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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 preasel
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 ine smooth pillows, sweetest bed;
A chamber, deaf to noise, and blind to light;
A rosy garland, and a weary head.
And if these things, as being thine by right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me
Livelier than elsewhere Stella's image see.

Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance
Guided so well, that I obtain'd the prize,
Both by the judgment of the English eyes,
And of some sent from that sweet enemy France;
Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance;
Townfolks my strength; a daintier judge applies
His praise to sleight which from good use doth rise ;
Some lucky wits impute it but to chance;
Others, because of both sides I do take
My blood from them who did excel in this,
Think nature me a man of arms did make.
How far they shot awry! the true cause is,
Stella look'd on, and from her heavenly face
Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race.

In martial sports I had my cunning tried,
And yet to break more staves did me address;
While with the people's shouts, I must confess,
Youth, luck, and praise, even fill'd my veins with
pride.

When Cupid, having me (his slave) descried
In Mars's livery, prancing in the press,
'What now, Sir Fool,' said he, I would no less.
Look here, I say.' I look'd, and Stella spied,
Who hard by made a window send forth light.
My heart then quaked, then dazzled were mine eyes;
One hand forgot to rule, th' other to fight;
Nor trumpet's sound I heard, nor friendly cries;
My foe came on, and beat the air for me,
Till that her blush taught me my shame to see.

Of all the kings that ever here did reign,
Edward named Fourth as first in praise I name;
Not for his fair outside, nor well-lined brain,
Although less gifts imp feathers oft on Fame:
Nor that he could, young-wise, wise-valiant, frame
His sire's revenge, join'd with a kingdom's gain,
And, gain'd by Mars, could yet mad Mars so tame,
That Balance weigh'd what Sword did late obtain:
Nor that he made the Flower-de-luce so fraid,
Though strongly hedg'd of bloody Lion's paws,
That witty Lewis to him a tribute paid.
Nor this, nor that, nor any such small cause-
But only for this worthy knight durst prove
To lose his crown, rather than fail his love.
O happy Thames, that didst my Stella bear!
I saw thee with full many a smiling line
Upon thy cheerful face joy's livery wear,
While those fair planets on thy streams did shine.
The boat for joy could not to dance forbear;
While wanton winds, with beauties so divine
Ravish'd, staid not, till in her golden hair
They did themselves (O sweetest prison) twine:
And fain those Eol's youth there would their stay
Have made; but, forced by Nature still to fly,
First did with puffing kiss those locks display.
She, so dishevell'd, blush'd. From window İ,
With sight thereof, cried out, O fair disgrace;
Let Honour's self to thee grant highest place.'

·

I Press, throng.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH-TIMOTHY KENDAL-NICHOLAS BRETON-HENRY CONSTABLE.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH, to whose merits as a prose writer justice is done in the sequel, deserves to be ranked amongst the minor poets of Elizabeth's reign. TIMOTHY KENDAL is only known for having published, in 1577, a volume entitled Hours of Epigrams. NICHOLAS BRETON (1555-1624) wrote some pastoral poems, and a volume called the Works of a Young Wit. HENRY CONSTABLE was a popular writer of sonnets, though strangely conceited and unnatural in his style. In most of the works of these inferior poets, happy thoughts and imagery may be found, mixed up with affectations, forced analogies, and conceits. It is worthy of remark, that this was the age when collections of fugitive and miscellaneous poems first became common. Several volumes of this kind, published in the reign of Elizabeth, contain poetry of high merit, without any author's

name.

The Country's Recreations.

[From a poem by Raleigh, bearing the above title, the following verses are extracted.]

Heart-tearing cares and quiv'ring fears,
Anxious sighs, untimely tears,

Fly, fly to courts,

Fly to fond worldling's sports;

Where strained sardonic smiles are glozing still,
And Grief is forced to laugh against her will;
Where mirth's but mummery,

And sorrows only real be.

Fly from our country pastimes, fly,
Sad troop of human misery!

Come, serene looks,

Clear as the crystal brooks,

Or the pure azur'd heaven that smiles to see
The rich attendance of our poverty.

