^^|^-|V#ft^~^?-^^--/" ^^^- -^^-^3:.-. r^ P ALGRAV E THE GOLDEN TREASURY m ii i riii n ir nTmrmin'iaif i rn ii iininnTnr i Ti i TTrm nm 1 1 yt/' 9>g The s;olden ooo. C5 UISIVE: ;iTYcfCALr- a: los angeles LIBRARY This book is DUE on the date stamped belew Cak? iEngltsIi dlasatrH General Editor LINDSAY TODD DAMON Professor of English, Brown University ADDISON AND STEELE — Sir Roger de Coverley Papers — Abbott ADDISON AND STEELE — Selections from The Tatler and The Spec- tator — Abbott AUSTEN — Pride and Prejudice — Ward BROWNING — Selected Poems — Reynolds Builders of Democracy — Greenlaw BUNYAN — The Pilgrim's Progress — Latham BURKE — Speech on Conciliation with Collateral Readings — WARD BURNS — Selected Poems \ CARLYLE — Essay on Burnsj^ vol.— Marsh CHAUCER — Selections — Greenlaw COLERIDGE- — The Ancient Mariner]^ LOWELL— I'isiora of Sir Launfal / 1 vol.— Moodt COOPER — The Last of the Mohicans — Lewis COOPER — The Spy — Damon DANA — Two Years Before the Mast — Westcott DEFOE — Robinson Crusoe — Hastings Democracy Today — Gauss DE OUINCEY— Tfte FUoht of a Tartar Tribe — French DE OUINCEY- — Joan of Arc and Selections — Moody DICKENS — .4 Christmas Carol, etc. — Bhoadus DICKENS — A Tale of Two Cities — Baldwin DICKENS — Daoid Coppcf/ieW— Baldwin DRYDEN — Palamon and Arcite — Cook ELIOT, GEORGE — Silas Marner — Hancock ELIOT, GEORGE — The Mill on the Floss — Ward EMERSON — Essays and Addresses — Heydrick English Poems — From Pope, Gray, Goldsmith, Coleridge, Btron, Macaulay, Arnold, and others — Scudder English Popular Ballads — Hart Essays — English and American — Alden Familiar Letters, English and American — Greenlaw FRANKLIN — Autobiography — Griffin French Short Stories — Schweikert GASKELL (Mrs.) — Cranford — Hancock GOLDSMITH — The Vicar of Wakefield — Morton HAWTHORNE — The House of the Seven Gables — Herrick HAWTHORNE — Twice-Told Tales — Herrick and Brtiere HUGHES — Tom Brown's School Days — DE Mille IRVING — Life of Goldsmith— Krapp IRVING — The Sketch Book — Krapp ^f)t Hafee Cnglisf) Clas^icsi— continuea IRVING — Tales of a Traveller — and parts of The Sketch Book — Krapp LAMB — Essays of Ella — Benedict LONGFELLOW — Narrative Poems — Powell LOWELL — Vision of Sir Launfal — See Coleridge MACAULAY — Essays on Addison and Johnson — Xewcosier MACAULAY — Essays on Clive and Hastings — Newcomer MACAULAY — Goldsmith, Frederic the Great, Madame D' Arblay — New- comer MACAULAY — Essays on Milton and Addison — Newcomer iAlUVOT^^L' Allegro, II Penseroso, Comus. and Lycidas — Neilson MILTON — Paradise Lost, Books I and II — Farley Old Testament Narratives — Rhodes One Hundred Narrative Poems — Teter PALGRAVE — The Golden Treasury — Newcomer PARKMAN — The Oregon Trail — Macdonald POE — Poems and Tales, Selected — Newcomer POPE — Homer's Iliad, Books I, VI, XXII, XXIV — Cresst and Moodi READE — The Cloister and the Hearth — DE Mille RUSKIN — Sesame and Lilies — Linn Russian Short Stories — SchweikeRT SCOTT — Lady of the Lake — Moody SCOTT — Lay of the Last Minstrel — Moody and Willard SCOTT — Marmion — Moody and Willard SCOTT — Ivanhoe — Simonds SCOTT — Quentin Durward — Simonds Selections from the Writings of Abraham Lincoln — HAMILTON SHAKSPERE — The Neilson Edition — Edited by W. A. Neilson, As You Like It Macbeth Hamlet M idsummer-Night' s Dream Henry V Romeo and Juliet Julius Caesar The Tempest Twelfth Night SHAKSPERE— Tfte Merchant of Venice — Lovett SOUTHEY — Life of Nelson — Westcott STEVENSON — Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey — LeonaBD STEVENSON — Kidnapped — Leonard STEVENSON — Treasure Island — Broadus TENNYSON — Selected Poems — Reynolds TENNYSON — The Princess — Copeland THACKERAY — English Humorists — Cdnliffe a.Vd Watt THACKERAY — Henry Esmond — Phelps THOREAU— TFaJden — BOWMAN Three American Poems — The Raven, Snow-Bound, Miles Standish — Greever Types of the Short Story — Heydrick VIRGIL — Aeneid — Allinson and Allinson Washington, Webster, Lincoln, Selections from — Dennet SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY CHICAGO ATLANTA NEW YORK ^Ije TLakt Cnglisif) Clasigicg REVISED EDITION WITH HELPS TO STUDY THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF SONGS AND LYRICS WITH NOTES BY FRANCIS T. PALGRAVE LATE PROFESSOK OF POETRY, THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD WITH AN INTRODUCTION ON THE STUDY OF POETRY BY ALPHONSO G. NEWCOMER SOMETIME PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, I.ELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVEK>ITY . ' . • • • . • ' . * • i » ' J > , • » ...... "••.',,',,, ■' ' ' " . • '• • » * 1^' -. . . ^ * - * ' ' ' SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY CHICAGO ATLANTA NEW YORK 99829 COPYMGHT 1908, 1919 By Scott, Foresman and Company 265.24 Om^ . (fiantrnta PAGE Introduction. The Study of Poetry v Dedication 45 Preface 47 Book 1 51 Book II 106 Book III 183 Book IV 247 Notes 399 Index of Writers 421 Index of First Lines 431 Appendix Helps to Study 438 Theme Subjects 444 ill THE STUDY OF POETRY Poetry, the highest form of hterature, is one of the arts of expression, of which painting,, sculptuie, architecture, and music are others. It differs from these other arts in several ways. It is less distinctly creative than music and archi- tecture, both of which give shape, as it were, to something that did not exist in any shape be- fore. It is less directly imitative than sculpture and painting, since these employ physical like- ness of one sort or another, whereas poetry w^orks only through the arbitrary symbols of ideas which we call words. It is thus the least vivid and least sensuous of the arts. It is also prob- ably the narrowest in its appeal. The currency of any particular poem is limited to the currency of the language in which it is written. Ancient Greek poetry spoke fully only to the ancient Greek. If we would understand it, we must either learn its language, which we can never do perfectly, or have it translated for us with much inevitable loss of beauty and significance. This limitation holds to a certain extent in the other arts, but far less fatally. Chinese music, f^-r VT Palgrave's Golden Treasury instance, does not affect us precisely as it does the Chinese; yet music, Uke painting and sculp- ture, comes much nearer to speaking a universal language. Notwithstanding all this, poetry is assuredly chief of the arts, the most perfect expression of the human spirit. This preeminence it owes to its inclusiveness. The color of the painting, the grace of the statue, the melody of the musical air, may all be in some measure conveyed through one and the same poem. And beyond and above these are aspects of life and nature, shades of thought, and ranges of feeling which only poetry can express. To take a very simple example, note the image and sentiment that constitute the refrain of Victor Husro's Guitare: 't?"- "The Avind that blows across the mountain-top Will drive me mad."* Or note the combination of melody and picture in William Dunbar's The Merle and the Nightin- .gale: "Ne'er sweeter noise was heard by living man Than made tliis merry, gentle nightingale: Her sound went with the river, as it ran Out through the fresh and flourished lusty vale." These effects are possible only in poetry. *Le vent qui vient a t ravers la montagne Me rendra fou. The Study oj Poetry vii THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF POETRY Many have attempted to define poetry, but every definition leaves something unsaid. It is better therefore to forego definition and rest content with description. And the first thing to be said has been best said by Shakspere when he describes the poet as being "of imagination all compact." Imagination is the magician that gives poetry its peculiar power. Now imagi- nation may work very simply, merely bringing back the vision of things past and done, repro- ducing after a fashion what the senses cannot reproduce. But it often becomes in a meas- ure creative. It is often pleased, for instance, to reshape what has been seen or experienced, softening what is harsh, illuminating what is obscure, selecting, it may be, the more congruous elements and combining them into lovelier crea- tions of its own. Or it may take the simple event or object and clothe it with a multitude of relations, penetrating everywhere to the essen- tial life and meaning of things. Or it may, in the exercise of a still higher function, assume to see in' the material some type or symbol of the spiritual and through the one "body forth" the other. But in whatever manner the imagination may assert itself, wherever it is active there is the possibility of poetry; viii Palgrave's Golden Treasury and unless it be active, there can be no poetry at all. But is not poetry then quite as often con- cerned with fiction as with truth? Yes, if we choose to put it so. But fiction is not the opposite of truth. Fiction, to be sure, means something that is not fact, something that has no exact counterpart in the actual world, and poetry pre- sents not a little such departure from the literal, physical truth. Take, for example, Mercutio's description of Queen Mab in Romeo and Juliet: "She comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the forefinger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep; Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs." etc. When Romeo protests that Mercutio is talking of nothing, Mercutio admits that he talks of dreams "Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy." Plato was disposed to condemn such fantasy, and would have had no poets in his ideal Re- public, because they were so much given to reciting fables of imaginary gods and heroes. But such a condemnation is too sw^eeping. Shakspere's invention of a Queen Mab is not meant to deceive and can do no harm; on the The Study of Poetry ix contrary it gives much innocent delight. It is fancy, not falsification. Moreover, the poet's fancy, even while it creates fictions, may be pre- senting under this guise essential spiritual truth. The hell and purgatory and paradise which Dante describes in such concrete terms in his Divina Commedia cannot possibly exist just as he imagined them, but they are no less essentially true in their portrayal of states of sin, suffering, and happiness in the human soul. In such a case the imagery of the poem may be regarded as fiction if we please, but the poem is none the less truth in the highest sense — truth that is not to be tested by the low and imperfect test of mere physical actuality. In fact we get the highest poetry only when there is a fusion ot both fact and fancy in the embodiment of some lofty imaginative truth. Along with the question of truth arises the question of beauty. Poetry, as one of the fine arts, should work through a medium of beauty and to beautiful ends. In any art we may at times find material which is in itself unlovely, but such material must be so presented as to give no offense, or the art ceases to be art. The actual suffering of Laocoon and his sons in the coils of the serpents would have been an intolerable thing to witness, but the symbolic X Palgrave's Golden Treasurif representation of it in marble, with the signs oi physical pain softened and subordinated to the spiritual expression, is contemplated with admira- tion; the observer is almost made to wish, says Winckelmann, that he could bear misery like that great man. Perhaps poetry ventures farther than the plastic arts in depicting physical or moral deformity and pain, but it does so only to heighten some contrasted beauty, or to body forth some truth the deep significance of which is in itself a beauty. If it stops short with the presentation of deformity, it is not poetry. The wrath of Achilles is redeemed by his friendship for Patroclus and his compassion on Priam. The villainy of lago, as portrayed by Shakspere, ultimately heightens our admiration of moral worth. So, also, the barest philosophical truth, having in itself neither beauty nor ugliness, may be presented in so engaging a form as to take at once the name of poetry. To be convinced of this, it is only necessary to recall the finished couplets of an artist like Pope. But whether poetry present to us truth or fiction, beauty or ugliness, it is absolutely essen- tial that it be the product of feeling and that it arouse feeling. It might almost be said that the beginning and end of poetry is delight — delight, that is, in no narrow sense of mere amusement, The Study of Poetry xi Dut in a sense which inchides the whole range cf emotional satisfaction. This view of it is not universal. The traditional Greek view made delight incidental, or a means only, regarding as the end of poetry the teaching of action and character. But poetry in which this end is deliberately sought is invariably characterized as philosophic or didactic; and the terms imply an inferior degree of poetic quality. The highest poetry will no doubt teach, but that poetry which teaches directly is never the highest, while that which does nothing but teach is not, prop- erly speakmg, poetry at all. The direct aim of great poetry is to stir the nobler emotions, leav- ing them to work out their own purposes in the moral