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Title: The Flower of the Mind


Author: Alice Meynell



Release Date: June 28, 2015  [eBook #2080]
[This file was first posted 22 June 1999]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)


***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLOWER OF THE MIND***

Transcribed from the 1898 Grant Richards edition by David Price, email [email protected]

Of this reissue
only 250
copies will
be bound
up.

THE FLOWER
OF THE MIND

A Choice among the best Poems

MADE BY

ALICE MEYNELL

LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS
9 HENRIETTA STREET
1898

p. ivEdinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty

p. vINTRODUCTION

Partial collections of English poems, decided by a common subject or bounded by narrow dates and periods of literary history, are made at very short intervals, and the makers are safe from the reproach of proposing their own personal taste as a guide for the reading of others.  But a general Anthology gathered from the whole of English literature—the whole from Chaucer to Wordsworth—by a gatherer intent upon nothing except the quality of poetry, is a more rare enterprise.  It is hardly to be made without tempting the suspicion—nay, hardly without seeming to hazard the confession—of some measure of self-confidence.  Nor can even the desire to enter upon that labour be a frequent one—the desire of the heart of one for whom poetry is veritably ‘the complementary life’ to set up a pale for inclusion and exclusion, to add honours, to multiply homage, to cherish, to restore, to protest, to proclaim, to depose; and to gain the consent of a multitude of readers to all those acts.  Many years, then—some part of a century—may easily pass between the publication of one general anthology and the making of another.

The enterprise would be a sorry one if it were really arbitrary, and if an anthologist should give effect to passionate preferences without authority.  An anthology that shall have any p. vivalue must be made on the responsibility of one but on the authority of many.  There is no caprice; the mind of the maker has been formed for decision by the wisdom of many instructors.  It is the very study of criticism, and the grateful and profitable study, that gives the justification to work done upon the strongest personal impulse, and done, finally, in the mental solitude that cannot be escaped at the last.  In another order, moral education would be best crowned if it proved to have quick and profound control over the first impulses; its finished work would be to set the soul in a state of law, delivered from the delays of self-distrust; not action only, but the desires would be in an old security, and a wish would come to light already justified.  This would be the second—if it were not the only—liberty.  Even so an intellectual education might assuredly confer freedom upon first and solitary thoughts, and confidence and composure upon the sallies of impetuous courage.  In a word, it should make a studious anthologist quite sure about genius.  And all who have bestowed, or helped in bestowing, the liberating education have given their student the authority to be free.  Personal and singular the choice in such a book must be, not without right.

Claiming and disclaiming so much, the gatherers may follow one another to harvest, and glean in the same fields in different seasons, for the repetition of the work can never be altogether a repetition.  The general consent of criticism does not stand still; and moreover, a mere accident p. viihas until now left a poet of genius of the past here and there to neglect or obscurity.  This is not very likely to befall again; the time has come when there is little or nothing left to discover or rediscover in the sixteenth century or the seventeenth; we know that there does not lurk another Crashaw contemned, or another Henry Vaughan disregarded, or another George Herbert misplaced.  There is now something like finality of knowledge at least; and therefore not a little error in the past is ready to be repaired.  This is the result of time.  Of the slow actions and reactions of critical taste there might be something to say, but nothing important.  No loyal anthologist perhaps will consent to acknowledge these tides; he will hardly do his work well unless he believe it to be stable and perfect; nor, by the way, will he judge worthily in the name of others unless he be resolved to judge intrepidly for himself.

Inasmuch as even the best of all poems are the best upon innumerable degrees, the size of most anthologies has gone far to decide what degrees are to be gathered in and what left without.  The best might make a very small volume, and be indeed the best, or a very large volume, and be still indeed the best.  But my labour has been to do somewhat differently—to gather nothing that did not overpass a certain boundary-line of genius.  Gray’s Elegy, for instance, would rightly be placed at the head of everything below that mark.  It is, in fact, so near to the work of genius as to be most directly, closely, and immediately rebuked by genius; it meets genius at close quarters and p. viiialmost deserves that Shakespeare himself should defeat it.  Mediocrity said its own true word in the Elegy:

‘Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.’

But greatness had said its own word also in a sonnet:

‘The summer flower is to the summer sweet
Though to itself it only live and die.’

The reproof here is too sure; not always does it touch so quick, but it is not seldom manifest, and it makes exclusion a simple task.  Inclusion, on the other hand, cannot be so completely fulfilled.  The impossibility of taking in poems of great length, however purely lyrical, is a mechanical barrier, even on the plan of the present volume; in the case of Spenser’s Prothalamion, the unmanageably autobiographical and local passage makes it inappropriate; some exquisite things of Landor’s are lyrics in blank verse, and the necessary rule against blank verse shuts them out.  No extracts have been made from any poem, but in a very few instances a stanza or a passage has been dropped out.  No poem has been put in for the sake of a single perfectly fine passage; it would be too much to say that no poem has been put in for the sake of two splendid passages or so.  The Scottish ballad poetry is represented by examples that are to my mind finer than anything left out; still, it is but represented; and as the song of this multitude of unknown poets overflows by its quantity a collection of lyrics of genius, so does p. ixseverally the song of Wordsworth, Crashaw, and Shelley.  It has been necessary, in considering traditional songs of evidently mingled authorship, to reject some one invaluable stanza or burden—the original and ancient surviving matter of a spoilt song—because it was necessary to reject the sequel that has cumbered it since some sentimentalist took it for his own.  An example, which makes the heart ache, is that burden of keen and remote poetry:

‘O the broom, the bonnie, bonnie broom,
   The broom of Cowdenknowes!’

Perhaps some hand will gather all such precious fragments as these together one day, freed from what is alien in the work of the restorer.  It is inexplicable that a generation resolved to forbid the restoration of ancient buildings should approve the eighteenth century restoration of ancient poems; nay, the architectural ‘restorer’ is immeasurably the more respectful.  In order to give us again the ancient fragments, it is happily not necessary to break up the composite songs which, since the time of Burns, have gained a national love.  Let them be, but let the old verses be also; and let them have, for those who desire it, the solitariness of their state of ruin.  Even in the cases—and they are not few—where Burns is proved to have given beauty and music to the ancient fragment itself, his work upon the old stanza is immeasurably finer than his work in his own new stanzas following, and it would be less than impiety to part the two.

p. xI have obeyed a profound conviction which I have reason to hope will be more commended in the future than perhaps it can be now, in leaving aside a multitude of composite songs—anachronisms, and worse than mere anachronisms, as I think them to be, for they patch wild feeling with sentiment of the sentimentalist.  There are some exceptions.  The one fine stanza of a song which both Sir Walter Scott and Burns restored is given with the restorations of both, those restorations being severally beautiful; and the burden, ‘Hame, hame, hame,’ is printed with the Jacobite song that carries it; this song seems so mingled and various in date and origin that no apology is needed for placing it amongst the bundle of Scottish ballads of days before the Jacobites.  Sir Patrick Spens is treated here as an ancient song.  It is to be noted that the modern, or comparatively modern, additions to old songs full of quantitative metre—‘Hame, hame, hame,’ is one of these—full of long notes, rests, and interlinear pauses, are almost always written in anapæsts.  The later writer has slipped away from the fine, various, and subtle metre of the older.  Assuredly the popularity of the metre which, for want of a term suiting the English rules of verse, must be called anapæstic, has done more than any other thing to vulgarise the national sense of rhythm and to silence the finer rhythms.  Anapæsts came quite suddenly into English poetry and brought coarseness, glibness, volubility, dapper and fatuous effects.  A master may use it well, but as a popular measure it has been disastrous.  I p. xiwould be bound to find the modern stanzas in an old song by this very habit of anapæsts and this very misunderstanding of the long words and interlinear pauses of the older stanzas.  This, for instance, is the old metre:

‘Hame, hame, hame!  O hame fain wad I be!’

and this the lamentable anapæstic line (from the same song):

‘Yet the sun through the mirk seems to promise to me—.’

It has been difficult to refuse myself the delight of including A Divine Love of Carew, but it seemed too bold to leave out four stanzas of a poem of seven, and the last four are of the poorest argument.  This passage at least shall speak for the first three:

            ‘Thou didst appear
   A glorious mystery, so dark, so clear,
         As Nature did intend
All should confess, but none might comprehend.’

From Christ’s Victory in Heaven of Giles Fletcher (out of reach for its length) it is a happiness to extract here at least the passage upon ‘Justice,’ who looks ‘as the eagle

         that hath so oft compared
Her eye with heaven’s’;

from Marlowe’s poem, also unmanageable, that in which Love ran to the priestess

‘And laid his childish head upon her breast’;

p. xiiwith that which tells how Night,

         ‘deep-drenched in misty Acheron,
Heaved up her head, and half the world upon
Breathed darkness forth’;

from Robert Greene two lines of a lovely passage:

‘Cupid abroad was lated in the night,
His wings were wet with ranging in the rain’;

from Ben Jonson’s Hue and Cry (not throughout fine) the stanza:

‘Beauties, have ye seen a toy,
Called Love, a little boy,
Almost naked, wanton, blind;
Cruel now, and then as kind?
If he be amongst ye, say;
He is Venus’ run-away’;

from Francis Davison:

‘Her angry eyes are great with tears’;

from George Wither:

      ‘I can go rest
      On her sweet breast
That is the pride of Cynthia’s train’;

from Cowley:

‘Return, return, gay planet of mine east’!

The poems in which these are cannot make part of the volume, but the citation of the fragments is a relieving act of love.

At the very beginning, Skelton’s song to ‘Mistress Margery Wentworth’ had almost taken a place; but its charm is hardly fine enough.  If it is necessary to answer the inevitable p. xiiiquestion in regard to Byron, let me say that in another Anthology, a secondary Anthology, the one in which Gray’s Elegy would have an honourable place, some more of Byron’s lyrics would certainly be found; and except this there is no apology.  If the last stanza of the ‘Dying Gladiator’ passage, or the last stanza on the cascade rainbow at Terni,

‘Love watching madness with unalterable mien,’

had been separate poems instead of parts of Childe Harold, they would have been amongst the poems that are here collected in no spirit of arrogance, or of caprice, of diffidence or doubt.

The volume closes some time before the middle of the century and the death of Wordsworth.

A. M

p. xvCONTENTS

p. 1ANONYMOUS
13TH CENTURY

THE FIRST CAROL

   Summer is y-comen in!
      Loud sing cuckoo!
   Groweth seed and bloweth mead,
      And springeth the wood new.
         Sing cuckoo! cuckoo!

   Ewe bleateth after lamb,
   Loweth cow after calf;
Bullock starteth, buck verteth;
      Merry sing cuckoo!
         Cuckoo! cuckoo!
      Nor cease thou ever now.
      Sing cuckoo now!
         Sing cuckoo!

SIR WALTER RALEIGH
1552–1618

VERSES BEFORE DEATH

Even such is time, that takes in trust
   Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
   Who, in the dark and silent grave,
p. 2When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust!

EDMUND SPENSER
1553–1599

EASTER

Most glorious Lord of life! that on this day
   Didst make thy triumph over death and sin;
And, having harrowed hell, didst bring away
   Captivity then captive, us to win:
This glorious day, dear Lord, with joy begin,
   And grant that we, for whom thou diddest die,
Being with thy dear blood clean washed from sin,
   May live for ever in felicity!

And that thy love we weighing worthily,
   May likewise love thee for the same again;
And for thy sake, that all like dear didst buy,
   With love may one another entertain.
So let us love, dear Love, like as we ought;
Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.

FRESH SPRING

Fresh Spring, the herald of love’s mighty king,
   In whose coat-armour richly are displayed
All sorts of flowers, the which on earth do spring
   In goodly colours gloriously arrayed:
p. 3Go to my love, where she is careless laid,
   Yet in her winter bower not well awake;
Tell her the joyous time will not be stayed,
   Unless she do him by the forelock take;

Bid her therefore herself soon ready make,
   To wait on Love amongst his lovely crew;
Where every one that misseth there her make
   Shall be by him amerced with penance due.
Make haste therefore, sweet love, whilst it is prime,
   For none can call again the passed time.

LIKE AS A SHIP

Like as a ship, that through the ocean wide,
   By conduct of some star doth make her way,
When, as a storm hath dimmed her trusty guide,
   Out of her course doth wander far astray!
So I, whose star, that wont with her bright ray
   Me to direct, with clouds is overcast,
Do wander now, in darkness and dismay,
   Through hidden perils round about me placed;

Yet hope I well that, when this storm is past,
   My Helice, the loadstar of my life,
Will shine again, and look on me at last,
   With lovely light to clear my cloudy grief:
Till then I wander, careful, comfortless,
In secret sorrow and sad pensiveness.

EPITHALAMION

Ye learned sisters, which have oftentimes
Been to me aiding, others to adorn,
Whom ye thought worthy of your graceful rhymes,
That even the greatest did not greatly scorn
p. 4To hear their names sung in your simple lays,
But joyed in their praise;
And when ye list your own mishaps to mourn,
Which death, or love, or fortune’s wreck did raise,
Your string could soon to sadder tenor turn,
And teach the woods and waters to lament
Your doleful dreariment:
Now lay those sorrowful complaints aside;
And, having all your heads with garlands crowned,
Help me mine own love’s praises to resound;
Ne let the same of any be envied:
So Orpheus did for his own bride!
So I unto myself alone will sing;
The woods shall to me answer, and my echo ring.

Early, before the world’s light-giving lamp
His golden beam upon the hills doth spread,
Having dispersed the night’s uncheerful damp,
Do ye awake; and, with fresh lusty-head,
Go to the bower of my beloved love,
My truest turtle dove;
Bid her awake; for Hymen is awake,
And long since ready forth his mask to move,
With his bright tead that names with many a flake,
And many a bachelor to wait on him,
In their fresh garments trim.
Bid her awake therefore, and soon her dight,
For lo! the wished day is come at last,
That shall, for all the pains and sorrows past,
Pay to her usury of long delight:
And, whilst she doth her dight,
Do ye to her of joy and solace sing,
That all the woods may answer, and your echo ring.

p. 5Bring with you all the Nymphs that you can hear
Both of the rivers and the forests green,
And of the sea that neighbours to her near:
All with gay garlands goodly well beseen.
And let them also with them bring in hand
Another gay garland,
For my fair love, of lilies and of roses,
Bound truelove wise, with a blue silk riband.
And let them make great store of bridal posies,
And let them eke bring store of other flowers,
To deck the bridal bowers.
And let the ground whereas her foot shall tread,
For fear the stones her tender foot should wrong,
Be strewed with fragrant flowers all along,
And diapred like the discoloured mead.
Which done, do at her chamber door await,
For she will waken straight;
The whiles do ye this song unto her sing,
The woods shall to you answer, and your echo ring.

Ye Nymphs of Mulla, which with careful heed
The silver scaly trouts do tend full well,
And greedy pikes which use therein to feed
(Those trouts and pikes all others do excel);
And ye likewise, which keep the rushy lake,
Where none do fishes take;
Bind up the locks the which hang scattered light,
And in his waters, which your mirror make,
Behold your faces as the crystal bright,
That when you come whereas my love doth lie,
No blemish she may spy.
And eke, ye lightfoot maids, which keep the door,
That on the hoary mountain used to tower;
And the wild wolves, which seek them to devour,
p. 6With your steel darts do chase from coming near;
Be also present here,
To help to deck her, and to help to sing,
That all the woods may answer, and your echo ring.

Wake now, my love, awake! for it is time:
The Rosy Morn long since left Tithon’s bed,
All ready to her silver coach to climb;
And Phœbus ’gins to show his glorious head.
Hark! how the cheerful birds do chant their lays
And carol of love’s praise.
The merry Lark her matins sings aloft;
The Thrush replies; the Mavis descant plays:
The Ouzel shrills; the Ruddock warbles soft;
So goodly all agree, with sweet consent,
To this day’s merriment.
Ah! my dear love, why do ye sleep thus long,
When meeter were that ye should now awake,
T’ await the coming of your joyous make,
And hearken to the birds’ love-learned song,
The dewy leaves among?
For they of joy and pleasance to you sing,
That all the woods them answer, and their echo ring.

My love is now awake out of her dreams,
And her fair eyes, like stars that dimmed were
With darksome cloud, now show their goodly beams
More bright than Hesperus his head doth rear.
Come now, ye damsels, daughters of delight,
Help quickly her to dight!
But first come, ye fair hours, which were begot,
In Jove’s sweet paradise, of Day and Night;
Which do the seasons of the year allot,
p. 7And all, that ever in this world is fair,
Do make and still repair:
And ye three handmaids of the Cyprian Queen,
The which do still adorn her beauty’s pride,
Help to adorn my beautifullest bride:
And, as ye her array, still throw between
Some graces to be seen;
And, as ye use to Venus, to her sing,
The whiles the woods shall answer, and your echo ring.

Now is my love all ready forth to come:
Let all the virgins therefore well await:
And ye, fresh boys, that tend upon her groom,
Prepare yourselves, for he is coming straight.
Set all your things in seemly good array,
Fit for so joyful day:
The joyfullest day that ever Sun did see.
Fair Sun! show forth thy favourable ray,
And let thy life-full heat not fervent be,
For fear of burning her sunshiny face,
Her beauty to disgrace.
O fairest Phœbus! father of the Muse!
If ever I did honour thee aright,
Or sing the thing that mote thy mind delight,
Do not thy servant’s simple boon refuse;
But let this day, let this one day, be mine;
Let all the rest be thine.
Then I thy sovereign praises loud will sing,
That all the woods shall answer, and their echo ring.

Hark! how the minstrels ’gin to shrill aloud
Their merry Music that resounds from far,
The pipe, the tabor, and the trembling crowd,
That well agree withouten breach or jar.
p. 8But, most of all, the damsels do delight
When they their timbrels smite,
And thereunto do dance and carol sweet,
That all the senses they do ravish quite;
The whiles the boys run up and down the street,
Crying aloud with strong confused noise,
As if it were one voice,
Hymen! iö Hymen!  Hymen, they do shout;
That even to the heavens their shouting shrill
Doth reach, and all the firmament doth fill;
To which the people standing all about,
As in approvance, do thereto applaud,
And loud advance her laud;
And evermore they Hymen, Hymen! sing,
That all the woods them answer, and their echo ring.

Lo! where she comes along with portly pace,
Like Phœbe, from her chamber of the East,
Arising forth to run her mighty race,
Clad all in white, that seems a virgin best.
So well it her beseems, that ye would ween
Some angel she had been.
Her long loose yellow locks like golden wire,
Sprinkled with pearl, and pearling flowers atween,
Do like a golden mantle her attire;
And, being crowned with a garland green,
Seem like some maiden Queen.
Her modest eyes, abashed to behold
So many gazers as on her do stare,
Upon the lowly ground affixed are;
Ne dare lift up her countenance too bold,
But blush to hear her praises sung so loud,
So far from being proud.
p. 9Nathless, do ye still loud her praises sing,
That all the woods may answer, and your echo ring.

Tell me, ye merchants’ daughters, did ye see
So fair a creature in your town before;
So sweet, so lovely, and so mild as she,
Adorned with beauty’s grace and virtue’s store?
Her goodly eyes like sapphires shining bright,
Her forehead ivory white,
Her cheeks like apples which the sun hath ruddied,
Her lips like cherries charming men to bite,
Her breast like to a bowl of cream uncrudded,
Her paps like lilies budded,
Her snowy neck like to a marble tower;
And all her body like a palace fair,
Ascending up, with many a stately stair,
To honour’s seat and chastity’s sweet bower.
Why stand ye still, ye virgins, in amaze,
Upon her so to gaze,
Whiles ye forget your former lay to sing,
To which the woods did answer, and your echo ring?

