaan above,
Which does with nourishing milk and pleasant honey flow,
And even i' th' way to which we should be fed
With angels' tasteful bread:
But we, alas! the flesh-pots love;
We love the very leeks and sordid roots below.
II.
In vain we judgments feel, and wonders see;
In vain did God to descend hither deign,
He was his own Ambassador in vain,
Our Moses and our guide himself to be.
We will not let ourselves to go,
And with worse hardened hearts, do our own Pharaohs grow;
Ah! lest at last we perish so,
Think, stubborn Man! think of the Egyptian prince,
(Hard of belief and will, but not so hard as thou,)
Think with what dreadful proofs God did convince
The feeble arguments that human power could show;
Think what plagues attend on thee,
Who Moses' God dost now refuse more oft than Moses he.
III.
'If from some God you come,' said the proud king,
With half a smile and half a frown,
'But what God can to Egypt be unknown?
What sign, what powers, what credence do you bring?'
'Behold his seal! behold his hand!'
Cries Moses, and casts down the almighty wand:
The almighty wand scarce touched the earth,
When, with an undiscerned birth,
The almighty wand a serpent grew,
And his long half in painted folds behind him drew:
Upwards his threatening tail he threw,
Upwards he cast his threatening head,
He gaped and hissed aloud,
With flaming eyes surveyed the trembling crowd,
And, like a basilisk, almost looked the assembly dead:
Swift fled the amazed king, the guards before him fled.
IV.
Jannes and Jambres stopped their flight,
And with proud words allayed the affright.
'The God of slaves!' said they, 'how can he be
More powerful than their master's deity?'
And down they cast their rods,
And muttered secret sounds that charm the servile gods,
The evil spirits their charms obey,
And in a subtle cloud they snatch the rods away,
And serpents in their place the airy jugglers lay:
Serpents in Egypt's monstrous land
Were ready still at hand,
And all at the Old Serpent's first command:
And they, too, gaped, and they, too, hissed,
And they their threatening tails did twist;
But straight on both the Hebrew serpent flew,
Broke both their active backs, and both it slew,
And both almost at once devoured;
So much was overpowered
By God's miraculous creation
His servant Nature's slightly wrought and feeble generation.
V.
On the famed bank the prophets stood,
Touched with their rod, and wounded all the flood;
Flood now no more, but a long vein of putrid blood;
The helpless fish were found
In their strange current drowned;
The herbs and trees washed by the mortal tide
About it blushed and died:
The amazed crocodiles made haste to ground;
From their vast trunks the dropping gore they spied,
Thought it their own, and dreadfully aloud they cried:
Nor all thy priests, nor thou,
O King! couldst ever show
From whence thy wandering Nile begins his course;
Of this new Nile thou seest the sacred source,
And as thy land that does o'erflow,
Take heed lest this do so.
What plague more just could on thy waters fall?
The Hebrew infants' murder stains them all.
The kind, instructing punishment enjoy;
Whom the red river cannot mend, the Red Sea shall destroy.
VI.
The river yet gave one instruction more,
And from the rotting fish and unconcocted gore,
Which was but water just before,
A loathsome host was quickly made,
That scaled the banks, and with loud noise did all the country invade;
As Nilus when he quits his sacred bed,
(But like a friend he visits all the land
With welcome presents in his hand,)
So did this living tide the fields o'erspread.
In vain the alarmed country tries
To kill their noisome enemies,
From the unexhausted source still new recruits arise:
Nor does the earth these greedy troops suffice;
The towns and houses they possess,
The temples and the palaces,
Nor Pharaoh nor his gods they fear,
Both their importune croakings hear:
Unsatiate yet they mount up higher,
Where never sun-born frog durst to aspire,
And in the silken beds their slimy members place,
A luxury unknown before to all the watery race.
VII.
The water thus her wonders did produce,
But both were to no use:
As yet the sorcerer's mimic power served for excuse.
Try what the earth will do, said God, and lo!
They struck the earth a fertile blow,
And all the dust did straight to stir begin,
One would have thought some sudden wind had been,
But, lo! 'twas nimble life was got within!
And all the little springs did move,
And every dust did an armed vermin prove,
Of an unknown and new-created kind,
Such as the magic gods could neither make or find.
The wretched shameful foe allowed no rest
Either to man or beast;
Not Pharaoh from the unquiet plague could be,
With all his change of raiments, free;
The devils themselves confessed
This was God's hand; and 'twas but just
To punish thus man's pride, to punish dust with dust.
VIII.
Lo! the third element does his plagues prepare,
And swarming clouds of insects fill the air;
With sullen noise they take their flight,
And march in bodies infinite;
In vain 'tis day above, 'tis still beneath them night;
Of harmful flies the nations numberless
Composed this mighty army's spacious boast;
Of different manners, different languages,
And different habits, too, they wore,
And different arms they bore:
And some, like Scythians, lived on blood,
And some on green, and some on flowery food,
And Accaron, the airy prince, led on this various host.
Houses secure not men; the populous ill
Did all the houses fill:
The country all around,
Did with the cries of tortured cattle sound;
About the fields enraged they flew,
And wished the plague that was t' ensue.
IX.
From poisonous stars a mortal influence came,
(The mingled malice of their flame,)
A skilful angel did the ingredients take,
And with just hands the sad composure make,
And over all the land did the full viol shake.
Thirst, giddiness, faintness, and putrid heats,
And pining pains, and shivering sweats,
On all the cattle, all the beasts, did fall;
With deformed death the country's covered all.
The labouring ox drops down before the plough;
The crowned victims to the altar led
Sink, and prevent the lifted blow:
The generous horse from the full manger turns his head,
Does his loved floods and pastures scorn,
Hates the shrill trumpet and the horn,
Nor can his lifeless nostril please
With the once-ravishing smell of all his dappled mistresses;
The starving sheep refuse to feed,
They bleat their innocent souls out into air;
The faithful dogs lie gasping by them there;
The astonished shepherd weeps, and breaks his tuneful reed.
X.
Thus did the beasts for man's rebellion die;
God did on man a gentler medicine try,
And a disease for physic did apply.
Warm ashes from the furnace Moses took,
The sorcerers did with wonder on him look,
And smiled at the unaccustomed spell
Which no Egyptian rituals tell.
He flings the pregnant ashes through the air,
And speaks a mighty prayer,
Both which the minist'ring winds around all Egypt bear;
As gentle western blasts, with downy wings
Hatching the tender springs,
To the unborn buds with vital whispers say,
Ye living buds, why do ye stay?
The passionate buds break through the bark their way;
So wheresoe'er this tainted wind but blew,
Swelling pains and ulcers grew;
It from the body called all sleeping poisons out,
And to them added new;
A noisome spring of sores as thick as leaves did sprout.
XI.
Heaven itself is angry next;
Woe to man when Heaven is vexed;
With sullen brow it frowned,
And murmured first in an imperfect sound;
Till Moses, lifting up his hand,
Waves the expected signal of his wand,
And all the full-charged clouds in ranged squadrons move,
And fill the spacious plains above;
Through which the rolling thunder first does play,
And opens wide the tempest's noisy way:
And straight a stony shower
Of monstrous hail does downward pour,
Such as ne'er Winter yet brought forth,
From all her stormy magazines of the north:
It all the beasts and men abroad did slay,
O'er the defaced corpse, like monuments, lay;
The houses and strong-bodied trees it broke,
Nor asked aid from the thunder's stroke:
The thunder but for terror through it flew,
The hail alone the work could do.
The dismal lightnings all around,
Some flying through the air, some running on the ground,
Some swimming o'er the waters' face,
Filled with bright horror every place;
One would have thought, their dreadful day to have seen,
The very hail and rain itself had kindled been.
XII.
The infant corn, which yet did scarce appear,
Escaped this general massacre
Of every thing that grew,
And the well-stored Egyptian year
Began to clothe her fields and trees anew;
When, lo! a scorching wind from the burnt countries blew,
And endless legions with it drew
Of greedy locusts, who, where'er
With sounding wings they flew,
Left all the earth depopulate and bare,
As if Winter itself had marched by there,
Whate'er the sun and Nile
Gave with large bounty to the thankful soil,
The wretched pillagers bore away,
And the whole Summer was their prey;
Till Moses with a prayer,
Breathed forth a violent western wind,
Which all these living clouds did headlong bear
(No stragglers left behind)
Into the purple sea, and there bestow
On the luxurious fish a feast they ne'er did know.
With untaught joy Pharaoh the news does hear,
And little thinks their fate attends on him and his so near.
XIII.
What blindness and what darkness did there e'er
Like this undocile king's appear?
Whate'er but that which now does represent
And paint the crime out in the punishment?
From the deep baleful caves of hell below,
Where the old mother Night does grow,
Substantial Night, that does disclaim
Privation's empty name,
Through secret conduits monstrous shapes arose,
Such as the sun's whole force could not oppose;
They with a solid cloud
All heaven's eclipsed face did shroud;
Seemed with large wings spread o'er the sea and earth,
To brood up a new Chaos his deformed birth;
And every lamp, and every fire,
Did, at the dreadful sight, wink and expire,
To the empyrean source all streams of light seemed to retire.
The living men were in their standing houses buried,
But the long night no slumber knows,
But the short death finds no repose.
Ten thousand terrors through the darkness fled,
And ghosts complained, and spirits murmured,
And fancy's multiplying sight
Viewed all the scenes invisible of night.
XIV.
Of God's dreadful anger these
Were but the first light skirmishes;
The shock and bloody battle now begins,
The plenteous harvest of full-ripened sins.
It was the time when the still moon
Was mounted softly to her noon,
And dewy sleep, which from Night's secret springs arose,
Gently as Nile the land o'erflows;
When, lo! from the high countries of refined day,
The golden heaven without allay,
Whose dross, in the creation purged away,
Made up the sun's adulterate ray,
Michael, the warlike prince, does downwards fly,
Swift as the journeys of the sight,
Swift as the race of light,
And with his winged will cuts through the yielding sky.
He passed through many a star, and as he passed
Shone (like a star in them) more brightly there
Than they did in their sphere:
On a tall pyramid's pointed head he stopped at last,
And a mild look of sacred pity cast
Down on the sinful land where he was sent
To inflict the tardy punishment.
'Ah! yet,' said he, 'yet, stubborn King! repent,
Whilst thus unarmed I stand,
Ere the keen sword of God fill my commanded hand;
Suffer but yet thyself and thine to live.
Who would, alas! believe
That it for man,' said he,
'So hard to be forgiven should be,
And yet for God so easy to forgive!'
XV.
He spoke, and downwards flew,
And o'er his shining form a well-cut cloud he threw,
Made of the blackest fleece of night,
And close-wrought to keep in the powerful light;
Yet, wrought so fine, it hindered not his flight,
But through the key-holes and the chinks of doors,
And through the narrowest walks of crooked pores,
He passed more swift and free
Than in wide air the wanton swallows flee:
He took a pointed pestilence in his hand,
The spirits of thousand mortal poisons made
The strongly-tempered blade,
The sharpest sword that e'er was laid
Up in the magazines of God to scourge a wicked land:
Through Egypt's wicked land his march he took,
And as he marched the sacred first-born struck
Of every womb; none did he spare;
None from the meanest beast to Cenchre's purple heir.
XVI.
The swift approach of endless night
Breaks ope the wounded sleepers' rolling eyes;
They awake the rest with dying cries,
And darkness doubles the affright.
The mixed sounds of scattered deaths they hear,
And lose their parted souls 'twixt grief and fear.
Louder than all, the shrieking women's voice
Pierces this chaos of confused noise;
As brighter lightning cuts a way,
Clear and distinguished through the day:
With less complaints the Zoan temples sound
When the adored heifer's drowned,
And no true marked successor to be found:
While health, and strength, and gladness does possess
The festal Hebrew cottages;
The bless'd destroyer comes not there,
To interrupt the sacred cheer,
That new begins their well-reformed year.
Upon their doors he read and understood
God's protection writ in blood;
Well was he skilled i' th' character divine,
And though he passed by it in haste,
He bowed, and worshipped as he passed
The mighty mystery through its humble sign.
XVII.
The sword strikes now too deep and near,
Longer with its edge to play,
No diligence or cost they spare
To haste the Hebrews now away,
Pharaoh himself chides their delay;
So kind and bountiful is fear!
But, oh! the bounty which to fear we owe,
Is but like fire struck out of stone,
So hardly got, and quickly gone,
That it scarce outlives the blow.
Sorrow and fear soon quit the tyrant's breast,
Rage and revenge their place possess'd:
With a vast host of chariots and of horse,
And all his powerful kingdom's ready force,
The travelling nation he pursues,
Ten times o'ercome, he still the unequal war renews.
Filled with proud hopes, 'At least,' said he,
'The Egyptian gods, from Syrian magic free,
Will now revenge themselves and me;
Behold what passless rocks on either hand,
Like prison walls, about them stand!
Whilst the sea bounds their flight before,
And in our injured justice they must find
A far worse stop than rocks and seas behind;
Which shall with crimson gore
New paint the water's name, and double dye the shore.'
XVIII.
He spoke; and all his host
Approved with shouts the unhappy boast;
A bidden wind bore his vain words away,
And drowned them in the neighbouring sea.
No means to escape the faithless travellers spy,
And with degenerous fear to die,
Curse their new-gotten liberty:
But the great Guide well knew he led them right,
And saw a path hid yet from human sight:
He strikes the raging waves; the waves on either side
Unloose their close embraces, and divide,
And backwards press, as in some solemn show
The crowding people do,
(Though just before no space was seen,)
To let the admired triumph pass between.
The wondering army saw, on either hand,
The no less wondering waves like rocks of crystal stand.
They marched betwixt, and boldly trod
The secret paths of God:
And here and there, all scattered in their way,
The sea's old spoils and gaping fishes lay
Deserted on the sandy plain:
The sun did with astonishment behold
The inmost chambers of the opened main,
For whatsoe'er of old
By his own priests, the poets, has been said,
He never sunk till then into the Ocean's bed.
XIX.
Led cheerfully by a bright captain, Flame,
To the other shore at morning-dawn they came,
And saw behind the unguided foe
March disorderly and slow:
The prophet straight from the Idumean strand
Shakes his imperious wand;
The upper waves, that highest crowded lie,
The beckoning wand espy;
Straight their first right-hand files begin to move,
And with a murmuring wind
Give the word march to all behind;
The left-hand squadrons no less ready prove,
But with a joyful, louder noise,
Answer their distant fellows' voice,
And haste to meet them make,
As several troops do all at once a common signal take.
What tongue the amazement and the affright can tell,
Which on the Chamian army fell,
When on both sides they saw the roaring main
Broke loose from his invisible chain?
They saw the monstrous death and watery war
Come rolling down loud ruin from afar;
In vain some backward and some forwards fly
With helpless haste, in vain they cry
To their celestial beasts for aid;
In vain their guilty king they upbraid,
In vain on Moses he, and Moses' God, does call,
With a repentance true too late:
They're compassed round with a devouring fate
That draws, like a strong net, the mighty sea upon them all.
GEORGE WITHER
This remarkable man was born in Hampshire, at Bentworth, near Alton, in
1588. He was sent to Magdalene College, Oxford, but had hardly been
there till his father remanded him home to hold the plough--a reversal
of the case of Cincinnatus which did not please the aspiring spirit of
our poet. He took an early opportunity of breaking loose from this
occupation, and of going to London with the romantic intention of making
his fortune at Court. Finding that to rise at Court, flattery was
indispensable, and determined not to flatter, he, in 1613, published his
'Abuses Whipt and Stript,' for which he was committed for some months
to the Marshalsea. Here he wrote his beautiful poem, 'The Shepherd's
Hunting;' and is said to have gained his manumission by a satire to
the King, in which he defends his former writings. Soon after his
liberation, he published his 'Hymns and Songs of the Church,' a book
which embroiled him with the clergy, but procured him the favour of King
James, who encouraged him to finish a translation of the Psalms. He
travelled to the court of the Queen of Bohemia, (James's daughter,) in
fulfilment of a vow, and presented her with a copy of his completed
translation.
In 1639, he was a captain of horse in the expedition against the Scotch.
When the Civil War broke out, he sold his estate to raise a troop of
horse on the Parliamentary side, and soon after was made a major. In
1642, he was appointed captain and commander of Farnham Castle, in
Surrey; but owing to some neglect or cowardice on his part, it was ceded
the same year to Sir William Waller. He was made prisoner by the
Royalists some time after this, and would have been put to death had not
Denham interfered, alleging that as long as Wither survived, he (Denham)
could not be accounted the worst poet in England. He was afterwards
appointed Cromwell's major-general of all the horse and foot in the
county of Surrey. He made money at this time by Royalist sequestrations,
but lost it all at the Restoration. He had, on the death of Cromwell,
hailed Richard with enthusiasm, and predicted him a happy reign; which
makes Campbell remark, 'He never but once in his life foreboded good,
and in that prophecy he was mistaken.' Wither was by no means pleased
with the loss of his fortune, and remonstrated bitterly; but for so
doing he was thrown into prison again. Here his mind continued as active
as ever, and he poured out treatises, poems, and satires--sometimes,
when pen and ink were denied him, inscribing his thoughts with red ochre
upon a trencher. After three years, he was, in 1663, released from
Newgate, under bond for good behaviour; and four years afterwards he
died in London. This was on the 2d of May 1667. He was buried between
the east door and the south end of the Savoy church, in the Strand.