world; the ends of morality may be served, but they are served best only when noth- ing lessens the purity of the imparted delight. The cry of "art for art's sake" becomes thus "art for art's sake because that is also art for morality's sake." So much for the general nature and function of poetry. Let us now pass to a consideration of certain incidental attributes which further distinguish it from prose — the ordinary prose of science, of record, and communication. Here our first guide shall be Milton, who, in differ- entiating poetry from logic, declared it to be xii Palgrave^s Golden Treasury '''less subtle and fine but more simple, sensuous, and passionate." "Simple, Sensuous, and Passionate." — The direct way to the heart is not through the reason, but through the senses and emotions and the language of the senses and emotions. Matter- of-fact exposition, long-drawn argument, refine- ments of logic, are manifestly out of place in poetry. It must keep mainly to the things with which all men are familiar, and it must put those things in the language of experience. Love and death, for instance, are themes of this kind, and while it is true that few things could be made the subjects of subtler logic or profounder specu- lation, when poetry approaches them it prefers to do so in the attitude of the simplest human being who enjoys and suffers. In Wordsworth's poem, "She dwelt among the untrodden ways," there is not a thought or an image that cannot be grasped immediately by the most untutored reader. Nor does it seem that any elaboration of thought or expression could convey more vividly the sorrow of bereavement than the simple concluding lines, "But she is in her grave, and oh The difference to me!" The prevailing sensuousness of poetry is well shown by the fact that the poet draws a large The Study of Poetry xiii proportion of his images from the world of sense — of eye and ear, of taste and smell and feeling. So true is this of early epic poetry that in all the Iliad there is but a single figure drawn from the operations of the mind.* Note how Keats's Eve of St. Agnes, one of the most widely known and admired of modern poems, abounds in pictures and images of sense. Mark in the more ethereal To a Skylark of Shelley the same con- oreteness of imagery — "Like a cloud of fire," "Like a star of heaven," "Like a rose embow- ered," "Like a high-born maiden in a palace tower." Could winter be more vividly portrayed than in Shakspere's lines: "When icicles hang by the wall And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail?" Moreover, in poetry abstract conceptions are constantly put into concrete form. When wo are conscious that time is rapidly passing, the poetic faculty within us leaps at once to an image and says, "Time flies;" and Scott, in his stir- ing Hunting Song, exclaims: "Time, stern huntsman! who can baulk, Staunch as hound and fleet as hawk!" *Iliad, XV., 80. xiv Palgrave's Golden Treasury In the same manner Shakspere, with the reverse conception writes: "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death." It must not, however, be assumed that sim- pUcity and sensuousness are necessary and imi- versal attributes of poetry, nor that the test of great poetry lies in its appeal to the untutored mind. To maintain this would be to limit poetry at once to the simplest lyrics or ballads and to set the concert-hall song above the Shaksperian drama. Milton was merely drawing a distinc- tion, not proposing a precise definition. There are many kinds of poetry; and there are vary- ing degrees of simplicity and sensuousness, as there are varying degrees of intelligence to be reached. What is simple to one man to-day might not have been so yesterday and may never be so to another. The poet cannot sink always to the level of babes. He may, indeed, address himself to most select audiences, basing his appeals upon less familiar experiences and involving them at times in subtle webs of thought. Oidy, he will keep more on the side of sensuous- ness and simplicity than if he were writing philosophical prose. The Study of Poetry XV Moreover, there is in Milton's statement a third element to be considered, namely, that poetry is marked by passion. Perhaps this is the most important of the three. We have already remarked how essential it is that poetry be based upon feeling. The "noble emotions" Oi which Ruskin makes so much in all art, the "spiritual excitement" which Arnold considers a necessary condition of lofty style, must l^e present in some degree; and no doubt if they are present in sufficient degree, if only the poet be impassioned enough, his emotional intensity and elevation will lift his thoughts, however abstruse, into the region of poetry. Generic, or Specific?— Is the generic or the specific the better suited to the poet's purpose? The fact that poetry shows a preference for the simple, sensuous, and concrete, might seem to decide the question at once in favor of the specific. Dr. Johnson, however, has recorded in Rasselas a somewhat different opinion: "The business of a poet," said Imlac, "is to examine, not the individual, but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances. He does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades in the verdure of the forest. He is to exhibit in liis por- traits of nature such prominent and striking features as recall the original to every mind, and must neglect the minuter discriminations, which one may have remarked and another have neglected, for those characteristics which are alike obvious to vigilance and carelessness." xvi Palgrave's Golden Treasury The ideas and tastes of the eighteenth century in these matters were somewhat different from our own. Johnson, for instance, in The Vanity of Human Wishes, contents himself in his enu- meration of the tilings that make up the pomp and splendor of a king's life, with such vaguely outlined elements as "the regal palace," "the luxurious board." Almost equally generalized is Pope's description of the happy man, — "Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, Whose flocks supply him with attire; Whose trees in summer yield him shade, In winter, fire." In marked contrast to this are such lines as Tennyson's "The seven elms, the poplars four. That stand beside my father's door." Each poet pursues his purpose consistently. The "flocks" and "trees" of Pope are as appropriate to his generalized landscape as the "elms" and "poplars" of Tennyson are to his particular one. All we can say is that there is a preference on the pare of probably the larger class of poets for specific themes and methods — a preference sometimes so marked that a poet like Keats will swell the description of even an imaginary bower with a wealth of "botanical circumstance." The Study of Poetry xvii These differences are really but differences of emphasis which help us to define more exactly the limits of poetry. We may agree with Ur. Johnson in the main, yet feel that he went too far in his restrictions. That which is obvious to "vigilance" only, should certainly be as good poetic material as that which is obvious to "carelessness" merely. But it should always be obvious, — not necessarily to the whole world, for that would sink poetry to the level of the commonplace, but obvious to the alert, the dis- cerning, and the imaginative, in a word, to the poet himself. Thmgs that are recondite, that can be discovered and set forth only by abstract reasoning, are not proper material for poetry. Neither are those natural phenomena which reveal themselves only to microscopic examina- tion or which require the test of scientific analysis. Such things are the material of the philosopher and the scientist, and should be handled through the medium of prose. To state the principle broadly then, the poet may safely generalize only up to the point where perception readily follows, and he may be specific only down to the same point. Such a general t^uth as "Slow rises worth by poverty depressed" is poetic material l^ecause it is based upon XA-iii Palgrave's Golden Treasury observation of the more immediate kind, and is readily verified by most men's experience. But such a scientific generalization as, "In animal life the ascent of the scale of creation is a process of differentiation of functions," goes bej^ond the proper realm of poetry. So with particularization. The poet may number the streaks of a tulip provided he can do it with a glance of the eye. If the streaks are too faint or too numerous for that, the numbering be- comes a scientific and not a poetic jDrocess. Even the numbering with a glance of the eye may be unpoetic if done for other purposes than delight. On the whole, it is plain what Dr. .Johnson would have excluded — very minute details, accidental peculiarities, methodically pre- cise description and classification. In further illustration, take Byron's description of the Lake of Geneva as viewed from the castle of Chillon: "A thousand feet in depth below The massy waters meet and flow." This might seem to be a violation of our prin- ciple. But a second thought shows that it is not. "Nine hundred and fifty-five feet" Avould be such a violation, because we should then have an exact reference to an abstract standard of measurement. The round nmnber makes no pretence to accuracy, even though the poet goes The Study of Poetry xLx on to speak of a fathom-line. The reader gets merely an impression of vast depth. Whether the statement even approaches exactness is a matter of comparative indifference. Most fre- quently, indeed, the poet avoids all reference to such standards of measurement as feet, hours, and the like. When Spenser would tell us the time, he says: "By this the northern Wagoner had set." When Keats would indicate a certain distance, he writes: "About a young bird's flutter from the wood."' The legions of Satan, according to Milton, lay on the lake of fire, "Tliick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks In Vallombrosa." In every case we are referred directly to the powers of sense-perception. Suggestion and Association. — While poetry sometimes achieves its end of giving delight by the simple method of filling the mind with pleas- ing tales and pictures, more often perhaps, the end is attained by opening avenvies of contempla- tion and stimulating the mind to create its own images. By the art of suggestion, or by playing XX Palgravc's Golden Treasury upon the law of association, the poet may set up such a creative activity in the mind of his auditor as yields perhaps the keenest of all imaginative pleasures. For instance, he may compress a dozen images into a single word, as vvhen Collins speaks of " salloiv Autumn"; or by a striking epithet he may start a long train of thought, as when Shakspere discourses of the "hungry ocean." An admiralile instance of the effectiveness of suggestion may be seen in tlie word "silent" as used by Keats in the last line of his sonnet, On First Looking into Chapman' s Homer. The ellipses so frequently found in verse, the compounding of nouns, the suppres- sion of verlis, the resort to exclamatory forms, all owe part of their effectiveness to the fact that they substitute suggestion for complete expression. The laws of mental association may likewise be counted upon to stimulate this imaginative activity. Words carry with them long trains of associated ideas, varying of course with the knowledge and experience of the individual. The poet instinctively seeks that language which is richest in associations. Milton, in V Allegro and II Penseroso, plays upon class- ical mythology and literature in a way to give intense deUcjht to those versed in that lore. The Study of Poetnj xxi The first stanza of Shelley's Ode to the West Wind calls up in succession all that we have read or known of the mysteries of witchcraft, of the horrors of plague, of funeral trains, muster- ing armieS; and shepherded flocks. "O wild West Wind, thou breatli of Autumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thoil Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low. Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With hvang hues and odours plain and liill: Wild Spirit, which art moving eveiywhere; Destroyer and Preserver; Hear, oh hear!" Imagination and Fancy. — We have already used the word imagination in a broad sense as virtually synonymous with all poetic or creative activity. In a somewhat narrower sense, how- ever, it is applied only to the higher and nobler phases of this activity, while the word fancy is employed to distinguish the lower phases. The marks of fancy are to be found in such poetry as deals with the merely pretty or amusing, the diminutive, the superficial, the ephemeral, the sentimental, and the like. At the lowest it may descend to the palpably false. When Pope, xxii Palgrave's Golden Treasury for instance, in one of his early pastorals, de- clares that at the nightingale's song "all the aerial audience clapped their wings," he strains ^is fancy quite to the verge of the ridiculous. Most of the stock images of poetry, like "rosy cheeks" and "ivory brow," and especially those which attempt to adorn nature with the attri- butes of art, such as "silken wings" and "jewelled skies," must.be regarded as creations of a not very worthy fancy. From its worthier exercise, however, may sprmg such an admirable poem as, for instance, Gray's playful Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat, or the numerous graceful trifles of Herrick, or the best of the sentimental effusions of Moore. A good example of fancy passing into imagination may be seen in Gray's Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude. On the other hand, the heat and glow of the pure imagination are at once stronger and steadier than the passing gleams of fancy. Imagination ranges beyond the immediate, deals freely with the vast in space or power, penetrates appearances and seizes and reveals whatever is fundamentally true, beautiful, and good. It is the native gift of the supreme poets. We may trace its workings upon every page of Shak- spere, the greatest master of both the secrets of nature and the passions of men- It illuminates The Study of Poetry xxiii as with a kind of celestial radiance the lines of Wordsworth's inspired odes. Unconditioned by time or space, it freely transcends fact, but never truth. Ideal truth is indeed one of its essential characteristics. When Wordsworth makes Nature say of Lucy that "Beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face," we are at first startled as by something merely fanciful and untrue. But a second thought makes us see that this is no idle fancy, but the profoundest of imaginative truth. Indeed, we may conceive it to be the literal fact — that harmonies which pass through the senses to the mind may be reproduced in the organs of the body. Literalness, however, is no necessary quality. When Milton ventures upon the high imaginings of a Paradise Lost, he does not bind himself to fact, that is, to actual human experi- ence. Much of the machinery of that great poem is a palpable fiction. Through its daring sym- bolism, however, it sets forth what Milton con- ceived to be the deepest truths of the moral and spiritual universe. Select Diction. — Coleridge said that whereas prose is simply "words in their best order," poetry, in his definition, is "the best words in the best order." Naturally poetry, being con- xxiv Palgrave^s Golden Treasury secrated to the highest spiritual purposes, seeks a consecrated hangviage. It avoids all words that might shock or offend. It clings instinctively to what is old and well-tried. Thus a greater archaism is not only permitted to poetry than to prose — it is almost forced upon it; and so we find in it certain forms, hke "wast," "yon," "trod," "burthen," which prose no longer uses. Now and then a poet will strike out boldly into new fields, forcing to his pur- poses a very modern or even local and technical diction. But the difficulty is great and the attempt dangerous, requiring for success a high order of imagination and taste.* On the other hand, verse-writers sometimes betray an exces- sive tendency to keep to a special "poetic" vocabulary. They think, for instance, that they must write of "crystal" instead of "glass," of "steed" or "courser" instead of "horse," of "youths and maidens" instead of "boys and girls." Poetry has doubtless shown a general preference for the former of these terms, a preference stronger at certain periods in the history of our literature than at others. But the preference is not always justifiable, since it *Perhaps as good an example of this as could be found (for by the nature of the case one is practically compelled to select from contemporary verse) is Mr. Kipling's MrAndreiv's Hymn. 1 he Studij of Foetry XXV does not follow that what is common is common- place or that what is homely is unpoetical. Sometimes the deepest feelings and the most sacred associations go with the familiar, homely word. Indeed, poetry usually prefers the simple word. This springs logically from the sim- plicity which we have seen to be characteristic of poetry in general. Long, hard words are learned comparatively late in life; they have not gathered about them so many associations, nor do they call them up so readily; in fact, they do not usually stand for the simpler human feelings and relations, but rather for the refine- ments of mature life and experience, when love passes into regard, and ardent will into prefer- ence, and joy into a measured gratification. Or they stand for the subtle distinctions of philo- sophic and scientific analysis, with which poetry has little or no concern. But we may not be dogmatic on this point, nor attempt to fix arbitrary limits. Milton employs a highly Latin- ized diction to suit the dignified character of his epic, and he has clearly felt the poetic beauty of certain long and resonant proper names. In the sonnets of Rossetti, too, may be found many such words as "desultory," "regenerate," "prim- ordial," "irretrievably," " inexoral)le supremacy," xxvi Pali,rave's Golden Treasury used nearly always with entire felicity both of sound and sense. Everything of course depends upon the atmosphere of the poem, the effect aimed at, and the taste and skill of the poet. Poetry prefers the beautiful word — a point in which again the taste of the poet is supreme arbiter. When Thomson writes "atween" in- stead of "between" and Tennyson "marish" instead of "marsh," we feel that they were drawn by some peculiar beauty which, rightly or wrongly, they conceived to lie in those forms. Poems like Shelley's To a Skylark, or Keats's Ode to Autumn, or Poe's The Raven are filled with the most beautiful and melodious words the language possesses. Of course, when a dif- ferent effect is desired, uncouth and dissonant words may be used; but this is in pursuance of a special or temporary purpose, in which poetry still, by nicely suiting the means to the end, achieves that ultimate and integral beauty which lies in the perfect harmonization of all elements. Figurative Language, — Figurative language is preeminently the language of the imagination, which is constantly detecting subtle resemblances or clothing abstractions in visible forms. It is also the natural language of emotion, which not only employs those rhetorical figures — exclama- tion, and the like — that serve to make expres- The Study uj Poetry XXVll sion more brief and vivid, but which sometimes sees falsely and therefore, without realizing it, speaks in hyperbole or under an untruthful image. When, for example, in an excess of fear or rage, or out of excessive love or sympathy, one attributes life and sensation to that which does not have them, he commits what Ruskin has called a pathetic fallacy — a fallacy, that is, of the feelings, natural and justifiable, and not to be con- fused with the inexcusable fallacy of a cold- blooded conceit. Lyric poetry is full of the pathetic fallacy, as it is full indeed of figures of every kind. On the other hand, it is to be observed that some narrative poetry of the highest type — Homer's Iliad, for example, and Dante's Divina Commedia — uidulges in few fig- ures, and those mostly of simple comparison, such as the simile, in which there is no shadow of mental confusion. Yet figures have remained, first and last, one of the great distinguishing marks of poetic expression. POETIC FORM Metre. — Nearly all definitions of poetry agree in requiring that '.ts language shall be measured, that is, be given metrical form. Metre, as applied to English verse, may be defined as a recurrence of accents or stresses at intervals measurably xxviii Palgrovc's Golden Treasury and continuously regular. The rhythm of prose is distinguished from metre in not being con- tinuous or so measurably regular. Metre obeys a discoverable law. Without going into the history of English verse or troubling ourselves about the difference between accent and the classical "quantity," we may give a very simple outline of English metrics as practiced in modern poetry. The Foot. — The metrical unit is the foot. This consists of one stressed syllable in combina- tion with either one or two unstressed syllables. The two-syllable feet are the iamb ( ^ ^ ) and the TROCHEE ( _1 _ ). The three-syllable feet are the anapest ( ,^ ^ _!. ) and the dactyl ( _1 _ _ ). To these may be added the spondee ( _ _ ), a foot of two heavy or nearly equally stressed syllables, which is emploj^ed as a frequent sub- stitute for the dactyl in dactylic verse. From this scheme it is apparent that English verse falls naturally into two great divisions or classes — the iambic-trochaic class, or what may be called duple measure, and the anapestic- dactylic class, or triple measure. Iambic and Trochaic Measures. — It is not always possible to tell whether we shall call a given duple-measure verse iambic or trochaic. The Study of Poetry XXIX From the middle portion of the Hnes we could not tell. If, however, the lines hegin regularly with a light syllable, we call the measure iambic; if with a stressed syllable, trochaic. Gray's Elegy is iambic: ft , t The curfew tolls the knell of parting day. Ambrose Philips's To Charlotte Pulteney (except- ing its last two lines) is trochaic: t I t ' Timely blossom, Infant fair. Gray's The Bard is predominantly iambic, with some trochaic lines. Milton's U Allegro and II Penseroso are compounded almost equally of the two measures. In general, the iambic movement is the more dignified and stately; the trochaic is lighter, with a tripping effect. It may be noted further that the iambic is the favorite English measure, in- cluding a far greater proportion of verse than all the other measures combined. Anapestic and Dactylic Measures. — The two movements in triple measure are likewise not always kept distinct. Cowper's The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk is an anapestic poem: I am monarch of all I survey; My right there is none to dispute. XXX Palgrave's Golden Tn.asury Hood's The Bridge of Sighs is dactylic: One more Unfortunate Weary of breath. Scott's Pihrocl of Donuil Dhu is mainly dactylic, with at least one stanza — the third — almost entirely anapeotic. It should be noted that this triple measure very freely admits duple feet as substitutes for the triple; a good example is Wolfe's The Burial of Sir John Moore: t t » f Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note. The Line. — The line is named according to the number of feet it contains. A line of One foot = MONOMETER Five feet = pentameter Two feet = dimeter Six feet = hexameter Three feet = trimeter Seven feet = heptameter Four feet = tetrameter Eight feet = octometer The line is then further described, according to the character of its feet, as iambic, trochaic, dactylic, or anapestic. Thus the line quoted above from Gray is iaml^ic pentameter, that from Philips is trochaic tetrameter (wanting a final light syllable), and that from Wolfe is anapestic tetrameter. The lines most commonly used in lyric verse The Study of Poetry xxxi are from three to five feet in length; in narrative and dramatic verse, from four to six feet. The great English verse* is unquestionably the iamlDic pentameter. It is used, with rhyme, for most long narrative poems of the romantic cast, and without rhyme (blank) for narrative of the severer epic type and for the drama. From its ' former use it has obtained the name of the Eng- lish "heroic." An iambic hexameter, when used as an occasional variant in pentameter verse^ goes by the French name of "Alexandrine." Metrical Variations. — Thus far we have de- scribed verse as if it were absolutely regular — as a child always Avishes to recite it, with regular and equally stressed accents. Poets, however, in their practice are constantly intro- ducing variations, and there can be no proper reading of poetry without taking account of the numerous departures from the normal foot and line. The variations are chiefly of ^hree kinds; (1) variations in the number of light or unstressed syllables; (2) variations in the weight of stressed syllables; (3) variations in the relative position of the stresses. 1 . An extra unstressed syllable is often allowed *Note that "a verse" or "the verse" means technically a single line. '' Verse" in the collective sense stands for all metrically arranged language. xxxii Palgrave^s Golden Treasury in iambic and trochaic measure, especially at the beginning or end of a line: ' t ft Other flowering isles must be r t It In the sea of life and agony. r t t t t The wise want love and those who love want wisdom The extra syllables within a line are usually- such as may be easily slurred over (-er, -el, -en, -y, the before a vowel, etc.): Master of the niunnuring courts. t r r t She dw-elt among the untrodden ways. So spake the imperial sage, purest of men. r p r ft Sweet fluttering sheet, even of her breath aware. Sometimes an apostrophe is made to take the place of the vowel of such syllables, but the present tendency is rather against complete elision. The syllable therefore should be pro- nounced distinctly, though of course very lightly and rapidly. A light syllable may be omitted from three- syllable (anapestic or dactylic) measure: r t f t A sensitive plant in a garden grew A A This is sometimes done so freely as quite to change the character of the verse. For example, The Study of Poetry ' xxxiii Moore's Pro Patria Mori and Wolfe's The Burial of Sir John Moore are both technically in anapestic measure, but the second, with its greater free- dom, gives much less the effect of singing and more the effect of recitation. Occasionally, the light syllable or syllables of a foot are altogether omitted, their place being supplied by a pause: V -!