But if ye saw that which no eyes can see,
The inward beauty of her lively spright,
Garnished with heavenly gifts of high degree,
Much more then would ye wonder at that sight,
And stand astonished like to those which read
Medusa’s mazeful head.
There dwells sweet love, and constant chastity,
Unspotted faith, and comely womanhood,
Regard of honour, and mild modesty;
There virtue reigns as Queen in royal throne,
And giveth laws alone,
p. 10The which the base affections do obey,
And yield their services unto her will;
Ne thought of thing uncomely ever may
Thereto approach to tempt her mind to ill.
Had ye once seen these her celestial treasures
And unrevealed pleasures,
Then would ye wonder, and her praises sing,
That all the woods should answer, and your echo ring.

Open the temple gates unto my love,
Open them wide that she may enter in,
And all the posts adorn as doth behove,
And all the pillars deck with garlands trim,
For to receive this Saint with honour due,
That cometh in to you.
With trembling steps, and humble reverence,
She cometh in before th’ Almighty’s view;
Of her ye virgins learn obedience,
When so ye come into those holy places,
To humble your proud faces:
Bring her up to th’ high altar, that she may
The sacred ceremonies there partake,
The which do endless matrimony make;
And let the roaring organs loudly play
The praises of the Lord in lively notes;
The whiles, with hollow throats,
The choristers the joyous anthem sing,
That all the woods may answer, and their echo ring.

Behold, whiles she before the altar stands,
Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks,
And blesseth her with his two happy hands,
How the red roses flush up in her cheeks,
p. 11And the pure snow with goodly vermeil stain,
Lake crimson dyed in grain:
That even th’ Angels, which continually
About the sacred altar do remain,
Forget their service and about her fly,
Oft peeping in her face, that seems more fair,
The more they on it stare.
But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground,
Are governed with goodly modesty,
That suffers not one look to glance awry,
Which may let in a little thought unsound.
Why blush ye, love, to give to me your hand,
The pledge of all our band?
Sing, ye sweet Angels, Alleluja sing,
That all the woods may answer, and your echo ring.

Now all is done: bring home the Bride again;
Bring home the triumph of our victory:
Bring home with you the glory of her gain,
With joyance bring her and with jollity.
Never had man more joyful day than this,
Whom heaven would heap with bliss.
Make feast therefore now all this live-long day;
This day for ever to me holy is.
Pour out the wine without restraint or stay,
Pour not by cups, but by the bellyful!
Pour out to all that wull,
And sprinkle all the posts and walls with wine,
That they may sweat, and drunken be withal.
Crown ye God Bacchus with a coronal,
And Hymen also crown with wreaths of vine;
And let the Graces dance unto the rest,
For they can do it best:
p. 12The whiles the maidens do their carol sing,
To which the woods shall answer, and their echo ring.

Ring ye the bells, ye young men of the town,
And leave your wonted labours for this day:
This day is holy; do ye write it down,
That ye for ever it remember may.
This day the sun is in his chiefest height,
With Barnaby the bright,
From whence declining daily by degrees,
He somewhat loseth of his heat and light,
When once the Crab behind his back he sees.
But for this time it ill ordained was,
To choose the longest day in all the year,
And shortest night, when longest fitter were:
Yet never day so long, but late would pass.
Ring ye the bells, to make it wear away,
And bonfires make all day;
And dance about them, and about them sing,
That all the woods may answer, and your echo ring!

Ah! when will this long weary day have end,
And lend me leave to come unto my love?
How slowly do the hours their numbers spend;
How slowly does sad Time his feathers move!
Haste thee, O fairest Planet, to thy home,
Within the Western foam:
Thy tired steeds long since have need of rest.
Long though it be, at last I see it gloom,
And the bright evening-star with golden crest
Appear out of the East,
Fair child of beauty! glorious lamp of love!
That all the host of heaven in ranks dost lead,
And guidest lovers through the night’s sad dread,
p. 13How cheerfully thou lookest from above,
And seem’st to laugh atween thy twinkling light,
As joying in the sight
Of these glad many, which for joy do sing,
That all the woods them answer, and their echo ring!

Now cease, ye damsels, your delights forepast;
Enough it is that all the day was yours:
Now day is done, and night is nighing fast,
Now bring the Bride into the bridal bowers.
The night is come; now soon her disarray,
And in her bed her lay;
Lay her in lilies and in violets,
And silken curtains over her display,
And odoured sheets, and arras coverlets.
Behold how goodly my fair love does lie,
In proud humility!
Like unto Maia, when as Jove her took
In Tempe, lying on the flowery grass,
’Twixt sleep and wake, after she weary was,
With bathing in the Acidalian brook.
Now it is night, ye damsels may be gone,
And leave my love alone,
And leave likewise your former lay to sing:
The woods no more shall answer, nor your echo ring.

Now welcome, night! thou night so long expected,
That long day’s labour dost at last defray,
And all my cares, which cruel Love collected,
Hast summed in one, and cancelled for aye:
Spread thy broad wing over my love and me,
That no man may us see;
And in thy sable mantle us enwrap,
From fear of peril and foul horror free.
p. 14Let no false treason seek us to entrap,
Nor any dread disquiet once annoy
The safety of our joy;
But let the night be calm, and quietsome,
Without tempestuous storms or sad affray:
Like as when Jove with fair Alcmena lay,
When he begot the great Tirynthian groom:
Or like as when he with thy self did lie
And begot Majesty.
And let the maids and young men cease to sing;
Ne let the woods them answer, nor their echo ring.

Let no lamenting cries nor doleful tears
Be heard all night within, nor yet without;
Ne let false whispers, breeding hidden fears,
Break gentle sleep with misconceived doubt.
Let no deluding dreams, nor dreadful sights,
Make sudden sad affrights;
Ne let house-fires, nor lightning’s helpless harms,
Ne let the Pouke, nor other evil sprights,
Ne let mischievous witches with their charms,
Ne let hobgoblins, names whose sense we see not,
Fray us with things that be not:
Let not the shriek-owl nor the stork be heard,
Nor the night raven, that still deadly yells;
Nor damned ghosts, called up with mighty spells,
Nor grisly vultures, make us once afeard:
Ne let the unpleasant choir of frogs still croaking
Make us to wish their choking!
Let none of these their dreary accents sing;
Ne let the woods them answer, nor their echo ring.

But let still Silence true night-watches keep,
That sacred Peace may in assurance reign,
p. 15And timely Sleep, when it is time to sleep,
May pour his limbs forth on your pleasant plain;
The whiles an hundred little winged loves,
Like divers-feathered doves,
Shall fly and flutter round about your bed,
And in the secret dark, that none reproves,
Their pretty stealths shall work, and snares shall spread
To filch away sweet snatches of delight,
Concealed through covert night.
Ye sons of Venus, play your sports at will!
For greedy Pleasure, careless of your toys,
Thinks more upon her paradise of joys,
Then what ye do, albeit good or ill!
All night therefore attend your merry play,
For it will soon be day:
Now none doth hinder you, that say or sing;
Ne will the woods now answer, nor your echo ring.

Who is the same, which at my window peeps,
Or whose is that fair face that shines so bright?
Is it not Cynthia, she that never sleeps,
But walks about high heaven all the night?
O! fairest goddess, do thou not envy
My love with me to spy:
For thou likewise didst love, though now unthought,
And for a fleece of wool, which privily
The Latmian shepherd once unto thee brought,
His pleasures with thee wrought!
Therefore to us be favourable now;
And sith of women’s labours thou hast charge,
And generation goodly dost enlarge,
Incline thy will to effect our wishful vow,
And the chaste womb inform with timely seed,
That may our comfort breed:
p. 16Till which we cease our hopeful hap to sing;
Ne let the woods us answer, nor our echo ring.

And thou, great Juno! which with awful might
The laws of wedlock still dost patronize,
And the religion of the faith first plight
With sacred rites hast taught to solemnize;
And eke for comfort often called art
Of women in their smart;
Eternally bind thou this lovely band,
And all thy blessings unto us impart.
And thou, glad Genius! in whose gentle hand
The bridal bower and genial bed remain,
Without blemish or stain;
And the sweet pleasures of their love’s delight
With secret aid dost succour and supply,
Till they bring forth the fruitful progeny;
Send us the timely fruit of this same night.
And thou, fair Hebe! and thou, Hymen free!
Grant that it may so be.
Till which we cease your further praise to sing;
Ne any woods shall answer, nor your echo ring.

And ye high heavens, the Temple of the Gods,
In which a thousand torches flaming bright
Do burn, that to us wretched earthly clods
In dreadful darkness lend desired light;
And all ye powers which in the same remain,
More than we men can feign!
Pour out your blessing on us plenteously,
And happy influence upon us rain,
That we may raise a large posterity,
Which from the earth, which they may long possess
With lasting happiness,
p. 17Up to your haughty palaces may mount;
And, for the guerdon of their glorious merit,
May heavenly tabernacles there inherit,
Of blessed saints for to increase the count.
So let us rest, sweet Love, in hope of this,
And cease till then our timely joys to sing:
The woods no more us answer, nor our echo ring!

Song! made in lieu of many ornaments,
With which my Love should duly have been decked.
Which cutting off through hasty accidents,
Ye would not stay your due time to expect,
But promised both to recompense;
Be unto her a goodly ornament,
And for short time an endless monument.

JOHN LYLY
1554(?)–1606

THE SPRING

What bird so sings, yet does so wail?
O, ’tis the ravished nightingale!
‘Jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu,’ she cries,
And still her woes at midnight rise.
Brave prick-song! who is’t now we hear?
None but the lark so shrill and clear;
Now at heaven’s gate she claps her wings,
The morn not waking till she sings.
Hark, hark, with what a pretty throat
Poor robin-redbreast tunes his note;
Hark, how the jolly cuckoos sing!
Cuckoo to welcome in the spring,
Cuckoo to welcome in the spring!

p. 18SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
1554–1586

TRUE LOVE

My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange one for the other given:
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven:
His heart in me keeps him and me in one,
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
He loves my heart, for once it was his own,
I cherish his because in me it bides:
His heart his wound received from my sight;
My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;
For as from me on him his hurt did light,
So still methought in me his hurt did smart:
   Both, equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss.
   My true-love hath my heart, and I have his.

THE MOON

With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb’st the skies!
How silently, and with how wan a face!
What, may it be that e’en in heavenly place
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries!
Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel’st a lover’s case;
I read it in thy looks; thy languished grace,
To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.
p. 19Then, e’en of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,
Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
   Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?
   Do they call virtue, there, ungratefulness?

KISS

Love still a boy and oft a wanton is,
Schooled only by his mother’s tender eye;
What wonder, then, if he his lesson miss,
When for so soft a rod dear play he try?
And yet my Star, because a sugared kiss
In sport I sucked while she asleep did lie,
Doth lower, nay chide, nay threat, for only this.—
Sweet, it was saucy Love, not humble I!
But no ’scuse serves; she makes her wrath appear
In Beauty’s throne; see now, who dares come near
Those scarlet judges, threatening bloody pain!
O heavenly fool, thy most kiss-worthy face
Anger invests with such a lovely grace,
That Anger’s self I needs must kiss again.

SWEET JUDGE

Alas! whence comes this change of looks?  If I
Have changed desert, let mine own conscience be
A still-felt plague to self-condemning me,
Let woe gripe on my heart, shame load mine eye;
But if all faith, like spotless ermine, lie
Safe in my soul, which only doth to thee,
p. 20As his sole object of felicity,
With wings of love in air of wonder fly,
O ease your hand, treat not so hard your slave;
In justice, pains come not till faults do call:
Or if I needs, sweet Judge, must torments have,
Use something else to chasten me withal
   Than those blest eyes, where all my hopes do dwell:
   No doom should make one’s heaven become his hell.

SLEEP

Come, Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,
The indifferent judge between the high and low;
With shield of proof shield me from out the prease
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw:
O make in me those civil wars to cease;
I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf of noise and blind of light,
A rosy garland and a weary head:
And if these things, as being thine in right,
   Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me
   Livelier than elsewhere Stella’s image see.

WAT’RED WAS MY WINE

Late tired with woe, even ready for to pine,
With rage of love, I called my love unkind;
She in whose eyes love, though unfelt, doth shine,
Sweet said that I true love in her should find.
p. 21I joyed; but straight thus wat’red was my wine,
That love she did, but loved a love not blind;
Which would not let me, whom she loved, decline
From nobler course, fit for my birth and mind:
And therefore, by her love’s authority,
Wiled me these tempests of vain love to fly,
And anchor fast myself on virtue’s shore.
Alas, if this the only metal be
Of love new-coined to help my beggary,
Dear, love me not, that you may love me more.

THOMAS LODGE
1556–1625

ROSALYND’S MADRIGAL

Love in my bosom, like a bee,
         Doth suck his sweet;
Now with his wings he plays with me,
         Now with his feet.
   Within mines eyes he makes his nest,
   His bed amidst my tender breast;
   My kisses are his daily feast,
   And yet he robs me of my rest:
         Ah! wanton, will ye?

And if I sleep, then percheth he
         With pretty flight,
And makes his pillow of my knee
         The livelong night.
   Strike I my lute, he tunes the string;
   He music plays if so I sing:
   He lends me every lovely thing,
   Yet cruel he my heart doth sting:
         Whist, wanton, will ye?

p. 22Else I with roses every day
         Will whip you hence,
And bind you, when you long to play,
         For your offence;
   I’ll shut my eyes to keep you in,
   I’ll make you fast it for your sin,
   I’ll count your power not worth a pin:
   Alas! what hereby shall I win,
         If he gainsay me?

What if I beat the wanton boy
         With many a rod?
He will repay me with annoy,
         Because a god.
   Then sit thou safely on my knee,
   And let thy bower my bosom be;
   Lurk in mine eyes, I like of thee!
   O Cupid! so thou pity me,
         Spare not, but play thee!

ROSALINE

   Like to the clear in highest sphere
   Where all imperial glory shines,
   Of selfsame colour is her hair
   Whether unfolded, or in twines:
      Heigh ho, fair Rosaline!
   Her eyes are sapphires set in snow,
   Resembling heaven by every wink;
   The gods do fear whenas they glow,
   And I do tremble when I think—
      Heigh ho, would she were mine!
   p. 23Her cheeks are like the blushing cloud
   That beautifies Aurora’s face,
   Or like the silver crimson shroud
   That Phœbus’ smiling looks doth grace;
      Heigh ho, fair Rosaline!
   Her lips are like two budded roses
   Whom ranks of lilies neighbour nigh,
   Within which bounds she balm encloses
   Apt to entice a deity:
      Heigh ho, would she were mine!

   Her neck is like a stately tower
   Where Love himself imprisoned lies,
   To watch for glances every hour
   From her divine and sacred eyes:
      Heigh ho, fair Rosaline!
   Her paps are centres of delight,
   Her breasts are orbs of heavenly frame,
   Where Nature moulds the dew of light
   To feed perfection with the same:
      Heigh ho, would she were mine!

   With orient pearl, with ruby red,
   With marble white, with sapphire blue
   Her body every way is fed,
   Yet soft in touch and sweet in view:
      Heigh ho, fair Rosaline!
   Nature herself her shape admires;
   The gods are wounded in her sight;
   And Love forsakes his heavenly fires
   And at her eyes his brand doth light:
      Heigh ho, would she were mine!

   p. 24Then muse not, Nymphs, though I bemoan
   The absence of fair Rosaline,
   Since for a fair there’s fairer none,
   Nor for her virtues so divine:
      Heigh ho, fair Rosaline;
Heigh ho, my heart! would God that she were mine!

THE SOLITARY SHEPHERD’S SONG

O shady vale, O fair enriched meads,
   O sacred woods, sweet fields, and rising mountains;
O painted flowers, green herbs where Flora treads,
   Refreshed by wanton winds and watery fountains!

O all ye winged choristers of wood,
   That perched aloft, your former pains report;
And straight again recount with pleasant mood
   Your present joys in sweet and seemly sort!

O all you creatures whosoever thrive
   On mother earth, in seas, by air, by fire;
More blest are you than I here under sun!
   Love dies in me, whenas he doth revive
In you; I perish under Beauty’s ire,
   Where after storms, winds, frosts, your life is won.

ANONYMOUS

I SAW MY LADY WEEP

      I saw my Lady weep,
And Sorrow proud to be advanced so
In those fair eyes where all perfections keep.
      Her face was full of woe,
But such a woe (believe me) as wins more hearts
Than Mirth can do with her enticing parts.

      p. 25Sorrow was there made fair,
And Passion, wise; Tears, a delightful thing;
Silence, beyond all speech, a wisdom rare:
      She made her sighs to sing,
And all things with so sweet a sadness move
As made my heart at once both grieve and love.

      O fairer than aught else
The world can show, leave off in time to grieve!
Enough, enough: your joyful look excels:
      Tears kill the heart, believe.
O strive not to be excellent in woe,
Which only breeds your beauty’s overthrow.

GEORGE PEELE
1558(?)–1597

FAREWELL TO ARMS

His golden locks time hath to silver turned;
   O time too swift!  O swiftness never ceasing!
His youth ’gainst age, and age at time, hath spurned,
   But spurned in vain; youth waneth by increasing:
Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen;
Duty, faith, love, are roots and ever green.

His helmet now shall make an hive for bees,
   And lovers’ sonnets turn to holy psalms;
A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees,
   And feed on prayers, that are old age’s alms:
But though from court to cottage he depart,
His saint is sure of his unspotted heart.

p. 26And when he saddest sits in homely cell,
   He’ll teach his swains this carol for a song,—
‘Blessed be the hearts that wish my sovereign well,
   Cursed be the souls that think her any wrong!’
Goddess, allow this aged man his right
To be your beadsman now that was your knight.

ROBERT GREENE
1560(?)–1592

FAWNIA

Ah, were she pitiful as she is fair,
   Or but as mild as she is seeming so,
Then were my hopes greater than my despair,
   Then all the world were heaven, nothing woe!
Ah, were her heart relenting as her hand,
   That seems to melt even with the mildest touch,
Then knew I where to seat me in a land
   Under wide heavens, but yet I know not such.
So as she shows, she seems the budding rose,
   Yet sweeter far than is an earthly flower,
Sovereign of beauty, like the spray she grows,
   Compassed she is with thorns and cankered flower;
Yet were she willing to be plucked and worn,
She would be gathered, though she grew on thorn.

Ah, when she sings, all music else be still,
   For none must be compared to her note;
Ne’er breathed such glee from Philomela’s bill,
   Nor from the morning-singer’s swelling throat.
p. 27Ah, when she riseth from her blissful bed,
   She comforts all the world, as doth the sun,
And at her sight the night’s foul vapour’s fled;
   When she is set, the gladsome day is done.
O glorious sun, imagine me thy west,
Shine in mine arms, and set thou in my breast!

SEPHESTIA’S SONG TO HER CHILD

Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee,
When thou art old there’s grief enough for thee.
      Mother’s wag, pretty boy,
      Father’s sorrow, father’s joy;
      When thy father first did see
      Such a boy by him and me,
      He was glad, I was woe,
      Fortune changed made him so,
      When he left his pretty boy
      Last his sorrow, first his joy.

Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee,
When thou art old, there’s grief enough for thee.
      Streaming tears that never stint,
      Like pearl drops from a flint,
      Fell by course from his eyes,
      That one another’s place supplies;
      Thus he grieved in every part,
      Tears of blood fell from his heart,
      When he left his pretty boy,
      Father’s sorrow, father’s joy.

Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee,
When thou art old, there’s grief enough for thee.
      The wanton smiled, father wept,
      Mother cried, baby leapt;
      p. 28More he crowed, more we cried,
      Nature could not sorrow hide:
      He must go, he must kiss
      Child and mother, baby bless,
      For he left his pretty boy,
      Father’s sorrow, father’s joy.
Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee,
When thou art old, there’s grief enough for thee.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
1562–1593

THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE

Come live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.

There will we sit upon the rocks
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

There will I make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold.

p. 29A belt of straw and ivy buds
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my Love.

Thy silver dishes for thy meat
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be
Prepared each day for thee and me.

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning;
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my Love.

SAMUEL DANIEL
1562–1619

SLEEP

Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born,
Relieve my languish, and restore the light;
With dark forgetting of my care return.
And let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth:
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,
Without the torment of the night’s untruth.
Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires,
To model forth the passions of the morrow;
Never let rising Sun approve you liars,
To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow:
   Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain,
   And never wake to feel the day’s disdain.

p. 30MY SPOTLESS LOVE

My spotless love hovers with purest wings
About the temple of the proudest frame,
Where blaze those lights, fairest of earthly things,
Which clear our clouded world with brightest flame.
My ambitious thoughts, confined in her face,
Affect no honour but what she can give;
My hopes do rest in limits of her grace;
I weigh no comfort unless she relieve.
For she that can my heart imparadise,
Holds in her fairest hand what dearest is,
My fortune’s wheel’s the circle of her eyes,
Whose rolling grace deign once a turn of bliss!
   All my life’s sweet consists in her alone;
   So much I love the most Unloving One.

MICHAEL DRAYTON
1563–1631

SINCE THERE’S NO HELP

Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part,—
Nay I have done, you get no more of me;
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free;
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows,
That we one jot of former love retain.
p. 31Now at the last gasp of love’s latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,
When faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And innocence is closing up his eyes,
   —Now if thou would’st, when all have given him over,
   From death to life thou might’st him yet recover!

JOSHUA SYLVESTER
1563–1618

WERE I AS BASE

Were I as base as is the lowly plain,
And you, my Love, as high as heaven above,
Yet should the thoughts of me your humble swain
Ascend to heaven, in honour of my Love.
Were I as high as heaven above the plain,
And you, my Love, as humble and as low
As are the deepest bottoms of the main,
Wheresoe’er you were, with you my love should go.
Were you the earth, dear Love, and I the skies,
My love should shine on you like to the sun,
And look upon you with ten thousand eyes
Till heaven waxed blind, and till the world were done.
   Wheresoe’er I am, below, or else above you,
   Wheresoe’er you are, my heart shall truly love you.

p. 32WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
1564–1616

Poor Soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
[Foiled by] those rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? is this thy body’s end?
Then, Soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more:—
   So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,
   And death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

O me! what eyes hath Love put in my head
Which have no correspondence with true sight;
Or if they have, where is my judgment fled
That censures falsely what they see aright?
If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,
What means the world to say it is not so?
If it be not, then love doth well denote
Love’s eye is not so true as all men’s: No,
How can it?  O how can love’s eye be true,
That is so vexed with watching and with tears?
No marvel then though I mistake my view:
The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.
   p. 33O cunning Love! with tears thou keep’st me blind,
   Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find!

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:—
   So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights;
Then in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have exprest
Ev’n such a beauty as you master now,
p. 34So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all, you prefiguring;
And for they looked but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
   For we, which now behold these present days,
   Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

That time of year thou may’st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang:
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest:
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by:
   This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
   To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen,
What old December’s bareness everywhere!
p. 35And yet this time removed was summer’s time:
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime
Like widowed wombs after their lord’s decease:
Yet this abundant issue seemed to me
But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute;
   Or if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer,
   That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend
Nor services to do, till you require:
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end-hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu:
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are how happy you make those;—
   So true a fool is love, that in your will
   Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate;
p. 36Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s heart, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on Thee—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
   For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
   That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

They that have power to hurt, and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,—
They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces,
And husband nature’s riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others, but stewards of their excellence.
The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die;
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
   For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
   Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

p. 37Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know’st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself thou gav’st, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me, to whom thou gav’st it, else mistaking;
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgment making.
   Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter;
   In sleep, a king; but waking, no such matter.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste;
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long-since-cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight.
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
p. 38The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before:
   But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
   All losses are restored, and sorrows end.

Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye
’Gainst whom the world could not hold argument,
Persuade my heart to this false perjury?
Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment.
A woman I forswore; but I will prove,
Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee:
My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love;
Thy grace being gained cures all disgrace in me.
My vow was breath, and breath a vapour is;
Then, thou fair sun, that on this earth doth shine,
Exhale this vapour vow; in thee it is:
If broken, then it is no fault of mine.
   If by me broke, what fool is not so wise
   To break an oath, to win a paradise?

The forward violet thus did I chide:
Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
If not from my love’s breath?  The purple pride
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
In my love’s veins thou hast too grossly dyed.
The lily I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stol’n thy hair:
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair;
p. 39A third, nor red nor white, had stol’n of both
And to his robbery had annexed thy breath;
But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth
A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
   More flowers I noted, yet I none could see
   But sweet or colour it had stol’n from thee.

O, lest the world should task you to recite
What merit lived in me, that you should love
After my death, dear love, forget me quite,
For you in me can nothing worthy prove;
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
To do more for me than mine own desert,
And hang more praise upon deceased I
Than niggard truth would willingly impart:
O, lest your true love may seem false in this,
That you for love speak well of me untrue,
My name be buried where my body is,
And live no more to shame nor me nor you.
   For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,
   And so should you, to love things nothing worth.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments.  Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
p. 40Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

How oft, when thou, my music, music play’st,
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway’st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,
At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand!
To be so tickled, they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more blest than living lips.
   Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
   Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
p. 41Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all-triumphant splendour on my brow,
But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath masked him from me now.
   Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth:
   Suns of the world may stain when heaven’s sun staineth.

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
   All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
   To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

FANCY

Tell me where is Fancy bred,
Or in the heart, or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?
      Reply, reply.

It is engendered in the eyes;
With gazing fed; and Fancy dies
In the cradle where it lies:
Let us all ring Fancy’s knell;
I’ll begin it,—Ding, dong, bell.
      Ding, dong, bell.

p. 42UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE

      Under the greenwood tree
      Who loves to lie with me,
      And tune his merry note
      Unto the sweet bird’s throat—
Come hither, come hither, come hither!
            Here shall he see
            No enemy
But winter and rough weather.

      Who doth ambition shun
      And loves to live i’ the sun,
      Seeking the food he eats
      And pleased with what he gets—
Come hither, come hither, come hither!
            Here shall he see
            No enemy
But winter and rough weather.

FAIRIES

Come unto these yellow sands,
   And then take hands:
Courtsied when you have, and kissed,
   The wild waves whist,
Foot it featly here and there;
And sweet Sprites the burthen bear.
      Hark, hark!
         Bow-bow.
      The watch-dogs bark:
         Bow-wow.
      Hark, hark!  I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer
      Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow!

p. 43COME AWAY

   Come away, come away, Death,
And in sad cypres let me be laid;
   Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
      O prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
      Did share it.

   Not a flower, not a flower sweet
On my black coffin let there be strown;
   Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown;
A thousand, thousand sighs to save,
      Lay me, O where
Sad true lover ne’er may find my grave
      To weep there.

FULL FATHOM FIVE

Full fathom five thy father lies;
   Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
   Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
   Hark! now I hear them,—
      Ding, dong, bell.

p. 44DIRGE

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun
   Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
   Home art gone and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o’ the great,
   Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
   To thee the reed is as the oak:
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning-flash
   Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
   Thou hast finished joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.

SONG

Take, O take those lips away
That so sweetly were forsworn,
And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn:
But my kisses bring again,
      Bring again—
Seals of love, but sealed in vain,
      Sealed in vain!

p. 45Hide, O hide those hills of snow,
   Which thy frozen bosom bears,
On whose tops the pinks that grow
   Are of those that April wears.
But first set my poor heart free
Bound in those icy chains by thee.

SONG

How should I your true love know
   From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff
   And his sandal shoon.

He is dead and gone, lady,
   He is dead and gone;
And at his head a green grass turf
   And at his heels a stone.

White his shroud as mountain snow,
   Larded with sweet showers,
Which bewept to the grave did go,
   With true love showers.

ANONYMOUS

TOM O’ BEDLAM

The morn’s my constant mistress,
   And the lovely owl my marrow;
      The naming drake,
      And the night-crow, make
   Me music to my sorrow.

p. 46I know more than Apollo;
   For oft when he lies sleeping,
      I behold the stars
      At mortal wars,
   And the rounded welkin weeping.

The moon embraces her shepherd,
   And the Queen of Love her warrior;
      While the first does horn
      The stars of the morn,
   And the next the heavenly farrier.

With a heart of furious fancies,
   Whereof I am commander:
      With a burning spear,
      And a horse of air,
   To the wilderness I wander;

With a Knight of ghosts and shadows,
   I summoned am to Tourney:
      Ten leagues beyond
      The wide world’s end;
   Methinks it is no journey.

THOMAS CAMPION
Circ. 1567–1620

KIND ARE HER ANSWERS

Kind are her answers,
But her performance keeps no day;
Breaks time, as dancers
From their own music when they stray.
All her free favours and smooth words
Wing my hopes in vain.
p. 47O, did ever voice so sweet but only feign?
   Can true love yield such delay,
   Converting joy to pain?

   Lost is our freedom
   When we submit to women so:
   Why do we need ’em
   When, in their best, they work our woe?
   There is no wisdom
   Can alter ends by fate prefixt.
O, why is the good of man with evil mixt?
   Never were days yet called two
   But one night went betwixt.

LAURA

Rose-cheeked Laura, come;
Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty’s
Silent music, either other
      Sweetly gracing.

Lovely forms do flow
From concent divinely framed;
Heaven is music, and thy beauty’s
      Birth is heavenly.

These dull notes we sing
Discords need for helps to grace them,
Only beauty purely loving
      Knows no discord.

But still moves delight,
Like clear springs renewed by flowing,
Ever perfect, ever in them-
      Selves eternal.

p. 48HER BACKED BOWER

Where she her sacred bower adorns
   The rivers clearly flow,
The groves and meadows swell with flowers,
   The winds all gently blow.
Her sun-like beauty shines so fair,
   Her spring can never fade.
Who then can blame the life that strives
   To harbour in her shade?

Her grace I sought, her love I wooed;
   Her love though I obtain,
No time, no toil, no vow, no faith
   Her wished grace can gain.
Yet truth can tell my heart is hers
   And her will I adore;
And from that love when I depart
   Let heaven view me no more!

Her roses with my prayers shall spring;
   And when her trees I praise,
Their boughs shall blossom, mellow fruit
   Shall straw her pleasant ways.
The words of hearty zeal have power
   High wonders to effect;
O, why should then her princely ear
   My words or zeal neglect?

If she my faith misdeems, or worth,
   Woe worth my hapless fate!
For though time can my truth reveal,
   That time will come too late.
p. 49And who can glory in the worth
   That cannot yield him grace?
Content in everything is not,
   Nor joy in every place.

But from her Bower of Joy since I
   Must now excluded be,
And she will not relieve my cares,
   Which none can help but she;
My comfort in her love shall dwell,
   Her love lodge in my breast,
And though not in her bower, yet I
   Shall in her temple rest.

FOLLOW

Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow,
   Though thou be black as night,
   And she made all of light;
Yet follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow!

Follow her whose light thy light depriveth;
   Though here thou live disgraced
   And she in heaven is placed;
Yet follow her whose light the world reviveth.

Follow those pure beams whose beauty burneth
   That so have scorched thee
   As thou still black must be,
Till her kind beams thy black to brightness turneth.

Follow her while yet her glory shineth;
   There comes a luckless night
   That will dim all her light;
And this the black unhappy shade divineth.

p. 50Follow still since so thy fates ordained;
   The sun must have his shade,
   Till both at once do fade;
The sun still proved, the shadow still disdained.

WHEN THOU MUST HOME

When thou must home to shades of underground,
   And there arrived, a new admired guest,
The beauteous spirits do engird thee round,
   White Iope, blithe Helen, and the rest,
To hear the stories of thy finished love,
   From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move;
Then wilt thou speak of banqueting delights,
   Of masks and revels which sweet youth did make,
Of tourneys and great challenges of knights,
   And all these triumphs for thy beauties’ sake:
When thou hast told these honours done to thee,
Then tell, O tell, how thou didst murther me.

WESTERN WIND

The peaceful western wind
   The winter storms hath tamed,
And nature in each kind
   The kind heat hath inflamed:
The forward buds so sweetly breathe
   Out of their earthly bowers,
That heav’n, which views their pomp beneath,
   Would fain be decked with flowers.

See how the morning smiles
   On her bright eastern hill,
And with soft steps beguiles
   Them that lie slumbering still!
p. 51The music-loving birds are come
   From cliffs and rocks unknown,
To see the trees and briars bloom
   That late were overflown.

What Saturn did destroy,
   Love’s Queen revives again;
And now her naked boy
   Doth in the fields remain,
Where he such pleasing change doth view
   In every living thing,
As if the world were born anew
   To gratify the Spring.

If all things life present,
   Why die my comforts then?
Why suffers my content?
   Am I the worst of men?
O beauty, be not thou accus’d
   Too justly in this case!
Unkindly if true love be used,
   ’Twill yield thee little grace.

FOLLOW YOUR SAINT

   Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet!
   Haste you, sad notes, fall at her flying feet!
   There, wrapped in cloud of sorrow, pity move,
And tell the ravisher of my soul I perish for her love;
   But if she scorns my never-ceasing pain,
Then burst with sighing in her sight and ne’er return again.

   p. 52All that I sang still to her praise did tend,
   Still she was first, still she my songs did end;
   Yet she my love and music both doth fly,
The music that her echo is and beauty’s sympathy.
   Then let my notes pursue her scornful flight!
It shall suffice that they were breathed and died for her delight.

CHERRY-RIPE

There is a garden in her face
   Where roses and white lilies blow;
A heavenly paradise is that place,
   Wherein all pleasant fruits do grow;
There cherries grow that none may buy,
Till Cherry-Ripe themselves do cry.

Those cherries fairly do enclose
   Of orient pearl a double row,
Which when her lovely laughter shows,
   They look like rosebuds filled with snow:
Yet them no peer nor prince may buy,
Till Cherry-Ripe themselves do cry.

Her eyes like angels watch them still;
   Her brows like bended bows do stand,
Threat’ning with piercing frowns to kill
   All that approach with eye or hand
These sacred cherries to come nigh,
Till Cherry-Ripe themselves do cry!

p. 53THOMAS NASH
1567–1601

SPRING

Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year’s pleasant king;
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring;
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing,
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, tu-witta-woo.

The palm and may make country-houses gay,
Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,
And hear we aye birds tune this merry lay,
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, tu-witta-woo.

The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,
Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit;
In every street these tunes our ears do greet,
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, tu-witta-woo.
         Spring, the sweet Spring!

JOHN DONNE
1573–1631

THIS HAPPY DREAM

Dear love, for nothing less than thee
Would I have broke this happy dream;
      It was a theme
For reason, much too strong for fantasy.
Therefore thou wak’dst me wisely; yet
My dream thou brok’st not but continu’dst it:
p. 54Thou art so true, that thoughts of thee suffice
To make dreams truth, and fables histories;
Enter these arms, for since thou thought’st it best
Not to dream all my dream, let’s act the rest.

As lightning or a taper’s light,
Thine eyes, and not thy noise, waked me.
      Yet I thought thee
(For thou lov’st truth) an angel at first sight;
But when I saw thou saw’st my heart,
And knew’st my thoughts beyond an angel’s art,
When thou knew’st what I dreamt, then thou knew’st when
Excess of joy would wake me, and cam’st then;
I must confess, it could not choose but be
Profane to think thee anything but thee.

Coming and staying showed thee thee,
But rising makes me doubt, that now
      Thou art not thou.
That love is weak, where fear’s as strong as he;
’Tis not all spirit, pure and brave,
If mixture it of fear, shame, honour, have.
Perchance as torches, which must ready be,
Men light and put out, so thou deal’st with me;
Thou cam’st to kindle, goest to come: then I
Will dream that hope again, but else would die.

DEATH

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

p. 55From rest and sleep which but thy picture be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.

Thou ’rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke.  Why swell’st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER

Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
   Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run,
   And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;
         For I have more.

Wilt Thou forgive that sin, which I have won
   Others to sin, and made my sins their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
   A year or two and wallowed in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;
         For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I’ve spun
   My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by Thyself that at my death Thy Son
   Shall shine, as He shines now and heretofore.
And having done that, Thou hast done;
         I fear no more.

p. 56THE FUNERAL

   Whoever comes to shroud me, do not harm
            Nor question much
   That subtle wreath of hair about mine arm;
   The mystery, the sign, you must not touch,
            For ’tis my outward soul,
   Viceroy to that which, unto heaven being gone,
            Will leave this to control
And keep these limbs, her provinces, from dissolution.

   But if the sinewy thread my brain lets fall
            Through every part,
   Can tie those parts and make me one of all;
   The hairs, which upward grew, and strength and art
            Have from a better brain,
   Can better do’t; except she meant that I
            By this should know my pain,
As prisoners are manacled when they’re condemned to die.

   Whate’er she meant by’t, bury it with me;
            For since I am
   Love’s martyr, it might breed idolatry
   If into others’ hands these relics came.
            As ’twas humility
   To afford to it all that a soul can do,
            So ’twas some bravery
That since you would have none of me, I bury some of you.

p. 57RICHARD BARNEFIELD
1574(?)–(?)

THE NIGHTINGALE

As it fell upon a day
In the merry month of May,
Sitting in a pleasant shade
Which a grove of myrtles made,
Beasts did leap and birds did sing,
Trees did grow and plants did spring;
Everything did banish moan
Save the Nightingale alone.
She, poor bird, as all forlorn,
Leaned her breast up-till a thorn,
And there sung the dolefull’st ditty
That to hear it was great pity.
Fie, fie, fie, now would she cry;
Teru, teru, by and by:
That to hear her so complain
Scarce I could from tears refrain;
For her griefs so lively shown
Made me think upon mine own.
—Ah, thought I, thou mourn’st in vain,
None takes pity on thy pain:
Senseless trees, they cannot hear thee,
Ruthless beasts, they will not cheer thee;
King Pandion, he is dead,
All thy friends are lapped in lead:
All thy fellow birds do sing
Careless of thy sorrowing:
Even so, poor bird, like thee
None alive will pity me.

p. 58BEN JONSON
1574–1637

CHARIS’ TRIUMPH

See the chariot at hand here of Love,
   Wherein my lady rideth!
Each that draws is a swan or a dove,
   And well the car Love guideth.
As she goes all hearts do duty
            Unto her beauty;
And enamoured do wish, so they might
            But enjoy such a sight,
That they still were to run by her side,
Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride.

Do but look on her eyes, they do light
   All that love’s world compriseth!
Do but look on her, she is bright
   As love’s star when it riseth!
Do but mark, her forehead’s smoother
            Than words that soothe her!
And from her arched brows, such a grace
            Sheds itself through the face,
As alone there triumphs to the life
All the gain, all the good of the elements’ strife.