Wither was a man of real genius, but seems to have been partially
insane. His political zeal was a frenzy; and his religion was deeply
tinged with puritanic gloom. His 'Collection of Emblems' never became so
popular as those of Quarles, and are now nearly as much forgotten as his
satires, his psalms, and his controversial treatises. But his early
poems are delightful--full of elegant and playful fancy, ease of
language, and delicacy of sentiment. Some passages in 'The Shepherd's
Hunting,' and in the 'Address to Poetry,' resemble the style of Milton
in his 'L'Allegro' and 'Penseroso.' His 'Christmas' catches the full
spirit of that joyous carnival of Christian England. Altogether, it is
refreshing to turn from the gnarled oak of Wither's struggling and
unhappy life, to the beautiful flowers, nodding over it, of his poesy.
FROM 'THE SHEPHERD'S HUNTING.'
See'st thou not, in clearest days,
Oft thick fogs could heavens raise?
And the vapours that do breathe
From the earth's gross womb beneath,
Seem they not with their black steams
To pollute the sun's bright beams,
And yet vanish into air,
Leaving it unblemished, fair?
So, my Willy, shall it be
With Detraction's breath and thee:
It shall never rise so high
As to stain thy poesy.
As that sun doth oft exhale
Vapours from each rotten vale;
Poesy so sometimes drains
Gross conceits from muddy brains;
Mists of envy, fogs of spite,
'Twixt men's judgments and her light;
But so much her power may do
That she can dissolve them too.
If thy verse do bravely tower,
As she makes wing, she gets power!
Yet the higher she doth soar,
She's affronted still the more:
Till she to the high'st hath past,
Then she rests with Fame at last.
Let nought therefore thee affright,
But make forward in thy flight:
For if I could match thy rhyme,
To the very stars I'd climb;
There begin again, and fly
Till I reached eternity.
But, alas! my Muse is slow;
For thy pace she flags too low.
Yes, the more's her hapless fate,
Her short wings were clipped of late;
And poor I, her fortune ruing,
Am myself put up a-muing.
But if I my cage can rid,
I'll fly where I never did.
And though for her sake I'm cross'd,
Though my best hopes I have lost,
And knew she would make my trouble
Ten times more than ten times double;
I would love and keep her too,
Spite of all the world could do.
For though banished from my flocks,
And confined within these rocks,
Here I waste away the light,
And consume the sullen night;
She doth for my comfort stay,
And keeps many cares away.
Though I miss the flowery fields,
With those sweets the springtide yields;
Though I may not see those groves,
Where the shepherds chant their loves,
And the lasses more excel
Than the sweet-voiced Philomel;
Though of all those pleasures past,
Nothing now remains at last,
But remembrance, poor relief,
That more makes than mends my grief:
She's my mind's companion still,
Maugre Envy's evil will:
Whence she should be driven too,
Were 't in mortals' power to do.
She doth tell me where to borrow
Comfort in the midst of sorrow;
Makes the desolatest place
To her presence be a grace,
And the blackest discontents
Be her fairest ornaments.
In my former days of bliss,
His divine skill taught me this,
That from everything I saw,
I could some invention draw;
And raise pleasure to her height
Through the meanest object's sight:
By the murmur of a spring,
Or the least bough's rustling;
By a daisy, whose leaves spread,
Shut when Titan goes to bed;
Or a shady bush or tree,
She could more infuse in me,
Than all Nature's beauties can,
In some other wiser man.
By her help I also now
Make this churlish place allow
Some things that may sweeten gladness
In the very gall of sadness:
The dull loneness, the black shade
That these hanging vaults have made,
The strange music of the waves,
Beating on these hollow caves,
This black den, which rocks emboss,
Overgrown with eldest moss;
The rude portals, that give light
More to terror than delight,
This my chamber of neglect,
Walled about with disrespect,
From all these, and this dull air,
A fit object for despair,
She hath taught me by her might
To draw comfort and delight.
Therefore, then, best earthly bliss,
I will cherish thee for this!
Poesy, thou sweet'st content
That e'er Heaven to mortals lent;
Though they as a trifle leave thee,
Whose dull thoughts can not conceive thee,
Though thou be to them a scorn
That to nought but earth are born;
Let my life no longer be
Than I am in love with thee!
Though our wise ones call it madness,
Let me never taste of gladness
If I love not thy madd'st fits
Above all their greatest wits!
And though some, too seeming holy,
Do account thy raptures folly,
Thou dost teach me to contemn
What makes knaves and fools of them!
THE SHEPHERD'S RESOLUTION.
1 Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman's fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care,
'Cause another's rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flowery meads in May;
If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?
2 Shall my foolish heart be pined,
'Cause I see a woman kind?
Or a well-disposed nature
Joined with a lovely feature?
Be she meeker, kinder, than
The turtle-dove or pelican;
If she be not so to me,
What care I how kind she be?
3 Shall a woman's virtues move
Me to perish for her love?
Or, her well-deservings known,
Make me quite forget mine own?
Be she with that goodness blest,
Which may merit name of Best;
If she be not such to me,
What care I how good she be?
4 'Cause her fortune seems too high,
Shall I play the fool and die?
Those that bear a noble mind,
Where they want of riches find,
Think what with them they would do,
That without them dare to woo;
And, unless that mind I see,
What care I how great she be?
5 Great, or good, or kind, or fair,
I will ne'er the more despair:
If she love me, this believe--
I will die ere she shall grieve.
If she slight me when I woo,
I can scorn and let her go:
If she be not fit for me,
What care I for whom she be?
THE STEADFAST SHEPHERD.
1 Hence away, thou Siren, leave me,
Pish! unclasp these wanton arms;
Sugared words can ne'er deceive me,
Though thou prove a thousand charms.
Fie, fie, forbear;
No common snare
Can ever my affection chain:
Thy painted baits,
And poor deceits,
Are all bestowed on me in vain.
2 I'm no slave to such as you be;
Neither shall that snowy breast,
Rolling eye, and lip of ruby,
Ever rob me of my rest:
Go, go, display
Thy beauty's ray
To some more soon enamoured swain:
Those common wiles
Of sighs and smiles
Are all bestowed on me in vain.
3 I have elsewhere vowed a duty;
Turn away thy tempting eye:
Show not me a painted beauty:
These impostures I defy:
My spirit loathes
Where gaudy clothes
And feigned oaths may love obtain:
I love her so,
Whose look swears No,
That all your labours will be vain.
4 Can he prize the tainted posies
Which on every breast are worn,
That may pluck the virgin roses
From their never-touched thorn?
I can go rest
On her sweet breast
That is the pride of Cynthia's train:
Then stay thy tongue,
Thy mermaid song
Is all bestowed on me in vain.
5 He's a fool that basely dallies,
Where each peasant mates with him:
Shall I haunt the thronged valleys,
Whilst there's noble hills to climb?
No, no, though clowns
Are scared with frowns,
I know the best can but disdain;
And those I'll prove:
So will thy love
Be all bestowed on me in vain.
6 I do scorn to vow a duty
Where each lustful lad may woo;
Give me her whose sun-like beauty
Buzzards dare not soar unto:
She, she it is
Affords that bliss
For which I would refuse no pain:
But such as you,
Fond fools, adieu!
You seek to captive me in vain.
7 Leave me then, you Siren, leave me:
Seek no more to work my harms:
Crafty wiles cannot deceive me,
Who am proof against your charms:
You labour may
To lead astray
The heart that constant shall remain;
And I the while
Will sit and smile
To see you spend your time in vain.
THE SHEPHERD'S HUNTING.
ARGUMENT.
Cuddy tells how all the swains
Pity Roget on the plains;
Who, requested, doth relate
The true cause of his estate;
Which broke off, because 'twas long,
They begin a three-man song.
WILLY. CUDDY. ROGET.
WILLY.
Roget, thy old friend Cuddy here, and I,
Are come to visit thee in these thy bands,
Whilst both our flocks in an enclosure by
Do pick the thin grass from the fallowed lands.
He tells me thy restraint of liberty,
Each one throughout the country understands:
And there is not a gentle-natured lad,
On all these downs, but for thy sake is sad.
CUDDY.
Not thy acquaintance and thy friends alone
Pity thy close restraint, as friends should do:
But some that have but seen thee for thee moan:
Yea, many that did never see thee too.
Some deem thee in a fault, and most in none;
So divers ways do divers rumours go:
And at all meetings where our shepherds be,
Now the main news that's extant is of thee.
ROGET.
Why, this is somewhat yet: had I but kept
Sheep on the mountains till the day of doom,
My name should in obscurity have slept,
In brakes, in briars, shrubbed furze and broom.
Into the world's wide care it had not crept,
Nor in so many men's thoughts found a room:
But what cause of my sufferings do they know?
Good Cuddy, tell me how doth rumour go?
CUDDY.
Faith, 'tis uncertain; some speak this, some that:
Some dare say nought, yet seem to think a cause,
And many a one, prating he knows not what,
Comes out with proverbs and old ancient saws,
As if he thought thee guiltless, and yet not:
Then doth he speak half-sentences, then pause:
That what the most would say, we may suppose:
But what to say, the rumour is, none knows.
ROGET.
Nor care I greatly, for it skills not much
What the unsteady common-people deems;
His conscience doth not always feel least touch,
That blameless in the sight of others seems:
My cause is honest, and because 'tis such
I hold it so, and not for men's esteems:
If they speak justly well of me, I'm glad;
If falsely evil, it ne'er makes me sad.
WILLY.
I like that mind; but, Roget, you are quite
Beside the matter that I long to hear:
Remember what you promised yesternight,
You'd put us off with other talk, I fear;
Thou know'st that honest Cuddy's heart's upright,
And none but he, except myself, is near:
Come therefore, and betwixt us two relate,
The true occasion of thy present state.
ROGET.
My friends, I will; you know I am a swain,
That keep a poor flock here upon this plain:
Who, though it seems I could do nothing less,
Can make a song, and woo a shepherdess;
And not alone the fairest where I live
Have heard me sing, and favours deigned to give;
But though I say't, the noblest nymph of Thame,
Hath graced my verse unto my greater fame.
Yet being young, and not much seeking praise,
I was not noted out for shepherds' lays,
Nor feeding flocks, as you know others be:
For the delight that most possessed me
Was hunting foxes, wolves, and beasts of prey;
That spoil our folds, and bear our lambs away.
For this, as also for the love I bear
Unto my country, I laid by all care
Of gain, or of preferment, with desire
Only to keep that state I had entire,
And like a true-grown huntsman sought to speed
Myself with hounds of rare and choicest breed,
Whose names and natures ere I further go,
Because you are my friends, I'll let you know.
My first esteemed dog that I did find,
Was by descent of old Actaeon's kind;
A brach, which if I do not aim amiss,
For all the world is just like one of his:
She's named Love, and scarce yet knows her duty;
Her dam's my lady's pretty beagle Beauty,
I bred her up myself with wondrous charge,
Until she grew to be exceeding large,
And waxed so wanton that I did abhor it,
And put her out amongst my neighbours for it.
The next is Lust, a hound that's kept abroad,
'Mongst some of mine acquaintance, but a toad
Is not more loathsome: 'tis a cur will range
Extremely, and is ever full of mange;
And 'cause it is infectious, she's not wont
To come among the rest, but when they hunt.
Hate is the third, a hound both deep and long.
His sire is true or else supposed Wrong.
He'll have a snap at all that pass him by,
And yet pursues his game most eagerly.
With him goes Envy coupled, a lean cur,
And she'll hold out, hunt we ne'er so far:
She pineth much, and feedeth little too,
Yet stands and snarleth at the rest that do.
Then there's Revenge, a wondrous deep-mouthed dog,
So fleet, I'm fain to hunt him with a clog,
Yet many times he'll much outstrip his bounds,
And hunts not closely with the other hounds:
He'll venture on a lion in his ire;
Curst Choler was his dam, and Wrong his sire.
This Choler is a brach that's very old,
And spends her mouth too much to have it hold:
She's very testy, an unpleasing cur,
That bites the very stones, if they but stur:
Or when that ought but her displeasure moves,
She'll bite and snap at any one she loves:
But my quick-scented'st dog is Jealousy,
The truest of this breed's in Italy:
The dam of mine would hardly fill a glove,
It was a lady's little dog, called Love:
The sire, a poor deformed cur, named Fear,
As shagged and as rough as is a bear:
And yet the whelp turned after neither kind,
For he is very large, and near-hand blind;
At the first sight he hath a pretty colour,
But doth not seem so, when you view him fuller;
A vile suspicious beast, his looks are bad,
And I do fear in time he will grow mad.
To him I couple Avarice, still poor;
Yet she devours as much as twenty more:
A thousand horse she in her paunch can put,
Yet whine as if she had an empty gut:
And having gorged what might a land have found,
She'll catch for more, and hide it in the ground.
Ambition is a hound as greedy full;
But he for all the daintiest bits doth cull:
He scorns to lick up crumbs beneath the table,
He'll fetch 't from boards and shelves, if he be able:
Nay, he can climb if need be; and for that,
With him I hunt the martin and the cat:
And yet sometimes in mounting he's so quick,
He fetches falls are like to break his neck.
Fear is well-mouth'd, but subject to distrust;
A stranger cannot make him take a crust:
A little thing will soon his courage quail,
And 'twixt his legs he ever claps his tail;
With him Despair now often coupled goes,
Which by his roaring mouth each huntsman knows.
None hath a better mind unto the game,
But he gives off, and always seemeth lame.
My bloodhound Cruelty, as swift as wind,
Hunts to the death, and never comes behind;
Who but she's strapp'd and muzzled too withal,
Would eat her fellows, and the prey and all;
And yet she cares not much for any food,
Unless it be the purest harmless blood.
All these are kept abroad at charge of many,
They do not cost me in a year a penny.
But there's two couple of a middling size,
That seldom pass the sight of my own eyes.
Hope, on whose head I've laid my life to pawn;
Compassion, that on every one will fawn.
This would, when 'twas a whelp, with rabbits play
Or lambs, and let them go unhurt away:
Nay, now she is of growth, she'll now and then
Catch you a hare, and let her go again.
The two last, Joy and Sorrow, 'tis a wonder,
Can ne'er agree, nor ne'er bide far asunder.
Joy's ever wanton, and no order knows:
She'll run at larks, or stand and bark at crows.
Sorrow goes by her, and ne'er moves his eye;
Yet both do serve to help make up the cry.
Then comes behind all these to bear the base,
Two couple more of a far larger race,
Such wide-mouth'd trollops, that 'twould do you good
To hear their loud loud echoes tear the wood.
There's Vanity, who, by her gaudy hide,
May far away from all the rest be spied,
Though huge, yet quick, for she's now here, now there;
Nay, look about you, and she's everywhere:
Yet ever with the rest, and still in chase.
Right so, Inconstancy fills every place;
And yet so strange a fickle-natured hound,
Look for her, and she's nowhere to be found.
Weakness is no fair dog unto the eye,
And yet she hath her proper quality;
But there's Presumption, when he heat hath got,
He drowns the thunder and the cannon-shot:
And when at start he his full roaring makes,
The earth doth tremble, and the heaven shakes.
These were my dogs, ten couple just in all,
Whom by the name of Satyrs I do call:
Mad curs they be, and I can ne'er come nigh them,
But I'm in danger to be bitten by them.
Much pains I took, and spent days not a few,
To make them keep together, and hunt true:
Which yet I do suppose had never been,
But that I had a scourge to keep them in.
Now when that I this kennel first had got,
Out of my own demesnes I hunted not,
Save on these downs, or among yonder rocks,
After those beasts that spoiled our parish flocks;
Nor during that time was I ever wont
With all my kennel in one day to hunt:
Nor had done yet, but that this other year,
Some beasts of prey, that haunt the deserts here,
Did not alone for many nights together
Devour, sometime a lamb, sometime a wether,
And so disquiet many a poor man's herd,
But that of losing all they were afeard:
Yea, I among the rest did fare as bad,
Or rather worse, for the best ewes[1] I had
(Whose breed should be my means of life and gain)
Were in one evening by these monsters slain:
Which mischief I resolved to repay,
Or else grow desperate, and hunt all away;
For in a fury (such as you shall see
Huntsmen in missing of their sport will be)
I vowed a monster should not lurk about,
In all this province, but I'd find him out,
And thereupon, without respect or care,
How lame, how full, or how unfit they were,
In haste unkennell'd all my roaring crew,
Who were as mad as if my mind they knew,
And ere they trail'd a flight-shot, the fierce curs
Had roused a hart, and thorough brakes and furs
Follow'd at gaze so close, that Love and Fear
Got in together, so had surely there
Quite overthrown him, but that Hope thrust in
'Twixt both, and saved the pinching of his skin,
Whereby he 'scaped, till coursing o'erthwart,
Despair came in, and griped him to the heart:
I hallowed in the res'due to the fall,
And for an entrance, there I fleshed them all:
Which having done, I dipped my staff in blood,
And onward led my thunder to the wood;
Where what they did, I'll tell you out anon,
My keeper calls me, and I must be gone.