- V -L V ^ Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O sea! Over bank and over brae, Hie away, hie away. A Rarely, as many as three light syllables are allowed in a foot. If this is done continuously we get virtually a new (quadruple) measure, the feet of which have never been given a name in English. Such feet, however, very easily resolve themselves into trochees or iambs: f i r Though the bloodhound be mute and the rush beneath my foot, And the warder his bug/e should not blow. (Scott's Eve of St. John.) 2. Stresses are not of uniform strength. Some- times the place of the stress is occupied by a xxxiv Palgrave's Golden Treasury very weak syllable. In reading, such a syllable is given the least accent possible — merely suffi- cient to indicate the time-beat: Amid the timbrels and the throng'd resort. f r I r ! The mockery of my people and their bane. The sound of merrimeni and chorus bland. Iambic pentameters, notwithstanding their five time-beats, show on the average only about four strong stresses to the line. Often the unstressed position is occupied b}'' a heavy syllable, which must not, however, be given the time-beat so long as there is an equally heavy syllable in the stressed position: But how to take last leave of all I love. 3. The position of stresses may occasionally be shifted, yielding inverted feet: -Nothing beside remains. Round the decay r t t f f Of that colossal wreck, hoiindless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away. Such inversion is most frequent at the begin- ning of a line or after a pause. It is mainly con- fined, too, to iambic verse, the other measures — trochaic, anapestic, and dactylic — having their accentual character more strongly marked. The Study of Poetry :sxxv Sometimes the shifting of stresses is carried so far as to bring about a kind of fusion of two feet into one long compound foot. The number and weight of stresses remain the same, but the alternation is temporarily lost: ' ' ' ' v^ _L And the first gray of morning filled the east. ' ' ' ' ^^ A Raised higher the faint head o'er which it hung. Here the scansion of the italicized portion is ^ ^ j_ j_ instead of _ JL .^ .1 • Rhyme. — Rhyme is a recurrence of the same sound or sounds. According to present English practice, two words are said to rhyme when they are similar in sound from the vowel of the last accented syllable to the close. It is com- monly required that the consonants (or combi- nation of consonants) preceding the accented vowel be different. That is, fate, ate, rate, gate, etc., may rhyme with grate, Imt not great with grate, because of their complete identity; but a few poets have followed the French custom and allowed this identity. Spelling has nothmg to do with the matter; strait and straight are both rhymes to either great or grate. Masculine rhyme is rhyme of a single syllable: go - grow; felled - beheld. Feminine or double rhyme (so named be- cause of the svllabic addition to femmine words xxxvi Palgrave's Golden Trtanury in French) is rhyme of two syllables; going- growing; city - pity. Triple rhymf is also occasionally found: tenderly - slenderly; bring to her - spring to her. Slight variations in the vowel sounds and (more rarely) in the consonant sounds are ad- mitted by most poets : love - prove; Christ - mist; prize - Paradise. Weak or light rhyme occurs when one of the rhyming syllables has only a secondary word- accent : see - futurity; sped - piloted; spell - desir- able. Another musical device frequently employed is ALLITERATION. This is merely beginning- rhyme, or similarity of sound at the beginning of words or syllables: now -never; Might -blos- som; love - relent; strive - restrain. In early Eng- lish poetry, alliteration was employed systemat- ically, but now it is almost wholly incidental; for example: With just enough of Me to see The last of suns go down on me. To alliteration may be added assonance, or similarity of sound (chiefly vowel) within words; gray - save; gloaming - home. This also is but an incidental element. Yet these incidental elements often add great charm to verse. Ob- serve, for example, how effectively the three The Study of Poetry xxxvii consonant sounds in the word Cupid are made to play through the following lines: Cupid and my Campaspe play'd At cards for kisses: Cupid paid and observe how extremely musical the follow- ing stanza is made by the chiming and cadence of its dominant sounds: The low downs lean to the sea; the stream. One loose thin pulseless tremulous vein, Rapid and vivid and dumb as a dream, Works downward, sick of the sun and the rain. Blank Verse. — Blank verse is verse without rhyme. It is commonly iambic pentameter, as in Shakspere's dramas and Milton's Paradise Lost. In this verse there are no metrical units greater than the line; beyond that the verse simply moves in rhythmical masses and falls into paragraphs like those of prose: "Is this the region, this the soil, the clime." Said then the lost Archangel, "this the seat That we must change for Heaven? — this mournful gloom For that celestial light? Be it so, since He Who now is sovran can dispose and bid What shall be right; farthest from him is best, Whom '•eason hath equalled, force hath made supreme Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields. Where joy forever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail, Infernal World! and thou, profoundest Hell, Receive thy new possessor — one who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." 99«<:h xxxviii Palgrave's Golden Treasury Another familiar form of blank verse is the DACTYLIC HEXAMETER, which is modelled upon the Greek and Latin hexameter, with very definite rules of its own. Among these rules are the requirement that the sixth or last foot shall always be a trochee; that a two-syllable foot (properly a spondee, but often a trochee) may be substituted for the dactyl of any foot but the fifth; and that the chief rhetorical pause within the line, technically kno\\Ti as the caesura, shall not come at the end of a foot: Awed by her own rash words she was still: || and her eyes to the seaward^ Looked for an answer of wrath: far off, in the heart of the darkness, Bright white mists rose slowly; beneath them the wander- ing ocean Glimmered and glowed to the deepest abyss; and the knees of the maiden Trembled and sank in her fear, as afar, like a dawn in the midnight, Rose from their seaweed chamber the choir of the mys- tical sea-maids. Couplets. — The simplest use of rhyme is shown in the couplet — two successive rhyming lines. This, like blank verse, is most frequently iambic pentameter. Two kinds of pentameter couplets may be distinguished, the classic and the roman- tic. In the former there is a marked pause at The Study of Poetry xxxix the end, each couplet constituting a pretty dis- tinct rhetorical unit, with internal balance nicely adjusted; as in the following example from Pope's Rape of the Lock: But now secure the painted vessel glides, The sunbeams trembling on the floating tides; While melting music steals upon the sky, And soften'd sovmds along the waters die; Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play, Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay. In the romantic couplet there are many "run- on" lines, the pauses occurring at any point, with frequently a full stop in the middle of a line. The opening lines of Keats's Endymion afford a good illustration: A thing of beauty is a joy forever; Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. In either case these couplets are printed con- tinuously, like blank verse, with large irregular paragraph divisions. Stanza Forms. — Rhyme is not only a musical addition to verse, but it serves also to bind the lines into the larger poetic units kno'v\Ti as stanzas. Sometimes stanzas are constructed without rhymes, as in Collins's ode To Evening, but this xl Palgrave's Golden Treasury is rare. The briefest stanza consists of two lines. Couplets, as defined above, are not stanzas. But when printed ' separately, they constitute stanzas to which perhaps the name of DisTicHS may be given. An example is Whittier's Maud Midler. Specimens may be found also of three-line stanzas, with triple rhyme. Above this we reach the forms of the more common stanzas, and the possible combi- nations become obviously very numerous. We shall indicate only the more frequent and char- acteristic combinations, some of which have distinctive names. A QUATRAIN consists of four lines, usually with alternate rhyme, a, b, a, h: I see the rainbow in the sky, The dew upon the grass, I see tliem, and I ask not why They ghmmer or they pass. An important variation is that employed by Tennyson in In Memoriam, with an enclosed couplet, thus: a-, h, h, a. The lines are tetram- eter: I sing to him that rests below, And, since the grasses round me wave, I take the grasses of the grave And make them pipes whereon to blow. Another variation is the oriental quatram of The Study of Poetry >li Fitzgerald's Ruhaiyat: a, a, h, a. The lines of this are pentameter: Awake! for morning in the bowl of niglit Has flung the stone that put the stars to fliglit: And lo! the hunter of the east has caught The sultan's turret in a noose of light. Rhyme-royal is a seven-line pentameter stanza, a, h, a, h, h, c, c. It was much used m Chaucer's time. An example may lie found in the familiar. Prelude of William ^Morris's Earthly Paradise: Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing, I cannot ease the burden of your fears, Or make quick-coming death a little thing, Or bring again the pleasure of past years, Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears, Or hope again for aught that I can say, The idle singer of an empty day. Ottava rima is an eight-line pentameter stanza, a, h, a, b, a, h, c, c. The stanza and the name were borrowed from the Italian. Byron's Don Juan will furnish an example: And first one universal shriek there rushed Louder than the loud ocean, like a crash Of echoing thunder; and then all was hushed, Save the wild wind and the remorseless dash Of billows; but at intervals there gushed. Accompanied with a convulsive splash, A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry Of some strong swimmer in his agony. xlii Palgrave's Golden Treasury Another Italian form, not really stanzaic, is the terza rima, consisting of sets of triple rhymes interlocked, a, b, a, h, c, b, c, d, c, d, e, d, etc. See Shelley's Ode to the West Wind. The Spenserian stanza, invented by Spenser for his Faerie Queene, consists of nine lines — eight iambic pentameter and the ninth an Alexandrine — rhyming a, b, a, b, b, c, b, c, c. The example following is from Spenser, but the stanza may be seen also in Byron's Childe Harold, Keats' s Eve of St. Agnes, and various poems of Shelley's, such as the Stanzas Written in Dejection near Naples: One day, nigh weary of the irksome way, From her unhasty beast she did ahght, And on the grass her dainty Hmbs did lay In secret shadow, far from all men's sight: From her fair head her fillet she imdight, And laid her stole aside. Her angel's face, As the great eye of heaven, shined bright, And made a sunshine in the shady place; Did never mortal eye behold such heavenly grace. The Sonnet. — The sonnet is a complete poem of fourteen iambic pentameter lines. In the strict Italian or Petrarchan form it is divided formally, and usually also logically, into an octave and a sestet. The octave contains but two rhymes, in the order a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a. The sestet may contain either two or three The Study of Poetry xliii rhymes arranged in any interlinked order- ed d, c, d, c, d; c, c, d, c, c, d; c, d, e, c, d, e; c, d, e, d, c, e, etc. The following example is from Wordsworth : The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon I This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For tills, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. — Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. The Shaksperian sonnet is arranged in three quatrains and a couplet: a, b, a, b, c, d, c, d, e. f, e, f, g, g: 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 ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou seest the twilight of such day As after sun-set 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 seest the glowing of such fire. That on the ashes of his youth doth lie. As the death-bed whereon it must expire, Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by. This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong. To love that well which thou must leave ere long. xliv Palgrave's Golden Treasury The Ode. — The ode is usually composed of lines of varying length, and divided into stanzas, "or strophes. In the so-called ''Pindaric" ode of Cowley and his imitators, these