THE PARLIAMENT OF LOVE....

A VERY WOMAN; OR, THE PRINCE OF TARENT.
THE UNNATURAL COMBAT.

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185

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PHILIP MASSINGER, THOMAS MIDDLETON, AND WILLIAM ROWLEY.

SPECIMENS

OF

ENGLISH DRAMATIC POETS.

THE LOVER'S MELANCHOLY. BY JOHN FORD.

Contention of a Bird and a Musician.

Passing from Italy to Greece, the tales

Which poets of an elder time have feign'd

To glorify their Tempe, bred in me
Desire of visiting that paradise.

To Thessaly I came, and living private,

Without acquaintance of more sweet companions
Than the old inmates to my love, my thoughts,
I day by day frequented silent groves,
And solitary walks. One morning early
This accident encounter'd me: I heard
The sweetest and most ravishing contention
That art or nature ever were at strife in.
A sound of music touch'd mine ears, or rather
Indeed entranc'd my soul: as I stole nearer,
Invited by the melody, I saw

This youth, this fair fac'd youth, upon his lute
With strains of strange variety and harmony
Proclaiming (as it seem'd) so bold a challenge
To the clear quiristers of the woods, the birds,
That as they flocked about him, all stood silent,
Wond'ring at what they heard. I wonder❜d too.
A Nightingale,

PART II. 2

Nature's best skill'd musician, undertakes

The challenge; and, for every several strain

The well-shap'd youth could touch, she sung her down;
He could not run division with more art

Upon his quaking instrument, than she

The nightingale did with her various notes
Reply to.

Some time thus spent, the young man grew at last
Into a pretty anger; that a bird,

Whom art had never taught cliffs, moods, or notes,
Should vie with him for mastery, whose study
Had busied many hours to perfect practice:
To end the controversy, in a rapture,
Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly,
So many voluntaries, and so quick,
That there was curiosity and cunning,

Concord in discord, lines of diff"'ring method
Meeting in one full centre of delight.

The bird (ordained to be

Music's first martyr) strove to imitate

These several sounds: which when her warbling throat

Fail'd in, for grief down dropt she on his lute

And brake her heart. It was the quaintest sadness,

To see the conqueror upon her hearse

To weep a funeral elegy of tears.

He looks upon the trophies of his art,

Then sigh'd, then wiped his eyes, then sigh'd, and cried, "Alas, poor creature, I will soon revenge

This cruelty upon the author of it.

Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood,

Shall never more betray a harmless peace

To an untimely end ;" and in that sorrow,
As he was pashing it against a tree,

I suddenly stept in.

[This Story, which is originally to be met with in Strada's Prolusions, has been paraphrased in rhyme by Crashaw, Ambrose Phillips, and others. but none of those versions can at all compare for harmony and grace with this blank verse of Ford's; It is as fine as anything in Beaumont and Fletch er; and almost equals the strife which it celebrates.]