Go if you please a while, attend your flocks,
And when the sun is over yonder rocks,
Come to this cave again, where I will be,
If that my guardian so much favour me.
Yet if you please, let us three sing a strain,
Before you turn your sheep into the plain.
WILLY.
I am content.
CUDDY.
As well content am I.
ROGET.
Then, Will, begin, and we'll the rest supply.
SONG.
WILLY.
Shepherd, would these gates were ope,
Thou might'st take with us thy fortune.
ROGET.
No, I'll make this narrow scope,
Since my fate doth so importune
Means unto a wider hope.
CUDDY.
Would thy shepherdess were here,
Who belov'd, loves thee so dearly!
ROGET.
Not for both your flocks, I swear,
And the gain they yield you yearly,
Would I so much wrong my dear.
Yet to me, nor to this place,
Would she now be long a stranger;
She would hold it no disgrace,
(If she feared not more my danger,)
Where I am to show her face.
WILLY.
Shepherd, we would wish no harms,
But something that might content thee.
ROGET.
Wish me then within her arms,
And that wish will ne'er repent me,
If your wishes might prove charms.
WILLY.
Be thy prison her embrace,
Be thy air her sweetest breathing.
CUDDY.
Be thy prospect her fair face,
For each look a kiss bequeathing,
And appoint thyself the place.
ROGET.
Nay pray, hold there, for I should scantly then
Come meet you here this afternoon again:
But fare you well, since wishes have no power,
Let us depart, and keep the 'pointed hour.
[1] 'Ewes:' hopes.
SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT,
The author of 'Gondibert,' was the son of a vintner in Oxford, and born
in February 1605. Gossip says--but says with her usual carelessness about
truth--that he was the son of no less a person than William Shakspeare,
who used, in his journeys between London and Stratford, to stop at the
Crown, an inn kept by Davenant's reputed father. This story is hinted at
by Wood, was told to Pope by Betterton the player, and believed by Malone,
but seems to be a piece of mere scandal. It is true that Davenant had a
great veneration for Shakspeare, and expressed it, when only ten years
old, in lines 'In remembrance of Master William Shakspeare,' beginning
thus:--
'Beware, delighted poets, when you sing,
To welcome nature in the early spring,
Your numerous feet not tread
The banks of Avon, for each flower
(As it ne'er knew a sun or shower)
Hangs there the pensive head.'
Southey says--'The father was a man of melancholy temperament, the mother
handsome and lively; and as Shakspeare used to put up at the house on his
journeys between Stratford and London, Davenant is said to have affected
the reputation of being Shakspeare's son. If he really did this, there
was a levity, or rather a want of feeling, in the boast, for which social
pleasantry, and the spirits which are induced by wine, afford but little
excuse.'
He was entered at Lincoln College; he next became page to the Duchess of
Richmond; and we find him afterwards in the family of Fulk Greville, Lord
Brooke--famous as the friend of Sir Philip Sidney. He began to write for
the stage in 1628; and on the death of Ben Jonson he was made Poet Laureate
--to the disappointment of Thomas May, so much praised by Johnson and
others for his proficiency in Latin poetry, as displayed in his supplement
to Lucan's 'Pharsalia.' He became afterwards manager of Drury Lane; but
owing to his connexion with the intrigues of that unhappy period, he was
imprisoned in the Tower, and subsequently made his escape to France. On his
return to England, he distinguished himself greatly in the Royal cause; and
when that became desperate, he again took refuge in France, and wrote part
of his 'Gondibert.' He projected a scheme for carrying over a colony to
Virginia; but his vessel was seized by one of the Parliamentary ships--he
himself was conveyed a prisoner to Cowes Castle, in the Isle of Wight, and
thence to the Tower, preparatory to being tried by the High Commission. But
a giant hand, worthy of having saved him had he been Shakspeare's veritable
son, was now stretched forth to his rescue--the hand of Milton. In this
generous act Milton was seconded by Whitelocke, and by two aldermen of
York, to whom our poet had rendered some services. Liberated from the
Tower, Davenant was also permitted, through the influence of Whitelocke,
to open, in defiance of Puritanic prohibition, a kind of theatre at Rutland
House, and by enacting his own plays there, he managed to support himself
till the Restoration. He then, it is supposed, repaid to Milton his
friendly service, and shielded him from the wrath of the Court. From this
period Davenant continued to write for the stage--having received the
patent of the Duke's Theatre, in Lincoln's Inn--till his death. This event
took place on April 7, 1668. His last play, written in conjunction with
Dryden, was an alteration and pollution of Shakspeare's 'Tempest,' which
was more worthy of Trincula than of the authors of 'Absalom and Ahithophel'
and of 'Gondibert.' Supposing Davenant the son of Shakspeare, his act to
his father's masterpiece reminds us, in the excess of its filial impiety,
of Ham's conduct to Noah.
'Gondibert' is a large and able, without being a great poem. It has the
incurable and indefensible defect of dulness. 'The line labours, and the
words move slow.' The story is interesting of itself, but is lost in the
labyrinthine details. It has many lines, and some highly and successfully
wrought passages; but as a whole we may say of it as Porson said of
certain better productions, 'It will be read when the works of Homer and
Virgil are forgotten--but _not till then_.'
FROM 'GONDIBERT'--CANTO II.
THE ARGUMENT.
The hunting which did yearly celebrate
The Lombards' glory, and the Vandals' fate:
The hunters praised; how true to love they are,
How calm in peace and tempest-like in war.
The stag is by the numerous chase subdued,
And straight his hunters are as hard pursued.
1 Small are the seeds Fate does unheeded sow
Of slight beginnings to important ends;
Whilst wonder, which does best our reverence show
To Heaven, all reason's sight in gazing spends.
2 For from a day's brief pleasure did proceed,
A day grown black in Lombard histories,
Such lasting griefs as thou shalt weep to read,
Though even thine own sad love had drained thine eyes.
3 In a fair forest, near Verona's plain,
Fresh as if Nature's youth chose there a shade,
The Duke, with many lovers in his train,
Loyal and young, a solemn hunting made.
4 Much was his train enlarged by their resort
Who much his grandsire loved, and hither came
To celebrate this day with annual sport,
On which by battle here he earned his fame,
5 And many of these noble hunters bore
Command amongst the youth at Bergamo;
Whose fathers gathered here the wreaths they wore,
When in this forest they interred the foe.
6 Count Hurgonil, a youth of high descent,
Was listed here, and in the story great;
He followed honour, when towards death it went;
Fierce in a charge, but temperate in retreat.
7 His wondrous beauty, which the world approved,
He blushing hid, and now no more would own
(Since he the Duke's unequalled sister loved)
Than an old wreath when newly overthrown.
8 And she, Orna the shy! did seem in life
So bashful too, to have her beauty shown,
As I may doubt her shade with Fame at strife,
That in these vicious times would make it known.
9 Not less in public voice was Arnold here;
He that on Tuscan tombs his trophies raised;
And now Love's power so willingly did bear,
That even his arbitrary reign he praised.
10 Laura, the Duke's fair niece, enthralled his heart,
Who was in court the public morning glass,
Where those, who would reduce nature to art,
Practised by dress the conquests of the face.
11 And here was Hugo, whom Duke Gondibert
For stout and steadfast kindness did approve;
Of stature small, but was all over heart,
And, though unhappy, all that heart was love.
12 In gentle sonnets he for Laura pined,
Soft as the murmurs of a weeping spring,
Which ruthless she did as those murmurs mind:
So, ere their death, sick swans unheeded sing.
13 Yet, whilst she Arnold favoured, he so grieved,
As loyal subjects quietly bemoan
Their yoke, but raise no war to be relieved,
Nor through the envied fav'rite wound the throne.
14 Young Goltho next these rivals we may name,
Whose manhood dawned early as summer light;
As sure and soon did his fair day proclaim,
And was no less the joy of public sight.
15 If love's just power he did not early see,
Some small excuse we may his error give;
Since few, though learn'd, know yet blest love to be
That secret vital heat by which we live:
16 But such it is; and though we may be thought
To have in childhood life, ere love we know,
Yet life is useless till by reason taught,
And love and reason up together grow.
17 Nor more the old show they outlive their love,
If, when their love's decayed, some signs they give
Of life, because we see them pained and move,
Than snakes, long cut, by torment show they live.
18 If we call living, life, when love is gone,
We then to souls, God's coin, vain reverence pay;
Since reason, which is love, and his best known
And current image, age has worn away.
19 And I, that love and reason thus unite,
May, if I old philosophers control,
Confirm the new by some new poet's light,
Who, finding love, thinks he has found the soul.
20 From Goltho, to whom love yet tasteless seemed,
We to ripe Tybalt are by order led;
Tybalt, who love and valour both esteemed,
And he alike from either's wounds had bled.
21 Public his valour was, but not his love,
One filled the world, the other he contained;
Yet quietly alike in both did move,
Of that ne'er boasted, nor of this complained.
22 With these, whose special names verse shall preserve,
Many to this recorded hunting came;
Whose worth authentic mention did deserve,
But from Time's deluge few are saved by Fame.
23 New like a giant lover rose the sun
From the ocean queen, fine in his fires and great;
Seemed all the morn for show, for strength at noon,
As if last night she had not quenched his heat.
24 And the sun's servants, who his rising wait,
His pensioners, for so all lovers are,
And all maintained by him at a high rate
With daily fire, now for the chase prepare.
25 All were, like hunters, clad in cheerful green,
Young Nature's livery, and each at strife
Who most adorned in favours should be seen,
Wrought kindly by the lady of his life.
26 These martial favours on their waists they wear,
On which, for now they conquest celebrate,
In an embroidered history appear
Like life, the vanquished in their fears and fate.
27 And on these belts, wrought with their ladies' care,
Hung cimeters of Akon's trusty steel;
Goodly to see, and he who durst compare
Those ladies' eyes, might soon their temper feel.
28 Cheered as the woods, where new-waked choirs they meet,
Are all; and now dispose their choice relays
Of horse and hounds, each like each other fleet;
Which best, when with themselves compared, we praise.
29 To them old forest spies, the harbourers,
With haste approach, wet as still weeping night,
Or deer that mourn their growth of head with tears,
When the defenceless weight does hinder flight.
30 And dogs, such whose cold secrecy was meant
By Nature for surprise, on these attend;
Wise, temperate lime-hounds that proclaim no scent,
Nor harb'ring will their mouths in boasting spend.
31 Yet vainlier far than traitors boast their prize,
On which their vehemence vast rates does lay,
Since in that worth their treason's credit lies,
These harb'rers praise that which they now betray.
32 Boast they have lodged a stag, that all the race
Outruns of Croton horse, or Rhegian hounds;
A stag made long since royal in the chase,
If kings can honour give by giving wounds.
33 For Aribert had pierced him at a bay,
Yet 'scaped he by the vigour of his head;
And many a summer since has won the day,
And often left his Rhegian followers dead.
34 His spacious beam, that even the rights outgrew,
From antler to his troch had all allowed,
By which his age the aged woodmen knew,
Who more than he were of that beauty proud.
35 Now each relay a several station finds,
Ere the triumphant train the copse surrounds;
Relays of horse, long breathed as winter winds,
And their deep cannon-mouthed experienced hounds.
36 The huntsmen, busily concerned in show,
As if the world were by this beast undone,
And they against him hired as Nature's foe,
In haste uncouple, and their hounds outrun.
37 Now wind they a recheat, the roused deer's knell,
And through the forest all the beasts are awed;
Alarmed by Echo, Nature's sentinel,
Which shows that murderous man is come abroad.
38 Tyrannic man! thy subjects' enemy!
And more through wantonness than need or hate,
From whom the winged to their coverts fly,
And to their dens even those that lay in wait.
39 So this, the most successful of his kind,
Whose forehead's force oft his opposers pressed,
Whose swiftness left pursuers' shafts behind,
Is now of all the forest most distressed!
40 The herd deny him shelter, as if taught
To know their safety is to yield him lost;
Which shows they want not the results of thought,
But speech, by which we ours for reason boast.
41 We blush to see our politics in beasts,
Who many saved by this one sacrifice;
And since through blood they follow interests,
Like us when cruel should be counted wise.
42 His rivals, that his fury used to fear
For his loved female, now his faintness shun;
But were his season hot, and she but near,
(O mighty love!) his hunters were undone.
43 From thence, well blown, he comes to the relay,
Where man's famed reason proves but cowardice,
And only serves him meanly to betray;
Even for the flying, man in ambush lies.
44 But now, as his last remedy to live,
(For every shift for life kind Nature makes,
Since life the utmost is which she can give,)
Cool Adice from the swoln bank he takes.
45 But this fresh bath the dogs will make him leave,
Whom he sure-nosed as fasting tigers found;
Their scent no north-east wind could e'er deceive
Which drives the air, nor flocks that soil the ground.
46 Swift here the fliers and pursuers seem;
The frighted fish swim from their Adice,
The dogs pursue the deer, he the fleet stream,
And that hastes too to the Adriatic sea.
47 Refreshed thus in this fleeting element,
He up the steadfast shore did boldly rise;
And soon escaped their view, but not their scent,
That faithful guide, which even conducts their eyes.
48 This frail relief was like short gales of breath,
Which oft at sea a long dead calm prepare;
Or like our curtains drawn at point of death,
When all our lungs are spent, to give us air.
49 For on the shore the hunters him attend:
And whilst the chase grew warm as is the day,
(Which now from the hot zenith does descend,)
He is embossed, and wearied to a bay.
50 The jewel, life, he must surrender here,
Which the world's mistress, Nature, does not give,
But like dropped favours suffers us to wear,
Such as by which pleased lovers think they live.
51 Yet life he so esteems, that he allows
It all defence his force and rage can make;
And to the eager dogs such fury shows,
As their last blood some unrevenged forsake.
52 But now the monarch murderer comes in,
Destructive man! whom Nature would not arm,
As when in madness mischief is foreseen,
We leave it weaponless for fear of harm.
53 For she defenceless made him, that he might
Less readily offend; but art arms all,
From single strife makes us in numbers fight;
And by such art this royal stag did fall.
54 He weeps till grief does even his murderers pierce;
Grief which so nobly through his anger strove,
That it deserved the dignity of verse,
And had it words, as humanly would move.
55 Thrice from the ground his vanquished head he reared,
And with last looks his forest walks did view;
Where sixty summers he had ruled the herd,
And where sharp dittany now vainly grew:
56 Whose hoary leaves no more his wounds shall heal;
For with a sigh (a blast of all his breath)
That viewless thing, called life, did from him steal,
And with their bugle-horns they wind his death.
57 Then with their annual wanton sacrifice,
Taught by old custom, whose decrees are vain,
And we, like humorous antiquaries, that prize
Age, though deformed, they hasten to the plain.
58 Thence homeward bend as westward as the sun,
Where Gondibert's allies proud feasts prepare,
That day to honour which his grandsire won;
Though feasts the eyes to funerals often are.
59 One from the forest now approached their sight,
Who them did swiftly on the spur pursue;
One there still resident as day and night,
And known as the eldest oak which in it grew:
60 Who, with his utmost breath advancing, cries,
(And such a vehemence no heart could feign,)
'Away! happy the man that fastest flies!
Fly, famous Duke! fly with thy noble train!'
61 The Duke replied: 'Though with thy fears disguised,
Thou dost my sire's old ranger's image bear,
And for thy kindness shalt not be despised;
Though counsels are but weak which come from fear.
62 'Were dangers here, great as thy love can shape,
And love with fear can danger multiply,
Yet when by flight thou bidst us meanly 'scape,
Bid trees take wings, and rooted forests fly.'
63 Then said the ranger: 'You are bravely lost!'
(And like high anger his complexion rose.)
'As little know I fear as how to boast;
But shall attend you through your many foes.
64 'See where in ambush mighty Oswald lay!
And see, from yonder lawn he moves apace,
With lances armed to intercept thy way,
Now thy sure steeds are wearied with the chase.
65 'His purple banners you may there behold,
Which, proudly spread, the fatal raven bear;
And full five hundred I by rank have told,
Who in their gilded helms his colours wear.'
66 The Duke this falling storm does now discern;
Bids little Hugo fly! but 'tis to view
The foe, and timely their first count'nance learn,
Whilst firm he in a square his hunters drew.
67 And Hugo soon, light as his courser's heels,
Was in their faces troublesome as wind;
And like to it so wingedly he wheels,
No one could catch, what all with trouble find.
68 But everywhere the leaders and the led
He temperately observed with a slow sight;
Judged by their looks how hopes and fears were fed,
And by their order their success in fight.
69 Their number, 'mounting to the ranger's guess,
In three divisions evenly was disposed;
And that their enemies might judge it less,
It seemed one gross with all the spaces closed.
70 The van fierce Oswald led, where Paradine
And manly Dargonet, both of his blood,
Outshined the noon, and their minds' stock within
Promised to make that outward glory good.
71 The next, bold, but unlucky Hubert led,
Brother to Oswald, and no less allied
To the ambitions which his soul did wed;
Lowly without, but lined with costly pride.