strophes are entirely irregular in length and form. See Dry- den's Alexanders Feast for an example. In the Pindaric ode proper, the stanzas are arranged in triads of strophe, antistrophe, and epode, and these correspond throughout. That is, some arrangement of lines and rhymes is? selected for the strophe and preserved througt^. all the succeeding strophes and antistrophes, with a different arrangement for the epode, which is likewise preserved through the follow- ing epodes. See Gray's The Bard. Many simpler arrangements of more or less regular stanzas are also called odes, such as the familiar odes of Shelley and Keats. French Forms. — In recent years there has been a revival of numerous old French forms of verse, such as the ballade, the rondeau, the TRIOLET, etc. Many of them are extremely elaborate and artificial, making much use o^ the element of refrain. They are of value chiefly as exercises of the fancy and of technical skill. Seldom is poetry of the first order composed in them and they call for no extended description here. The Studij of Poetry -xlv KINDS OF POETRY Poetry may be divided into three large classes, Epic, Lyric, and Dramatic, with numerous minor classes subdividing and to some extent overlapping these. Epic Poetry. — Epic poetr}' was originally the poetry of recital or of rude chant. It is objec- tive; that is, it deals with external events and seldom expresses the feelmgs of the poet. It is mainly narrative, usually of great length, and in its earlier examples treats of the deeds and prowess of some hero or tril^e. A distinction may be made between the early folk-epic, or hero-saga, and its later developments or imita- tions. The former is comparatively simple and of obscure origin, being sometimes a product of slow growth and the work of various bards. Such are the Iliad, the Nibelungenlied, and Beowulf. The character of the folk-epic can- not of course be adequately shown in an extract, but possibly something of its spirit and general manner may be thus conveyed. The following is from our Old English epic, the alliterative poem of three thousand lines which recounts the deeds of the Teutonic hero Beowulf, who delivered the country of xi\s. L*anes from a dragon : xlvi Palgrave's Golden Treasury Then he saw mid the war-gems a weapon of victory, An ancient giant-sword, of edges a-doughty, Glory of warriors: of weapons 'twas choicest, Only 'twas larger than any man else was Able to bear to the battle-encounter, The good and splendid work of the giants. He grasped then the sword-hilt, brandished liis ring-sword; Hopeless of living, hotly he smote her. That the fiend-woman's neck firmly it grappled. Broke through her bone-joints, the bill fully pierced her Fate-cursed body, she fell to the ground then: The hand-sword was bloody, the hero exulted. (J. L. Hall's Translation.) The ART-EPIC arises at a stage of higher devel- opment, and is invariably the work of a single poet who elaborates his story with all the devices of a perfected art. The best type of this is the great Roman epic of the Aeneid. Though Virgil professedly followed Homer, writing a heroic poem and employing indeed some of the same legends, the difference of treatment may be. felt in almost every line. The primitive character is gone; the later poet is manifestly far removed from the events which he describes, and literary embellishment is more constantly added to direct narration. The following lines describe Aeneas's departure from Carthage, on his way tc found Rome, at the bidding of a messenger from heaven : Now at the last, Troy's chief, by the sudden vision appalled, Started from slumber, and loudly his sleeping manners called: The Study of Poetry xlvii "Gallants! waken in haste! Each man to his bench and his oar! Hoist all sails with a will! From the heavenly heights as before, Comes an immortal God, sent dovra 'u-ith a mighty com- mand Straight to depart, and to sever the twisted cables from land. Holiest one! we obey thee, whatever thy title on high; Lo! with rejoicing hearts to perform thy bidding we fly. Be thou graciously near us, and make yon stars of the sky Herald us weather fair." As he spake, from the scab- bard his sword Flamed as the lightning flashes, and sundered swiftly the cord. All are aglow, heave gaily amain, haste gladly to do. Land in the distance fades, sails cover the seas, and the crew Labor the foaming waters, and cleave bright billows of blue. {Bowen's Translation.) Sometimes the later poet attempts to imitate the simphcity of the more primitive epic, as Matthew Arnold has done in Sohrab and Rustum. On the other hand the modern epic poet may quite depart from the subjects and methods of the early bards, and produce a great historical, allegorical, or religious epic, like Camoen's Lusiad, Spenser's Faerie Queene, or Milton's Paradise Lost. The FOLK-BALLAD, though much briefer and partaking of a lyric character, remains essentially objective and must be regarded as a variety of epic poetry. There are numerous English ballads xlviii Palgrave's Golden Treasury of unknown origin, like Robin Hood or the Battle of Otterhurn, and also numerous later ones, especially since the time of Scott, composed in more or less close imitation of them. The char- acter of the rude, anonymous ballad is well illustrated by the opening stanzas of Sir Patrick Spence: The king sits in Dumferling toune, Drinking the bUide-reid wine: "O whar will I get guid sailor, To sail this schip of mine?" Up and spak an eldern knicht, Sat at the king's richt kne: "Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailor, That sails upon the se." The METRICAL TALE is another important variety of the epic. It is usually highly romantic, deriving its themes from deeds of chivalry, from oriental manners, and the "like. Such are Scott's longer poems, Byron's The Bride of Abydos, etc. Sometimes the metrical tale is quite modem in setting and spirit, as in Tennyson's English Idyls. Lyric Poetry. — Lyric poetry is the poetry of song, though now seldom actually meant to be sung. It is more or less subjective — that is, it springs from and expresses the feelings of the poet, and appeals less to the love of incident than The Study of Poetry xiix to the emotional and aesthetic sensibihties of the reader. It in chides nearly all short poems and many of considerable length — the great bulk, indeed, of modern verse — and the sources of its inspiration cover the entire range of human feel- ing, from the religious worshiper's hymn or the mother's tender lullaby over her sleeping infant to the warrior's fierce cry of battle and victory. Examples rise in perplexing number: Take, O take those lips away That so sweetly were forsworn, And those eyes, the break of day, Lights that do mislead the mora; But my kisses bring again, Bring again — Seals of love, but seal'd in vain, Seal'd in vain I — Shakspere. Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from heaven or near it Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. — Shelley. Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea J Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow. Blow him again to me; While my httle one, while my pretty one, sleeps. — Tennyson. Under the general head of lyric poetry must be included a number of more or less specialized 1 Palgrave's Golden Treasury varieties, such as elegies, or mourning poems, of which Milton's Lycidas is the 'great Enghsh example; epithalamia, or marriage hymns, like Spenser's Epithalamion; and odes and sonnets, both of which have been more fully described in the preceding section on Poetic Form. Dramatic Poetry. — This is tlie poetry of en- acted life. In it the poet drops the role of narrator or interpreter and simply presents his characters, allowing them to speak and act for themselves. Sometimes poetic drama is written only to Ije read, when we give it the name of "closet-drama," but in the greatest period of the English drama, the time of Queen Elizabeth, it was invariably intended for actual representation on the stage and the productions were called simply "plays." Plays are com- monly classified as either tragedies or com- edies. A tragedy is solemn and lofty in char- acter, usually portraying the struggle of an individual against fate, and moving to a fatal issue. Hamlet and Macbeth are familiar examples. Comedy, on the other hand, presents a more or less amusing plot with a happy ending. Usually only the higher class of romantic comedies, such as The Merchant of Venice and As You Like It, are cast in poetic form; when comedy descends The Study of Poetry li toward the level of farce, its natural vehicle is prose. * To all these varieties of poetry — epic, lyric, a»d dramatic, ^ — may be added some others not easily classifiable, such as pastorals, satires, EPIGRAMS, and the great body of reflective and didactic verse. READING AND INTERPRETATION There are obviously several kinds of enjoy- ment to l^e derived from poetry. The first is the simple, immediate sense of something beau- tiful or moving — the enjoyment which the poet meant to give, and the only enjoyment which the unschooled and perhaps even the average hearer or reader ever gets. Nothing should be allowed to obscure or diminish this enjoyment, and the advice given by Dr. Johnson in the preface to his edition of Shakspere in the year 1765 is well worth dwelling on: '& "Notes are often necessary, but they are necessary evils. Let him that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakespeare, and who desires to feel the highest pleas- sure that the drama can give, read every play, from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of all his commentators. When his fancy is once on the wng, let it not stoop at correction or explanation. When his atten- tion is strongly engaged, let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of Theobald and of Pope. Let him read on through brightness and obscurity, through integrity ai''d lii Palgrarc's Golden Treasury corruption; let liim preserve his comprehension of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exact- ness, and read the commentators." It is a cardinal principle in the interpretation of poetry that to feel is better than to know, or rather that, except possibly in the severest orders of didactic verse, feeling is the only true knowledge. To know without feeling is after all not to understand; none but he who follows his poet with lively sympathy, with kindled imagination, with sharpened sensibility to all beauty and power, can have any true or vital knowledge of him. Poetry, then, should first of all be read, earn- estly read, — neither studied on the one hand, nor skimmed on the other. It should be read aloud, if possible, both that the reading may be done with care, and that the ear may get in reality, and not through imagination only, the melodies and harmonies of the verse. So organic are these musical elements in all good poetry, so intimately connected with the poet's thought and feeling, that the only road to complete sympathy with him lies through them. If the reader's metrical sense is defective or untrained, he must confine himself at first to the simpler and more marked rhythms, gradually perfect- ing his education in this particular ir the only The Study of Poetry liii possible way, namely, by reading more and more verse. In time he will find, if he have any faculty for rhythm at all, that the freest of meters will give him little trouble and he will instinctively make the nicest necessary adjustments between rhetorical sense and metri- cal law. The teacher of poetry can devise no more profitable exercise than daily to read or have read a short .selection of verse without comment or criticism, depending on the mherent power of the verse to command both interest and appreciation. Understanding is of course also necessary. For however strong may be the appeal of poetry to the senses, its language is the language of reason, and it has always a pure intellectual basis that cannot be ignored. One should not rest content until the words and sentences of a poem convey to him definite and accurate ideas. Therefore it may sometimes be necessary to paraphrase. For instance, readers who are unfamiliar with the Scotch dialect and with the less usual forms of our subjunctive construction may require to have Burns's lines, ''O wad some power the giftie gie us," etc., turned into "If some power would but give us the gift," etc, But if we stop there, the poetry liv Palgrm'e's Golden Treasury is destroyed. When the significance is gras^>ed we must forget our paraphrase and revert to the poet's language. Indeed, any needless trans- lation of the poet's ideas and images into other words is to be sedulously avoided, since it carries with it the danger of irrecoverable loss. In a well known essay Matthew Arnold has declared that he would rather have a young person ignorant of the moon's diameter than have him think that a good paraphrase for Macbeth's query, ''Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?" would be "Can you not Avait upon the lunatic?" — and lovers of Shakspere find it not a little hard to forgive Arnold for having made current such a paraphrase even for the sake