Have you seen but a bright lily grow
   Before rude hands have touched it?
Have you marked but the fall of the snow
   Before the soil hath smutched it?
Have you felt the wool of the beaver,
            Or swan’s down ever?
p. 59Or have smelled o’ the bud o’ the brier?
            Or the nard in the fire?
Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
O so white!  O so soft!  O so sweet is she!

JEALOUSY

Wretched and foolish jealousy,
How cam’st thou thus to enter me?
         I ne’er was of thy kind:
Nor have I yet the narrow mind
         To vent that poor desire,
That others should not warm them at my fire:
         I wish the sun should shine
On all men’s fruits and flowers as well as mine.

But under the disguise of love,
Thou say’st thou only cam’st to prove
         What my affections were.
Think’st thou that love is helped by fear?
         Go, get thee quickly forth,
Love’s sickness and his noted want of worth,
         Seek doubting men to please.
I ne’er will owe my health to a disease.

EPITAPH ON ELIZABETH L. H.

Wouldst thou hear what many say
In a little?—reader, stay.

Underneath this stone doth lie
As much beauty as could die;
Which in life did harbour give
To more virtue than doth live.
p. 60If at all she had a fault,
Leave it buried in this vault.
One name was Elizabeth,
The other, let it sleep with death:
Fitter where it died to tell
Than that it lived at all.  Farewell!

HYMN TO DIANA

Queen and Huntress, chaste and fair,
   Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair
   State in wonted manner keep:
      Hesperus entreats thy light,
      Goddess excellently bright!

Earth, let not thy envious shade
   Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia’s shining orb was made
   Heaven to clear when day did close:
      Bless us then with wished sight,
      Goddess excellently bright!

Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
   And thy crystal-shining quiver;
Give unto the flying hart
   Space to breathe, how short soever:
      Thou that mak’st a day of night,
      Goddess excellently bright!

ON MY FIRST DAUGHTER

Here lies to each her parent’s ruth,
Mary, the daughter of their youth:
p. 61Yet all heaven’s gifts being heaven’s due,
It makes the father less to rue.
At six months’ end she parted hence
With safety of her innocence;
Whose soul Heaven’s Queen (whose name she bears),
In comfort of her mother’s tears,
Hath placed among her virgin train:
Where, while that severed doth remain,
This grave partakes the fleshly birth,
Which cover lightly, gentle earth.

ECHO’S LAMENT FOB NARCISSUS

Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears;
   Yet, slower yet; O faintly, gentle springs;
List to the heavy part the music bears;
   Woe weeps out her division when she sings.
            Droop herbs and flowers;
            Fall grief in showers,
            Our beauties are not ours;
               O, I could still,
Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
            Drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since nature’s pride is now a withered daffodil.

AN EPITAPH ON SALATHIEL PAVY, A CHILD OF QUEEN ELIZABETH’S CHAPEL

Weep with me, all you that read
   This little story;
And know, for whom a tear you shed
   Death’s self is sorry.
p. 62It was a child that so did thrive
   In grace and feature,
As Heaven and Nature seemed to strive
   Which owned the creature.
Years he numbered scarce thirteen
   When fates turned cruel,
Yet three filled zodiacs had he been
   The stage’s jewel;
And did act (what now we moan)
   Old men so duly,
Ah, sooth, the Parcae thought him one—
   He played so truly.
So by error to his fate
   They all consented,
But viewing him since, alas, too late
   They have repented;
And have sought, to give new birth,
   In baths to steep him;
But being much too good for earth,
   Heaven vows to keep him.

JOHN FLETCHER
1579–1625

INVOCATION TO SLEEP, FROM VALENTINIAN

Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes,
Brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose
On this afflicted prince; fall like a cloud
In gentle showers; give nothing that is loud
Or painful to his slumbers;—easy, sweet,
And as a purling stream, thou son of Night,
Pass by his troubled senses; sing his pain
Like hollow murmuring wind or silver rain;
p. 63Into this prince gently, oh, gently slide
And kiss him into slumbers like a bride!

TO BACCHUS

God Lyæus, ever young,
Ever honoured, ever sung;
Stained with blood of lusty grapes
In a thousand lusty shapes;
Dance upon the mazer’s brim,
In the crimson liquor swim;
From thy plenteous hand divine,
Let a river run with wine:
   God of Youth, let this day here
   Enter neither care nor fear.

JOHN WEBSTER
(?)–1625

SONG FROM THE DUCHESS OF MALFI

Hark, now everything is still,
The screech-owl and the whistler shrill
Call upon our dame aloud,
And bid her quickly don her shroud:

Much you had of land and rent,
Your length in clay’s now competent;
A long war disturbed your mind,
Here your perfect peace is signed.
Of what is’t fools make such vain keeping?
Sin their conception, their birth weeping,
Their life a general mist of error,
Their death a hideous storm of terror.
Strew your hair with powders sweet,
Don clean linen, bathe your feet,
p. 64And (the foul fiend more to check)
A crucifix let bless your neck;
’Tis now full tide ’tween night and day;
End your groan and come away.

SONG FROM THE DEVIL’S LAW-CASE

All the flowers of the spring
Meet to perfume our burying;
These have but their growing prime,
And man does flourish but his time.
Survey our progress from our birth;
We’re set, we grow, we turn to earth,
Courts adieu, and all delights,
All bewitching appetites!
Sweetest breath and clearest eye,
Like perfumes, go out and die;
And consequently this is done
As shadows wait upon the sun.
Vain the ambition of kings
Who seek by trophies and dead things
To leave a living name behind,
And weave but nets to catch the wind.

IN EARTH, DIRGE FROM VITTORIA COROMBONA

Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren,
Since o’er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.
Call unto his funeral dole
The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole
To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm
And (when gay tombs are robbed) sustain no harm;
But keep the wolf far thence, that’s foe to men,
For with his nails he’ll dig them up again.

p. 65WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN
1585–1649

SONG

Phœbus, arise!
And paint the sable skies
With azure, white, and red:
Rouse Memnon’s mother from her Tithon’s bed
That she thy càreer may with roses spread:
The nightingales thy coming each-where sing:
Make an eternal Spring!
Give life to this dark world which lieth dead;
Spread forth thy golden hair
In larger locks than thou wast wont before,
And emperor-like decore
With diadem of pearl thy temples fair:
Chase hence the ugly night
Which serves but to make dear thy glorious light.

This is that happy morn,
That day, long-wished day
Of all my life so dark
(If cruel stars have not my ruin sworn
And fates not hope betray),
Which, purely white, deserves
An everlasting diamond should it mark.
This is the morn should bring unto this grove
My Love, to hear and recompense my love.
Fair king, who all preserves,
But show thy blushing beams,
And thou two sweeter eyes
p. 66Shalt see than those which by Peneus’ streams
Did once thy heart surprise.
Nay, suns, which shine as clear
As thou, when two thou didst to Rome appear.
Now, Flora, deck thyself in fairest guise:
If that ye winds would hear
A voice surpassing far Amphion’s lyre,
Your stormy chiding stay;
Let Zephyr only breathe,
And with her tresses play,
Kissing sometimes these purple ports of death.
—The winds all silent are,
And Phœbus in his chair
Ensaffroning sea and air
Makes vanish every star:
Night like a drunkard reels
Beyond the hills, to shun his flaming wheels:
The fields with flowers are decked in every hue,
The clouds with orient gold spangle their blue;
Here is the pleasant place—
And nothing wanting is, save She, alas!

SLEEP, SILENCE’ CHILD

Sleep, Silence’ child, sweet father of soft rest,
Prince, whose approach peace to all mortals brings,
Indifferent host to shepherds and to kings,
Sole comforter of minds with grief oppressed;
Lo, by thy charming rod all breathing things
Lie slumb’ring, with forgetfulness possessed,
And yet o’er me to spread thy drowsy wings
Thou sparest, alas! who cannot be thy guest.
Since I am thine, O come, but with that face
To inward light which thou art wont to show;
p. 67With feigned solace ease a true-felt woe;
Or if, deaf god, thou do deny that grace,
   Come as thou wilt, and what thou wilt bequeath:
   I long to kiss the image of my death.

TO THE NIGHTINGALE

Dear chorister, who from these shadows sends,
Ere that the blushing morn dare show her light,
Such sad lamenting strains, that night attends,
Become all ear, stars stay to hear thy plight:
If one whose grief even reach of thought transcends,
Who ne’er, not in a dream, did taste delight,
May thee importune who like care pretends,
And seems to joy in woe, in woe’s despite;
Tell me (so may thou fortune milder try,
And long, long sing) for what thou thus complains,
Sith, winter gone, the sun in dappled sky
Now smiles on meadows, mountains, woods, and plains?
   The bird, as if my question did her move,
   With trembling wings sobbed forth, ‘I love!  I love!’

MADRIGAL I

   Like the Idalian queen,
   Her hair about her eyne,
With neck and breast’s ripe apples to be seen,
   At first glance of the morn,
In Cyprus’ gardens gathering those fair flowers
   Which of her blood were born,
I saw, but fainting saw, my paramours.
The graces naked danced about the place,
   The winds and trees amazed
   With silence on her gazed;
p. 68The flowers did smile, like those upon her face,
And as their aspen stalks those fingers band,
   That she might read my case
A hyacinth I wished me in her hand.

MADRIGAL II

   The beauty and the life
Of life’s and beauty’s fairest paragon,
O tears!  O grief! hung at a feeble thread
To which pale Atropos had set her knife;
   The soul with many a groan
   Had left each outward part,
And now did take its last leave of the heart;
Nought else did want, save death, even to be dead;
When the afflicted band about her bed,
Seeing so fair him come in lips, cheeks, eyes,
Cried, ‘Ah! and can death enter paradise?’

BEAUMONT and FLETCHER
1586–1616 and 1579–1625

I DIED TRUE

Lay a garland on my hearse
   Of the dismal yew;
Maidens willow branches bear;
   Say, I die true.

My love was false, but I was firm
   From my hour of birth.
Upon my buried body lie
   Lightly, gentle earth.

p. 69FRANCIS BEAUMONT
1586–1616

ON THE TOMBS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY

Mortality, behold and fear!
What a change of flesh is here!
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within these heaps of stones;
Here they lie, had realms and lands,
Who now want strength to stir their hands;
Where from their pulpits sealed with dust
They preach, ‘In greatness is no trust.’
Here’s an acre sown indeed
With the richest royallest seed
That the earth did e’er suck in
Since the first man died for sin:
Here the bones of birth have cried,
‘Though gods they were, as men they died!’
Here are sands, ignoble things,
Dropt from the ruined sides of kings:
Here’s a world of pomp and state
Buried in dust, once dead by fate.

SIR FRANCIS KYNASTON
1587–1642

TO CYNTHIA, ON CONCEALMENT OF HER BEAUTY

Do not conceal those radiant eyes,
The starlight of serenest skies;
Lest, wanting of their heavenly light,
They turn to chaos’ endless night!

p. 70Do not conceal those tresses fair,
The silken snares of thy curled hair
Lest, finding neither gold nor ore,
The curious silk-worm work no more.

Do not conceal those breasts of thine,
More snow-white than the Apennine;
Lest, if there be like cold and frost,
The lily be for ever lost.

Do not conceal that fragrant scent,
Thy breath, which to all flowers hath lent
Perfumes; lest, it being supprest,
No spices grow in all the rest.

Do not conceal thy heavenly voice,
Which makes the hearts of gods rejoice;
Lest, music hearing no such thing,
The nightingale forget to sing.

Do not conceal, nor yet eclipse,
Thy pearly teeth with coral lips;
Lest that the seas cease to bring forth
Gems which from thee have all thy worth.

Do not conceal no beauty, grace,
That’s either in thy mind or face;
Lest virtue overcome by vice
Make men believe no Paradise.

p. 71NATHANIEL FIELD
1587–1638

MATIN SONG

Rise, Lady Mistress, rise!
   The night hath tedious been;
No sleep hath fallen into mine eyes
   Nor slumbers made me sin.
Is not she a saint then, say,
Thoughts of whom keep sin away?

Rise, Madam! rise and give me light,
   Whom darkness still will cover,
And ignorance, darker than night,
   Till thou smile on thy lover.
All want day till thy beauty rise;
For the grey morn breaks from thine eyes.

GEORGE WITHER
1588–1667

SLEEP, BABY, SLEEP!

Sleep, baby, sleep! what ails my dear,
   What ails my darling thus to cry?
Be still, my child, and lend thine ear,
   To hear me sing thy lullaby.
My pretty lamb, forbear to weep;
Be still, my dear; sweet baby, sleep.

p. 72Thou blessed soul, what canst thou fear?
   What thing to thee can mischief do?
Thy God is now thy father dear,
   His holy Spouse thy mother too.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.

Though thy conception was in sin,
   A sacred bathing thou hast had;
And though thy birth unclean hath been,
   A blameless babe thou now art made.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.

While thus thy lullaby I sing,
   For thee great blessings ripening be;
Thine Eldest Brother is a king,
   And hath a kingdom bought for thee.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.

Sweet baby, sleep, and nothing fear;
   For whosoever thee offends
By thy protector threaten’d are,
   And God and angels are thy friends.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.

When God with us was dwelling here,
   In little babes He took delight;
Such innocents as thou, my dear,
   Are ever precious in His sight.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.

p. 73A little infant once was He;
   And strength in weakness then was laid
Upon His Virgin Mother’s knee,
   That power to thee might be convey’d.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.

In this thy frailty and thy need
   He friends and helpers doth prepare,
Which thee shall cherish, clothe, and feed,
   For of thy weal they tender are.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.

The King of kings, when He was born,
   Had not so much for outward ease;
By Him such dressings were not worn,
   Nor such like swaddling-clothes as these.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.

Within a manger lodged thy Lord,
   Where oxen lay and asses fed:
Warm rooms we do to thee afford,
   An easy cradle or a bed.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.

The wants that He did then sustain
   Have purchased wealth, my babe, for thee;
And by His torments and His pain
   Thy rest and ease secured be.
My baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.

p. 74Thou hast, yet more, to perfect this,
   A promise and an earnest got
Of gaining everlasting bliss,
   Though thou, my babe, perceiv’st it not.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.

THOMAS CAREW
1589–1639

SONG

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauties, orient deep,
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters, and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more if east or west
The phœnix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies!

p. 75TO MY INCONSTANT MISTRESS

When thou, poor Excommunicate
   From all the joys of Love, shalt see
The full reward and glorious fate
   Which my strong faith shall purchase me,
   Then curse thine own Inconstancy.

A fairer hand than thine shall cure
   That heart which thy false oaths did wound;
And to my soul a soul more pure
   Than thine shall by Love’s hand be bound,
   And both with equal glory crowned.

Then shalt thou weep, entreat, complain
   To Love, as I did once to thee:
When all thy tears shall be as vain
   As mine were then: for thou shalt be
   Damned for thy false Apostacy.

AN HYMENEAL DIALOGUE

Groom.—Tell me, my Love, since Hymen tied
   The holy knot, hast thou not felt
A new-infused spirit slide
   Into thy breast, whilst mine did melt?

Bride.—First tell me, Sweet, whose words were those?
   For though your voice the air did break,
Yet did my soul the sense compose,
   And through your lips my heart did speak.

p. 76Groom.—Then I perceive, when from the flame
   Of love my scorched soul did retire,
Your frozen heart in that place came,
   And sweetly melted in that fire.

Bride.—’Tis true, for when that mutual change
   Of souls was made, with equal gain,
I straight might feel diffused a strange
   But gentle heat through every vein.

Bride.—Thy bosom then I’ll make my nest,
   Since there my willing soul doth perch.
Groom.—And for my heart, in thy chaste breast,
   I’ll make an everlasting search.

O blest disunion, that doth so
   Our bodies from our souls divide;
As two to one, and one four grow,
   Each by contraction multiplied.

INGRATEFUL BEAUTY THREATENED

Know, Celia (since thou art so proud),
   ’Twas I that gave thee thy renown!
Thou hadst in the forgotten crowd
   Of common beauties lived unknown,
Had not my verse exhaled thy name,
And with it imped the wings of fame.

That killing power is none of thine;
   I gave it to thy voice and eyes;
Thy sweets, thy graces, all are mine;
   Thou art my star, shin’st in my skies;
Then dart not from thy borrowed sphere
Lightning on him that fixed thee there.

p. 77Tempt me with such affrights no more,
   Lest what I made I uncreate!
Let fools thy mystic forms adore;
   I’ll know thee in thy mortal state.
Wise poets, that wrapped the truth in tales,
Knew her themselves through all her veils.

THOMAS DEKKER
Circa 1570–1641

LULLABY

Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,
Smiles awake you when you rise.
Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby.
Bock them, rock a lullaby.

Care is heavy, therefore sleep you,
You are care, and care must keep you.
Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby.
Rock them, rock a lullaby.

SWEET CONTENT

Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers?
         O sweet content!
Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplexed?
         O punishment!
Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vexed
To add to golden numbers, golden numbers?
p. 78O sweet content!  O sweet, O sweet content!
   Work apace, apace, apace, apace;
   Honest labour bears a lovely face;
   Then hey nonny nonny, hey nonny nonny!

Canst drink the waters of the crisped spring?
   O sweet content!
Swimm’st thou in wealth, yet sink’st in thine own tears?
   O punishment!
Then he that patiently want’s burden bears
No burden bears, but is a king, a king!
O sweet content!  O sweet, O sweet content!
   Work apace, apace, apace, apace;
   Honest labour bears a lovely face;
   Then hey nonny nonny, hey nonny nonny!

THOMAS HEYWOOD
—1649?

GOOD-MORROW

Pack, clouds, away, and welcome day,
   With night we banish sorrow;
Sweet air blow soft, mount larks aloft
   To give my Love good-morrow!
Wings from the wind to please her mind,
   Notes from the lark I’ll borrow;
Bird, prune thy wing, nightingale sing,
   To give my Love good-morrow;
   To give my Love good-morrow,
   Notes from them both I’ll borrow.

p. 79Wake from thy nest, Robin-redbreast,
   Sing, birds, in every furrow;
And from each hill, let music shrill
   Give my fair Love good-morrow!
Blackbird and thrush in every bush,
   Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow!
You pretty elves, amongst yourselves,
   Sing my fair Love good-morrow;
   To give my Love good-morrow
   Sing, birds, in every furrow!

ROBERT HERRICK
1591–1674

TO DIANEME

Sweet, be not proud of those two eyes
Which star-like sparkle in their skies;
Nor be you proud, that you can see
All hearts your captives; yours yet free.
Be you not proud of that rich hair
Which wantons with the love-sick air;
Whenas that ruby which you wear,
Sunk from the tip of your soft ear,
Will last to be a precious stone
When all your world of beauty’s gone.

TO MEADOWS

Ye have been fresh and green,
   Ye have been filled with flowers;
And ye the walks have been
   Where maids have spent their hours.

p. 80Ye have beheld how they
   With wicker arks did come
To kiss and bear away
   The richer cowslips home.

You’ve heard them sweetly sing,
   And seen them in a round,
Each virgin, like a Spring,
   With honeysuckles crowned.

But now we see none here
   Whose silvery feet did tread,
And with dishevelled hair
   Adorned this smoother mead.

Like unthrifts, having spent
   Your stock, and needy grown,
You’re left here to lament
   Your poor estates alone.

TO BLOSSOMS

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.