Peace and a secure mind,

Which all men seek, we only find.
Abused mortals, did you know

Where joy, heart's ease, and comforts grow,
You'd scorn proud towers,

And seek them in these bowers;

Where winds perhaps our woods may sometimes shake, But blustering care could never tempest make,

Nor murmurs e'er come nigh us,

Saving of fountains that glide by us.

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Now next, my gallant youths, farewell;
My lads that oft have cheered my heart!
My grief of mind no tongue can tell,

To think that I must from you part.
I now must leave you all, alas,
And live with some old lobcock ass!

And now farewell thou gallant lute,

With instruments of music's sounds! Recorder, citern, harp, and flute,

And heavenly descants on sweet grounds.
I now must leave you all, indeed,
And make some music on a reed!
And now, you stately stamping steeds,
And gallant geldings fair, adieu!
My heavy heart for sorrow bleeds,

To think that I must part with you:
And on a strawen pannel sit,
And ride some country carting tit!

And now farewell both spear and shield,
Caliver pistol, arquebuss,

See, see, what sighs my heart doth yield
To think that I must leave you thus;
And lay aside my rapier blade,
And take in hand a ditching spade!
And you farewell, all gallant games,
Primero, and Imperial,
Wherewith I us'd, with courtly dames,
To pass away the time withal:
I now must learn some country plays
For ale and cakes on holidays!
And now farewell each dainty dish,
With sundry sorts of sugar'd wine!
Farewell, I say, fine flesh and fish,

To please this dainty mouth of mine!
I now, alas, must leave all these,

And make good cheer with bread and cheese!

And now, all orders due, farewell!

My table laid when it was noon;

My heavy heart it irks to tell

My dainty dinners all are done:

With leeks and onions, whig and whey,
I must content me as I may.

And farewell all gay garments now,
With jewels rich, of rare device!
Like Robin Hood, I wot not how,

I must go range in woodman's wise;
Clad in a coat of green, or grey,
And glad to get it if I may.
What shall I say, but bid adieu

To every dream of sweet delight,
In place where pleasure never grew,
In dungeon deep of foul despite,
I must, ah me! wretch as I may,
Go sing the song of welaway!

[Sonnet by Constable.]

[From his Diana: 1594.]

To live in hell, and heaven to behold,
To welcome life, and die a living death,
To sweat with heat, and yet be freezing cold,
To grasp at stars, and lie the earth beneath,
To tread a maze that never shall have end,
To burn in sighs, and starve in daily tears,
To climb a hill, and never to descend,
Giants to kill, and quake at childish fears,
To pine for food, and watch th' Hesperian tree,
To thirst for drink, and nectar still to draw,
To live accurs'd, whom men hold blest to be,
And weep those wrongs, which never creature saw;
If this be love, if love in these be founded,
My heart is love, for these in it are grounded.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOW JOSHUA SYLVESTER

RICHARD BARNFIELD.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOW, So highly eminent as a dramatic writer, would probably have been overlooked in the department of miscellaneous poetry, but for his beautiful piece, rendered familiar by its being transferred into Walton's Angler'-The Passionate Shepherd to his Love. JOSHUA SYLVESTER, who died in 1618, at the age of 55, and who was the author of a large volume of poems of very unequal merit, claims notice as the now generally received author of an impressive piece, long ascribed to Raleigh-The Soul's Errand. Another fugitive poem of great beauty, but in a different style, and which has often been attributed to Shakspeare, is now given to RICHARD BARNFIELD, author of several poetical volumes published between 1594 and 1598. These three remarkable poems are here subjoined :

The Passionate Shepherd to his Love.
COME live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That vallies, groves, and hills and fields,
Woods or steepy mountains yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers and a kirtle,
Embroider'd 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:

A 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.

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.

[The Nymph's Reply to the Passionate Shepherd By Raleigh.]

If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee, and be thy love.

Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
And Philomel becometh dumb,

The rest complain of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies,
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs ;
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.

But could youth last, and love still breed,
Had joys no date, nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.

The Soul's Errand.