72 Most to himself his valour fatal was,
Whose glories oft to others dreadful were;
So comets, though supposed destruction's cause,
But waste themselves to make their gazers fear.
73 And though his valour seldom did succeed,
His speech was such as could in storms persuade;
Sweet as the hopes on which starved lovers feed,
Breathed in the whispers of a yielding maid.
74 The bloody Borgio did conduct the rear,
Whom sullen Vasco heedfully attends;
To all but to themselves they cruel were,
And to themselves chiefly by mischief friends.
75 War, the world's art, nature to them became;
In camps begot, born, and in anger bred;
The living vexed till death, and then their fame,
Because even fame some life is to the dead.
76 Cities, wise statesmen's folds for civil sheep,
They sacked, as painful shearers of the wise;
For they like careful wolves would lose their sleep,
When others' prosperous toils might be their prize.
77 Hugo amongst these troops spied many more,
Who had, as brave destroyers, got renown;
And many forward wounds in boast they wore,
Which, if not well revenged, had ne'er been shown.
78 Such the bold leaders of these lancers were,
Which of the Brescian veterans did consist;
Whose practised age might charge of armies bear,
And claim some rank in Fame's eternal list.
79 Back to his Duke the dexterous Hugo flies,
What he observed he cheerfully declares;
With noble pride did what he liked despise;
For wounds he threatened whilst he praised their scars.
80 Lord Arnold cried, 'Vain is the bugle-horn,
Where trumpets men to manly work invite!
That distant summons seems to say, in scorn,
We hunters may be hunted hard ere night.'
81 'Those beasts are hunted hard that hard can fly,'
Replied aloud the noble Hurgonil;
'But we, not used to flight, know best to die;
And those who know to die, know how to kill.
82 'Victors through number never gained applause;
If they exceed our count in arms and men,
It is not just to think that odds, because
One lover equals any other ten.'
FROM 'GONDIBERT'--CANTO IV.
1 The King, who never time nor power misspent
In subject's bashfulness, whiling great deeds
Like coward councils, who too late consent,
Thus to his secret will aloud proceeds:
2 'If to thy fame, brave youth, I could add wings,
Or make her trumpet louder by my voice,
I would, as an example drawn for kings,
Proclaim the cause why thou art now my choice.
* * * * *
3 'For she is yours, as your adoption free;
And in that gift my remnant life I give;
But 'tis to you, brave youth! who now are she;
And she that heaven where secondly I live.
4 'And richer than that crown, which shall be thine
When life's long progress I have gone with fame,
Take all her love; which scarce forbears to shine,
And own thee, through her virgin curtain, shame.'
5 Thus spake the king; and Rhodalind appeared
Through published love, with so much bashfulness,
As young kings show, when by surprise o'erheard,
Moaning to favourite ears a deep distress.
6 For love is a distress, and would be hid
Like monarchs' griefs, by which they bashful grow;
And in that shame beholders they forbid;
Since those blush most, who most their blushes show.
7 And Gondibert, with dying eyes, did grieve
At her vailed love, a wound he cannot heal,
As great minds mourn, who cannot then relieve
The virtuous, when through shame they want conceal.
8 And now cold Birtha's rosy looks decay;
Who in fear's frost had like her beauty died,
But that attendant hope persuades her stay
A while, to hear her Duke; who thus replied:
9 'Victorious King! abroad your subjects are,
Like legates, safe; at home like altars free!
Even by your fame they conquer, as by war;
And by your laws safe from each other be.
10 'A king you are o'er subjects so, as wise
And noble husbands seem o'er loyal wives;
Who claim not, yet confess their liberties,
And brag to strangers of their happy lives.
11 'To foes a winter storm; whilst your friends bow,
Like summer trees, beneath your bounty's load;
To me, next him whom your great self, with low
And cheerful duty, serves, a giving God.
12 'Since this is you, and Rhodalind, the light
By which her sex fled virtue find, is yours,
Your diamond, which tests of jealous sight,
The stroke, and fire, and Oisel's juice endures;
13 'Since she so precious is, I shall appear
All counterfeit, of art's disguises made;
And never dare approach her lustre near,
Who scarce can hold my value in the shade.
14 'Forgive me that I am not what I seem;
But falsely have dissembled an excess
Of all such virtues as you most esteem;
But now grow good but as I ills confess.
15 'Far in ambition's fever am I gone!
Like raging flame aspiring is my love;
Like flame destructive too, and, like the sun,
Does round the world tow'rds change of objects move.
16 'Nor is this now through virtuous shame confessed;
But Rhodalind does force my conjured fear,
As men whom evil spirits have possessed,
Tell all when saintly votaries appear.
17 'When she will grace the bridal dignity,
It will be soon to all young monarchs known;
Who then by posting through the world will try
Who first can at her feet present his crown.
18 'Then will Verona seem the inn of kings,
And Rhodalind shall at her palace gate
Smile, when great love these royal suitors brings;
Who for that smile would as for empire wait.
19 'Amongst this ruling race she choice may take
For warmth of valour, coolness of the mind,
Eyes that in empire's drowsy calms can wake,
In storms look out, in darkness dangers find;
20 'A prince who more enlarges power than lands,
Whose greatness is not what his map contains;
But thinks that his where he at full commands,
Not where his coin does pass, but power remains.
21 'Who knows that power can never be too high;
When by the good possessed, for 'tis in them
The swelling Nile, from which though people fly,
They prosper most by rising of the stream.
22 'Thus, princes, you should choose; and you will find,
Even he, since men are wolves, must civilise,
As light does tame some beasts of savage kind,
Himself yet more, by dwelling in your eyes.'
23 Such was the Duke's reply; which did produce
Thoughts of a diverse shape through several ears:
His jealous rivals mourn at his excuse;
But Astragon it cures of all his fears,
24 Birtha his praise of Rhodalind bewails;
And now her hope a weak physician seems;
For hope, the common comforter, prevails
Like common medicines, slowly in extremes.
25 The King (secure in offered empire) takes
This forced excuse as troubled bashfulness,
And a disguise which sudden passion makes,
To hide more joy than prudence should express.
26 And Rhodalind, who never loved before,
Nor could suspect his love was given away,
Thought not the treasure of his breast so poor,
But that it might his debts of honour pay.
27 To hasten the rewards of his desert,
The King does to Verona him command;
And, kindness so imposed, not all his art
Can now instruct his duty to withstand.
28 Yet whilst the King does now his time dispose
In seeing wonders, in this palace shown,
He would a parting kindness pay to those
Who of their wounds are yet not perfect grown.
29 And by this fair pretence, whilst on the King
Lord Astragon through all the house attends,
Young Orgo does the Duke to Birtha bring,
Who thus her sorrows to his bosom sends:
30 'Why should my storm your life's calm voyage vex?
Destroying wholly virtue's race in one:
So by the first of my unlucky sex,
All in a single ruin were undone.
31 'Make heavenly Rhodalind your bride! whilst I,
Your once loved maid, excuse you, since I know
That virtuous men forsake so willingly
Long-cherished life, because to heaven they go.
32 'Let me her servant be: a dignity,
Which if your pity in my fall procures,
I still shall value the advancement high,
Not as the crown is hers, but she is yours.'
33 Ere this high sorrow up to dying grew,
The Duke the casket opened, and from thence,
Formed like a heart, a cheerful emerald drew;
Cheerful, as if the lively stone had sense.
34 The thirtieth caract it had doubled twice;
Not taken from the Attic silver mine,
Nor from the brass, though such, of nobler price,
Did on the necks of Parthian ladies shine:
35 Nor yet of those which make the Ethiop proud;
Nor taken from those rocks where Bactrians climb:
But from the Scythian, and without a cloud;
Not sick at fire, nor languishing with time.
36 Then thus he spake: 'This, Birtha, from my male
Progenitors, was to the loyal she
On whose kind heart they did in love prevail,
The nuptial pledge, and this I give to thee:
37 'Seven centuries have passed, since it from bride
To bride did first succeed; and though 'tis known
From ancient lore, that gems much virtue hide,
And that the emerald is the bridal stone:
38 'Though much renowned because it chastens loves,
And will, when worn by the neglected wife,
Show when her absent lord disloyal proves,
By faintness, and a pale decay of life.
39 'Though emeralds serve as spies to jealous brides,
Yet each compared to this does counsel keep;
Like a false stone, the husband's falsehood hides,
Or seems born blind, or feigns a dying sleep.
40 'With this take Orgo, as a better spy,
Who may in all your kinder fears be sent
To watch at court, if I deserve to die
By making this to fade, and you lament.'
41 Had now an artful pencil Birtha drawn,
With grief all dark, then straight with joy all light,
He must have fancied first, in early dawn,
A sudden break of beauty out of night.
42 Or first he must have marked what paleness fear,
Like nipping frost, did to her visage bring;
Then think he sees, in a cold backward year,
A rosy morn begin a sudden spring.
43 Her joys, too vast to be contained in speech,
Thus she a little spake: 'Why stoop you down,
My plighted lord, to lowly Birtha's reach,
Since Rhodalind would lift you to a crown?
44 'Or why do I, when I this plight embrace,
Boldly aspire to take what you have given?
But that your virtue has with angels place,
And 'tis a virtue to aspire to heaven.
45 'And as towards heaven all travel on their knees,
So I towards you, though love aspire, will move:
And were you crowned, what could you better please
Then awed obedience led by bolder love?
46 'If I forget the depth from whence I rise,
Far from your bosom banished be my heart;
Or claim a right by beauty to your eyes;
Or proudly think my chastity desert.
47 'But thus ascending from your humble maid
To be your plighted bride, and then your wife,
Will be a debt that shall be hourly paid,
Till time my duty cancel with my life.
48 'And fruitfully, if heaven e'er make me bring
Your image to the world, you then my pride
No more shall blame than you can tax the spring
For boasting of those flowers she cannot hide.
49 'Orgo I so receive as I am taught
By duty to esteem whate'er you love;
And hope the joy he in this jewel brought
Will luckier than his former triumphs prove.
50 'For though but twice he has approached my sight,
He twice made haste to drown me in my tears:
But now I am above his planet's spite,
And as for sin beg pardon for my fears.'
51 Thus spake she: and with fixed, continued sight
The Duke did all her bashful beauties view;
Then they with kisses sealed their sacred plight,
Like flowers, still sweeter as they thicker grew.
52 Yet must these pleasures feel, though innocent,
The sickness of extremes, and cannot last;
For power, love's shunned impediment, has sent
To tell the Duke his monarch is in haste:
53 And calls him to that triumph which he fears
So as a saint forgiven, whose breast does all
Heaven's joys contain, wisely loved pomp forbears,
Lest tempted nature should from blessings fall.
54 He often takes his leave, with love's delay,
And bids her hope he with the King shall find,
By now appearing forward to obey,
A means to serve him less in Rhodalind.
55 She weeping to her closet window hies,
Where she with tears doth Rhodalind survey;
As dying men, who grieve that they have eyes,
When they through curtains spy the rising day.
DR HENRY KING.
Of this poetical divine we know nothing, except that he was born in
1591, and died in 1669,--that he was chaplain to James I., and Bishop of
Chichester,--and that he indited some poetry as pious in design as it is
pretty in execution.
SIC VITA.
Like to the falling of a star,
Or as the flights of eagles are;
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue,
Or silver drops of morning dew;
Or like a wind that chafes the flood,
Or bubbles which on water stood:
Even such is man, whose borrowed light
Is straight called in, and paid to-night.
The wind blows out, the bubble dies;
The spring entombed in autumn lies;
The dew dries up, the star is shot:
The flight is past--and man forgot.
SONG.
1 Dry those fair, those crystal eyes,
Which like growing fountains rise
To drown their banks! Grief's sullen brooks
Would better flow in furrowed looks:
Thy lovely face was never meant
To be the shore of discontent.
2 Then clear those waterish stars again,
Which else portend a lasting rain;
Lest the clouds which settle there
Prolong my winter all the year,
And thy example others make
In love with sorrow, for thy sake.
LIFE.
1 What is the existence of man's life
But open war or slumbered strife?
Where sickness to his sense presents
The combat of the elements,
And never feels a perfect peace
Till death's cold hand signs his release.
2 It is a storm--where the hot blood
Outvies in rage the boiling flood:
And each loud passion of the mind
Is like a furious gust of wind,
Which beats the bark with many a wave,
Till he casts anchor in the grave.
3 It is a flower--which buds, and grows,
And withers as the leaves disclose;
Whose spring and fall faint seasons keep,
Like fits of waking before sleep,
Then shrinks into that fatal mould
Where its first being was enrolled.
4 It is a dream--whose seeming truth
Is moralised in age and youth;
Where all the comforts he can share
As wandering as his fancies are,
Till in a mist of dark decay
The dreamer vanish quite away.
5 It is a dial--which points out
The sunset as it moves about;
And shadows out in lines of night
The subtle stages of Time's flight,
Till all-obscuring earth hath laid
His body in perpetual shade.
6 It is a weary interlude--
Which doth short joys, long woes, include:
The world the stage, the prologue tears;
The acts vain hopes and varied fears;
The scene shuts up with loss of breath,
And leaves no epilogue but Death!
JOHN CHALKHILL.
This author was of the age of Spenser, and is said to have been an
acquaintance and friend of that poet. It was not, however, till 1683
that good old Izaak Walton published 'Thealma and Clearchus,' a pas-
toral romance, which, he stated, had been written long since by John
Chalkhill, Esq. He says of the author, 'that he was in his time a man
generally known, and as well beloved; for he was humble and obliging
in his behaviour--a gentleman, a scholar, very innocent and prudent,
and indeed his whole life was useful, quiet, and virtuous.' Some have
suspected that this production proceeded from the pen of Walton himself.
This, however, is rendered extremely unlikely--first, by the fact that
Walton, when he printed 'Thealma,' was ninety years of age; and,
secondly, by the difference in style and purpose between that poem and
Walton's avowed productions. The mind of Walton was quietly ingenious;
that of the author of 'Thealma' is adventurous and fantastic. Walton
loved 'the green pastures and the still waters' of the Present; the
other, the golden groves and ideal wildernesses of the Golden Age in
the Past.
'Thealma and Clearchus' may be called an 'Arcadia' in rhyme. It
resembles that work of Sir Philip Sidney, not only in subject, but in
execution. Its plot is dark and puzzling, its descriptions are rich to
luxuriance, its narrative is tedious, and its characters are mere
shadows. But although a dream, it is a dream of genius, and brings
beautifully before our imagination that early period in the world's
history, in which poets and painters have taught us to believe, when the
heavens were nearer, the skies clearer, the fat of the earth richer, the
foam of the sea brighter, than in our degenerate days;--when shepherds,
reposing under broad, umbrageous oaks, saw, or thought they saw, in the
groves the shadow of angels, and on the mountain-summits the descending
footsteps of God. Chalkhill resembles, of all our modern poets, perhaps
Shelley most, in the ideality of his conception, the enthusiasm of his
spirit, and the unmitigated gorgeousness of his imagination.
ARCADIA.
Arcadia, was of old, a state,
Subject to none but their own laws and fate;
Superior there was none, but what old age
And hoary hairs had raised; the wise and sage,
Whose gravity, when they are rich in years,
Begat a civil reverence more than fears
In the well-mannered people; at that day,
All was in common, every man bare sway
O'er his own family; the jars that rose
Were soon appeased by such grave men as those:
This mine and thine, that we so cavil for,
Was then not heard of; he that was most poor
Was rich in his content, and lived as free
As they whose flocks were greatest; nor did he
Envy his great abundance, nor the other
Disdain the low condition of his brother,
But lent him from his store to mend his state,
And with his love he quits him, thanks his fate;
And, taught by his example, seeks out such
As want his help, that they may do as much.
Their laws, e'en from their childhood, rich and poor
Had written in their hearts, by conning o'er
The legacies of good old men, whose memories
Outlive their monuments, the grave advice
They left behind in writing;--this was that
That made Arcadia then so blest a state;
Their wholesome laws had linked them so in one,
They lived in peace and sweet communion.
Peace brought forth plenty, plenty bred content,
And that crowned all their plans with merriment.
They had no foe, secure they lived in tents,
All was their own they had, they paid no rents;
Their sheep found clothing, earth provided food,
And labour dressed them as their wills thought good;
On unbought delicates their hunger fed,
And for their drink the swelling clusters bled;
The valleys rang with their delicious strains,
And pleasure revelled on those happy plains;
Content and labour gave them length of days,
And peace served in delight a thousand ways.
THEALMA, A DESERTED SHEPHERDESS.
Scarce had the ploughman yoked his horned team,
And locked their traces to the crooked beam,
When fair Thealma, with a maiden scorn,
That day before her rise, outblushed the morn;
Scarce had the sun gilded the mountain-tops,
When forth she leads her tender ewes.
* * * * *
Down in a valley, 'twixt two rising hills,
From whence the dew in silver drops distils
To enrich the lowly plain, a river ran,
Hight Cygnus, (as some think, from Leda's swan
That there frequented;) gently on it glides,
And makes indentures in her crooked sides,
And with her silent murmurs rocks asleep
Her watery inmates; 'twas not very deep,
But clear as that Narcissus looked in, when
His self-love made him cease to live with men.