of impress- ing a wholesome lesson. In the more abstruse kinds of poetry, con- scious analysis and interpretation must doubt- less be resorted to freely. Some poetry of this class exists chiefly for the message or moral it conveys. Close study of it is therefore not only legitimate, but is demanded, and it may be pursued with little harm to the more purely poetic enjoyment, since that becomes then a minor consideration. Moreover, our skill in interpreting will grow with our practice until The Study of Poetry Iv even difficult poetry becomes simple to us and there is no longer any perceptible bar to the appreciation of both its truth and its beauty. When we have reached that stage, Shakspere and Dante will not only yield delight as readily as Bums and Tennyson did once, but the delight will be greater in proportion to the greater ideas and truths that accompany the poet's imagma- tion and feeling. A further pleasure to be derived from poetry may lie in the discovery of the sources of our primary enjoyment. This may be made clearest, perhaps, by an illustration. Tennyson's Mariana is a poem that requires no interpreta- tion. One may read simply for the obvious beauty and feeling in them, such lines as. "About a stone-cast from the wall A sluice with blackeu'd waters slept, And o'er it many, round and small, The cluster'd marish-mosses crept." But, if he choose, he may return upon his read- ing and trace the pleasurable effects to their source. He will then discover that there is music for the ear in the rich rhymes and the alliterated syllables, that there is pleasure in meeting with such words as "sluice" and "marish" in poetic surroundings, that a subtle harmony is to he detected between Mariana's depression Ivi Palgrave's Golden Treasury of spirit and the blackened, sleeping waters that she looks upon, that the sense of sullen life and purposed action on the part of the waters, im- plied in the word "slept," imparts an atmosphere of mystery and awe, that in the whole poem, indeed, though the words "monotony" and "melancholy" are nowhere used, every thought and image contributes to produce a monotonous, melancholy effect. Many will protest against such analysis, as destroying the charm of poetry. To those who find it disenchanting, the simple advice is to let it alone. To all should be given , a caution against pushing it too far, for it is precisely this kind of treatment that if over done will deaden literature instead of making it alive. Yet a certain amount of conscious study, pur- sued with reverence and sympathy, can scarcely result in harm. After all, to increase in every way possible our enjoyment of "the best that has been thought and said in the world" is the great object. Per- haps each one primarily demands of the poet his own best thoughts and dreams given such expres- sion as he himself is unable to give them. He goes to the poet, as it were, saying: "I have seen, in fact or in fancy, such and such things; I have felt thus and so: But if I tried to express it, I should not do myself justice. My words The Study of Poetry Ivii are poor, and I have no skill to sha^/e them aright. Do you do it for me." And to one who looks out upon nature, filled with the palpi- tating joy of life, a Tennyson interprets the throstle's song: '• 'Summer is coming, summer is coming, I know it, I know it. I know ir. Light again, leaf again, life again, love again/ Yes, my wild little poet;" and to one oppressed with sorrow a Longfellow tells how 'Into each life some rain must fall. Some days must be dark and dreary." Thus, the needed expression is supplied, and the pent-up feelings find an outlet. Yet something more than this is possible. The great poets have visions that we have not seen, thoughts that never crossed our brain. To follow and find these, to come into touch with Wordsworth's subtle .sympathies, to rise to the sublimity of Milton's lofty conceptions, to sound the depths of Shakspere's knowledge of the human soul, are things that wait only upon the constant readhig and study of poetry. For the attainment of these, can any sacrifice of time or labor seem too great? Alphoxso Ger.\ld Newcomer. TO ALFRED TENNYSON POET LAUREATE This book in its progress has recalled often to my memory a man with whose friendship we were once honoured, to whom no region of EngHsh Literature was unfamihar, and who, wliilst rich in all the noble gifts of Nature, was most eminently distinguished by the noblest and the rarest, — ^just judgment and high-hearted patriotism. It would have been hence a peculiar pleasure and pride to dedicate what I have endeavoured to make a true national Anthology of three centuries to Henry Hallam. But he is beyond the reach of any human tokens of love and reverence; and I desire therefore to place before it a name united with liis by associations which, while Poetry retains her hold on the minds of Englishmen, are not likely to be forgotten. Your encouragement, given while traversing the wild scenery of Treryn Dinas, led me to begin the work; and it has been completed under your advice and assistance. For the favour now asked I have thus a second reason: and to this I may add, the homage which is your right as Poet, and the gratitude due to a Friend, whose regard I rate at no common value. 45 Permit me then to inscribe to yourself a book which, I hope, may be found by many a lifelong fountain of innocent and exalted pleasure; a source of animation to friends when they meet; and able to sweeten solitude itself with best society,^ — with the companionship of the wise and the good, with the beauty which the eye cannot see, and the music only heard in silence. If this Collection proves a storehouse of delight to Labour and to Poverty, — if it teaches those indifferent to the Poets to love them, and those who love them to love them more, the aim and the desire entertained in framing it will be fully accomplished. F.T.R May: 1861 m PREFACE This little Collection differs, it is believed, from others in the attempt made to include in it all the best original Lyrical pieces and Songs in our language (save a very few regretfully omitted on account of length), by writers not living, — and none beside the best. Many familiar verses will hence be met with; many also which should be familiar: — the Editor will regard as his fittest readers those who love Poetry so well, that he can offer them nothing not already known and valued. The Editor is acquainted with no strict and exhaustive definition of Lyrical Poetry; but he has found the task of practical decision increase in clearness and in facility as he advanced with the work, whilst keeping in view a few simple principles. Lyrical has been here held essentially to imply that each Poem shall turn on some single thought, feeling, or situation. In accordance with this, narrative, descriptive, and didactic poems, — unless accompanied by rapidity of movement, brevity, and the colouring of human passion, — have been excluded. Humourous poetry, ex- cept in the very vmfrequent instances where a truly poetical tone pervades the whole, with what is strictly personal, occasional, and religious, has been considered foreign to the idea of the book. Blank verse and the ten- syllable couplet, with all pieces markedly dramatic, have been rejected as alien from what is commonly understood by Song, and rarely conforming to Lyrical 'conditions in treatment. But it is not anticipated, nor is it possible, that all readers shall think the line accurately drawn. Some poems, as Gray's Elegy, the Allegro and Penseroso, Wordsworth's Ruth or Campbell's Lord LTUin, might be claimed with perhaps equal justice for a narrative or descriptive selection: whilst with reference especially to Ballads and Sonnets, the Editor can only state that he has taken his utmost pains to decide without caprice or partiality. 3 47 t- 48 Palgrave's Golden Treasury This also is all he can plead in regard to a point even more liable to question; — what degree of merit should give rank among the Best. That a poem shall be worthy of the writer's genius, — that it shall reach a perfection commensurate with its aim, — that we should require finish in proportion to brevity, — that passion, colour, and originality cannot atone for serious imperfections in clear- ness, unity or truth, — that a few good lines do not make a good poem, that popular estima.te is serviceable as a guidepost more than as a compass, — above all, that excel- lence should be looked for rather in the whole than in the parts, — such and other such canons have been always steadily regarded. He may however add that the pieces chosen, and a far larger number rejected, have been care- fully and repeatedly considered; and that he has been aided throughout by two friends of independent and exercised judgment, besides the distinguished person addressed in the Dedication. It is hoped that by this procedure the volume has been freed from that one-sided- ness which inust beset individual decisions: — but for the final choice the Editor is alone responsible. Chalmer's vast collection, with the whole works of all accessible poets not contained in it, and the best Anthol- ogies of different periods, have been twice systematically read through: and it is hence improbable that any omis- sions which may be regretted are due to oversight. The poems are printed entire, except in a very few instances where a stanza or passage has been omitted. These omissions have been risked only when the piece could be thus brought to a closer lyrical unity: and, as essentially opposed to this unity, extracts, obviously such, are excluded, fn regard to the text, the purpose of the book has appeared to justify the choice of the most poetical version, wherever more than one exists; and much labour has been given to present each poem, in disposition, spell- ing, and punctuation, to the greatest advantage. In the arrangement, the most poetically-effective order has been attempted. The English mind has passed through phases of thought and cultivation so various and so opposed during these three centuries of Poetry, that a rapid passage between old and new, like rapid alteration, of the eye's focus in looking at the landscape, will always Preface 49 Dt wearisome and hurtful to the sense of Beauty. The poems have been therefore distributed into Books corres- ponding, I to the ninety years closing about 1616, II thence to 1700, III to 1800, IV to the half century just ended. Or, looking at the Poets who more or less give each portion its distinctive character, they might be called the Books of Shakespeare, Milton, Gray, and Wordsworth. The volume, in this respect, so far as the limitations of its range allow, accurately reflects the natural growth and evolution of our Poetry. A rigidly chronological sequence, however, rather fits a collection aiming at instruction than at pleasure, and the wisdom which comes through pleasure: — within each book the pieces have therefore been arranged in gradations of feeling or subject. And it is hoped that the contents of this Anthology will thus be found to pre- sent a certain unity, 'as episodes,' in the noble language of Shelley, 'to that great Poem which all poets, like the co-operating thoughts of one great mind, have built up since the beginning of the world.' As he closes his long survey, the Editor trusts he may add without egotism, that he has found the vague general verdict of popular Fame more just than those have thought, who, with too severe a criticism, would confine judgments on Poetry to 'the selected few of many gener- ations.' Not many appear to have gained reputation without some gift or perfonnance that, in dvie degree, deserved it: and if no verses by certain writers who show less strength than sweetness, or more^ thought than mastery of expression, are printed in this volume, it should not be imagined that they have been excluded without much hesitation and regret, — far less that they have been slighted. Throughout this vast and pathetic array of Singers now silent, few have been honoured with the name Poet, and have not possessed a skill in words, a sympathy with beauty, a tenderness of feeling, or serious- ness in reflection, which render their works, although never perhaps attaining that loftier and finer excellence here required, — better worth reading than much of what fills the scanty hours that most men spare for self-improve- ment, or for pleasure in any of its more elevated and permanent forms. — And if this be true of even mediocre poetry, for how much more are we indebted to the best! 50 Palgrave's Golden Treasury Like the fabled fountain of the Azores; but with a more various power, the magic of this Art can confer on each period of hfe its appropriate blessing: on early years Experience, on maturity Calm, on age, Youthfulness. Poetry gives treasures 'more golden than gold,' leading us in higher and healthier ways than those of the world, and interpreting to us the lessons of Nature. But she speaks best for herself. Her true accents, if the plan has been executed with success, may be heard throughout the following pages: — wherever the Poets of England are honoured, wherever the dominant language of the world is spoken, it is hoped that they will find fit audience. 