Go, soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless errand!
Fear not to touch the best,

The truth shall be thy warrant;
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.
Go, tell the court it glows,
And shines like rotten wood;
Go, tell the church it shows
What's good, and doth no good:
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.
Tell potentates, they live
Acting by others actions,
Not lov'd unless they give,
Not strong but by their factions.
If potentates reply,
Give potentates the lie.
Tell men of high condition
That rule affairs of state,
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate.

And if they once reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell them that brave it most,
They beg for more by spending,
Who in their greatest cost,
Seek nothing but commending.
And if they make reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell zeal it lacks devotion,
Tell love it is but lust,
Tell time it is but motion,
Tell flesh it is but dust;
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.

Tell age it daily wasteth,
Tell honour how it alters,
Tell beauty how she blasteth,
Tell favour how she falters.
And as they shall reply,
Give every one the lie.

Tell wit how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness:
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in over-wiseness.
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.

Tell physic of her boldness,
Tell skill it is pretension,
Tell charity of coldness,
Tell law it is contention.
And as they do reply,
So give them still the lie.

Tell fortune of her blindness,
Tell nature of decay,
Tell friendship of unkindness,
Tell justice of delay.

And if they will reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming,
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming.
If arts and schools reply,
Give arts and schools the lie.

Tell faith it's fled the city,
Tell how the country erreth,
Tell, manhood shakes off pity,
Tell, virtue least preferreth.
And if they do reply,
Spare not to give the lie.

So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing:
Although to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing;
Yet stab at thee who will,
No stab the soul can kill.

[Address to 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,
Lean'd 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 bears they will not cheer thee:
King Pandion he is dead;

All thy friends are lapp'd in lead;
All thy fellow-birds do sing,
Careless of thy sorrowing!
Whilst as fickle Fortune smil'd,
Thou and I were both beguil'd.
Every one that flatters thee

Is no friend in misery.

Words are easy, like the wind;

Faithful friends are hard to find.

Every man will be thy friend

Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend :

But, if store of crowns be scant,
No man will supply thy want.
If that one be prodigal,
Bountiful they will him call;
And with such-like flattering,
'Pity but he were a king.'
If he be addict to vice,
Quickly him they will entice;
But if fortune once do frown,
Then farewell his great renown:
They that fawn'd on him before
Use his company no more.
He that is thy friend indeed,
Ile will help thee in thy need;
If thou sorrow, he will weep,
If thou wake he cannot sleep:
Thus, of every grief in heart
He with thee doth bear a part.
These are certain signs to know
Faithful friend from flattering foe.

EDMUND SPENSER.

These writers bring us to EDMUND SPENSER, whose genius is one of the peculiar glories of the romantic reign of Elizabeth. 'It is easy,' says

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Pope, to mark out the general course of our poetry; Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and Dryden, are the great landmarks for it.' We can now add Cowper and Wordsworth; but, in Pope's generation, the list he has given was accurate and complete. Spenser was, like Chaucer, a native of London, and like him, also, he has recorded the circumstance in his poetry :

Merry London, my most kindly nurse,
That to me gave this life's first native source,
Though from another place I take my name,
An house of ancient fame.

Prothalamion.

deformed by a number of obsolete uncouth phrases
(the Chaucerisms of Spenser, as Dryden designated
them), yet containing traces of a superior original
genius. The fable of the Oak and Briar is finely
told; and in verses like the following, we see the
germs of that tuneful harmony and pensive reflection
in which Spenser excelled:-

You naked buds, whose shady leaves are lost,
Wherein the birds were wont to build their bower,
And now are clothed with moss and hoary frost,
Instead of blossoms wherewith your buds did flower:
I see your tears that from your boughs do rain,

He was born at East Smithfield, near the Tower, Whose drops in dreary icicles remain.