Close by the river was a thick-leafed grove,
Where swains of old sang stories of their love,
But unfrequented now since Colin died--
Colin, that king of shepherds, and the pride
Of all Arcadia;--here Thealma used
To feed her milky droves; and as they browsed,
Under the friendly shadow of a beech
She sat her down; grief had tongue-tied her speech,
Her words were sighs and tears--dumb eloquence--
Heard only by the sobs, and not the sense.
With folded arms she sat, as if she meant
To hug those woes which in her breast were pent;
Her looks were nailed to earth, that drank
Her tears with greediness, and seemed to thank
Her for those briny showers, and in lieu
Returns her flowery sweetness for her dew.
* * * * *
'O my Clearchus!' said she, and with tears
Embalms his name: 'oh, if the ghosts have ears,
Or souls departed condescend so low,
To sympathise with mortals in their woe,
Vouchsafe to lend a gentle ear to me,
Whose life is worse than death, since not with thee.
What privilege have they that are born great
Move than the meanest swain? The proud waves beat
With more impetuousness upon high lands,
Than on the flat and less-resisting strands:
The lofty cedar, and the knotty oak,
Are subject more unto the thunder-stroke,
Than the low shrubs that no such shocks endure;
Even their contempt doth make them live secure.
Had I been born the child of some poor swain,
Whose thoughts aspire no higher than the plain,
I had been happy then; t'have kept these sheep,
Had been a princely pleasure; quiet sleep
Had drowned my cares, or sweetened them with dreams:
Love and content had been my music's themes;
Or had Clearchus lived the life I lead,
I had been blest!'
PRIESTESS OF DIANA.
Within a little silent grove hard by,
Upon a small ascent, he might espy
A stately chapel, richly gilt without,
Beset with shady sycamores about:
And ever and anon he might well hear
A sound of music steal in at his ear
As the wind gave it being; so sweet an air
Would strike a syren mute.--
* * * * *
A hundred virgins there he might espy
Prostrate before a marble deity,
Which, by its portraiture, appeared to be
The image of Diana; on their knee
They tendered their devotions, with sweet airs,
Offering the incense of their praise and prayers.
Their garments all alike; beneath their paps
Buckled together with a silver claps,
And 'cross their snowy silken robes, they wore
An azure scarf, with stars embroidered o'er.
Their hair in curious tresses was knit up,
Crowned with a silver crescent on the top.
A silver bow their left hand held, their right,
For their defence, held a sharp-headed flight
Drawn from their broidered quiver, neatly tied
In silken cords, and fastened to their side.
Under their vestments, something short before,
White buskins, laced with ribanding, they wore.
It was a catching sight for a young eye,
That love had fired before. He might espy
One, whom the rest had sphere-like circled round,
Whose head was with a golden chaplet crowned.
He could not see her face, only his ear
Was blessed with the sweet sounds that came from her.
THEALMA IN FULL DRESS.
----Tricked herself in all her best attire,
As if she meant this day to invite desire
To fall in love with her; her loose hair
Hung on her shoulders, sporting with the air;
Her brow a coronet of rosebuds crowned,
With loving woodbines' sweet embraces bound.
Two globe-like pearls were pendant to her ears,
And on her breast a costly gem she wears,
An adamant, in fashion like a heart,
Whereon Love sat, a-plucking out a dart,
With this same motto graven round about,
On a gold border, 'Sooner in than out.'
This gem Clearchus gave her, when, unknown,
At tilt his valour won her for his own.
Instead of bracelets on her wrists, she wore
A pair of golden shackles, chained before
Unto a silver ring, enamelled blue,
Whereon in golden letters to the view
This motto was presented, 'Bound, yet free,'
And in a true-love's knot, a T and C
Buckled it fast together; her silk gown
Of grassy green, in equal plaits hung down
Unto the earth; and as she went, the flowers,
Which she had broidered on it at spare hours,
Were wrought so to the life, they seemed to grow
In a green field; and as the wind did blow,
Sometimes a lily, then a rose, takes place,
And blushing seems to hide it in the grass:
And here and there good oats 'mong pearls she strew,
That seemed like spinning glow-worms in the dew.
Her sleeves were tinsel, wrought with leaves of green
In equal distance spangeled between,
And shadowed over with a thin lawn cloud,
Through which her workmanship more graceful showed.
DWELLING OF THE WITCH ORANDRA.
Down in a gloomy valley, thick with shade,
Which two aspiring hanging rocks had made,
That shut out day, and barred the glorious sun
From prying into the actions there done;
Set full of box and cypress, poplar, yew,
And hateful elder that in thickets grew,
Among whose boughs the screech-owl and night-crow
Sadly recount their prophecies of woe,
Where leather-winged bats, that hate the light,
Fan the thick air, more sooty than the night.
The ground o'ergrown with weeds and bushy shrubs,
Where milky hedgehogs nurse their prickly cubs:
And here and there a mandrake grows, that strikes
The hearers dead with their loud fatal shrieks;
Under whose spreading leaves the ugly toad,
The adder, and the snake, make their abode.
Here dwelt Orandra; so the witch was hight,
And hither had she toiled him by a sleight:
She knew Anaxus was to go to court,
And, envying virtue, she made it her sport
To hinder him, sending her airy spies
Forth with delusion to entrap his eyes,
As would have fired a hermit's chill desires
Into a flame; his greedy eye admires
The more than human beauty of her face,
And much ado he had to shun the grace;
Conceit had shaped her out so like his love,
That he was once about in vain to prove
Whether 'twas his Clarinda, yea or no,
But he bethought him of his herb, and so
The shadow vanished; many a weary step
It led the prince, that pace with it still kept,
Until it brought him by a hellish power
Unto the entrance of Orandra's bower,
Where underneath an elder-tree he spied
His man Pandevius, pale and hollow-eyed;
Inquiring of the cunning witch what fate
Betid his master; they were newly sate
When his approach disturbed them; up she rose,
And toward Anaxus (envious hag) she goes;
Pandevius she had charmed into a maze,
And struck him mute, all he could do was gaze.
He called him by his name, but all in vain,
Echo returns 'Pandevius' back again;
Which made him wonder, when a sudden fear
Shook all his joints: she, cunning hag, drew near,
And smelling to his herb, he recollects
His wandering spirits, and with anger checks
His coward fears; resolved now to outdare
The worst of dangers, whatsoe'er they were;
He eyed her o'er and o'er, and still his eye
Found some addition to deformity.
An old decrepit hag she was, grown white
With frosty age, and withered with despite
And self-consuming hate; in furs yclad,
And on her head a thrummy cap she had.
Her knotty locks, like to Alecto's snakes,
Hang down about her shoulders, which she shakes
Into disorder; on her furrowed brow
One might perceive Time had been long at plough.
Her eyes, like candle-snuffs, by age sunk quite
Into their sockets, yet like cats' eyes bright:
And in the darkest night like fire they shined,
The ever-open windows of her mind.
Her swarthy cheeks, Time, that all things consumes,
Had hollowed flat into her toothless gums.
Her hairy brows did meet above her nose,
That like an eagle's beak so crooked grows,
It well-nigh kissed her chin; thick bristled hair
Grew on her upper lip, and here and there
A rugged wart with grisly hairs behung;
Her breasts shrunk up, her nails and fingers long;
Her left leant on a staff, in her right hand
She always carried her enchanting wand.
Splay-footed, beyond nature, every part
So patternless deformed, 'twould puzzle art
To make her counterfeit; only her tongue,
Nature had that most exquisitely strung,
Her oily language came so smoothly from her,
And her quaint action did so well become her,
Her winning rhetoric met with no trips,
But chained the dull'st attention to her lips.
With greediness he heard, and though he strove
To shake her off, the more her words did move.
She wooed him to her cell, called him her son,
And with fair promises she quickly won
Him to her beck; or rather he, to try
What she could do, did willingly comply,
With her request. * * *
Her cell was hewn out of the marble rock
By more than human art; she did not knock,
The door stood always open, large and wide,
Grown o'er with woolly moss on either side,
And interwove with ivy's nattering twines,
Through which the carbuncle and diamond shines.
Not set by Art, but there by Nature sown
At the world's birth, so star-like bright they shone.
They served instead of tapers to give light
To the dark entry, where perpetual Night,
Friend to black deeds, and sire of Ignorance,
Shuts out all knowledge, lest her eye by chance
Might bring to light her follies: in they went,
The ground was strewed with flowers, whose sweet scent,
Mixed with the choice perfumes from India brought,
Intoxicates his brain, and quickly caught
His credulous sense; the walls were gilt, and set
With precious stones, and all the roof was fret
With a gold vine, whose straggling branches spread
All o'er the arch; the swelling grapes were red;
This Art had made of rubies, clustered so,
To the quick'st eye they more than seemed to grow;
About the wall lascivious pictures hung,
Such as were of loose Ovid sometimes sung.
On either side a crew of dwarfish elves
Held waxen tapers, taller than themselves:
Yet so well shaped unto their little stature,
So angel-like in face, so sweet in feature;
Their rich attire so differing; yet so well
Becoming her that wore it, none could tell
Which was the fairest, which the handsomest decked,
Or which of them desire would soon'st affect.
After a low salute they all 'gan sing,
And circle in the stranger in a ring.
Orandra to her charms was stepped aside,
Leaving her guest half won and wanton-eyed.
He had forgot his herb: cunning delight
Had so bewitched his ears, and bleared his sight,
And captivated all his senses so,
That he was not himself; nor did he know
What place he was in, or how he came there,
But greedily he feeds his eye and ear
With what would ruin him;--
* * * * *
Next unto his view
She represents a banquet, ushered in
By such a shape as she was sure would win
His appetite to taste; so like she was
To his Clarinda, both in shape and face;
So voiced, so habited, of the same gait
And comely gesture; on her brow in state
Sat such a princely majesty, as he
Had noted in Clarinda; save that she
Had a more wanton eye, that here and there
Rolled up and down, not settling any where.
Down on the ground she falls his hand to kiss,
And with her tears bedews it; cold as ice
He felt her lips, that yet inflamed him so,
That he was all on fire the truth to know,
Whether she was the same she did appear,
Or whether some fantastic form it were,
Fashioned in his imagination
By his still working thoughts, so fixed upon
His loved Clarinda, that his fancy strove,
Even with her shadow, to express his love.
CATHARINE PHILLIPS.
Very little is known of the life of this lady-poet. She was born in
1631. Her maiden name was Fowler. She married James Phillips, Esq., of
the Priory of Cardigan. Her poems, published under the name of "Orinda,"
were very popular in her lifetime, although it was said they were
published without her consent. She translated two of the tragedies of
Corneille, and left a volume of letters to Sir Charles Cotterell. These,
however, did not appear till after her death. She died of small-pox
--then a deadly disease--in 1664. She seems to have been a favourite
alike with the wits and the divines of her age. Jeremy Taylor addressed
to her his "Measures and Offices of Friendship;" Dryden praised her; and
Flatman and Cowley, besides imitating her poems while she was living,
paid rhymed tributes to her memory when dead. Her verses are never
commonplace, and always sensible, if they hardly attain to the measure
and the stature of lofty poetry,
THE INQUIRY.
1 If we no old historian's name
Authentic will admit,
But think all said of friendship's fame
But poetry or wit;
Yet what's revered by minds so pure
Must be a bright idea sure.
2 But as our immortality
By inward sense we find,
Judging that if it could not be,
It would not be designed:
So here how could such copies fall,
If there were no original?
3 But if truth be in ancient song,
Or story we believe;
If the inspired and greater throng
Have scorned to deceive;
There have been hearts whose friendship gave
Them thoughts at once both soft and grave.
4 Among that consecrated crew
Some more seraphic shade
Lend me a favourable clew,
Now mists my eyes invade.
Why, having filled the world with fame,
Left you so little of your flame?
5 Why is't so difficult to see
Two bodies and one mind?
And why are those who else agree
So difficultly kind?
Hath Nature such fantastic art,
That she can vary every heart?
6 Why are the bands of friendship tied
With so remiss a knot,
That by the most it is defied,
And by the most forgot?
Why do we step with so light sense
From friendship to indifference?
7 If friendship sympathy impart,
Why this ill-shuffled game,
That heart can never meet with heart,
Or flame encounter flame?
What does this cruelty create?
Is't the intrigue of love or fate?
8 Had friendship ne'er been known to men,
(The ghost at last confessed)
The world had then a stranger been
To all that heaven possessed.
But could it all be here acquired,
Not heaven itself would be desired.
A FRIEND.
1 Love, nature's plot, this great creation's soul,
The being and the harmony of things,
Doth still preserve and propagate the whole,
From whence man's happiness and safety springs:
The earliest, whitest, blessed'st times did draw
From her alone their universal law.
2 Friendship's an abstract of this noble flame,
'Tis love refined and purged from all its dross,
The next to angels' love, if not the same,
As strong in passion is, though not so gross:
It antedates a glad eternity,
And is an heaven in epitome.
* * * * *
3 Essential honour must be in a friend,
Not such as every breath fans to and fro;
But born within, is its own judge and end,
And dares not sin though sure that none should know.
Where friendship's spoke, honesty's understood;
For none can be a friend that is not good.
* * * * *
4 Thick waters show no images of things;
Friends are each other's mirrors, and should be
Clearer than crystal or the mountain springs,
And free from clouds, design, or flattery.
For vulgar souls no part of friendship share;
Poets and friends are born to what they are.
MARGARET, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE.
This lady, if not more of a woman than Mrs Phillips, was considerably
more of a poet. She was born (probably) about 1625. She was the daughter
of Sir Charles Lucas, and became a maid-of-honour to Henrietta Maria.
Accompanying the Queen to France, she met with the Marquis, afterwards
Duke of Newcastle, and married him at Paris in 1645. They removed to
Antwerp, and there, in 1653, this lady published a volume, entitled
'Poems and Fancies.' The pair aided each other in their studies, and the
result was a number of enormous folios of poems, plays, speeches, and
philosophical disquisitions. These volumes were, we are told, great
favourites of Coleridge and Charles Lamb, for the sake, we presume, of
the wild sparks of insight and genius which break irresistibly through
the scholastic smoke and bewildered nonsense. When Charles II. was
restored, the Marquis and his wife returned to England, and spent their
life in great harmony. She died in 1673, leaving behind her some
beautiful fantasias, where the meaning is often finer than the music,
such as the 'Pastime and Recreation of Fairies in Fairy-land.' Her
poetry, particularly her contrasted pictures of Mirth and Melancholy,
present fine accumulations of imagery drawn direct from nature, and
shewn now in brightest sunshine, and now in softest moonlight, as the
change of her subject and her tone of feeling require.
MELANCHOLY DESCRIBED BY MIRTH.
Her voice is low, and gives a hollow sound;
She hates the light, and is in darkness found;
Or sits with blinking lamps, or tapers small,
Which various shadows make against the wall.
She loves nought else but noise which discord makes,
As croaking frogs, whose dwelling is in lakes;
The raven's hoarse, the mandrake's hollow groan,
And shrieking owls which fly i' the night alone;
The tolling bell, which for the dead rings out;
A mill, where rushing waters run about;
The roaring winds, which shake the cedars tall,
Plough up the seas, and beat the rocks withal.
She loves to walk in the still moonshine night,
And in a thick dark grove she takes delight;
In hollow caves, thatched houses, and low cells,
She loves to live, and there alone she dwells.
MELANCHOLY DESCRIBING HERSELF.
I dwell in groves that gilt are with the sun;
Sit on the banks by which clear waters run;
In summers hot, down in a shade I lie;
My music is the buzzing of a fly;
I walk in meadows, where grows fresh green grass;
In fields, where corn is high, I often pass;
Walk up the hills, where round I prospects see,
Some brushy woods, and some all champaigns be;
Returning back, I in fresh pastures go,
To hear how sheep do bleat, and cows do low;
In winter cold, when nipping frosts come on,
Then I do live in a small house alone;
Although 'tis plain, yet cleanly 'tis within,
Like to a soul that's pure, and clear from sin;
And there I dwell in quiet and still peace,
Not filled with cares how riches to increase;
I wish nor seek for vain and fruitless pleasures;
No riches are, but what the mind intreasures.
Thus am I solitary, live alone,
Yet better loved, the more that I am known;
And though my face ill-favoured at first sight,
After acquaintance, it will give delight.
Refuse me not, for I shall constant be;
Maintain your credit and your dignity.
THOMAS STANLEY.
Thomas Stanley, like Thomas Brown in later days, was both a philosopher
and a poet; but his philosophical reputation at the time eclipsed his
poetical. He was the only son of Sir Thomas Stanley of Camberlow Green,
in Hertfordshire, and was born in 1620. He received his education at
Pembroke College, Oxford; and after travelling for some years abroad,
he took up his abode in the Middle Temple. Here he seems to have spent
the rest of his life in patient and multifarious studies. He made
translations of some merit from Anacreon, Bion, Moschus, and the
'Kisses' of Secundus, as well as from Marino, Boscan, Tristan, and
Gongora. He wrote a work of great pretensions as a compilation, entitled
'The History of Philosophy,' containing the lives, opinions, actions,
and discourses of philosophers of every sect, of which he published the
first volume in 1655, and completed it in a fourth in 1662. It is rather
a vast collection of the materials for a history, than a history itself.