1861 Some poems, especially in Book I, have been added: — either on better acquaintance; — in deference to critical suggestions; — or vmknown to the Editor when first gathering his harvest. For aid in these after-gleanings he is specially indebted to the excellent reprints of rare early verse given us by Dr. Hannah, Dr. Grosart, Mr. Arber, Mr. BuUen, and others, — and (in regard to the additions of 1883) to the advice of that distinguished Friend, by whom the final choice has been so largely guided. The text has also been carefully revised from authoritative sources. It has still seemed best, for many reasons, to retain the original limit by which the selection was confined to those then no longer living. But the Editor hopes that, so far as in him lies, a complete and definitive collection of our best Lyrics, to the central year of this fast-closing century, is now offered. 1883-1890-1891 CI)e (t^oltien Creatfurp 'Book JFim 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 to-witta-woo I 5 The palm and may make country houses gay, Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day. And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay, Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-w9o! The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet. 10 Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit, In every street these tunes our ears do greet Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo! Spring! the sweet Spring! T. Nash. 51 52 JHalyrave's Golden Treasury [u II THE FAIRY LIFE 1 Where the bee sucks, there suck I: In a cowsHp's bell I lie; I'here I couch, when owls do ciy: On the bat's back I do fly 5 A.iter summer merrily. Merrily, merrily, shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs on the bough III Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands: Courtsied when you have, and kiss'd The wild waves whist, 5 Foot it featly here and there; And, sweet Sprites, the burthen bear Hark, hark! Bow-bow. The watch-dogs bark: 10 Bow-wow. Hark, hark! I hear The strain of strutting chanticleer Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow! W. Shakespeare IV SUMMONS TO LOVE Phoebus, arise J And paint the sable skies With azure, white, and red: Rouse Memnon's mother from her Tithon's bed iv] Book First 63 That she may thy career with roses spread: The nightingales thy coming each-where sing. Make an eternal Spring! Give Ufe to tliis dark world which lieth dead; 5 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 10 Which serves but to make dear thy glorious light — This is that happy mom, That day, long-wished day Of all my life so dark, (If cruel stars have not my ruin sworn 15 And fates my hopes betray). Which, purely white, deserves An everlasting diamond should it mark, Tliis is the morn should bring unto this grcve My Love, to hear and recompense my love. 20 Fair King, who all preserves, But show thy blushing beams. And thou two sweeter eyes Shalt see than those which by Peneus' streams Did once thy heart sui-prize. 25 Now, Flora, deck thyself in fairest guise: If that ye winds would hear A voice surpassing far Amphion's lyre, Your furious chiding stay; Let Zephyr only breathe 30 And with her tresses play. — The winds all silent are. And Phoebus in his chair Ensaffroning sea and air Makes vanish every star: 35 Night like a drunkard reels Beyond the hills, to shun his flaming wheels: The fields with flowers are deck'd in every hue, The clouds with orient gold spangle their blue; Here is the pleasant place — to And nothing wanting is, save She, alas! W. Drummond of II author nden 54 Palgrave's Golden Treasury (v V TIME AND LOVE When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced The rich proud cost of out-worn buried age; When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed, And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; 5 When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the watery main, Increasing store with loss, and loss with store; When I have seen such interchange of state, 10 Or state itself confounded to decay, Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate — That Time will come and take my Love away: — This thought is as a death, which cannot choose But weep to have that which it fears to lose. W. Shakespeare VI Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o'ersways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? 5 O how shall summer's honey breath hold out Against the wreckful siege of battering days. When rocks impregnable are not so stout Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays? O fearful meditation! where, alack! 10 Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid? Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back, Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid? O! none, unless this miracle have might. That in black ink my love may still shine bright. W. Shakespeare, vii] Book First 66 VII THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE Come live with me and be my Love, And we will all the pleasures prove That hills antl valleys, dale and field, And all the craggy mountains yield. 6 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 1 make thee beds of roses 10 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, 15 Fair Un^d 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, 20 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. 25 The shepherd swains shall dance and sing For thy delight each May-moming: If these delights thy mind may move, Then live with me and be my Love. C. Marlowe 56 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [viii vin OMNIA VINCIT i'ain would I change that note To wliich fond Love hath charm'd me Long long to sing by rote, Fancying that that harm'd me: 5 Yet when this thought doth come 'Love is the perfect sum Of all delight,' I have no other choice Either for pen or voice 10 To sing or write. Love! they wrong thee much That say thy sweet is bitter^ When thy rich fruit is such As nothing can be sweeter. 15 Fair house of joy and bliss> Where truest pleasure is I do adore thee: 1 know thee what thoii art, I serve thee with my heart, W And fall before thee! Anon. IX A MADRIGAL Crabbed Age and Youth Cannot live together: Youth is full of pleasarfce. Age is full of care; Youth like summer mom, Age like winter weather, Youth like summer brave. Age like winter bare: x] Book First 57 Youth is full of sport, Age's breath is short, Youth is nimble, Age is lame: Youth is hot and bold, fi Age is weak and cold, Youth is wild, and Age is tame. — Age, I do abhor thee. Youth; I do adore thee; O! my Love, my Love is young' IC Age, 1 do defy thee — O sweet shepherd, hie thee. For methinks thou stay'st toe long. T^". Sliakespeare Under the greenwood tree Who loves to he with me, i5 And turn his merrj' note I'nto the sweet bird's throat — Come hither, come hither, come hither!. Here shall he see Xo enemy 20 But -winter and rough weather. Who doth ambition shun And loves to live i' the sun. Seeking the food he eats And pleased -nith what he gets^ 25 Come hither, come hither, come hitherl Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather. W. Shakes-peart 58 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [xi XI It was a lover and liis lass With a hey and a ho, and a hey noninol That o'er the green corn-field did pass In the spring time, the only pretty ring time. 5 When birds do sing hey ding a ding. Sweet lovers love the Spring, Between the acres of the rye These pretty country folks would lie: This carol they began that hour, 10 How that life was but a flower: And therefore take the present time With a hey and a ho and a hey noninol For love is cro^\^led with the prime In spring time, the only pretty ring time, 15 When birds do sing hey ding a ding: Sweet lovers love the Spring. TT'. Shakespeare XII PRESENT IN ABSENCE Absence, hear thou this protestation Against thy strength, Distance, and length; Do what thou canst for alteration: 6 For hearts of truest mettle Absence doth join, and Time doth settle. Who loves a mistress of such quality, His mind hath found Affection's ground 10 Beyond time, place, and mortality. To hearts that cannot vary Absence is present, Time doth tarry. xiv] Book First 59 By absence this good means I gain, That I can catch her, Where none can match her, In some close corner of my brain: 5 There I embrace and kiss her; And so 1 both enjoy and miss her. J. Donne XIII VIA AMORIS High-way, since you my chief Parnassus be, And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet. Tempers her words to tramphng horses' feet More oft than to a chamber-melody, — 5 Now, blessed you bear onward blessed me To her, where I my heart, safe-left, shall meet; My Muse and I must you of duty greet With thanks and \\ishes, -^-ishing thankfully; Be you still fair, honour'd by public heed; 10 By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot; Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deedi And that you know I en\'y you no lot Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss,-— Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss! Sir P. Sidney XIV ABSENCE Being your slave, wliat 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: 60 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [xiv Nor dare I question with my jealous thought Where you may be, or your affairs suppose, But Hke a sad slave, stay and think of nought Save, where you are, how happy you make those; — - 5 So true a fool is love, that in your will Though you do anything, he thinks no ill. W. Sliakespeare XV 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! 5 And yet this time removed was summer's time: The teeming autumn, big with rich increase. Bearing the wanton burden of the prime Like widow'd wombs after their lord's decease: Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me 10 But hope of orphans, and unfather'd 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. W. Shakespeare XVI A CONSOLATION When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes I all alone be weep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate; Wishing me like to one more rich in hope. Featured like him, like him with friends possest, Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope. With what I most enjoy contented least; xviii] Book First 61 Yet in these thoughts myself ahnost 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; 5 For thy sweet love remember'd, such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. W. Shakespeare XVII THE UNCHANGEABLE O never say that I was false of heart, Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify: As easy might I from myself depart As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie; 5 That is my home of love; if I have ranged, Like him that travels, I return again. Just to the time, not with the time exchanged, So that myself bring water for my stain. Never believe, though in my nature reign'd 10 All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood, That it could so preposterously be stain'd To leave for nothing all thy sum of good: For nothing this wide universe I call, Save thou, my rose: in it thou art my all. W. Shakespeare XVIII To me, fair Friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eyed Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold Have from the forest shook three summers' pride; 5 Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn tum'd In process of the seasons have I seen, Three April perfumes in three hot Junes bum'd, Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green. Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand, 10 Steaf from his figure, and no pace perceived; '62 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [xviii So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,. Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived: For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred, — • Ere you were born, was beauty's summer dead. W. Shakespeare XIX ROSALIXE Like to the clear in highest sphere Where all imperial glory shines, Of selfsame colour is her hair Whether vmfolded, or in twines: 5 Heigh ho, fair Rosaline! Her eyes are sapphires set in snow, Resembhng heaven by every wink; The Gods do fear whenas they glow And I do tremble when I think 10 Heigh ho, would she were mine! Her cheeks are like the. blushing cloud Tliat beautifies Aurora's face, Or like the silver crimson shroud That Phoebus' smiling looks doth grace; \5 Heigh ho, fair Rosaline! Her hps are like two budded roses Whom ranks of lilies neighbour nigh. Within which bounds she balm encloses Apt to entice a deity: 20 Heigh ho, would she were mine! Her neck is like a stately tower _ Where Love himself imprison'd lies, To watch for glances every hour From her divine and sacred eyes: 25 Heigh ho, for Rosaline! Her paps are centres of delight, Her breasts are orbs of heavenly frame^ W^here Nature moulds the dew of light To feed perfection with the same: 30 Heigh ho, would she were mine' xk] Book First ^3 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; 5 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: 10 Heigh ho, would she were mine! Then 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: 15 Heigh ho, fair Rosaline; Heigh ho, my heart! would God that she were mine! T. Lodge XX COLIX Beauty sat bathing by a spring Where fairest shades did hide her; The winds blew calm, the birds did sing, The cool streams ran beside her. 5 My wanton thoughts enticed mine eye To see what was forbidden: But better memory said, fie! So vain desire was chidden: — Hey nonny nonny O! 10 Hey nonny nonny 1 Into a slumber then I fell. When fond imagination Seemed to see, but could not tell Her featiire or her fashion. 