What, were ye born to be
   An hour or half’s delight,
   And so to bid good-night?
’Twas pity Nature brought ye forth
   Merely to show your worth,
      And lose you quite!

p. 81But 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.

TO DAFFODILS

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
   You haste away so soon:
As yet the early-rising Sun
   Has not attained his noon.
         Stay, stay,
   Until the hasting day
         Has run
   But to the even-song;
And, having prayed together, we
   Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,
   We have as short a Spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay
   As you, or any thing.
         We die,
   As your hours do, and dry
         Away,
   Like to the Summer’s rain,
Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,
   Ne’er to be found again.

p. 82TO VIOLETS

Welcome, Maids of Honour!
   You do bring
   In the Spring,
And wait upon her.

She has Virgins many,
   Fresh and fair;
   Yet you are
More sweet than any.

Ye are the Maiden Posies,
   And so graced
   To be placed
’Fore damask roses.

But, though thus respected,
   By and by
   Ye do lie,
Poor girls, neglected.

TO PRIMROSES

Why do ye weep, sweet babes? can tears
            Speak grief in you,
            Who were but born
      Just as the modest morn
      Teemed her refreshing dew?
   Alas, you have not known that shower
            That mars a flower;
            Nor felt th’ unkind
      Breath of a blasting wind;
      Nor are ye worn with years;
         p. 83Or warped as we,
      Who think it strange to see
Such pretty flowers, like to orphans young,
To speak by tears, before ye have a tongue.

Speak, whimp’ring 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 care are, and with tears brought forth.

TO DAISIES, NOT TO SHUT SO SOON

Shut not so soon; the dull-eyed night
   Hath not as yet begun
To make a seizure on the light,
   Or to seal up the sun.

No marigolds yet closed are,
   No shadows great appear;
Nor doth the early shepherd’s star
   Shine like a spangle here.

p. 84Stay but till my Julia close
   Her life-begetting eye,
And let the whole world then dispose
   Itself to live or die.

TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE MUCH OF TIME

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
   Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
   To-morrow will be dying.

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.

That 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.

Then be not coy, but use your time;
   And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
   You may for ever tarry.

DRESS

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:—
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction,—
p. 85An erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher,—
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbands to flow confusedly,—
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat,—
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility,—
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.

IN SILKS

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free;
O how that glittering taketh me!

CORINNA’S GOING A-MAYING

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 bowed toward the east,
Above an hour since; yet you not drest—
      Nay! not so much as out of bed,
      When all the birds have matins said,
      p. 86And sung their thankful hymns: ’tis sin,
      Nay, profanation, to keep in—
Whenas a thousand virgins on this day
Spring, sooner than the lark, to fetch in May.

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.

Come, my Corinna, come! and coming, mark
How each field turns a street, each street a park
      Made green, and trimmed 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 white-thorn neatly 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:
p. 87And sin no more, as we have done, by staying:
But, my Corinna, come! let’s go a-Maying.

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 white-thorn laden home.
      Some have despatched their cakes and cream,
      Before that we have left to dream:
And some have wept, and wooed, 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 keys betraying
This night, and locks picked:—Yet we’re not a-Maying.

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 drowned with us in endless night.
Then while time serves, and we are but decaying,
Come, my Corinna, come! let’s go a-Maying.

p. 88GRACE FOR A CHILD

Here, a little child, I stand,
Heaving up my either hand:
Cold as paddocks though they be,
Here I lift them up to Thee,
For a benison to fall
On our meat and on our all.  Amen.

BEN JONSON

               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
Out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine.

               My Ben!
         Or come again
         Or send to us
      Thy wit’s great over-plus;
         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.

p. 89GEORGE HERBERT
1593–1632

HOLY BAPTISM

      Since, Lord, to Thee
   A narrow way and little gate
Is all the passage, on my infancy
   Thou didst lay hold, and antedate
      My faith in me.

      O, let me still
   Write Thee ‘great God,’ and me ‘a child’;
Let me be soft and supple to Thy will,
   Small to myself, to others mild,
      Behither ill.

      Although by stealth
   My flesh get on; yet let her sister,
My soul, bid nothing but preserve her wealth:
   The growth of flesh is but a blister;
      Childhood is health.

VIRTUE

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky,
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,
         For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave,
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,
Thy root is ever in its grave,
         And thou must die.

p. 90Sweet Spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie,
My music shows ye have your closes,
         And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like seasoned timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
         Then chiefly lives.

UNKINDNESS

Lord, make me coy and tender to offend:
In friendship, first I think if that agree
            Which I intend
   Unto my friend’s intent and end;
I would not use a friend as I use Thee.

If any touch my friend or his good name,
It is my honour and my love-to free
            His blasted fame
   From the least spot or thought of blame;
I could not use a friend as I use Thee.

My friend may spit upon my curious floor;
Would he have gold?  I lend it instantly;
            But let the poor,
   And Thee within them, starve at door;
I cannot use a friend as I use Thee.

When that my friend pretendeth to a place,
I quit my interest, and leave it free;
            But when Thy grace
   Sues for my heart, I Thee displace;
Nor would I use a friend as I use Thee.

p. 91Yet can a friend what Thou hast done fulfil?
O, write in brass, ‘My God upon a tree
            His blood did spill,
   Only to purchase my good-will’;
Yet use I not my foes as I use Thee.

LOVE

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
            Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
            From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
            If I lacked anything.

‘A guest,’ I answered, ‘worthy to be here’:
            Love said, ‘You shall be he.’
‘I, the unkind, ungrateful?  Ah, my dear!
            I cannot look on thee.’
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
            ‘Who made the eyes but I?’

‘Truth, Lord; but I have marred them; let my shame
            Go where it doth deserve.’
‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘who bore the blame?
            ‘My dear, then I will serve.’
‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’
            So I did sit and eat.

THE PULLEY

      When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
‘Let us,’ said He, ‘pour on him all we can;
Let the world’s riches, which dispersed lie,
      Contract into a span.’

      p. 92So strength first made a way,
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour pleasure;
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all His treasure,
      Rest in the bottom lay.

      ‘For if I should,’ said He,
‘Bestow this jewel also on My creature,
He would adore My gifts instead of Me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
      So both should losers be.

      ‘Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
      May toss him to My breast.’

THE COLLAR

I struck the board, and cried, ‘No more;
         I will abroad.
   What, shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free; free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.
         Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?
         Sure there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
Before my tears did drown it;
p. 93Is the year only lost to me?
Have I no bays to crown it,
No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted,
         All wasted?
Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,
         And thou hast hands.
Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures; leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit and not; forsake thy cage,
         Thy rope of sands,
Which petty thoughts have made; and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw,
         And be thy law,
While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
         Away! take heed;
         I will abroad.
Call in thy death’s-head there, tie-up thy fears;
         He that forbears
To suit and serve his need
         Deserves his load.’
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
         At every word,
Methought I heard one calling, ‘Child’;
         And I replied, ‘My Lord.’

LIFE

I made a posy while the day ran by:
Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
   My life within this band;
But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they
By noon most cunningly did steal away,
   And withered in my hand.

p. 94My hand was next to them, and then my heart;
I took, without more thinking, in good part
   Time’s gentle admonition;
Who did so sweetly Death’s sad taste convey,
Making my mind to smell my fatal day,
   Yet sugaring the suspicion.

Farewell, dear flowers; sweetly your time ye spent,
Fit while ye lived for smell or ornament,
   And after death for cures.
I follow straight, without complaints or grief,
Since if my scent be good, I care not if
   It be as short as yours.

MISERY

Lord, let the angels praise Thy name:
   Man is a foolish thing, a foolish thing;
Folly and sin play all his game;
   His house still burns, and yet he still doth sing—
            Man is but grass,
         He knows it—‘Fill the glass.’

How canst Thou brook his foolishness?
   Why, he’ll not lose a cup of drink for Thee:
Bid him but temper his excess,
   Not he: he knows where he can better be—
            As he will swear—
         Than to serve Thee in fear.

What strange pollutions doth he wed,
   And make his own! as if none knew but he.
p. 95No man shall beat into his head
   That Thou within his curtains drawn canst see:
            ‘They are of cloth
         Where never yet came moth.’

The best of men, turn but Thy hand
   For one poor minute, stumble at a pin;
They would not have their actions scanned,
   Nor any sorrow tell them that they sin,
            Though it be small,
         And measure not the fall.

They quarrel Thee, and would give over
   The bargain made to serve Thee; but Thy love
Holds them unto it, and doth cover
   Their follies with the wings of Thy mild Dove,
            Not suffering those
         Who would, to be Thy foes.

My God, man cannot praise Thy name:
   Thou art all brightness, perfect purity;
The sun holds down his head for shame,
   Dead with eclipses, when we speak of Thee:
            How shall infection
         Presume on Thy perfection?

As dirty hands foul all they touch,
   And those things most which are most pure and fine,
So our clay-hearts, even when we crouch
   To sing Thy praises, make them less divine:
            Yet either this
         Or none Thy portion is.

p. 96Man cannot serve Thee: let him go
   And serve the swine—there, that is his delight:
He doth not like this virtue, no;
   Give him his dirt to wallow in all night:
            ‘These preachers make
         His head to shoot and ache.’

O foolish man! where are thine eyes?
   How hast thou lost them in a crowd of cares!
Thou pull’st the rug, and wilt not rise,
   No, not to purchase the whole pack of stars:
            ‘There let them shine;
         Thou must go sleep or dine.’

The bird that sees a dainty bower
   Made in the tree, where she was wont to sit,
Wonders and sings, but not His power
   Who made the arbour; this exceeds her wit.
            But man doth know
         The Spring whence all things flow:

And yet, as though he knew it not,
   His knowledge winks, and lets his humours reign;
They make his life a constant blot,
   And all the blood of God to run in vain.
            Ah, wretch! what verse
         Can thy strange ways rehearse?

Indeed, at first man was a treasure,
   A box of jewels, shop of rarities,
A ring whose posy was ‘my pleasure’;
   He was a garden in a Paradise;
            Glory and grace
         Did crown his heart and face.

p. 97But sin hath fooled him; now he is
   A lump of flesh, without a foot or wing
To raise him to a glimpse of bliss;
   A sick-tossed vessel, dashing on each thing,
            Nay, his own shelf:
         My God, I mean myself.

JAMES SHIRLEY
1596–1666

EQUALITY

The glories of our blood and state
   Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate;
   Death lays his icy hand on kings:
         Sceptre and Crown
         Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.

Some men with swords may reap the field,
   And plant fresh laurels where they kill:
But their strong nerves at last must yield;
   They tame but one another still:
         Early or late
         They stoop to fate,
And must give up their murmuring breath
When they, pale captives, creep to death.

The garlands wither on your brow;
   Then boast no more your mighty deeds;
Upon Death’s purple altar now
   See where the victor-victim bleeds:
         p. 98Your heads must come
         To the cold tomb;
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust.

ANONYMOUS
Circa 1603

LULLABY

Weep you no more, sad fountains;
      What need you flow so fast?
Look how the snowy mountains
      Heaven’s sun doth gently waste.
   But my sun’s heavenly eyes
         View not your weeping,
         That now lies sleeping
   Softly, now softly lies
               Sleeping.

Sleep is a reconciling,
      A rest that peace begets;
Doth not the sun rise smiling
      When fair at eve he sets?
   Rest you, then, rest, sad eyes,
         Melt not in weeping,
         While she lies sleeping
   Softly, now softly lies
               Sleeping.

p. 99SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT
1605–1668

MORNING

The lark now leaves his watery nest,
   And climbing shakes his dewy wings,
He takes your window for the east,
   And to implore your light, he sings;
Awake, awake, the morn will never rise,
Till she can dress her beauty at your eyes.

The merchant bows unto the seaman’s star,
   The ploughman from the sun his season takes;
But still the lover wonders what they are,
   Who look for day before his mistress wakes;
Awake, awake, break through your veils of lawn!
Then draw your curtains and begin the dawn.

EDMUND WALLER
1605–1687

THE ROSE

      Go, lovely rose!
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
      That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.

      p. 100Tell her that’s young
And shuns to have her graces spied,
      That hadst thou sprung
In deserts, where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.

      Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired;
      Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.

      Then die! that she
The common fate of all things rare
      May read in thee:
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!

THOMAS RANDOLPH
1606–1634?

HIS MISTRESS

I have a mistress, for perfections rare
In every eye, but in my thoughts most fair.
Like tapers on the altar shine her eyes;
Her breath is the perfume of sacrifice;
And wheresoe’er my fancy would begin,
Still her perfection lets religion in.
We sit and talk, and kiss away the hours
As chastely as the morning dews kiss flowers.
I touch her, like my beads, with devout care,
And come unto my courtship as my prayer.

p. 101CHARLES BEST
17th century

A SONNET OF THE MOON

Look how the pale Queen of the silent night
   Doth cause the ocean to attend upon her,
And he, as long as she is in his sight,
   With his full tide is ready her to honour:

But when the silver waggon of the Moon
   Is mounted up so high he cannot follow,
The sea calls home his crystal waves to moan,
   And with low ebb doth manifest his sorrow.

So you that are the sovereign of my heart,
   Have all my joys attending on your will,
My joys low ebbing when you do depart,
   When you return, their tide my heart doth fill.

So as you come, and as you do depart,
Joys ebb and flow within my tender heart.

JOHN MILTON
1608–1674

HYMN ON CHRIST’S NATIVITY

         It was the winter wild
         While the heaven-born Child
   All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
         Nature in awe to Him
         Had doffed her gaudy trim,
   p. 102With her great Master so to sympathise:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.

         Only with speeches fair
         She woos the gentle air
   To hide her guilty front with innocent snow;
         And on her naked shame,
         Pollute with sinful blame,
   The saintly veil of maiden white to throw;
Confounded, that her Maker’s eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

         But He, her fears to cease,
         Sent down the meek-eyed Peace;
   She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding
         Down through the turning sphere,
         His ready harbinger,
   With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;
And waving wide her myrtle wand,
She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.

         No war, or battle’s sound
         Was heard the world around:
   The idle spear and shield were high uphung;
         The hooked chariot stood
         Unstained with hostile blood;
   The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.

         But peaceful was the night
         Wherein the Prince of Light
   p. 103His reign of peace upon the earth began:
         The winds, with wonder whist,
         Smoothly the waters kist,
   Whispering new joys to the mild ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.

         The stars, with deep amaze,
         Stand fixed in steadfast gaze,
   Bending one way their precious influence;
         And will not take their flight
         For all the morning light,
   Or Lucifer that often warned them thence;
But in their glimmering orbs did glow,
Until their Lord Himself bespake, and bid them go.

         And though the shady gloom
         Had given day her room,
   The sun himself withheld his wonted speed,
         And hid his head for shame,
         As his inferior flame
   The new-enlightened world no more should need;
He saw a greater Sun appear
Than his bright throne or burning axletree could bear.

         The shepherds on the lawn,
         Or ere the point of dawn,
   Sat simply chatting in a rustic row;
         Full little thought they than
         That the mighty Pan
   Was kindly come to live with them below;
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.

         p. 104When such music sweet
         Their hearts and ears did greet
   As never was by mortal fingers strook—
         Divinely-warbled voice
         Answering the stringed noise,
   As all their souls in blissful rapture took;
The air, such pleasure loth to lose,
With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.

         Nature, that heard such sound
         Beneath the hollow round
   Of Cynthia’s seat the airy region thrilling,
         Now was almost won
         To think her part was done,
   And that her reign had here its last fulfilling;
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all Heaven and Earth in happier union.

         At last surrounds their sight
         A globe of circular light,
   That with long beams the shamefaced night arrayed;
         The helmed Cherubim
         And sworded Seraphim
   Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displayed,
Harping in loud and solemn quire,
With unexpressive notes, to Heaven’s new-born Heir.

         Such music (as ’tis said)
         Before was never made
   But when of old the Sons of Morning sung,
         While the Creator great
         His constellations set,
   p. 105And the well-balanced world on hinges hung;
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.

         Ring out, ye crystal spheres!
         Once bless our human ears,
   If ye have power to touch our senses so;
         And let your silver chime
         Move in melodious time;
   And let the bass of heaven’s deep organ blow;
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort to the angelic symphony.

         For if such holy song
         Enwrap our fancy long,
   Time will run back and fetch the age of gold;
         And speckled Vanity
         Will sicken soon and die,
   And leprous Sin will melt from earthly mould;
And Hell itself will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.

         Yea, Truth and Justice then
         Will down return to men,
   Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,
         Mercy will sit between
         Throned in celestial sheen,
   With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering;
And Heaven, as at some festival,
Will open wide the gates of her high palace-hall.

         But wisest Fate says No;
         This must not yet be so;
   The Babe yet lies in smiling infancy
         p. 106That on the bitter cross
         Must redeem our loss;
   So both Himself and us to glorify:
Yet first, to those ychained in sleep,
The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep,

         With such a horrid clang
         As on Mount Sinai rang,
   While the red fire and smouldering clouds out-brake:
         The aged Earth aghast
         With terror of that blast
   Shall from the surface to the centre shake,
When, at the world’s last session,
The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread His throne.

         And then at last our bliss
         Full and perfect is,
   But now begins; for from this happy day
         The old Dragon under ground,
         In straiter limits bound,
   Not half so far casts his usurped sway;
And, wroth to see his kingdom fail,
Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.

         The Oracles are dumb;
         No voice or hideous hum
   Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
         Apollo from his shrine
         Can no more divine,
   With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving:
No nightly trance or breathed spell
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

         p. 107The lonely mountains o’er
         And the resounding shore
   A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;
         From haunted spring and dale
         Edged with poplar pale,
   The parting Genius is with sighing sent;
With flower-inwoven tresses torn
The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

         In consecrated earth
         And on the holy hearth
   The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint;
         In urns, and altars round,
         A drear and dying sound
   Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint;
And the chill marble seems to sweat,
While each peculiar Power forgoes his wonted seat.

         Peor and Baalim
         Forsake their temples dim,
   With that twice-battered god of Palestine;
         And mooned Ashtaroth,
         Heaven’s queen and mother both,
   Now sits not girt with tapers’ holy shine;
The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn:
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn.

         And sullen Moloch, fled,
         Hath left in shadows dread
   His burning idol all of blackest hue;
         In vain with cymbals’ ring
         They call the grisly king,
   p. 108In dismal dance about the furnace blue;
The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste.

         Nor is Osiris seen
         In Memphian grove or green,
   Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings loud:
         Nor can he be at rest
         Within his sacred chest;
   Nought but profoundest Hell can be his shroud;
In vain with timbrelled anthems dark
The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipped ark.

         He feels from Juda’s land
         The dreaded Infant’s hand;
   The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;
         Nor all the gods beside
         Longer dare abide,
   Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:
Our Babe, to show His Godhead true,
Can in His swaddling bands control the damned crew.

         So, when the sun in bed,
         Curtained with cloudy red,
   Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,
         The flocking shadows pale
         Troop to the infernal jail,
   Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave;
And the yellow-skirted fays
Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.

         But see! the Virgin blest
         Hath laid her Babe to rest;
   p. 109Time is, our tedious song should here have ending:
         Heaven’s youngest-teemed star
         Hath fixed her polished car,
   Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending:
And all about the courtly stable
Bright-harnessed Angels sit in order serviceable.