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Edmund Spenser.

about the year 1553. The rank of his parents, or the degree of his affinity with the ancient house of Spenser, is not known. Gibbon says truly, that the noble family of Spenser should consider the Faery Queen as the most precious jewel in their coronet.* The poet was entered a sizer (one of the humblest class of students) of Pembroke College, Cambridge, in May 1569, and continued to attend college for seven years, taking his degree of M.A. in June 1576. While Spenser was at Pembroke, Gabriel Harvey, the future astrologer, was at Christ's College, and an intimacy was formed between them, which lasted during the poet's life. Harvey was learned and pedantic, full of assumption and conceit, and in his Venetian velvet and pantofles of pride,' formed a peculiarly happy subject for the satire of Nash, who assailed him with every species of coarse and contemptuous ridicule. Harvey, however, was of service to Spenser. The latter, on retiring from the University, lived with some friends in the north of England; probably those Spensers of Hurstwood, to, whose family he is said to have belonged. Harvey induced the poet to repair to London, and there he introduced him to Sir Philip Sidney, one of the very diamonds of her majesty's court.' In 1579, the poet published his Shepherd's Calendar, dedicated to Sidney, who afterwards patronised him, and recommended him to his uncle, the powerful Earl of Leicester. The Shepherd's Calendar is a pastoral poem, in twelve eclogues, one for each month, but without strict keeping as to natural description or rustic character, and *It was lately announced, that the family to which the poet's father belonged has been ascertained as one settled at Hurstwood, near Burnley, in Lancashire, where it flourished till '690

6

All so my lustful life is dry and sere,

My timely buds with wailing all are wasted;
The blossom which my branch of youth did bear,
With breathed sighs is blown away and blasted,
And from mine eyes the drizzling tears descend,
As on your boughs the icicles depend.

These lines form part of the first eclogue, in which the shepherd boy (Colin Clout) laments the issue of his love for a country lass,' named Rosalind-a happy female name, which Thomas Lodge, and, following him, Shakspeare, subsequently connected with love and poetry. Spenser is here supposed to have depicted a real passion of his own for a lady in the north, who at last preferred a rival, though, as Gabriel Harvey says, 'the gentle Mistress Rosalind' once reported the rejected suitor to have all the intelligences at command, and another time christened him Signior Pegaso.' Spenser makes his shepherds discourse of polemics as well as love, and they draw characters of good and bad pastors, and institute comparisons between Popery and Protestantism. Some allusions to Archbishop Grindal (Algrind' in the poem) and Bishop Aylmer are said to have given offence to Lord Burleigh; but the patronage of Leicester and Essex must have made Burleigh look with distaste on the new poet. For ten years we hear little of Spenser. He is found corresponding with Harvey on a literary innovation contemplated by that learned person, and even by Sir Philip Sidney. This was no less than banishing rhymes and introducing the Latin prosody into English verse. Spenser seems to have assented to it, fondly overcome with Sidney's charm;' he suspended the Faery Queen, which he had then begun, and tried English hexameters, forgetting, to use the witty words of Nash, that the hexameter, though a gentleman of an ancient house, was not likely to thrive in this clime of ours, the soil being too craggy for him to set his plough in.' Fortunately, he did not persevere in the conceit; he could not have gained over his contemporaries to it (for there were then too many poets, and too much real poetry in the land), and if he had made the attempt, Shak speare would soon have blown the whole away. As a dependent on Leicester, and a suitor for court favour, Spenser is supposed to have experienced many reverses. The following lines in Mother Hub bard's Tale, though not printed till 1581, seem to belong to this period of his life:

Full little knowest thou that hast not tried,
What hell it is in suing long to bide;
To lose good days that might be better spent ;
To waste long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow;
To have thy prince's grace, yet want her peers';
To have thy asking, yet wait many years;
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares;
To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs;
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to wait, to be undone ! 86

Strong feeling has here banished all antique and affected expression: there is no fancy in this gloomy painting. It appears, from recently-discovered documents, that Spenser was sometimes employed in inferior state missions, a task then often devolved on poets and dramatists. At length an important appointment came. Lord Grey of Wilton was sent to Ireland as lord-deputy, and Spenser accompanied him in the capacity of secretary. They remained there two years, when the deputy was recalled, and the poet also returned to England. In June 1586, Spenser obtained from the crown a grant of 3028 acres in the county of Cork, out of the forfeited lands of the Earl of Desmond, of which Sir Walter Raleigh had previously, for his military services in Ireland, obtained 12,000 acres. The poet was obliged to reside on his estate, as this was one of the conditions of the grant, and he accordingly repaired to Ireland, and took up his abode in Kilcolman Castle, near Doneraile, which had been one of the ancient strongholds or appanages of the Earls of Desmond. The poet's castle stood in the midst of a large plain, by the side of a lake; the river Mulla ran through his grounds, and a chain of mountains at a distance