He is a Cudworth in magnitude and learning, but not in strength and
comprehension, and is destitute of precision and clearness of style.
Stanley also wrote some poems, which discover powers that might have
been better employed in original composition than in translation.
His style, rich of itself, is enriched to repletion by conceits, and
sometimes by voluptuous sentiments and language. He adds a new flush to
the cheek of Anacreon himself; and his grapes are so heavy, that not a
staff, but a wain were required to bear them. Stanley died in 1678.
CELIA SINGING.
1 Roses in breathing forth their scent,
Or stars their borrowed ornament;
Nymphs in their watery sphere that move,
Or angels in their orbs above;
The winged chariot of the light,
Or the slow, silent wheels of night;
The shade which from the swifter sun
Doth in a swifter motion run,
Or souls that their eternal rest do keep,
Make far less noise than Celia's breath in sleep.
2 But if the angel which inspires
This subtle flame with active fires,
Should mould this breath to words, and those
Into a harmony dispose,
The music of this heavenly sphere
Would steal each soul (in) at the ear,
And into plants and stones infuse
A life that cherubim would choose,
And with new powers invert the laws of fate,
Kill those that live, and dead things animate.
SPEAKING AND KISSING.
1 The air which thy smooth voice doth break,
Into my soul like lightning flies;
My life retires while thou dost speak,
And thy soft breath its room supplies.
2 Lost in this pleasing ecstasy,
I join my trembling lips to thine,
And back receive that life from thee
Which I so gladly did resign.
3 Forbear, Platonic fools! t'inquire
What numbers do the soul compose;
No harmony can life inspire,
But that which from these accents flows.
LA BELLE CONFIDANTE.
You earthly souls that court a wanton flame
Whose pale, weak influence
Can rise no higher than the humble name
And narrow laws of sense,
Learn, by our friendship, to create
An immaterial fire,
Whose brightness angels may admire,
But cannot emulate.
Sickness may fright the roses from her cheek,
Or make the lilies fade,
But all the subtle ways that death doth seek
Cannot my love invade.
THE LOSS.
1 Yet ere I go,
Disdainful Beauty, thou shalt be
So wretched as to know
What joys thou fling'st away with me.
2 A faith so bright,
As Time or Fortune could not rust;
So firm, that lovers might
Have read thy story in my dust,
3 And crowned thy name
With laurel verdant as thy youth,
Whilst the shrill voice of Fame
Spread wide thy beauty and my truth.
4 This thou hast lost,
For all true lovers, when they find
That my just aims were crossed,
Will speak thee lighter than the wind.
5 And none will lay
Any oblation on thy shrine,
But such as would betray
Thy faith to faiths as false as thine.
6 Yet, if thou choose
On such thy freedom to bestow,
Affection may excuse,
For love from sympathy doth flow.
NOTE ON ANACREON.
Let's not rhyme the hours away;
Friends! we must no longer play:
Brisk Lyaeus--see!--invites
To more ravishing delights.
Let's give o'er this fool Apollo,
Nor his fiddle longer follow:
Fie upon his forked hill,
With his fiddlestick and quill;
And the Muses, though they're gamesome,
They are neither young nor handsome;
And their freaks in sober sadness
Are a mere poetic madness:
Pegasus is but a horse;
He that follows him is worse.
See, the rain soaks to the skin,
Make it rain as well within.
Wine, my boy; we'll sing and laugh,
All night revel, rant, and quaff;
Till the morn, stealing behind us,
At the table sleepless find us.
When our bones, alas! shall have
A cold lodging in the grave;
When swift Death shall overtake us,
We shall sleep and none can wake us.
Drink we then the juice o' the vine
Make our breasts Lyaeus' shrine;
Bacchus, our debauch beholding,
By thy image I am moulding,
Whilst my brains I do replenish
With this draught of unmixed Rhenish;
By thy full-branched ivy twine;
By this sparkling glass of wine;
By thy Thyrsus so renowned:
By the healths with which th' art crowned;
By the feasts which thou dost prize;
By thy numerous victories;
By the howls by Moenads made;
By this haut-gout carbonade;
By thy colours red and white;
By the tavern, thy delight;
By the sound thy orgies spread;
By the shine of noses red;
By thy table free for all;
By the jovial carnival;
By thy language cabalistic;
By thy cymbal, drum, and his stick;
By the tunes thy quart-pots strike up;
By thy sighs, the broken hiccup;
By thy mystic set of ranters;
By thy never-tamed panthers;
By this sweet, this fresh and free air;
By thy goat, as chaste as we are;
By thy fulsome Cretan lass;
By the old man on the ass;
By thy cousins in mixed shapes;
By the flower of fairest grapes;
By thy bisks famed far and wide;
By thy store of neats'-tongues dried;
By thy incense, Indian smoke;
By the joys thou dost provoke;
By this salt Westphalia gammon;
By these sausages that inflame one;
By thy tall majestic flagons;
By mass, tope, and thy flapdragons;
By this olive's unctuous savour;
By this orange, the wine's flavour;
By this cheese o'errun with mites;
By thy dearest favourites;
To thy frolic order call us,
Knights of the deep bowl install us;
And to show thyself divine,
Never let it want for wine.
ANDREW MARVELL.
This noble-minded patriot and poet, the friend of Milton, the Abdiel of a
dark and corrupt age,--'faithful found among the faithless, faithful only
he,'--was born in Hull in 1620. He was sent to Cambridge, and is said
there to have nearly fallen a victim to the proselytising Jesuits, who
enticed him to London. His father, however, a clergyman in Hull, went
in search of and brought him back to his university, where speedily, by
extensive culture and the vigorous exercise of his powerful faculties,
he emancipated himself for ever from the dominion, and the danger of the
dominion, of superstition and bigotry. We know little more about the early
days of our poet. When only twenty, he lost his father in remarkable
circumstances. In 1640, he had embarked on the Humber in company with a
youthful pair whom he was to marry at Barrow, in Lincolnshire. The weather
was calm; but Marvell, seized with a sudden presentiment of danger, threw
his staff ashore, and cried out, 'Ho for heaven!' A storm came on, and the
whole company perished. In consequence of this sad event, the gentleman,
whose daughter was to have been married, conceiving that the father had
sacrificed his life while performing an act of friendship, adopted young
Marvell as his son. Owing to this, he received a better education, and
was sent abroad to travel. It is said that at Rome he met and formed a
friendship with Milton, then engaged on his immortal continental tour.
We find Marvell next at Constantinople, as Secretary to the English
Embassy at that Court. We then lose sight of him till 1653, when he was
engaged by the Protector to superintend the education of a Mr Dutton at
Eton. For a year and a half after Cromwell's death, Marvell assisted
Milton as Latin Secretary to the Protector. Our readers are all familiar
with the print of Cromwell and Milton seated together at the council-table,
--the one the express image of active power and rugged grandeur, the other
of thoughtful majesty and ethereal grace. Marvell might have been added as
a third, and become the emblem of strong English sense and incorruptible
integrity. A letter of Milton's was, not long since, discovered, dated
February 1652, in which he speaks of Marvell as fitted, by his knowledge
of Latin and his experience of teaching, to be his assistant. He was not
appointed, however, till 1657. In 1660, he became member for Hull, and was
re-elected as long as he lived. He was absent, however, from England for
two years, in the beginning of the reign, in Germany and Holland. After-
wards he sought leave from his constituents to act as Ambassador's
Secretary to Lord Carlisle at the Northern Courts; but from the year 1665
to his death, his attention to his parliamentary duties was unremitting.
He constantly corresponded with his constituents; and after the longest
sittings, he used to write out for their use a minute account of public
proceedings ere he went to bed, or took any refreshment. He was one of
the last members who received pay from the town he represented; (2s.
a-day was probably the sum;) and his constituents were wont, besides, to
send him barrels of ale as tokens of their regard. Marvell spoke little
in the House; but his heart and vote were always in the right place. Even
Prince Eupert continually consulted him, and was sometimes persuaded by
him to support the popular side; and King Charles having met him once in
private, was so delighted with his wit and agreeable manners, that he
thought him worth trying to bribe. He sent Lord Danby to offer him a mark
of his Majesty's consideration. Marvell, who was seated in a dingy room
up several flights of stairs, declined the proffer, and, it is said,
called his servant to witness that he had dined for three successive days
on the same shoulder of mutton, and was not likely, therefore, to care
for or need a bribe. When the Treasurer was gone, he had to send to a
friend to borrow a guinea. Although, a silent senator, Marvell was a
copious and popular writer. He attacked Bishop Parker for his slavish
principles, in a piece entitled 'The Rehearsal Transposed,' in which he
takes occasion to vindicate and panegyrise his old colleague Milton. His
anonymous 'Account of the Growth of Arbitrary Power and Popery in England'
excited a sensation, and a reward was offered for the apprehension of the
author and printer. Marvell had many of the elements of a first-rate
political pamphleteer. He had wit of a most pungent kind, great though
coarse fertility of fancy, and a spirit of independence that nothing could
subdue or damp. He was the undoubted ancestor of the Defoes, Swifts,
Steeles, Juniuses, and Burkes, in whom this kind of authorship reached its
perfection, ceased to be fugitive, and assumed classical rank.
Marvell had been repeatedly threatened with assassination, and hence,
when he died suddenly on the 16th of August 1678, it was surmised that
he had been removed by poison. The Corporation of Hull voted a sum to
defray his funeral expenses, and for raising a monument to his memory;
but owing to the interference of the Court, through the rector of the
parish, this votive tablet was not at the time erected. He was buried in
St Giles-in-the-Fields.
'Out of the strong came forth sweetness,' saith the Hebrew record. And
so from the sturdy Andrew Marvell have proceeded such soft and lovely
strains as 'The Emigrants,' 'The Nymph complaining for the Death of her
Fawn,' 'Young Love,' &c. The statue of Memnon became musical at the dawn;
and the stern patriot, whom no bribe could buy and no flattery melt, is
found sympathising in song with a boatful of banished Englishmen in the
remote Bermudas, and inditing 'Thoughts in a Garden,' from which you might
suppose that he had spent his life more with melons than with men, and was
better acquainted with the motions of a bee-hive than with the contests of
Parliament, and the distractions of a most distracted age. It was said
(not with thorough truth) of Milton, that he could cut out a Colossus from
a rock, but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones--a task which his
assistant may be said to have performed in his stead, in his small but
delectable copies of verse.
THE EMIGRANTS.
1 Where the remote Bermudas ride,
In the ocean's bosom unespied,
From a small boat that rowed along,
The listening winds received this song.
2 'What should we do but sing His praise
That led us through the watery maze,
Unto an isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own!
3 'Where he the huge sea-monsters racks,
That lift the deep upon their backs;
He lands us on a grassy stage,
Safe from the storms and prelates' rage.
4 'He gave us this eternal spring
Which here enamels everything,
And sends the fowls to us in care,
On daily visits through the air.
5 'He hangs in shades the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night:
* * * * *
And in these rocks for us did frame
A temple where to sound his name.
6 'Oh, let our voice his praise exalt
Till it arrive at heaven's vault,
Which then perhaps rebounding may
Echo beyond the Mexique bay.'
7 Thus sung they in the English boat,
A holy and a cheerful note;
And all the way, to guide their chime,
With falling oars they kept the time.
THE NYMPH COMPLAINING FOR THE DEATH OF HER FAWN.
The wanton troopers riding by
Have shot my fawn, and it will die.
Ungentle men! they cannot thrive
Who killed thee. Thou ne'er didst alive
Them any harm; alas! nor could
Thy death to them do any good.
I'm sure I never wished them ill;
Nor do I for all this; nor will:
But, if my simple prayers may yet
Prevail with Heaven to forget
Thy murder, I will join my tears,
Rather than fail. But, O my fears!
It cannot die so. Heaven's King
Keeps register of every thing,
And nothing may we use in vain:
Even beasts must be with justice slain.
* * * * *
Inconstant Sylvio, when yet
I had not found him counterfeit,
One morning (I remember well)
Tied in this silver chain and bell,
Gave it to me: nay, and I know
What he said then: I'm sure I do.
Said he, 'Look how your huntsman here
Hath taught a fawn to hunt his deer.'
But Sylvio soon had me beguiled.
This waxed tame while he grew wild,
And, quite regardless of my smart,
Left me his fawn, but took his heart.
Thenceforth I set myself to play
My solitary time away
With this, and very well content
Could so my idle life have spent;
For it was full of sport, and light
Of foot and heart; and did invite
Me to its game; it seemed to bless
Itself in me. How could I less
Than love it? Oh, I cannot be
Unkind to a beast that loveth me!
Had it lived long, I do not know
Whether it too might have done so
As Sylvio did; his gifts might be
Perhaps as false, or more, than he.
But I am sure, for aught that I
Could in so short a time espy,
Thy love was far more better than
The love of false and cruel man.
With sweetest milk and sugar first
I it at my own fingers nursed;
And as it grew, so every day
It waxed more white and sweet than they:
It had so sweet a breath; and oft
I blushed to see its foot more soft
And white, shall I say, than my hand?
Nay, any lady's of the land.
It is a wondrous thing how fleet
'Twas on those little silver feet;
With what a pretty skipping grace
It oft would challenge me the race;
And when't had left me far away,
'Twould stay, and run again, and stay;
For it was nimbler much than hinds,
And trod as if on the four winds.
I have a garden of my own,
But so with roses overgrown,
And lilies, that you would it guess
To be a little wilderness,
And all the spring-time of the year
It only loved to be there.
Among the beds of lilies I
Have sought it oft where it should lie,
Yet could not, till itself would rise,
Find it, although before mine eyes;
For in the flaxen lilies' shade
It like a bank of lilies laid;
Upon the roses it would feed,
Until its lips e'en seemed to bleed;
And then to me 'twould boldly trip,
And print those roses on my lip.
But all its chief delight was still
On roses thus itself to fill,
And its pure virgin limbs to fold
In whitest sheets of lilies cold.
Had it lived long, it would have been
Lilies without, roses within. * * *
ON PARADISE LOST.
When I beheld the poet blind, yet bold,
In slender book his vast design unfold,
Messiah crowned, God's reconciled decree,
Rebelling angels, the forbidden tree,
Heaven, Hell, Earth, Chaos, all; the argument
Held me a while misdoubting his intent,
That he would ruin (for I saw him strong)
The sacred truths to fable and old song;
(So Sampson groped the temple's posts in spite)
The world o'erwhelming to revenge his sight.
Yet as I read, still growing less severe,
I liked his project, the success did fear;
Through that wild field how he his way should find,
O'er which lame Faith leads Understanding blind;
Lest he'd perplex the things he would explain,
And what was easy he should render vain.
Or if a work so infinite be spanned,
Jealous I was that some less skilful hand
(Such as disquiet always what is well,
And, by ill imitating, would excel)
Might hence presume the whole creation's day
To change in scenes, and show it in a play.
Pardon me, mighty poet, nor despise
My causeless, yet not impious, surmise.
But I am now convinced, and none will dare
Within thy labours to pretend a share.
Thou hast not missed one thought that could be fit.
And all that was improper dost omit;
So that no room is here for writers left,
But to detect their ignorance or theft.
That majesty, which through thy work doth reign,
Draws the devout, deterring the profane.
And things divine thou treat'st of in such state
As them preserves, and thee, inviolate.
At once delight and horror on us seize,
Thou sing'st with so much gravity and ease;
And above human flight dost soar aloft
With plume so strong, so equal, and so soft.
The bird named from that Paradise you sing,
So never flags, but always keeps on wing.
Where couldst thou words of such a compass find?
Whence furnish such a vast expanse of mind?
Just Heaven thee, like Tiresias, to requite,
Rewards with prophecy thy loss of sight.
Well mightst thou scorn thy readers to allure
With tinkling rhyme, of thy own sense secure;
While the Town-Bays writes all the while and spells,
And like a pack-horse tires without his bells:
Their fancies like our bushy points appear;
The poets tag them, we for fashion wear.
I too, transported by the mode, offend,
And while I meant to praise thee, must commend.
Thy verse created, like thy theme, sublime,
In number, weight, and measure, needs not rhyme.
THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN.
1 How vainly men themselves amaze,
To win the palm, the oak, or bays!
And their incessant labours see
Crowned from some single herb or tree,
Whose short and narrow-verged shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid;
While all the flowers and trees do close,
To weave the garlands of repose.
2 Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear?
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men.
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow.
Society is all but rude
To this delicious solitude.
3 No white nor red was ever seen
So amorous as this lovely green.
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress' name.
Little, alas, they know or heed,
How far these beauties her exceed!
Fair trees! where'er your barks I wound,
No name shall but your own be found.
4 What wondrous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head.
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine.
The nectarine, and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach.
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
5 Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness.
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
6 Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide;
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then whets and claps its silver wings,
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
7 Such was the happy garden state,
While man there walked without a mate:
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
But 'twas beyond a mortal's share
To wander solitary there:
Two paradises are in one,
To live in paradise alone.
8 How well the skilful gard'ner drew
Of flowers and herbs this dial new!
Where, from above, the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run:
And, as it works, the industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers?
SATIRE ON HOLLAND.
Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but the offscouring of the British sand;
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots when they heaved the lead;
Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion fell,
Of shipwrecked cockle and the mussel-shell;
This indigested vomit of the sea
Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.
Glad then, as miners who have found the ore,
They, with mad labour, fished the land to shore:
And dived as desperately for each piece
Of earth, as if't had been of ambergris;
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay,
Less than what building swallows bear away;
Or than those pills which sordid beetles roll,
Transfusing into them their dunghill soul.
How did they rivet, with gigantic piles,
Thorough the centre their new-catched miles;
And to the stake a struggling country bound,
Where barking waves still bait the forced ground;
Building their watery Babel far more high
To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky.
Yet still his claim the injured Ocean laid,
And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played;
As if on purpose it on land had come
To show them what's their _mare liberum_.
A daily deluge over them does boil;
The earth and water play at level-coil.
The fish oft-times the burgher dispossessed,
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest;
And oft the Tritons, and the sea-nymphs, saw
Whole shoals of Dutch served up for Cabillau;
Or, as they over the new level ranged,
For pickled herring, pickled heeren changed.
Nature, it seemed, ashamed of her mistake,
Would throw their land away at duck and drake,
Therefore necessity, that first made kings,
Something like government among them brings.
For, as with Pigmies, who best kills the crane,
Among the hungry he that treasures grain,
Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reigns,
So rules among the drowned he that drains.
Not who first see the rising sun commands,
But who could first discern the rising lands.
Who best could know to pump an earth so leak,
Him they their lord, and country's father, speak.
To make a bank was a great plot of state;
Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate.
Hence some small dikegrave unperceived invades
The power, and grows, as 'twere, a king of spades;
But, for less envy some joined states endures,
Who look like a commission of the sewers:
For these half-anders, half-wet and half-dry,
Nor bear strict service, nor pure liberty.
'Tis probable religion, after this,
Came next in order; which they could not miss.
How could the Dutch but be converted, when
The apostles were so many fishermen?
Besides, the waters of themselves did rise,
And, as their land, so them did re-baptize;
Though herring for their God few voices missed,
And Poor-John to have been the Evangelist.
Faith, that could never twins conceive before,
Never so fertile, spawned upon this shore
More pregnant than their Marg'ret, that laid down
For Hands-in-Kelder of a whole Hans-Town.
Sure, when religion did itself embark,
And from the east would westward steer its ark,
It struck, and splitting on this unknown ground,
Each one thence pillaged the first piece he found:
Hence Amsterdam, Turk, Christian, Pagan, Jew,
Staple of sects, and mint of schism grew;
That bank of conscience, where not one so strange
Opinion, but finds credit, and exchange.
In vain for Catholics ourselves we bear:
The universal church is only there. * * *
IZAAK WALTON.
This amiable enemy of the finny tribe was born in Stafford, in August
1593. We hear of him first as settled in London, following the trade
of a sempster, or linen-draper, having a shop in the Royal Burse, in
Cornhill, which was 'seven feet and a half long, and five wide,' and
where he became possessed of a moderate fortune. He spent his leisure
time in fishing 'with honest Nat and R. Roe.' From the Royal Burse, he
removed to Fleet Street, where he had 'one half of a shop,' a hosier
occupying the other half. In 1632, he married Anne, the daughter of
Thomas Ken of Furnival's Inn, and sister of Dr Ken, the celebrated
Bishop of Bath and Wells. Through her and her kindred, he became
acquainted with many eminent men of the day. His wife, 'a woman of
remarkable prudence and primitive piety,' died long before him. He
retired from business in 1643, and lived, for forty years after, a life
of leisure and quiet enjoyment, spending much of his time in the houses
of his friends, and much of it by the still waters, which he so dearly
loved. Walton commenced his literary career by writing a Life of Dr
Donne, and followed with another of Sir Henry Wotton, prefixed to his
literary remains. In 1653 appeared his 'Complete Angler,' four editions
of which were called for before his decease. He wrote, in 1662, a Life
of Richard Hooker; in 1670, a Life of George Herbert; and, in 1678, a
Life of Bishop Sanderson--all distinguished by _naïveté_ and heart. In
1680, he published an anonymous discourse on the 'Distempers of the
Times.' In 1683, he printed, as we have seen, Chalkhill's 'Thealma and
Clearchus;' and on the 15th of December in the same year, he died at
Winchester, while residing with his son-in-law, Dr Hawkins, Prebendary
of Winchester Cathedral.
Walton is one of the most loveable of all authors. Your admiration of
him is always melting into affection. Red as his and is with the blood
of fish, you pant to grasp it and press it to yours. You go with him
to the fishing as you would with a bright-eyed boy, relishing his
simple-hearted enthusiasm, and leaning down to listen to his precocious
remarks, and to pat his curly head. It is the prevalence of the
childlike element which makes Walton's 'Angler' rank with Bunyan's
'Pilgrim,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' and White's 'Natural History of Selborne,'
as among the most delightful books in the language. Its descriptions of
nature, too, are so fresh, that you smell to them as to a green leaf.
Walton would not have been at home fishing in the Forth or Clyde, or in
such rivers as are found in Norway, the milk-blue Logen, or the grass-
green Rauma, uniting, with its rich mediation, Romsdale Horn to the
tremendous Witch-Peaks which lower on the opposite side of the valley;
--the waters of his own dear England, going softly and somewhat drowsily
on their path, are the sources of his inspiration, and seem to sound like
the echoes of his own subdued but gladsome spirit. Johnson defined angling
as a rod with a fish at one end, and a fool at the other; in Walton's
case, we may correct the expression to 'a rod with a fish at one end, and
a fine old fellow--the "ae best fellow in the world"--at the other'--
'In wit a man, simplicity a child.'
We have given a specimen of the verse he intersperses sparingly in a
book which _is itself a complete poem._
THE ANGLER'S WISH.
1 I in these flowery meads would be:
These crystal streams should solace me,
To whose harmonious bubbling noise
I with my angle would rejoice:
Sit here and see the turtle-dove
Court his chaste mate to acts of love:
2 Or on that bank feel the west wind
Breathe health and plenty: please my mind
To see sweet dew-drops kiss these flowers,
And then washed off by April showers!
Here hear my Kenna sing a song,
There see a blackbird feed her young,
3 Or a leverock build her nest:
Here give my weary spirits rest,
And raise my low-pitched thoughts above
Earth, or what poor mortals love;
Or, with my Bryan[1] and my book,
Loiter long days near Shawford brook:
4 There sit by him and eat my meat,
There see the sun both rise and set,
There bid good morning to next day,
There meditate my time away,
And angle on, and beg to have
A quiet passage to the grave.
[1] Probably his dog.
JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER
We hear of the Spirit of Evil on one occasion entering into swine, but,
if possible, a stranger sight is that of the Spirit of Poesy finding a
similar incarnation. Certainly the connexion of genius in the Earl of
Rochester with a life of the most degrading and desperate debauchery is
one of the chief marvels of this marvellous world.
John Wilmot was the son of Henry, Lord Rochester, and was born April 10,
1647, at Ditchley in Oxfordshire. He was taught grammar at the school of
Burford. He then 'entered a nobleman' into Wadham College, when twelve
years old, and at 1661, when only fourteen, he was, in conjunction with
some others of rank, made M.A. by Lord Clarendon in person. Pursuing his
travels in France and Italy, he went in 1665 to sea with the Earl of
Sandwich, and distinguished himself at Bergen in an attack on the Dutch
fleet. Next year, while serving under Sir Edward Spragge, his commander
sent him in the heat of an engagement with a reproof to one of his
captains--a duty which Wilmot gallantly accomplished amidst a storm of
shot. With this early courage some of his biographers have contrasted
his subsequent reputation for cowardice, his slinking away out of
street-quarrels, his refusing to fight the Duke of Buckingham, &c. This
diversity at different periods may perhaps be accounted for on the
ground of the nervousness which continued dissipation produces, and
perhaps from his poetical temperament. A poet, we are persuaded, is
often the bravest, and often the most pusillanimous of men. Byron was
unquestionably in general a brave, almost a pugnacious man; and yet he
confesses that at certain times, had one proceeded to horsewhip him,
he would not have had the hardihood to resist. Shelley, who, in a
tremendous storm, behaved with dauntless heroism, and who would at any
time have acted on the example of his own character in 'Prometheus,'
who, in a shipwreck,
'gave an enemy
His plank, then plunged aside to die,'
was yet subject to paroxysms of nervous horror, which made him perspire
and tremble like a spirit-seeing steed. Rochester had the same
temperament, and a similar creed, with these men, although inferior to
them both in _morale_ and in genius.
His character was certainly very depraved. He told Burnet on his
deathbed that for five years he had not known the sensation of sobriety,
having been all that time either totally drunk, or mad through the dregs
of drunkenness. He on one occasion, while in this state, erected a stage
on Tower Hill, and addressed the mob as a naked mountebank. Even after
he became more temperate, he continued and even increased his
licentiousness--one devil went out, and seven entered in. He pursued low
amours in disguise; he practised occasionally as a quack doctor; and at
other times he retired to the country, and, like Byron, amused himself
by libelling all his acquaintances--every line in each libel being a
lie. Notwithstanding all this, he was a favourite with Charles II., who
made him one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber, and comptroller of
Woodstock Park. In his lucid intervals he recurred to his studies, wrote
occasional verses, read in French Boileau and in English Cowley, and is
called by Wood the best scholar among all the nobility.
At last, ere he was thirty-one, the 'dreary old sort of feel,' and the
'rigid fibre and stiffening limbs,' of which Byron and Burns, when
scarcely older, complained, began to assail Rochester. He had exhausted
his capacity of enjoyment by excess, and had deprived himself of the
consolations of religion by infidelity. His unbelief was not like
Shelley's--the growth of his own mind, and the fruit of unbridled,
though earnest, speculation;--it was merely a drug which he snatched
from the laboratories of others to deaden his remorse, and enable him to
look with desperate calmness to the blotted Past and the lowering
Future. At this stage of his career, he became acquainted with Bishop
Burnet, who has recorded his conversion and edifying end in a book
which, says Johnson, 'the critic ought to read for its elegance, the
philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety.' To this,
after Johnson's example, we refer our readers. Eochester died July 26,
1680, before he had completed his thirty-fourth year. He was married,
and left three daughters and a son named Charles, who did not long
survive his father. With him the male line ceased, and the title was
conferred on a younger son of Lord Clarendon. His poems appeared in the
year of his death, professing on the title-page to be printed at
Antwerp. They contain much that is spurious, but some productions that
are undoubtedly Rochester's. They are at the best, poor fragmentary
exhibitions of a vigorous, but undisciplined mind. His songs are rather
easy than lively. His imitations are distinguished by grace and spirit.
His 'Nothing' is a tissue of clever conceits, like gaudy weeds growing
on a sterile soil, but here and there contains a grand and gloomy image,
such as--
'And rebel Light obscured thy reverend dusky face.'
His 'Satire against Man' might be praised for its vigorous misanthropy,
but is chiefly copied from Boileau.
Rochester may be signalised as the first thoroughly depraved and vicious
person, so far as we remember, who assumed the office of the satirist,
--the first, although not, alas! the last human imitator of 'Satan
accusing Sin.' Some satirists before him had been faulty characters,
while rather inconsistently assailing the faults of others; but here,
for the first time, was a man of no virtue, or belief in virtue whatever,
(his tenderness to his family, revealed in his letters, is just that of
the tiger fondling his cubs, and seeming, perhaps, to _them_ a 'much-
misrepresented character,') and whose life was one mass of wounds,
bruises, and putrefying sores,--a naked satyr who gloried in his shame,
--becoming a severe castigator of public morals and of private character.
Surely there was a gross anomaly implied in this, which far greater
genius than Rochester's could never have redeemed.
SONG.
1 Too late, alas! I must confess,
You need not arts to move me;
Such charms by nature you possess,
'Twere madness not to love ye.
2 Then spare a heart you may surprise,
And give my tongue the glory
To boast, though my unfaithful eyes
Betray a tender story.
SONG.
1 My dear mistress has a heart
Soft as those kind looks she gave me,
When with love's resistless art,
And her eyes, she did enslave me.
But her constancy's so weak,
She's so wild and apt to wander,
That my jealous heart would break
Should we live one day asunder.
2 Melting joys about her move,
Killing pleasures, wounding blisses:
She can dress her eyes in love,
And her lips can warm with kisses.
Angels listen when she speaks,
She's my delight, all mankind's wonder;
But my jealous heart would break,
Should we live one day asunder.
THE EARL OF ROSCOMMON.
Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, was the son of James Dillon and
Elizabeth Wentworth. She was the sister of the infamous Strafford, who
was at once uncle and godfather to our poet. In what exact year Dillon
was born is uncertain, but it was some time about 1633. His father had
been converted from Popery by Usher; and when the Irish Rebellion broke
out, Strafford, afraid of the fury of the Irish, sent for his godson,
and took him to his own seat in Yorkshire, where he was taught Latin
with great care. He was sent afterwards to Caen, where he studied under
Bochart. It is said that while playing extravagantly there at the
customary games of boys, he suddenly paused, became grave, and cried
out, 'My father is dead,' and that a fortnight after arrived tidings
from Ireland confirming his impression. Johnson is inclined to believe
this story, and we are more than inclined. Since the lexicographer's
day, many of what used to be called his 'superstitions' have been
established as certain facts, although their explanation is still
shrouded in darkness. Roscommon was then only ten years of age.
From Caen he travelled to Italy, where he obtained a profound knowledge
of medals. At the Restoration he returned to England, where he was made
Captain of the Band of Pensioners, and subsequently Master of the Horse
to the Duchess of York. He became unfortunately addicted to gambling,
and, through this miserable habit, he got embroiled in endless quarrels,
as well as in pecuniary embarassments.
Business compelled him to visit Ireland, where the Duke of Orrnond made
him Captain of the Guards. On his return to England in 1662, he married
the Lady Frances, daughter of the Earl of Burlington. By her he had no
issue. His second wife, whom he married in 1674, was Isabella, daughter
of Matthew Beynton of Barmister, in Yorkshire.
Roscommon now began to meditate and execute literary projects. He
produced an 'Essay on Translated Verse,' (in 1681,) a translation of
Horace's 'Art of Poetry,' and other pieces. He projected, in conjunction
with his friend Dryden, a plan for refining our language and fixing its
standard, as if Time were not the great refiner, fixer, and enricher of
a tongue. While busy with these schemes and occupations, the troubles of
James II.'s reign commenced. Roscommon determined to retire to Rome,
saying, 'It is best to sit near the chimney when the chamber smokes.'
Death, however, prevented him from reaching the beloved and desired
focus of Roman Catholic darkness. He was assailed by gout, and an
ignorant French empiric, whom he consulted, contrived to drive the
disease into the bowels. Roscommon expired, uttering with great fervour
two lines from his own translation of the 'Dies Irae,'--
'My God, my Father, and my Friend,
Do not forsake me in my end.'
This was in 1684. He received a pompous interment in Westminster Abbey.
Roscommon does not deserve the name of a great poet. He was a man of
varied accomplishments and exquisite taste rather than of genius. His
'Essay on Translated Verse' is a sound and sensible, not a profound and
brilliant production. In one point he went before his age. He praises
Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' although unfortunately he selects for encomium
the passage in the sixth book describing the angels fighting against
each other with fire-arms--a passage which most critics have considered
a blot upon the poem.
FROM "AN ESSAY ON TRANSLATED VERSE."
Immodest words admit of no defence;
For want of decency is want of sense.
What moderate fop would rake the park or stews,
Who among troops of faultless nymphs may choose?
Variety of such is to be found:
Take then a subject proper to expound;
But moral, great, and worth a poet's voice;
For men of sense despise a trivial choice;
And such applause it must expect to meet,
As would some painter busy in a street,
To copy bulls and bears, and every sign
That calls the staring sots to nasty wine.
Yet 'tis not all to have a subject good:
It must delight us when 'tis understood.
He that brings fulsome objects to my view,
As many old have done, and many new,
With nauseous images my fancy fills,
And all goes down like oxymel of squills.
Instruct the listening world how Maro sings
Of useful subjects and of lofty things.
These will such true, such bright ideas raise,
As merit gratitude, as well as praise:
But foul descriptions are offensive still,
Either for being like, or being ill:
For who, without a qualm, hath ever looked
On holy garbage, though by Homer cooked?
Whose railing heroes, and whose wounded gods
Make some suspect he snores, as well as nods.
But I offend--Virgil begins to frown,
And Horace looks with indignation down:
My blushing Muse with conscious fear retires,
And whom they like implicitly admires.
On sure foundations let your fabric rise,
And with attractive majesty surprise;
Not by affected meretricious arts,
But strict harmonious symmetry of parts;
Which through the whole insensibly must pass,
With vital heat to animate the mass:
A pure, an active, an auspicious flame;
And bright as heaven, from whence the blessing came:
But few, oh! few souls, preordained by fate,
The race of gods, have reached that envied height.
No rebel Titan's sacrilegious crime,
By heaping hills on hills can hither climb:
The grizzly ferryman of hell denied
Aeneas entrance, till he knew his guide.
How justly then will impious mortals fall,
Whose pride would soar to heaven without a call!