L’ALLEGRO

Hence, loathed Melancholy,
   Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born
In Stygian cave forlorn,
   ’Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy!
Find out some uncouth cell
   Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings
And the night-raven sings;
   There under ebon shades, and low-browed rocks
As ragged as thy locks,
   In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

   But come, thou goddess fair and free,
In heaven yclept Euphrosyne,
And by men, heart-easing Mirth,
Whom lovely Venus at a birth
With two sister Graces more
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;
Or whether (as some sager sing)
The frolic wind that breathes the spring,
Zephyr, with Aurora playing,
As he met her once a-Maying—
There on beds of violets blue
And fresh-blown roses washed in dew
p. 110Filled her with thee, a daughter fair,
So buxom, blithe, and debonair.
   Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful jollity,
Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe’s cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides:—
Come, and trip it as you go
On the light fantastic toe;
And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee
In unreproved pleasures free;
To hear the lark begin his flight
And singing startle the dull night
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come, in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow
Through the sweetbriar, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine:
While the cock with lively din
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn-door,
Stoutly struts his dames before:
Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,
From the side of some hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill:
p. 111Sometime walking, not unseen,
By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate
Where the great Sun begins his state
Robed in flames and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight;
While the ploughman, near at hand,
Whistles o’er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.
   Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures
Whilst the landscape round it measures;
Russet lawns, and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains, on whose barren breast
The labouring clouds do often rest;
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide;
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some Beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.
   Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis, met,
Are at their savoury dinner set
Of herbs, and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses;
And then in haste her bower she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
Or, if the earlier season lead,
To the tanned haycock in the mead.
   p. 112Sometimes with secure delight
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound
To many a youth and many a maid,
Dancing in the chequered shade;
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday,
Till the live-long day-light fail:
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,
With stories told of many a feat,
How Faery Mab the junkets eat:—
She was pinched and pulled, she said;
And he by Friar’s lantern led;
Tells how the grudging Goblin sweat
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day-labourers could not end;
Then lies him down the lubber fiend,
And, stretched out all the chimney’s length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength;
And crop-full out of doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings.
   Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,
By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.
   Towered cities please us then
And the busy hum of men,
Where throngs of knights and barons bold,
In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold,
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize
Of wit or arms, while both contend
To win her grace, whom all commend.
p. 113There let Hymen oft appear
In saffron robe, with taper clear,
And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With mask, and antique pageantry;
Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream.
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson’s learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.
   And ever against eating cares
Lap me in soft Lydian airs
Married to immortal verse,
Such as the meeting soul may pierce
In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony;
That Orpheus’ self may heave his head
From golden slumber, on a bed
Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half-regained Eurydice.
   These delights if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

IL PENSEROSO

Hence, vain deluding Joys,
   The brood of Folly without father bred!
p. 114How little you bestead
   Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys!
Dwell in some idle brain,
   And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess
As thick and numberless
   As the gay motes that people the sunbeams,
Or likest hovering dreams,
   The fickle pensioners of Morpheus’ train.

   But hail, thou goddess sage and holy,
Hail, divinest Melancholy!
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight,
And therefore to our weaker view
O’erlaid with black, staid Wisdom’s hue;
Black, but such as in esteem
Prince Memnon’s sister might beseem,
Or that starred Ethiop queen that strove
To set her beauty’s praise above
The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended:
Yet thou art higher far descended:
Thee bright-haired Vesta, long of yore,
To solitary Saturn bore;
His daughter she; in Saturn’s reign
Such mixture was not held a stain:
Oft in glimmering bowers and glades
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida’s inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove.
   Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain
Flowing with majestic train
p. 115And sable stole of Cipres lawn
Over thy decent shoulders drawn:
Come, but keep thy wonted state,
With even step and musing gait,
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes:
There, held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble, till
With a sad leaden downward cast
Thou fix them on the earth as fast:
And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet,
Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet,
And hears the Muses in a ring
Aye round about Jove’s altar sing:
And add to these retired Leisure
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure:—
But first and chiefest, with thee bring
Him that yon soars on golden wing,
Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne,
The cherub Contemplation;
And the mute Silence hist along,
’Less Philomel will deign a song
In her sweetest, saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of Night,
While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke
Gently o’er the accustomed oak.
   Sweet bird, that shunn’st the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy!
Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among,
I woo to hear thy even-song;
And missing thee, I walk unseen
On the dry smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wandering Moon
Riding near her highest noon,
p. 116Like one that had been led astray
Through the heaven’s wide pathless way,
And oft, as if her head she bowed,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.
   Oft on a plat of rising ground
I hear the far-off curfew sound
Over some wide-watered shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar;
Or, if the air will not permit,
Some still, removed place will fit,
Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom;
Far from all resort of mirth,
Save the cricket on the hearth,
Or the bellman’s drowsy charm
To bless the doors from nightly harm.
   Or let my lamp at midnight hour
Be seen in some high lonely tower,
Where I may oft out-watch the Bear
With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato, to unfold
What worlds or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind, that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook:
And of those demons that are found
In fire, air, flood, or under ground,
Whose power hath a true consent
With planet, or with element.
Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy
In sceptered pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops’ line,
Or the tale of Troy divine;
Or what (though rare) of later age
Ennobled hath the buskined stage.
   p. 117But, O sad Virgin, that thy power
Might raise Musaeus from his bower,
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing
Such notes as, warbled to the string,
Drew iron tears down Pluto’s cheek
And made Hell grant what Love did seek!
Or call up him that left half-told
The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camball, and of Algarsife,
And who had Canace to wife
That owned the virtuous ring and glass;
And of the wondrous horse of brass
On which the Tartar king did ride:
And if aught else great bards beside
In sage and solemn tunes have sung
Of tourneys and of trophies hung,
Of forests and enchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear.
   Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career,
Till civil-suited Morn appear,
Not tricked and frounced as she was wont
With the Attic Boy to hunt,
But kercheft in a comely cloud
While rocking winds are piping loud,
Or ushered with a shower still,
When the gust hath blown his fill,
Ending on the rustling leaves
With minute drops from off the eaves.
And when the sun begins to fling
His flaring beams, me, goddess, bring
To arched walks of twilight groves,
And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves,
Of pine, or monumental oak,
Where the rude axe, with heaved stroke,
p. 118Was never heard the nymphs to daunt,
Or fright them from their hallowed haunt.
There in close covert by some brook,
Where no profaner eye may look,
Hide me from day’s garish eye,
While the bee with honeyed thigh,
That at her flowery work doth sing,
And the waters murmuring,
With such consort as they keep
Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep;
And let some strange mysterious dream
Wave at his wings in airy stream
Of lively portraiture displayed,
Softly on my eyelids laid:
And, as I wake, sweet music breathe
Above, about, or underneath,
Sent by some Spirit to mortals good,
Or the unseen Genius of the wood.
   But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloister’s pale,
And love the high-embowed roof,
With antique pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow
To the full-voiced quire below
In service high and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all Heaven before mine eyes.
   And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell
Where I may sit and rightly spell
p. 119Of every star that heaven doth shew,
And every herb that sips the dew;
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.
   These pleasures, Melancholy, give,
And I with thee will choose to live.

LYCIDAS

Elegy on a Friend drowned in the Irish Channel, 1637

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear
Compels me to disturb your season due:
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.

   Begin, then, Sisters of the sacred well
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence withdenial vain and coy excuse:
So may some gentle Muse
With lucky words favour my destined urn;
And, as he passes, turn
And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.

   p. 120For we were nursed upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill:
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eyelids of the Morn,
We drove a-field, and both together heard
What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our nocks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft till the star that rose at evening bright
Toward heaven’s descent had sloped his westering wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,
Tempered to the oaten flute,
Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel
From the glad sound would not be absent long;
And old Damoetas loved to hear our song.

   But, oh! the heavy change, now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone and never must return!
Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o’ergrown,
And all their echoes, mourn:
The willows and the hazel copses green
Shall now no more be seen
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rose,
Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear
When first the white-thorn blows;
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd’s ear.

   Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closed o’er the head of your loved Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep
p. 121Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream:
Ay me!  I fondly dream—
Had ye been there . . .  For what could that have done?
What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,
Whom universal nature did lament,
When by the rout that made the hideous roar
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?

   Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd’s trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera’s hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life.  ‘But not the praise,’
Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears;
‘Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies:
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.’

   p. 122O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood,
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds,
That strain I heard was of a higher mood.
But now my oat proceeds,
And listens to the herald of the sea
That came in Neptune’s plea.
He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,
What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain?
And questioned every gust of rugged wings
That blows from off each beaked promontory.
They knew not of his story;
And sage Hippotades their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed;
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark
Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.

   Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge
Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.
‘Ah! who hath reft,’ quoth he, ‘my dearest pledge?’
Last came, and last did go
The Pilot of the Galilean lake;
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain);
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:
‘How well could I have spared for thee, young swain,
Enow of such, as for their bellies’ sake
Creep and intrude and climb into the fold!
Of other care they little reckoning make
Than how to scramble at the shearers’ feast,
p. 123And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least
That to the faithful herdman’s art belongs!
What recks it them?  What need they?  They are sped;
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said:
But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.’

   Return, Alpheus; the dread voice is past
That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks;
Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes
That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears:
p. 124Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.
For so to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise:—
Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
Wash far away, where’er thy bones are hurled,
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
Where thou perhaps, under the whelming tide,
Visitest the bottom of the monstrous world;
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
Sleep’st by the fable of Bellerus old,
Where the great Vision of the guarded mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona’s hold;
Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth:
And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth!

   Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor:
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high
Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves;
Where, other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the Saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That sing, and singing in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
p. 125Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;
Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood.

   Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,
While the still morn went out with sandals grey;
He touched the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the western bay:
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.

ON HIS BLINDNESS

When I consider how my light is spent
   Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
   And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
   My true account, lest He returning chide,—
   Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?
I fondly ask:—But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: God doth not need
   Either man’s work, or His own gifts; who best
      Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: His state
Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed
   And post o’er land and ocean without rest:
      They also serve who only stand and wait.

p. 126ON HIS DECEASED WIFE

Methought I saw my late espoused saint
   Brought to me like Alkestis from the grave,
   Whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.
Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint
   Purification in the Old Law did save,
   And such as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind;
   Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shined
   So clear as in no face with more delight.
But oh! as to embrace me she inclined,
   I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.

ON SHAKESPEARE

What needs my Shakespeare, for his honoured bones,
The labour of an age in piled stones?
Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid
Under a star-y-pointing pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a live-long monument.
For whilst, to shame of slow-endeavouring art
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And so sepulchered in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

p. 127SONG ON MAY MORNING

Now the bright morning star, day’s harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
   Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire
   Mirth and youth and young desire!
   Woods and groves are of thy dressing,
   Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
   And welcome thee and wish thee long.

INVOCATION TO SABRINA, FROM COMUS

         Sabrina fair!
   Listen, where thou art sitting,
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
   In twisted braids of lilies knitting
The loose train of thine amber-dripping hair,
Listen for dear honour’s sake,
Goddess of the silver lake,
         Listen and save!
Listen, and appear to us,
In name of great Oceanus,
By the earth-shaking Neptune’s mace,
And Tethys’ grave majestic pace;
By hoary Nereus’ wrinkled look,
And the Carpathian wizard’s hook;
By scaly Triton’s winding shell,
And old soothsaying Glaucus’ spell;
p. 128By Leucothea’s lovely hands,
And her son that rules the strands;
By Thetis’ tinsel-slippered feet,
And the songs of sirens sweet;
By dead Parthenope’s dear tomb,
And fair Ligea’s golden comb,
Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks
Sleeking her soft alluring locks;
By all the nymphs that nightly dance
Upon thy streams with wily glance;
Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy head
From thy coral-paven bed,
And bridle in thy headlong wave,
Till thou our summons answered have.
         Listen and save!

INVOCATION TO ECHO, FROM COMUS

Sweet Echo, sweetest Nymph, that liv’st unseen
         Within thine airy shell
         By slow Meander’s margent green,
And in the violet-embroidered vale,
         Where the love-lorn nightingale
Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well;
Canst thou not tell me of a single pair
         That likest thy Narcissus are?
         O, if thou have
         Hid them in some flowery cave,
         Tell me but where,
Sweet Queen of Parley, daughter of the Sphere!
So mayest thou be translated to the skies,
And give resounding grace to all Heaven’s harmonies.

p. 129THE ATTENDANT SPIRIT, FROM COMUS

To the ocean now I fly,
And those happy climes that lie
Where day never shuts his eye,
Up in the broad fields of the sky.
There I suck the liquid air,
All amid the gardens fair
Of Hesperus, and his daughters three
That sing about the golden tree.
Along the crisped shades and bowers
Revels the spruce and jocund Spring;
The Graces and the rosy-bosomed Hours
Thither all their bounties bring.
There eternal Summer dwells,
And west winds with musky wing
About the cedarn alleys fling
Nard and cassia’s balmy smells.
Iris there with humid bow
Waters the odorous banks, that blow
Flowers of more mingled hue
Than her purpled scarf can show,
And drenches with Elysian dew
(List, mortals, if your ears be true)
Beds of hyacinth and roses,
Where young Adonis oft reposes,
Waxing well of his deep wound
In slumber soft, and on the ground
Sadly sits the Assyrian queen.
But far above, in spangled sheen,
Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced,
Holds his dear Psyche, sweet entranced,
p. 130After her wandering labours long,
Till free consent the gods among
Make her his eternal bride,
And from her fair unspotted side
Two blissful twins are to be born,
Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn.

But now my task is smoothly done:
I can fly or I can run
Quickly to the green earth’s end,
Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend,
And from thence can soar as soon
To the corners of the moon.
Mortals that would follow me,
Love Virtue; she alone is free,
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or if feeble Virtue were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her.

JAMES GRAHAM, MARQUIS OF MONTROSE
1612–1650

THE VIGIL OF DEATH

Let them bestow on every airth a limb,
Then open all my veins, that I may swim
To thee, my Maker! in that crimson lake.
Then place my parboiled head upon a stake—
Scatter my ashes—strew them in the air:
Lord! since thou know’st where all these atoms are,
I’m hopeful thou’lt recover once my dust,
And confident thou’lt raise me with the just.

p. 131RICHARD CRASHAW
1615(?)–1652

ON A PRAYER-BOOK SENT TO MRS. M. R.

Lo, here a little volume, but great book!
A nest of new-born sweets,
Whose native pages, ’sdaining
To be thus folded, and complaining
Of these ignoble sheets,
Affect more comely bands,
Fair one, from thy kind hands,
And confidently look
To find the rest
Of a rich binding in your breast!

It is in one choice handful, heaven; and all
Heaven’s royal hosts encamped, thus small
To prove that true schools use to tell,
A thousand angels in one point can dwell.

It is love’s great artillery,
Which here contracts itself, and comes to lie
Close couched in your white bosom; and from thence,
As from a snowy fortress of defence,
Against your ghostly foe to take your part,
And fortify the hold of your chaste heart.

It is an armoury of light;
Let constant use but keep it bright,
   You’ll find it yields
To holy hands and humble hearts
   More swords and shields
Than sin hath snares, or hell hath darts.

   p. 132Only be sure
   The hands be pure
That hold these weapons, and the eyes
Those of turtles, chaste, and true,
   Wakeful, and wise.
Here’s a friend shall fight for you;
Hold but this book before your heart,
Let prayer alone to play his part.

But, O! the heart
That studies this high art
Must be a sure housekeeper,
And yet no sleeper.
Dear soul, be strong;
Mercy will come ere long,
And bring her bosom full of blessings,
Flowers of never-fading graces,
To make immortal dressings
For worthy souls, whose wise embraces
Store up themselves for Him who is alone
The Spouse of virgins, and the Virgin’s Son.

But if the noble Bridegroom when He comes
Shall find the wandering heart from home,
   Leaving her chaste abode
   To gad abroad,
Amongst the gay mates of the god of flies
   To take her pleasure, and to play
   And keep the Devil’s holy day;
To dance in the sunshine of some smiling,
      But beguiling
p. 133Spheres of sweet and sugared lies,
   Some slippery pair
   Of false, perhaps, as fair,
Flattering, but forswearing, eyes;

Doubtless some other heart
         Will get the start
Meanwhile, and, stepping in before,
Will take possession of that sacred store
   Of hidden sweets, and holy joys,
Words which are not heard with ears—
   These tumultuous shops of noise—
   Effectual whispers, whose still voice
The soul itself more feels than hears;

Amorous languishments, luminous trances,
   Sights which are not seen with eyes,
Spiritual and soul-piercing glances
   Whose pure and subtle lightning flies
Home to the heart, and sets the house on fire
And melts it down in sweet desire,
      Yet does not stay
To ask the window’s leave to pass that way;

Delicious deaths, soft exhalations
Of soul; dear and divine annihilations;
   A thousand unknown rites
   Of joys, and rarefied delights;

A hundred thousand goods, glories, and graces,
   And many a mystic thing,
   Which the divine embraces
Of the dear Spouse of spirits with them will bring
   For which it is no shame
That dull mortality must not know a name.

p. 134Of all this store
Of blessings, and ten thousand more,
   If when He come
He find the heart from home,
   Doubtless He will unload
Himself some otherwhere,
   And pour abroad
   His precious sweets,
On the fair soul whom first He meets.

O fair!  O fortunate!  O rich!  O dear!
   O happy, and thrice happy she,
   Dear silver-breasted dove,
   Whoe’er she be,
   Whose early love
   With winged vows
Makes haste to meet her morning Spouse,
And close with His immortal kisses!
   Happy, indeed, who never misses
   To improve that precious hour,
      And every day
      Seize her sweet prey,
   All fresh and fragrant as He rises,
   Dropping, with a balmy shower,
   A delicious dew of spices.

O, let the blessful heart hold fast
Her heavenly armful, she shall taste
At once ten thousand paradises!
      She shall have power
      To rifle and deflower
The rich and roseal spring of those rare sweets,
Which with a swelling bosom there she meets;
p. 135Boundless and infinite, bottomless treasures
      Of pure inebriating pleasures;
Happy proof she shall discover,
      What joy, what bliss,
      How many heavens at once it is,
To have a God become her lover!

TO THE MORNING

Satisfaction for Sleep

What succour can I hope the Muse will send,
Whose drowsiness hath wronged the Muse’s friend?
What hope, Aurora, to propitiate thee,
Unless the Muse sing my apology?
O! in that morning of my shame, when I
Lay folded up in sleep’s captivity;
How at the sight didst thou draw back thine eyes,
Into thy modest veil! how didst thou rise
Twice dyed in thine own blushes, and didst run
To draw the curtains and awake the sun!
Who, rousing his illustrious tresses, came,
And seeing the loathed object, hid for shame
His head in thy fair bosom, and still hides
Me from his patronage; I pray, he chides;
And, pointing to dull Morpheus, bids me take
My own Apollo, try if I can make
His Lethe be my Helicon, and see
If Morpheus have a Muse to wait on me.
Hence ’tis my humble fancy finds no wings,
No nimble raptures, starts to heaven and brings
Enthusiastic flames, such as can give
Marrow to my plump genius, make it live
Dressed in the glorious madness of a muse,
Whose feet can walk the milky-way, and choose
p. 136Her starry throne; whose holy heats can warm
The grave, and hold up an exalted arm
To lift me from my lazy urn, and climb
Upon the stooped shoulders of old Time,
And trace eternity.  But all is dead,
All these delicious hopes are buried
In the deep wrinkles of his angry brow,
Where mercy cannot find them; but, O thou
Bright lady of the morn, pity doth lie
So warm in thy soft breast, it cannot die;
Have mercy, then, and when he next doth rise,
O, meet the angry god, invade his eyes,
And stroke his radiant cheeks; one timely kiss
Will kill his anger, and revive my bliss.
So to the treasure of thy pearly dew
Thrice will I pay three tears, to show how true
My grief is; so my wakeful lay shall knock
At the oriental gates, and duly mock
The early lark’s shrill orisons to be
An anthem at the day’s nativity.
And the same rosy-fingered hand of thine,
That shuts night’s dying eyes, shall open mine.
   But thou, faint god of sleep, forget that I
Was ever known to be thy votary.
No more my pillow shall thine altar be,
Nor will I offer any more to thee
Myself a melting sacrifice; I’m born
Again a fresh child of the buxom morn,
Heir of the sun’s first beams; why threat’st thou so?
Why dost thou shake thy leaden sceptre?  Go,
Bestow thy poppy upon wakeful woe,
Sickness and sorrow, whose pale lids ne’er know
Thy downy finger dwell upon their eyes;
Shut in their tears, shut out their miseries.

p. 137LOVE’S HOROSCOPE

Love, brave Virtue’s younger brother,
Erst hath made my heart a mother.
She consults the anxious spheres,
To calculate her young son’s years;
She asks if sad or saving powers
Gave omen to his infant hours;
She asks each star that then stood by
If poor Love shall live or die.