Kilcolman Castle.

approved of his friend's poem; and he persuaded Spenser, when he had completed the three first books, to accompany him to England, and arrange for their publication. The Faery Queen appeared in January 1589-90, dedicated to her majesty, in that strain of adulation which was then the fashion of the age. To the volume was appended a letter to Raleigh, explaining the nature of the work, which the author said was a continued allegory, or dark conceit.' He states his object to be to fashion a gentleman, or noble person, in virtuous and gentle discipline, and that he had chosen Prince Arthur for his hero. He conceives that prince to have beheld the Faery Queen in a dream, and been so enamoured of the vision, that, on awaking, he resolved to set forth and seek her in Faery Land. The poet further 'devises' that the Faery Queen shall keep her annual feast twelve days, twelve several adventures happening in that time, and each of them being undertaken by a knight. The adventures were also to express the same number of moral virtues. The first is that of the Redcross Knight, expressing Holiness; the second Sir Guyon, or Temperance; and the third, Britomartis, a lady knight,' representing Chastity. There was thus a blending of chivalry and religion in the design of the Faery Queen. Spenser had imbibed (probably from Sidney) a portion of the Platonic doctrine, which overflows in Milton's Comus, and he looked on chivalry as a sage and serious thing.* Besides his personification of the abstract virtues, the poet made his allegorical personages and their adventures represent historical characters and events. The queen, Gloriana, and the huntress Belphoebe, are both symbolical of Queen Elizabeth; the adventures of the Redcross Knight shadow forth the history of the Church of England; the distressed knight is Henry IV.; and Envy is intended to glance at the un-. fortunate Mary, Queen of Scots. The stanza of Spenser is the Italian ottava rima, now familiar in English poetry; but he added an Alexandrine, or long line, which gives a full and sweeping close to the verse. The poet's diction is rich and abundant. He introduced, however, a number of obsolete expressions, new grafts of old and withered words,' for which he was censured by his contemporaries and their successors, and in which he was certainly not copied by Shakspeare. His Gothic subject

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*The Platonism of Spenser is more clearly seen in his hymns on Love and Beauty, which are among the most passionate and exquisite of his productions. His account of the spirit of love is not unlike Ovid's description of the creation of man: the soul, just severed from the sky, retains part of its heavenly power

'And frames her house, in which she will be placed,
Fit for herself.'

seemed to bulwark in the romantic retreat. Here he wrote most of the Faery Queen, and received the visits of Raleigh, whom he fancifully styled the Shepherd of the Ocean;' and here he brought home his wife, the Elizabeth' of his sonnets, welcoming her with that noble strain of pure and fervent passion, which he has styled the Epithalamium, and which forms the most magnificent spousal verse' But he speculates further— in the language. Kilcolman Castle is now a ruin; its towers almost level with the ground; but the spot must ever be dear to the lovers of genius. Raleigh's visit was made in 1589, and, according to the figurative language of Spenser, the two illustrious friends, while reading the manuscript of the Faery Queen,

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'So every spirit, as it is most pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer body doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairly dight
With cheerful grace and amiable sight;
For of the soul the body form doth take;
For soul is form, and doth the body make.

Spenser afterwards wrote two religious hymns, to counteract the effect of those on love and beauty, but though he spiritualises his passion, he does not abandon his early belief, that the fairest body encloses the fairest mind: he still says

'For all that's good is beautiful and fair.' The Grecian philosophy was curiously united with Puritanism in both Spenser and Milton. Our poet took the fable of his great poem from the style of the Gothic romance, but the deep sense of beauty which pervades it is of classical origin, elevated and purified by strong religious feeling.

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