Pride, of all others the most dangerous fault,
Proceeds from want of sense, or want of thought.
The men who labour and digest things most,
Will be much apter to despond than boast:
For if your author be profoundly good,
'Twill cost you dear before he's understood.
How many ages since has Virgil writ!
How few are they who understand him yet!
Approach his altars with religious fear:
No vulgar deity inhabits there.
Heaven shakes not more at Jove's imperial nod,
Than poets should before their Mantuan god.
Hail, mighty Maro! may that sacred name
Kindle my breast with thy celestial flame,
Sublime ideas and apt words infuse;
The Muse instruct my voice, and thou inspire the Muse!
What I have instanced only in the best,
Is, in proportion, true of all the rest.
Take pains the genuine meaning to explore!
There sweat, there strain: tug the laborious oar;
Search every comment that your care can find;
Some here, some there, may hit the poet's mind:
Yet be not blindly guided by the throng:
The multitude is always in the wrong.
When things appear unnatural or hard,
Consult your author, with himself compared.
Who knows what blessing Phoebus may bestow,
And future ages to your labour owe?
Such secrets are not easily found out;
But, once discovered, leave no room for doubt.
Truth stamps conviction in your ravished breast;
And peace and joy attend the glorious guest.
Truth still is one; Truth is divinely bright;
No cloudy doubts obscure her native light;
While in your thoughts you find the least debase,
You may confound, but never can translate.
Your style will this through all disguises show;
For none explain more clearly than they know.
He only proves he understands a text,
Whose exposition leaves it unperplexed.
They who too faithfully on names insist,
Rather create than dissipate the mist;
And grow unjust by being over nice,
For superstitious virtue turns to vice.
Let Crassus' ghost and Labienus tell
How twice in Parthian plains their legions fell.
Since Rome hath been so jealous of her fame
That few know Pacorus' or Monaeses' name.
Words in one language elegantly used,
Will hardly in another be excused;
And some that Rome admired in Caesar's time,
May neither suit our genius nor our clime.
The genuine sense, intelligibly told,
Shows a translator both discreet and bold.
Excursions are inexpiably bad;
And 'tis much safer to leave out than add.
Abstruse and mystic thought you must express
With painful care, but seeming easiness;
For truth shines brightest through the plainest dress.
The Aenean Muse, when she appears in state,
Makes all Jove's thunder on her verses wait;
Yet writes sometimes as soft and moving things
As Venus speaks, or Philomela sings.
Your author always will the best advise,
Fall when he falls, and when he rises, rise.
Affected noise is the most wretched thing,
That to contempt can empty scribblers bring.
Vowels and accents, regularly placed,
On even syllables (and still the last)
Though gross innumerable faults abound,
In spite of nonsense, never fail of sound,
But this is meant of even verse alone,
As being most harmonious and most known:
For if you will unequal numbers try,
There accents on odd syllables must lie.
Whatever sister of the learned Nine
Does to your suit a willing ear incline,
Urge your success, deserve a lasting name,
She'll crown a grateful and a constant flame.
But if a wild uncertainty prevail,
And turn your veering heart with every gale,
You lose the fruit of all your former care,
For the sad prospect of a just despair.
A quack, too scandalously mean to name,
Had, by man-midwifery, got wealth and fame;
As if Lucina had forgot her trade,
The labouring wife invokes his surer aid.
Well-seasoned bowls the gossip's spirits raise,
Who, while she guzzles, chats the doctor's praise;
And largely, what she wants in words, supplies,
With maudlin eloquence of trickling eyes.
But what a thoughtless animal is man!
How very active in his own trepan!
For, greedy of physicians' frequent fees,
From female mellow praise he takes degrees;
Struts in a new unlicensed gown, and then
From saving women falls to killing men.
Another such had left the nation thin,
In spite of all the children he brought in.
His pills as thick as hand grenadoes flew;
And where they fell, as certainly they slew:
His name struck everywhere as great a damp,
As Archimedes' through the Roman camp.
With this, the doctor's pride began to cool;
For smarting soundly may convince a fool.
But now repentance came too late for grace;
And meagre famine stared him in the face:
Fain would he to the wives be reconciled,
But found no husband left to own a child.
The friends, that got the brats, were poisoned too:
In this sad case, what could our vermin do?
Worried with debts, and past all hope of bail,
The unpitied wretch lies rotting in a jail:
And there, with basket-alms scarce kept alive,
Shows how mistaken talents ought to thrive.
I pity, from my soul, unhappy men,
Compelled by want to prostitute their pen;
Who must, like lawyers, either starve or plead,
And follow, right or wrong, where guineas lead!
But you, Pompilian, wealthy, pampered heirs,
Who to your country owe your swords and cares,
Let no vain hope your easy mind seduce,
For rich ill poets are without excuse;
'Tis very dangerous tampering with the Muse,
The profit's small, and you have much to lose;
For though true wit adorns your birth or place,
Degenerate lines degrade the attainted race.
No poet any passion can excite,
But what they feel transport them when they write.
Have you been led through the Cumaean cave,
And heard the impatient maid divinely rave?
I hear her now; I see her rolling eyes;
And panting, 'Lo! the God, the God,' she cries:
With words not hers, and more than human sound,
She makes the obedient ghosts peep trembling through the ground.
But, though we must obey when Heaven commands,
And man in vain the sacred call withstands,
Beware what spirit rages in your breast;
For ten inspired, ten thousand are possess'd:
Thus make the proper use of each extreme,
And write with fury, but correct with phlegm.
As when the cheerful hours too freely pass,
And sparkling wine smiles in the tempting glass,
Your pulse advises, and begins to beat
Through every swelling vein a loud retreat:
So when a Muse propitiously invites,
Improve her favours, and indulge her flights;
But when you find that vigorous heat abate,
Leave off, and for another summons wait.
Before the radiant sun, a glimmering lamp,
Adulterate measures to the sterling stamp,
Appear not meaner than mere human lines,
Compared with those whose inspiration shines:
These, nervous, bold; those, languid and remiss;
There cold salutes; but here a lover's kiss.
Thus have I seen a rapid headlong tide,
With foaming waves the passive Saone divide;
Whose lazy waters without motion lay,
While he, with eager force, urged his impetuous way.
CHARLES COTTON.
Hearty, careless 'Charley Cotton' was born in 1630. His father, Sir
George Cotton, was improvident and intemperate in his latter days, and
left the poet an encumbered estate situated at Ashbourne, in Derbyshire,
near the river Dove. This place will recall the words quoted by O'Connell
in Parliament in reference to the present Lord Derby:--
'Down thy fair banks, romantic Ashbourne, glides
The Derby dilly, with its six insides.'
Charles studied at Cambridge; and after travelling abroad, married the
daughter of Sir Thomas Owthorp in Nottinghamshire, who does not appear
to have lived long. His extravagance keeping him poor, he was compelled
to eke out his means by translating works from the French and Italian,
including those of a spirit somewhat kindred to his own--Montaigne. At
the age of forty, he obtained a captain's commission in the army, and
went to Ireland. There he met with his second wife, Mary, Countess
Dowager of Ardglass, the widow of Lord Cornwall. She possessed a
jointure of £1500 a-year, secured, however, after marriage, from her
husband's imprudent and reckless management. He returned to his English
estate, where he became passionately fond of fishing,--intimate with
Izaak Walton, whom he invited in a poem, although now eighty-three years
old, to visit him in the country--and where he built a fishing-house,
with the initials of Izaak's name and his own united in ciphers over
the door; the walls, too, being painted with fishing scenes, and the
portraits of Cotton and Walton appearing upon the beaufet. Poor Charles
had a less fortunate career than his friend, dying insolvent at
Westminster in 1687.
Careless gaiety and reckless extravagance, blended with heart, sense,
and sincerity, were the characteristics of Cotton as a man, and were, as
is usually the case, transferred to his poetry. He squandered his pence
and his powers with equal profusion. His travestie of the 'Aeneid' is
pronounced by Christopher North (who must have read it, however,) a
beastly book. Campbell says, with striking justice, of another of
Cotton's productions, 'His imitations of Lucian betray the grossest
misconception of humorous effect, when he attempts to burlesque that
which is ludicrous already.' It is like trying to turn the 'Tale of
a Tub' into ridicule. But Cotton's own vein, as exhibited in his
'Invitation to Walton,' his 'New Year,' and his 'Voyage to Ireland,'
(which anticipates in some measure the style of Anstey in the 'New Bath
Guide,') is very rich and varied, full of ease, picturesque spirit, and
humour, and stamps him a genuine, if not a great poet.
INVITATION TO IZAAK WALTON.
1 Whilst in this cold and blustering clime,
Where bleak winds howl, and tempests roar,
We pass away the roughest time
Has been of many years before;
2 Whilst from the most tempestuous nooks
The dullest blasts our peace invade,
And by great rains our smallest brooks
Are almost navigable made;
3 Whilst all the ills are so improved
Of this dead quarter of the year,
That even you, so much beloved,
We would not now wish with us here:
4 In this estate, I say, it is
Some comfort to us to suppose,
That in a better clime than this,
You, our dear friend, have more repose;
5 And some delight to me the while,
Though Nature now does weep in rain,
To think that I have seen her smile,
And haply may I do again.
6 If the all-ruling Power please
We live to see another May,
We'll recompense an age of these
Foul days in one fine fishing day.
7 We then shall have a day or two,
Perhaps a week, wherein to try
What the best master's hand can do
With the most deadly killing fly.
8 A day with not too bright a beam;
A warm, but not a scorching sun;
A southern gale to curl the stream;
And, master, half our work is done.
9 Then, whilst behind some bush we wait
The scaly people to betray,
We'll prove it just, with treacherous bait,
To make the preying trout our prey;
10 And think ourselves, in such an hour,
Happier than those, though not so high,
Who, like leviathans, devour
Of meaner men the smaller fry.
11 This, my best friend, at my poor home,
Shall be our pastime and our theme;
But then--should you not deign to come,
You make all this a flattering dream.
A VOYAGE TO IRELAND IN BURLESQUE.
CANTO I.
The lives of frail men are compared by the sages
Or unto short journeys, or pilgrimages,
As men to their inns do come sooner or later,
That is, to their ends, to be plain in my matter;
From whence when one dead is, it currently follows,
He has run his race, though his goal be the gallows;
And this 'tis, I fancy, sets folks so a-madding,
And makes men and women so eager of gadding;
Truth is, in my youth I was one of these people
Would have gone a great way to have seen a high steeple,
And though I was bred 'mongst the wonders o' th' Peak,
Would have thrown away money, and ventured my neck
To have seen a great hill, a rock, or a cave,
And thought there was nothing so pleasant and brave:
But at forty years old you may, if you please,
Think me wiser than run such errands as these;
Or had the same humour still run in my toes,
A voyage to Ireland I ne'er should have chose;
But to tell you the truth on 't, indeed it was neither
Improvement nor pleasure for which I went thither;
I know then you'll presently ask me for what?
Why, faith, it was that makes the old woman trot;
And therefore I think I'm not much to be blamed
If I went to the place whereof Nick was ashamed.
O Coryate! thou traveller famed as Ulysses,
In such a stupendous labour as this is,
Come lend me the aids of thy hands and thy feet,
Though the first be pedantic, the other not sweet,
Yet both are so restless in peregrination,
They'll help both my journey, and eke my relation.
'Twas now the most beautiful time of the year,
The days were now long, and the sky was now clear,
And May, that fair lady of splendid renown,
Had dressed herself fine, in her flowered tabby gown,
When about some two hours and an half after noon,
When it grew something late, though I thought it too soon,
With a pitiful voice, and a most heavy heart,
I tuned up my pipes to sing _'loth to depart;_'
The ditty concluded, I called for my horse,
And with a good pack did the jument endorse,
Till he groaned and he f----d under the burden,
For sorrow had made me a cumbersome lurden:
And now farewell, Dove, where I've caught such brave dishes
Of over-grown, golden, and silver-scaled fishes;
Thy trout and thy grayling may now feed securely,
I've left none behind me can take 'em so surely;
Feed on then, and breed on, until the next year,
But if I return I expect my arrear.
By pacing and trotting betimes in the even,
Ere the sun had forsaken one half of the heaven,
We all at fair Congerton took up our inn,
Where the sign of a king kept a King and his queen:
But who do you think came to welcome me there'?
No worse a man, marry, than good master mayor,
With his staff of command, yet the man was not lame,
But he needed it more when he went, than he came;
After three or four hours of friendly potation,
We took leave each of other in courteous fashion,
When each one, to keep his brains fast in his head,
Put on a good nightcap, and straightway to bed.
Next morn, having paid for boiled, roasted, and bacon,
And of sovereign hostess our leaves kindly taken,
(For her king, as 'twas rumoured, by late pouring down,
This morning had got a foul flaw in his crown,)
We mounted again, and full soberly riding,
Three miles we had rid ere we met with a biding;
But there, having over-night plied the tap well,
We now must needs water at a place called Holmes Chapel:
'A hay!' quoth the foremost, 'ho! who keeps the house?'
Which said, out an host comes as brisk as a louse;
His hair combed as sleek as a barber he'd been,
A cravat with black ribbon tied under his chin;
Though by what I saw in him, I straight 'gan to fear
That knot would be one day slipped under his ear.
Quoth he (with low conge), 'What lack you, my lord?'
'The best liquor,' quoth I, 'that the house will afford.'
'You shall straight,' quoth he; and then calls out, 'Mary?
Come quickly, and bring us a quart of Canary.'
'Hold, hold, my spruce host! for i' th' morning so early,
I never drink liquor but what's made of barley.'
Which words were scarce out, but, which made me admire,
My lordship was presently turned into 'squire:
'Ale, 'squire, you mean?' quoth he nimbly again,
'What, must it be purled'--'No, I love it best plain.'
'Why, if you'll drink ale, sir, pray take my advice,
Here's the best ale i' th' land, if you'll go to the price;
Better, I sure am, ne'er blew out a stopple;
But then, in plain truth, it is sixpence a bottle.'
'Why, faith,' quoth I, 'friend, if your liquor be such,
For the best ale in England, it is not too much:
Let's have it, and quickly.'--'o sir! you may stay;
A pot in your pate is a mile in your way:
Come, bring out a bottle here presently, wife,
Of the best Cheshire hum he e'er drank in his life.'
Straight out comes the mistress in waistcoat of silk,
As clear as a milkmaid, as white as her milk,
With visage as oval and sleek as an egg,
As straight as an arrow, as right as my leg:
A curtsey she made, as demure as a sister,
I could not forbear, but alighted and kissed her:
Then ducking another, with most modest mien,
The first word she said was, 'Will 't please you walk in?
I thanked her; but told her, I then could not stay,
For the haste of my business did call me away.
She said, she was sorry it fell out so odd,
But if, when again I should travel that road,
I would stay there a night, she assured me the nation
Should nowhere afford better accommodation:
Meanwhile my spruce landlord has broken the cork,
And called for a bodkin, though he had a fork;
But I showed him a screw, which I told my brisk gull
A trepan was for bottles had broken their skull;
Which, as it was true, he believed without doubt,
But 'twas I that applied it, and pulled the cork out.
Bounce, quoth the bottle, the work being done,
It roared, and it smoked, like a new-fired gun;
But the shot missed us all, or else we'd been routed,
Which yet was a wonder, we were so about it.
Mine host poured and filled, till he could fill no fuller:
'Look here, sir,' quoth he, 'both for nap and for colour,
Sans bragging, I hate it, nor will I e'er do 't;
I defy Leek, and Lambhith, and Sandwich, to boot.'
By my troth, he said true, for I speak it with tears,
Though I have been a toss-pot these twenty good years,
And have drank so much liquor has made me a debtor,
In my days, that I know of, I never drank better:
We found it so good and we drank so profoundly,
That four good round shillings were whipt away roundly;
And then I conceived it was time to be jogging,
For our work had been done, had we stay'd t' other noggin.
From thence we set forth with more metal and spright,
Our horses were empty, our coxcombs were light;
O'er Dellamore forest we, tantivy, posted,
Till our horses were basted as if they were roasted:
In truth, we pursued might have been by our haste,
And I think Sir George Booth did not gallop so fast,
Till about two o'clock after noon, God be blest,
We came, safe and sound, all to Chester i' th' west.
And now in high time 'twas to call for some meat,
Though drinking does well, yet some time we must eat:
And i' faith we had victuals both plenty and good,
Where we all laid about us as if we were wood:
Go thy ways, Mistress Anderton, for a good woman,
Thy guests shall by thee ne'er be turned to a common;
And whoever of thy entertainment complains,
Let him lie with a drab, and be poxed for his pains.
And here I must stop the career of my Muse,
The poor jade is weary, 'las! how should she choose?
And if I should further here spur on my course,
I should, questionless, tire both my wits and my horse:
To-night let us rest, for 'tis good Sunday's even,
To-morrow to church, and ask pardon of Heaven.
Thus far we our time spent, as here I have penned it,
An odd kind of life, and 'tis well if we mend it:
But to-morrow (God willing) we'll have t' other bout,
And better or worse be 't, for murder will out,
Our future adventures we'll lay down before ye,
For my Muse is deep sworn to use truth of the story.