Ah, my heart, is that the way?
Are these the beams that rule thy day?
Thou know’st a face in whose each look
Beauty lays ope Love’s fortune-book,
On whose fair revolutions wait
The obsequious motions of Love’s fate.
Ah, my heart! her eyes and she
Have taught thee new astrology.
Howe’er Love’s native hours were set,
Whatever starry synod met,
’Tis in the mercy of her eye,
If poor Love shall live or die.

If those sharp rays, putting on
Points of death, bid Love be gone;
Though the heavens in council sat
To crown an uncontrolled fate;
Though their best aspects twined upon
The kindest constellation,
Cast amorous glances on his birth,
And whispered the confederate earth
p. 138To pave his paths with all the good
That warms the bed of youth and blood:—
Love has no plea against her eye;
Beauty frowns, and Love must die.

But if her milder influence move,
And gild the hopes of humble Love;—
Though heaven’s inauspicious eye
Lay black on Love’s nativity;
Though every diamond in Jove’s crown
Fixed his forehead to a frown;—
Her eye a strong appeal can give,
Beauty smiles, and Love shall live.

O, if Love shall live, O where,
But in her eye, or in her ear,
In her breast, or in her breath,
Shall I hide poor Love from death?
For in the life aught else can give,
Love shall die, although he live.

Or, if Love shall die, O where,
But in her eye, or in her ear,
In her breath, or in her breast,
Shall I build his funeral nest?
While Love shall thus entombed lie,
Love shall live, although he die!

ON MR. G. HERBERT’S BOOK

Entitled, ‘The Temple of Sacred Poems,’ sent to a Gentlewoman

Know you, fair, on what you look?
Divinest love lies in this book,
p. 139Expecting fire from your eyes,
To kindle this his sacrifice.
When your hands untie these strings,
Think you’ve an angel by the wings;
One that gladly will be nigh
To wait upon each morning sigh,
To flutter in the balmy air
Of your well perfumed prayer.
These white plumes of his he’ll lend you,
Which every day to heaven will send you,
To take acquaintance of the sphere,
And all the smooth-faced kindred there.
And though Herbert’s name do owe
These devotions, fairest, know
That while I lay them on the shrine
Of your white hand, they are mine.

WISHES TO HIS SUPPOSED MISTRESS

Whoe’er she be,
That not impossible She
   That shall command my heart and me:

Where’er she he,
Locked up from mortal eye
In shady leaves of destiny:

Till that ripe birth
Of studied Fate stand forth,
And teach her fair steps tread our earth:

Till that divine
Idea take a shrine
Of crystal flesh, through which to shine:

p. 140Meet you her, my Wishes,
Bespeak her to my blisses,
And be ye called, my absent kisses.

I wish her beauty
That owes not all its duty
To gaudy tire, or glist’ring shoe-tie.

Something more than
Taffata or tissue can,
Or rampant feather, or rich fan.

More than the spoil
Of shop, or silkworm’s toil,
Or a bought blush, or a set smile.

A face that’s best
By its own beauty drest,
And can alone commend the rest.

A cheek where youth
And blood, with pen of truth,
Write what the reader sweetly rueth.

A cheek where grows
More than a morning rose,
Which to no box his being owes.

Lips where all day
A lover’s kiss may play,
Yet carry nothing thence away.

p. 141Looks that oppress
Their richest tires, but dress
And clothe their simple nakedness.

Eyes that displace
Their neighbour diamond, and out-face
That sunshine by their own sweet grace.

Tresses that wear
Jewels, but to declare
How much themselves more precious are;

Whose native ray
Can tame the wanton day
Of gems that in their bright shades play.

Each ruby there,
Or pearl that dare appear,
Be its own blush, be its own tear.

A well-tamed heart,
For whose more noble smart
Love may be long choosing a dart.

Eyes that bestow
Full quivers on love’s bow,
Yet pay less arrows than they owe.

Smiles that can warm
The blood, yet teach a charm,
That chastity shall take no harm.

p. 142Blushes that bin
The burnish of no sin,
Nor flames of aught too hot within.

Joys that confess,
Virtue their mistress,
And have no other head to dress.

Fears fond and slight
As the coy bride’s, when night
First does the longing lover right.

Tears quickly fled,
And vain, as those are shed
For a dying maidenhead.

Soft silken hours,
Open suns, shady bowers;
’Bove all, nothing within that lowers.

Days that need borrow
No part of their good-morrow
From a fore-spent night of sorrow.

Days that in spite
Of darkness, by the light
Of a clear mind, are day all night.

Nights, sweet as they,
Made short by lovers’ play,
Yet long by the absence of the day.

p. 143Life, that dares send
A challenge to his end,
And when it comes, say, Welcome, friend!

Sydneian showers
Of sweet discourse, whose powers
Can crown old winter’s head with flowers.

Whate’er delight
Can make day’s forehead bright,
Or give down to the wings of night.

In her whole frame,
Have Nature all the name,
Art and ornament the shame.

Her flattery,
Picture and poesy,
Her counsel her own virtue be.

I wish her store
Of worth may leave her poor
Of wishes; and I wish—no more.

Now, if Time knows
That Her, whose radiant brows
Weave them a garland of my vows;

Her whose just bays
My future hopes can raise,
A trophy to her present praise;

p. 144Her that dares he
What these lines wish to see;
I seek no further, it is She.

’Tis She, and here,
Lo! I unclothe and clear
My wishes’ cloudy character.

May she enjoy it
Whose merit dare apply it,
But modesty dares still deny it!

Such worth as this is
Shall fix my flying wishes,
And determine them to kisses.

Let her full glory,
My fancies, fly before ye;
Be ye my fictions:—but her story.

QUEM VIDISTIS PASTORES, ETC.
A HYMN OF THE NATIVITY, SUNG BY THE SHEPHERDS

Chorus

Come, we shepherds whose blest sight
Hath met Love’s noon in Nature’s night;
Come lift we up our loftier song,
And wake the sun that lies too long.

p. 145To all our world of well-stol’n joy
   He slept, and dreamt of no such thing,
While we found out Heaven’s fairer eye,
   And kissed the cradle of our King;
Tell him he rises now too late
To show us aught worth looking at.

Tell him we now can show him more
   Than he e’er showed to mortal sight,
Than he himself e’er saw before,
   Which to be seen needs not his light:
Tell him, Tityrus, where th’ hast been,
Tell him, Thyrsis, what th’ hast seen.

Tityrus

Gloomy night embraced the place
   Where the noble infant lay:
The babe looked up, and showed His face;
   In spite of darkness it was day.
It was Thy day, sweet, and did rise,
Not from the East, but from Thine eyes.
Chorus.  It was Thy day, sweet, and did rise,
Not from the East, but from Thine eyes.

Thyrsis

Winter chid aloud, and sent
   The angry North to wage his wars:
The North forgot his fierce intent,
   And left perfumes instead of scars.
By those sweet eyes’ persuasive powers,
Where he meant frosts he scattered flowers.
Chorus.  By those sweet eyes’ persuasive powers,
Where he meant frosts he scattered flowers.

p. 146Both

We saw Thee in Thy balmy nest,
   Young dawn of our eternal day;
We saw Thine eyes break from the East,
   And chase the trembling shades away:
We saw Thee, and we blest the sight,
We saw Thee by Thine own sweet light.

Tityrus

Poor world, said I, what wilt thou do
   To entertain this starry stranger?
Is this the best thou canst bestow—
   A cold and not too cleanly manger?
Contend the powers of heaven and earth,
To fit a bed for this huge birth.
Chorus.  Contend the powers of heaven and earth,
To fit a bed for this huge birth.

Thyrsis

Proud world, said I, cease your contest,
   And let the mighty babe alone,
The phœnix builds the phœnix’ nest,
   Love’s architecture is his own.
The babe, whose birth embraves this morn,
Made His own bed ere He was born.
Chorus.  The babe, whose birth embraves this morn,
Made His own bed ere He was born.

Tityrus

I saw the curled drops, soft and slow,
   Come hovering o’er the place’s head,
Off’ring their whitest sheets of snow,
   To furnish the fair infant’s bed.
p. 147Forbear, said I, be not too bold,
Your fleece is white, but ’tis too cold.

Thyrsis

I saw th’ obsequious seraphim
   Their rosy fleece of fire bestow,
For well they now can spare their wings,
   Since Heaven itself lies here below.
Well done, said I; but are you sure
Your down, so warm, will pass for pure?
Chorus.  Well done, said I; but are you sure
Your down, so warm, will pass for pure?

Both

No, no, your King’s not yet to seek
   Where to repose His royal head;
See, see how soon His new-bloomed cheek
   ’Twixt mother’s breasts is gone to bed.
Sweet choice, said we; no way but so,
Not to lie cold, yet sleep in snow!
Chorus.  Sweet choice, said we; no way but so,
Not to lie cold, yet sleep in snow!

Full Chorus

Welcome all wonders in one sight!
   Eternity shut in a span!
Summer in winter! day in night!

Chorus

   Heaven in earth! and God in man!
Great little one, whose all-embracing birth
Lifts earth to Heaven, stoops Heaven to earth,
p. 148Welcome, tho’ nor to gold, nor silk,
   To more than Cæsar’s birthright is:
Two sister seas of virgin’s milk,
   With many a rarely-tempered kiss,
That breathes at once both maid and mother,
Warms in the one, cools in the other.

She sings Thy tears asleep, and dips
   Her kisses in Thy weeping eye;
She spreads the red leaves of Thy lips,
   That in their buds yet blushing lie.
She ’gainst those mother diamonds tries
The points of her young eagle’s eyes.

Welcome—tho’ not to those gay flies,
   Gilded i’ th’ beams of earthly kings,
Slippery souls in smiling eyes—
   But to poor shepherds, homespun things,
Whose wealth’s their flocks, whose wit’s to be
Well read in their simplicity.

Yet, when young April’s husband show’rs
   Shall bless the fruitful Maia’s bed,
We’ll bring the first-born of her flowers,
   To kiss Thy feet and crown Thy head.
To Thee, dread Lamb! whose love must keep
The shepherds while they feed their sheep.

To Thee, meek Majesty, soft King
   Of simple graces and sweet loves!
Each of us his lamb will bring,
   Each his pair of silver doves!
At last, in fire of Thy fair eyes,
Ourselves become our own best sacrifice!

p. 149MUSIC’S DUEL

Now westward Sol had spent the richest beams
Of noon’s high glory, when, hard by the streams
Of Tiber, on the scene of a green plat,
Under protection of an oak, there sat
A sweet lute’s master: in whose gentle airs
He lost the day’s heat, and his own hot cares.
   Close in the covert of the leaves there stood
A nightingale, come from the neighbouring wood:—
The sweet inhabitant of each glad tree,
Their muse, their Syren, harmless Syren she,—
There stood she list’ning, and did entertain
The music’s soft report, and mould the same
In her own murmurs, that whatever mood
His curious fingers lent, her voice made good.
The man perceived his rival, and her art;
Disposed to give the light-foot lady sport,
Awakes his lute, and ’gainst the fight to come
Informs it, in a sweet præludium
Of closer strains; and ere the war begin
He slightly skirmishes on every string,
Charged with a flying touch; and straightway she
Carves out her dainty voice as readily
Into a thousand sweet distinguished tones;
And reckons up in soft divisions
Quick volumes of wild notes, to let him know
By that shrill taste she could do something too.
   His nimble hand’s instinct then taught each string
A cap’ring cheerfulness; and made them sing
To their own dance; now negligently rash
He throws his arm, and with a long-drawn dash
Blends all together, then distinctly trips
From this to that, then, quick returning, skips
p. 150And snatches this again, and pauses there.
She measures every measure, everywhere
Meets art with art; sometimes, as if in doubt—
Not perfect yet, and fearing to be out—
Trails her plain ditty in one long-spun note
Through the sleek passage of her open throat:
A clear unwrinkled song; then doth she point it
With tender accents, and severely joint it
By short diminutives, that, being reared
In controverting warbles evenly shared,
With her sweet sell she wrangles; he, amazed
That from so small a channel should be raised
The torrent of a voice whose melody
Could melt into such sweet variety,
Strains higher yet, that, tickled with rare art,
The tattling strings—each breathing in his part—
Most kindly do fall out; the grumbling bass
In surly groans disdains the treble’s grace;
The high-perched treble chirps at this, and chides
Until his finger—moderator—hides
And closes the sweet quarrel, rousing all,
Hoarse, shrill, at once: as when the trumpets call
Hot Mars to th’ harvest of death’s field, and woo
Men’s hearts into their hands; this lesson, too,
She gives him back, her supple breast thrills out
Sharp airs, and staggers in a warbling doubt
Of dallying sweetness, hovers o’er her skill,
And folds in waved notes, with a trembling bill,
The pliant series of her slippery song;
Then starts she suddenly into a throng
Of short thick sobs, whose thund’ring volleys float
And roll themselves over her lubric throat
In panting murmurs, ’stilled out of her breast,
That ever-bubbling spring, the sugared nest
p. 151Of her delicious soul, that there does lie
Bathing in streams of liquid melody,—
Music’s best seed-plot; when in ripened ears
A golden-headed harvest fairly rears
His honey-dropping tops, ploughed by her breath,
Which there reciprocally laboureth.
In that sweet soil it seems a holy quire
Founded to th’ name of great Apollo’s lyre;
Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes
Of sweet-lipped angel-imps, that swill their throats
In cream of morning Helicon; and then
Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men,
To woo them from their beds, still murmuring
That men can sleep while they their matins sing;—
Most divine service! whose so early lay
Prevents the eyelids of the blushing day.
There might you hear her kindle her soft voice
In the close murmur of a sparkling noise,
And lay the ground-work of her hopeful song;
Still keeping in the forward stream so long,
Till a sweet whirlwind, striving to get out,
Heaves her soft bosom, wanders round about,
And makes a pretty earthquake in her breast;
Till the fledged notes at length forsake their nest,
Fluttering in wanton shoals, and to the sky,
Winged with their own wild echos, pratt’ling fly.
She opes the floodgate, and lets loose a tide
Of streaming sweetness, which in state doth ride
On the waved back of every swelling strain,
Rising and falling in a pompous train;
And while she thus discharges a shrill peal
Of flashing airs, she qualifies their zeal
With the cool epode of a graver note;
Thus high, thus low, as if her silver throat
p. 152Would reach the brazen voice of war’s hoarse bird;
Her little soul is ravished; and so poured
Into loose ecstasies, that she is placed
Above herself—music’s enthusiast!
   Shame now and anger mixed a double stain
In the musician’s face: Yet once again,
Mistress, I come.  Now reach a strain, my lute,
Above her mock, or be for ever mute;
Or tune a song of victory to me,
Or to thyself sing thine own obsequy!
So said, his hands sprightly as fire he flings,
And with a quivering coyness tastes the strings:
The sweet-lipped sisters, musically frighted,
Singing their fears, are fearfully delighted:
Trembling as when Apollo’s golden hairs
Are fanned and frizzled in the wanton airs
Of his own breath, which, married to his lyre,
Doth tune the spheres, and make heaven’s self look higher;
From this to that, from that to this, he flies,
Feels music’s pulse in all her arteries;
Caught in a net which there Apollo spreads,
His fingers struggle with the vocal threads,
Following those little rills, he sinks into
A sea of Helicon; his hand does go
Those parts of sweetness which with nectar drop,
Softer than that which pants in Hebe’s cup:
The humorous strings expound his learned touch
By various glosses; now they seem to grutch
And murmur in a buzzing din, then gingle
In shrill-tongued accents, striving to be single;
Every smooth turn, every delicious stroke,
Gives life to some new grace: thus doth he invoke
Sweetness by all her names; thus, bravely thus—
Fraught with a fury so harmonious—
p. 153The lute’s light Genius now does proudly rise,
Heaved on the surges of swoll’n rhapsodies,
Whose flourish, meteor-like, doth curl the air
With flash of high-born fancies; here and there
Dancing in lofty measures, and anon
Creeps on the soft touch of a tender tone,
Whose trembling murmurs, melting in wild airs,
Run to and fro, complaining his sweet cares;
Because those precious mysteries that dwell
In music’s ravished soul he dare not tell,
But whisper to the world: thus do they vary,
Each string his note, as if they meant to carry
Their master’s blest soul, snatched out at his ears
By a strong ecstasy, through all the spheres
Of music’s heaven; and seat it there on high
In th’ empyræum of pure harmony.
At length—after so long, so loud a strife
Of all the strings, still breathing the best life
Of blest variety, attending on
His fingers’ fairest revolution,
In many a sweet rise, many as sweet a fall—
A full-mouthed diapason swallows all.
   This done, he lists what she would say to this;
And she, although her breath’s late exercise
Had dealt too roughly with her tender throat,
Yet summons all her sweet powers for a note.
Alas, in vain! for while, sweet soul, she tries
To measure all those wild diversities
Of chatt’ring strings, by the small size of one
Poor simple voice, raised in a natural tone,
She fails; and failing, grieves; and grieving, dies;
She dies, and leaves her life the victor’s prize,
Falling upon his lute.  O, fit to have—
That lived so sweetly—dead, so sweet a grave!

p. 154THE FLAMING HEART

Upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphical Saint
Teresa, as she is usually expressed with
a Seraphim beside her

Well-meaning readers! you that come as friends
And catch the precious name this piece pretends,
Make not too much haste t’ admire
That fair-cheeked fallacy of fire.
That is a seraphim, they say,
And this the great Teresia.
Readers, be ruled by me, and make
Here a well-placed and wise mistake;
You must transpose the picture quite,
And spell it wrong to read it right;
Read Him for Her, and Her for Him,
And call the saint the seraphim.
   Painter, what didst thou understand
To put her dart into his hand?
See, even the years and size of him
Shows this the mother seraphim.
This is the mistress flame, and duteous he
Her happy fireworks, here, comes down to see:
O, most poor-spirited of men!
Had thy cold pencil kissed her pen,
Thou couldst not so unkindly err
To show us this faint shade for her.
Why, man, this speaks pure mortal frame,
And mocks with female frost love’s manly flame;
One would suspect thou meant’st to paint
Some weak, inferior woman Saint.
But, had thy pale-faced purple took
Fire from the burning cheeks of that bright book,
p. 155Thou wouldst on her have heaped up all
That could be found seraphical;
Whate’er this youth of fire wears fair,
Rosy fingers, radiant hair,
Glowing cheek, and glist’ring wings,
All those fair and flagrant things;
But, before all, that fiery dart
Had filled the hand of this great heart.
   Do, then, as equal right requires,
Since his the blushes be, and hers the fires,
Resume and rectify thy rude design,
Undress thy seraphim into mine;
Redeem this injury of thy art,
Give him the veil, give her the dart.
   Give him the veil, that he may cover
The red cheeks of a rivalled lover,
Ashamed that our world now can show
Nests of new Seraphims here below.
   Give her the dart, for it is she,
Fair youth, shoots both thy shaft and thee;
Say, all ye wise and well-pierced hearts
That live and die amidst her darts,
What is’t your tasteful spirits do prove
In that rare life of her and love?
Say and bear witness.  Sends she not
A seraphim at every shot?
What magazines of immortal arms there shine!
Heav’n’s great artillery in each love-spun line!
Give, then, the dart to her who gives the flame,
Give him the veil who gives the shame.
   But if it be the frequent fate
Of worst faults to be fortunate,
If all’s prescription, and proud wrong
Hearkens not to an humble song,
p. 156For all the gallantry of him,
Give me the suff’ring seraphim.
His be the bravery of those bright things,
The glowing cheeks, the glistering wings,
The rosy hand, the radiant dart;
Leave her alone the flaming heart.
   Leave her that, and thou shalt leave her
Not one loose shaft, but Love’s whole quiver.
For in Love’s field was never found
A nobler weapon than a wound.
Love’s passives are his activ’st part,
The wounded is the wounding heart.
O, heart! the equal poise of Love’s both parts,
Big alike with wounds and darts,
Live in these conquering leaves, live all the same,
And walk through all tongues one triumphant flame!
Live here, great heart, and love, and die, and kill,
And bleed, and wound, and yield, and conquer still.
Let this immortal Life, where’er it comes,
Walk in the crowd of loves and martyrdoms.
Let mystic deaths wait on’t, and wise souls be
The love-slain witnesses of this life of thee.
O, sweet incendiary! show here thy art
Upon this carcass of a hard, cold heart;
Let all thy scattered shafts of light, that play
Among the leaves of thy large books of day,
Combined against this breast, at once break in
And take away from me myself and sin;
This gracious robbery shall thy bounty be,
And my best fortunes such fair spoils of me.
O, thou undaunted daughter of desires!
By all thy dower of lights and fires,
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove,
By all thy lives and deaths of love,
p. 157By thy large draughts of intellectual day,
And by thy thirst of love more large than they;
By all thy brim-filled bowls of fierce desire,
By thy last morning’s draught of liquid fire,
By the full kingdom of that final kiss
That seized thy parting soul, and sealed thee His;
By all the heav’ns thou hast in Him,
Fair sister of the seraphim!
By all of Him we have in thee,
Leave nothing of myself in me:
Let me so read thy life that I
Unto all life of mine may die.

ABRAHAM COWLEY
1618–1667

ON THE DEATH OF MR. CRASHAW

Poet and Saint! to thee alone are given
The two most sacred names of earth and heaven;
The hard and rarest union which can be,
Next that of Godhead with humanity.
Long did the muses banished slaves abide,
And built vain pyramids to mortal pride;
Like Moses, thou (though spells and charms withstand)
Hast brought them nobly back home to their Holy Land.
   Ah, wretched we, poets of earth! but thou
Wert living the same poet which thou’rt now.
Whilst angels sing to thee their airs divine,
And join in an applause so great as thine,
Equal society with them to hold,
Thou need’st not make new songs, but say the old.
p. 158And they (kind spirits!) shall all rejoice to see
How little less than they exalted man may be.
   Still the old heathen gods in numbers dwell,
The heavenliest thing on earth still keeps up hell.
Nor have we yet quite purged the Christian land;
Still idols here, like calves at Bethel, stand.
And though Pan’s death long since all oracles broke,
Yet still in rhyme the fiend Apollo spoke:
Nay, with the worst of heathen dotage we
(Vain men!) the monster woman deify;
Find stars, and tie our fates there in a face,
And paradise in them, by whom we lost it, place.
What different faults corrupt our muses thus!
Wanton as girls, as old wives fabulous!
   Thy spotless muse, like Mary, did contain
The boundless Godhead; she did well disdain
That her eternal verse employed should be
On a less subject than eternity;
And for a sacred mistress scorned to take
But her whom God Himself scorned not His spouse to make.
It (in a kind) her miracle did do;
A fruitful mother was and virgin too.
   How well, blest swan, did Fate contrive thy death,
And make thee render up thy tuneful breath
In thy great Mistress’ arms, thou most divine
And richest offering of Loretto’s shrine!
Where, like some holy sacrifice to expire,
A fever burns thee, and love lights the fire.
Angels (they say) brought the famed chapel there,
And bore the sacred load in triumph through the air.
’Tis surer much they brought thee there, and they
And thou, their charge, went singing all the way.

* * * * *

   p. 159Hail, bard triumphant! and some care bestow
On us, the poets militant below.
Opposed by our old enemy, adverse chance,
Attacked by envy and by ignorance,
Enchained by beauty, tortured by desires,
Exposed by tyrant love to savage beasts and fires.
Thou from low earth in nobler flames didst rise,
And, like Elijah, mount alive the skies.
Elisha-like (but with a wish much less,
More fit thy greatness and my littleness),
Lo, here I beg (I, whom thou once didst prove
So humble to esteem, so good to love)
Not that thy spirit might on me doubled be—
I ask but half thy mighty spirit for me;
And when my muse soars with so strong a wing,
’Twill learn of things divine, and first of thee, to sing.

HYMN TO THE LIGHT

   First-born of chaos, who so fair didst come
            From the old Negro’s darksome womb!
            Which, when it saw the lovely child,
The melancholy mass put on kind looks and smiled!

   Thou tide of glory which no rest dost know,
            But ever ebb and ever flow!
            Thou golden shower of a true Jove
Who does in thee descend, and Heaven to Earth make love!

   Hail, active Nature’s watchful life and health!
            Her joy, her ornament, and wealth!
            Hail to thy husband, Heat, and thee!
Thou the world’s beauteous Bride, the lusty Bridegroom he.

   p. 160Say from what golden quivers of the sky
            Do all thy winged arrows fly?
            Swiftness and power by birth are thine:
From thy great Sire they came, thy Sire the Word Divine.

   ’Tis, I believe, this archery to show,
            That so much cost in colours thou
            And skill in painting dost bestow
Upon thy ancient arms, the gaudy heavenly bow.

   Swift as light thoughts their empty career run,
            Thy race is finished when begun.
            Let a post-angel start with thee,
And thou the goal of earth shalt reach as soon as he.

   Thou, in the moon’s bright chariot proud and gay,
            Dost thy bright wood of stars survey;
            And all the year dost with thee bring
Of thousand flowery lights thine own nocturnal spring.

   Thou, Scythian-like, dost round thy lands above
            The sun’s gilt tent for ever move;
            And still as thou in pomp dost go,
The shining pageants of the world attend thy show.

   Nor amidst all these triumphs dost thou scorn
            The humble glow-worms to adorn,
            And with those living spangles gild
(O, greatness without pride!) the lilies of the field.

   p. 161Night and her ugly subjects thou dost fright,
            And sleep, the lazy owl of night;
            Ashamed and fearful to appear,
They screen their horrid shapes with the black hemisphere.

   With them there hastes, and wildly takes the alarm
            Of painted dreams a busy swarm.
            At the first opening of thine eye
The various clusters break, the antic atoms fly.

   The guilty serpents and obscener beasts
            Creep, conscious, to their secret rests;
            Nature to thee does reverence pay,
Ill omens and ill sights remove out of thy way.

   At thy appearance, Grief itself is said
            To shake his wings and rouse his head:
            And cloudy Care has often took
A gentle beamy smile, reflected from thy look.

   At thy appearance, Fear itself grows bold;
            Thy sunshine melts away his cold.
            Encouraged at the sight of thee,
To the cheek colour comes, and firmness to the knee.

   Even Lust, the master of a hardened face,
            Blushes, if thou be’st in the place,
            To darkness’ curtain he retires,
In sympathising night he rolls his smoky fires.

   When, goddess, thou lift’st up thy wakened head
            Out of the morning’s purple bed,
            Thy quire of birds about thee play,
And all thy joyful world salutes the rising day.

   p. 162The ghosts and monster-spirits that did presume
            A body’s privilege to assume,
            Vanish again invisibly,
And bodies gain again their visibility.

   All the world’s bravery that delights our eyes,
            Is but thy several liveries:
            Thou the rich dye on them bestow’st,
Thy nimble pencil paints this landscape as thou go’st.

   A crimson garment in the rose thou wear’st,
            A crown of studded gold thou bear’st.
            The virgin lilies in their white
Are clad but with the lawn of almost naked light.

   The violet, Spring’s little infant, stands
            Girt in the purple swaddling-bands;
            On the fair tulip thou dost dote,
Thou cloth’st it in a gay and parti-coloured coat.

   With flames condensed thou dost thy jewels fix,
            And solid colours in it mix:
            Flora herself envies to see
Flowers fairer than her own, and durable as she.

   Ah goddess! would thou couldst thy hand withhold
            And be less liberal to gold;
            Didst thou less value to it give,
Of how much care (alas!) might’st thou poor man relieve.

   To me the sun is more delightful far,
            And all fair days much fairer are.
            But few, ah, wondrous few there be
Who do not gold prefer, O goddess, even to thee!

   p. 163Through the soft ways of heaven, and air, and sea,
            Which open all their pores to thee;
            Like a clear river thou dost glide,
And with thy living streams through the close channels slide.

   But where firm bodies thy free course oppose,
            Gently thy source the land o’erflows;
            Takes there possession, and does make,
Of colours mingled, Light, a thick and standing lake.

   But the vast ocean of unbounded Day
            In the Empyrean Heaven does stay.
            Thy rivers, lakes, and springs below
From thence took first their rise, thither at last must flow.

RICHARD LOVELACE
1618–1658

TO LUCASTA ON GOING TO THE WARS

Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind,
   That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
   To war and arms I fly.

True; a new mistress now I chase,
   The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
   A sword, a horse, a shield.

p. 164Yet this inconstancy is such
   As thou, too, shalt adore;
I could not love thee, dear, so much
   Loved I not honour more.

TO AMARANTHA

That she would dishevel her hair

Amarantha, sweet and fair,
Ah, braid no more that shining hair!
As my curious hand or eye
Hovering round thee, let it fly.

Let it fly as unconfined
As its calm ravisher the wind,
Who hath left his darling, th’ east,
To wanton in that spicy nest.

Every tress must be confessed;
But neatly tangled at the best;
Like a clew of golden thread
Most excellently ravelled.

Do not, then, wind up that light
In ribands, and o’er cloud in night,
Like the sun in ’s early ray;
But shake your head and scatter day.

p. 165LUCASTA

Paying her Obsequies to the chaste memory of my dearest Cousin, Mrs. Bowes Barne

See what an undisturbed tear
      She weeps for her last sleep!
But viewing her, straight waked, a star,
      She weeps that she did weep.

Grief ne’er before did tyrannize
      On the honour of that brow,
And at the wheels of her brave eyes
      Was captive led, till now.

Thus for a saint’s apostasy,
      The unimagined woes
And sorrows of the hierarchy
      None but an angel knows.

Thus for lost soul’s recovery,
      The clapping of the wings
And triumph of this victory
      None but an angel sings.

So none but she knows to bemoan
      This equal virgin’s fate;
None but Lucasta can her crown
      Of glory celebrate.

Then dart on me, Chaste Light, one ray,
      By which I may descry
Thy joy clear through this cloudy day
      To dress my sorrow by.

p. 166TO ALTHEA, FROM PRISON

When love with unconfined wings
   Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
   To whisper at the grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair
   And fettered to her eye;
The birds that wanton in the air
   Know no such liberty.

When flowing cups run swiftly round
   With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses crowned,
   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.

When (like committed linnets) I
   With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty
   And glories of my King;
When I shall voice aloud how good
   He is, how great should be,
Enlarged winds that curl the flood
   Know no such liberty.

Stone walls do not a prison make
   Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
   That for an hermitage;
p. 167If I have freedom in my love,
   And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above
   Enjoy such liberty.

A GUILTLESS LADY IMPRISONED: AFTER PENANCED

Hark, fair one, how whate’er here is
Doth laugh and sing at thy distress,
Not out of hate to thy relief,
But joy—to enjoy thee, though in grief.

See! that which chains you, you chain here,
The prison is thy prisoner;
How much thy jailor’s keeper art!
He binds thy hands, but thou his heart.

The gyves to rase so smooth a skin
Are so unto themselves within;
But, blest to kiss so fair an arm,
Haste to be happy with that harm;

And play about thy wanton wrist,
As if in them thou so wert dressed;
But if too rough, too hard they press,
O they but closely, closely kiss.

And as thy bare feet bless the way,
The people do not mock, but pray,
And call thee, as amazed they run,
Instead of prostitute, a nun.

p. 168The merry torch burns with desire
To kindle the eternal fire, [168]
And lightly dances in thine eyes
To tunes of epithalamies.

The sheet tied ever to thy waist,
How thankful to be so embraced!
And see! thy very, very bands
Are bound to thee to bind such hands.

THE ROSE

Sweet, serene, sky-like flower,
Haste to adorn the bower;
From thy long cloudy bed,
Shoot forth thy damask head.

New-startled blush of Flora,
The grief of pale Aurora
(Who will contest no more),
Haste, haste to strew her floor!

Vermilion ball that’s given
From lip to lip in Heaven;
Love’s couch’s coverled,
Haste, haste to make her bed.

Dear offspring of pleased Venus
And jolly, plump Silenus,
Haste, haste to deck the hair
Of the only sweetly fair!

p. 169See! rosy is her bower,
Her floor is all this flower
Her bed a rosy nest
By a bed of roses pressed.

But early as she dresses,
Why fly you her bright tresses?
Ah! I have found, I fear,—
Because her cheeks are near.

ANDREW MARVELL
1620–1678

A HORATIAN ODE UPON CROMWELL’S RETURN FROM IRELAND

The forward youth that would appear
Must now forsake his muses dear,
      Nor in the shadows sing
      His numbers languishing.
’Tis time to leave the books in dust,
And oil the unused armour’s rust,
      Removing from the wall
      The corselet of the hall.
So restless Cromwell could not cease
In the inglorious arts of peace,
      But through adventurous war
      Urged his active star;
And, like the three-forked lightning, first
Breaking the clouds where it was nurst,
      Did thorough his own side
      His fiery way divide;
(For ’tis all one to courage high,
The emulous, or enemy,
      p. 170And with such to enclose
      Is more than to oppose;)
Then burning through the air he went,
And palaces and temples rent;
      And Cæsar’s head at last
      Did through his laurels blast.
’Tis madness to resist or blame
The force of angry heaven’s flame;
      And if we would speak true,
      Much to the man is due,
Who, from his private gardens, where
He lived reserved and austere,
      As if his highest plot
      To plant the bergamot,
Could by industrious valour climb
To ruin the great work of Time,
      And cast the kingdoms old
      Into another mould.
Though Justice against Fate complain
And plead the ancient rights in vain
      (But those do hold or break,
      As men are strong or weak),
Nature, that hateth emptiness,
Allows of penetration less,
      And therefore must make room
      Where greater spirits come.
What field of all the civil war
Where his were not the deepest scar?
      And Hampton shows what part
      He had of wiser art;
Where, twining subtle fears with hope,
He wove a net of such a scope
      That Charles himself might chase
      To Carisbrook’s narrow case,
p. 171That thence the royal actor borne
The tragic scaffold might adorn,
      While round the armed bands
      Did clap their bloody hands;
He nothing common did, or mean,
Upon that memorable scene,
      But with his keener eye
      The axe’s edge did try;
Nor called the gods with vulgar spite
To vindicate his helpless right,
      But bowed his comely head
      Down, as upon a bed.
This was that memorable hour,
Which first assured the forced power;
      So, when they did design
      The capitol’s first line,
A bleeding head, where they begun,
Did fright the architects to run;
      And yet in that the State
      Foresaw its happy fate.
And now the Irish are ashamed
To see themselves in one year tamed;
      So much one man can do,
      That does both act and know.
They can affirm his praises best,
And have, though overcome, confessed
      How good he is, how just,
      And fit for highest trust;
Nor yet grown stiffer with command,
But still in the republic’s hand
      (How fit he is to sway,
      That can so well obey!)
He to the Commons’ feet presents
A kingdom for his first year’s rents;
      p. 172And, what he may, forbears
      His fame, to make it theirs;
And has his sword and spoil ungirt,
To lay them at the Public’s skirt:
      So when the falcon high
      Falls heavy from the sky,
She, having killed, no more doth search,
But on the next green bough to perch;
      Where, when he first does lure,
      The falconer has her sure.
What may not then our isle presume,
While victory his crest does plume?
      What may not others fear,
      If thus he crowns each year?
As Caesar, he, ere long, to Gaul,
To Italy a Hannibal,
      And to all states not free
      Shall climacteric be.
The Pict no shelter now shall find
Within his parti-coloured mind,
      But, from this valour sad,
      Shrink underneath the plaid;
Happy, if in the tufted brake
The English hunter him mistake,
      Nor lay his hounds in near
      The Caledonian deer.
But thou, the war’s and fortune’s son,
March indefatigably on,
      And for the last effect,
      Still keep the sword erect;
Beside the force it has to fright
The spirits of the shady night;
      The same arts that did gain
      A power, must it maintain.

p. 173THE PICTURE OF T. C. IN A PROSPECT OF FLOWERS

   See with what simplicity
   This nymph begins her golden days!
   In the green grass she loves to lie,
   And there with her fair aspect tames
   The wilder flowers, and gives them names;
   But only with the roses plays,
            And them does tell
What colours best become them, and what smell.

   Who can foretell for what high cause
   This darling of the gods was born?
   Yet this is she whose chaster laws
   The wanton Love shall one day fear,
   And, under her command severe,
   See his bow broke, and ensigns torn.
            Happy who can
Appease this virtuous enemy of man!

   O then let me in time compound
   And parley with those conquering eyes,
   Ere they have tried their force to wound;
   Ere with their glancing wheels they drive
   In triumph over hearts that strive,
   And them that yield but more despise:
            Let me be laid,
Where I may see the glories from some shade.

   Meantime, whilst every verdant thing
   Itself does at thy beauty charm,
   Reform the errors of the Spring;
   Make that the tulips may have share
   p. 174Of sweetness, seeing they are fair,
   And roses of their thorns disarm;
            But most procure
That violets may a longer age endure.

   But O young beauty of the woods,
   Whom Nature courts with fruits and flowers,
   Gather the flowers, but spare the buds;
   Lest Flora, angry at thy crime
   To kill her infants in their prime,
   Should quickly make the example yours;
            And, ere we see,
Nip, in the blossom, all our hopes in thee.

THE NYMPH COMPLAINING OF 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 yet ever do them 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 everything,
And nothing may we use in vain;
Even beasts must be with justice slain,
Else men are made their deodands.
Though they should wash their guilty hands
p. 175In this warm life-blood which doth part
From thine, and wound me to the heart,
Yet could they not be clean, their stain
Is dyed in such a purple grain.
There is not such another in
The world, to offer for their sin.

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 my heart.