15 But ev'n as babes in dreams do smile, And sometimes fall a-weeping, So I awaked, as wise this while As when I fell a-sleeping: — Hey nonny nonny O! 20 Hey nomiy nonny! The Shepherd Tonie 64 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [xxi XXI A PICTURE S'veet Love, if thou wilt gain a monarch's glory, Subdue her heart, who makes me glad and sorry: Out of thy golden quiver Take thou thy strongest arrow That will through bone and ma-row, And me and thee of grief and fear deliver: — . But come behind, for if she look upon thee, Alas I poor Love! then thou art woe-begone thee! Anon. XXII A SOXG FOR MUSIC .Weep you no more, sad fountains: — What need you flow so fast? Look how the snowy mountains Heaven's sun doth gently waste! 5 But my Sun's heavenly eyes View not your weeping, That now lies sleeping Softly, now softly lies, Sleeping. iO Sleep is a reconciling, A rest that peace begets: — Doth not the svm rise smiling, When fair at even he sets? — Rest you, then, rest, sad eyest 1^ Melt not in weeping! While She lies sleeping Softly, now softly lies. Sleeping! Anon, xxiv] Book First 65 XXIII TO HIS LOVE 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: 5 Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines. And often is his gold complexion dimm'd: And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd. But thy eternal summer shall not fade 10 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 tliis, and this gives life to thee. W. Shakespeare XXIV TO HIS LOVE 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; 5 Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, I see their antiqvie pen would have exprest Ev'n such a beauty as you master now. So all their praises are but prophecies iO Of this our time, all. you prefiguring: And for they look'd 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. W. Shakespeare 66 Palgrave's Golden Treasury |xxv XXV BASIA Tvim back, you wanton flyer, And answer my desire With niutvial greeting. Yet bend a little nearer, — 6 True beauty still shines clearer In closer meeting! Hearts with hearts delighted Should strive to be united, Each others arms with arms enchaining,— 10 Hearts with a thought, Rosy lips with a kiss still entertaining. What harvest half so sweet is As still to reap the kisses Grown ripe in sowing? 15 And straight to be receiver Of that which thou art giver, Rich in bestowing? There is no strict observing Of times' or seasons' swerving, 20 There is ever one fresh spring abiding; — Then what we sow with our lips Let us reap, love's gains dividing. r. Campion XXVI ADVICE TO A GIRL Never love unless you can Bear with all the faults of man I Men sometimes will jealous be Though but little cause they see. And hang the head as discontent, And speak wliat straight they will repent. xxvii] Book Fiist 67 Men, that but one Saint adore, Make a show of love to more; Beauty must be scorn'd in none, Though but truly served in one: 5 For what is courtship but disguise? True hearts may have dissembling eyes. Men, when their affairs require. Must awhile themselves retire; Sometimes hunt, and sometimes hawk, 10 And not ever sit and talk: — If these and such-like you can bear, Then like, and love, and never fear! T. Campion XXVII LOVE'S PERJURIES On a day, alack the day! Love, whose month is ever May, Spied a blossom passing fair Playing in the wanton air: 5 Through the velvet leaves tlie wind All unseen, 'gan passage find; That the lover, sick to death, Wish'd himself the heaven's breath. Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow, 10 Air, would I might triumph so* But, alack, my hand is sworn Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn Vow, alack, for youth unmeet; Youth so apt to pluck a sweet. 15 Do not call it sin in me That I am forsworn for thee* Thou for whom Jove would swear Juno but an Ethiope were, And deny himself for Jove, 20 Turning mortal for thy love. W. Shakespears 68 Palgrave's Golden Treasury fxxvu XXVIII A SUPPLICATION Forget not yet the tried intent Of such a truth as 1 have meant: My great travail so gladly spent, Forget not yetf 5 Forget not yet when first began The weary life ye know, since whan The suit, the service none tell can; Forget not yet' Forget not yet the great assays, 10 The cruel wrong, the scornful w-ays, The painful patience in delays, Forget not yetf Forget not! O, forget not this,_ How long ago hath been, and is 16 The mind that never meant amiss — • Forget not yet! Forget not then thine own approved The which so long hath thee so loved, Whose steadfast faith yet never moved — 20 Forget not this! Sir T. Wna^ XXIX TO AURORA O if thou knew'st how thou thyself dost harm, , And dost prejudge thy bliss, and spoil my rest; Then thou would'st melt the ice out of thy breast And thy relenting heart would kindly warm. O if thy pride did not our joys controul. What world of loving wonders should'st thou seel For if I saw thee once transformed in me. Then in thy bosom I would pour my soul; XXX ; Book First 89 Then all my thoughts should in thy visage shhie, And if that aught niischanced thou should'st not moan Nor bear the burthen of thy griefs alone; No, 1 would have my share in what were thine: And whilst we thus should make our sorrows one, This happy harmony would make them none. W. Alexander, Earl of Sterline XXX IN LACRIMAS I saw my Lady weep, And Sorrow proud to be a^lvanced so In those fair eyes where all perfections keep. Her face was full of woe, 5 But such a woe (believe me) as wins more hearts Than Mirth can do with her enticing parts. Sorrow was there made fair, And Passion, wise; Tears, a delightful thing; Silence, beyond all speech, a wisdom rare: 10 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: 15 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. Anon 70 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [xxxi XXXI TRUE LOVE 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:-— 5 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. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks ^0 Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out ev'n to the edge of doom: — If this be error, and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. W. Shakespeare XXXII A DITTY My true-love hath my heart, and I have his, By just exchange one for another given: I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss, There never was a better bargain driven: .5 My true-love hath my heart, and I have his. 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: 10 My true-love hath my heart, and I have his. Sir P. Sidney cxxiv] Book First f^ XXXIII LOVE'S INSIGHT Though others may Her brow adore Yet more must I, that therein see far more Than any other's eyes have power to see: She is to me 5 More than to any others she can be* I can discern more secret notes That in tlie margin oi her cheeks Love quotes, Than any else besides have art to read: No looks proceed 10 From those fair eyes but to me wonder breed, Amyn, XXXIV LOVE'S OMNIPRESENCE 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. 5 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, Whereso'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, 10 AikI look upon you with ten thousand eyes Till heaven wax'd blind, and till the world were done. Whereso'er I am, below, or else above you, Whereso'er you are, my heart shall truly love you, J . Sylvester 72 PalgTave's Golden Treasury [xxxv XXXV CARPE DIEM O Mistress mine, where are you roaming? O stay and hear! your true-love's coming That can sing both high and low; Trip no further, pretty sweeting, 5 Journeys end in lovers meeting — Every wise man's son doth know. What is love? 'tis not heseatter; Present mirth hath present laughter; What's to come is still unsure: 10 In delay there lies no plenty, — Then come kiss me, Sweet-and-twenty, Youth's a stuff will not endure. W. Shakespeare xxxvi AN HONEST AUTOLYCUS Fine knacks for ladies, cheap, choice, brave, and new, Good penny-worths, — but money cannot move: I keep a fair but for the Fair to view; A beggar may be liberal of love. 6 Though all my wares be trash, the heart is true — The heart is true. Great gifts are guiles and look for gifts again; My trifles come as treasures from my mind; It is a precious jewel to be plain; 10 Sometimes in shell the orient'st pearls we find: — Of others take a sheaf, of me a grain! Of me a grain! Anon. ^xxviii] Book First 73 XXXVIT WINTER When icicles hang by the wall And Dick the shepherd blows his nail And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail; 5 When Mood is nipt, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl Tu-whit ! Tu-who! A merry note! While greasy Joan doth keel the pot, 10 When all about the wind doth blow, An(d coughing drowns the parson's saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow. And Marian's nose looks red and raw; When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl — 15 Then nightly sings the staring owl Tu-whit! Tu-who! A merry note! While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. W. Shakespeare XXXVIII 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 ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang- 5 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, to That on the ashes of his youth doth lie As the death bed whereon it must expire, Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by; 74 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [xxxviii — This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long. W. Shakespeare XXXIX MEMORY When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of tilings past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste; 5 Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, And weep afresh loves long-since-cancell'd woe. And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight. Then can T grieve at grievances foregone, 10 And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er The sad account of fore-bemoaned 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. TF, Shakespeare XL 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, Th' 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: make in me those civil wars to cease; 1 will good tribute pay, if thou do so. xlii] Book First 75 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, 5 Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me, Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see. Sir P. Sidney XLI REVOLUTIOXS Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing piace with that whicli goes before. In sequent toil all forwards do contend. 5 Nativity, once in the main of light, Crawls to maturity, wherewith being cro\\Ti'd, Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight. And Time that gave, doth now his gift confound. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth, 10. And delves the parallels in beauty's brow; Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth, And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow: — And yet, to times in hope, my verse shall stand Praising Thy worth, despite his cruel hand. TT^. Shakespeare XLII Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing, And like enough thou knov/'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, AjkI so my patent back again is swerving,. Palgrave's Golden Treasury [xlii 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. W. Shakespeare XLIII THE LIFE WITHOUT PASSION 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, — 5 They rightly do inherit heaven's graces. And husband nature's riclies 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, 10 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. W. Shakespeare XLIV THE LOVER'S APPEAL And wilt thou leave me thus? Say nay! say nay! for shame To save thee from the blame Of all my grief and grame. And wilt thou leave me thus? Say nay! say nay! ^vl Book First Tl And wilt thou leave me thus, That hath loved thee so long In wealth and woe among: And is thy heart so strong r As for to leave me thus? Say nayi say nay! And wilt thou leave me thus, That hath given thee my heart Never for to depart to Neithe. for pain nor smart: And wilt thou leave me thus? Say nay! say nay! And wilt thou leave me thus, And have no more pity 15 Of him that loveth thee? Alas! thy cruelty! And wilt thou leave me thus? Say nay! say nay! Sir T. Wyai XLV THE NIGHTINGALE As it fell upon a day In the mern,' month of May, Sitting in a pleasant shade Wliich a grove of myrtles made, 5 Beasts did leap and birds did sing, Trees did grow and plants did spring. Every thing did banish moan Save the Nightingale alone. She, poor bird, as all forlorn, 10 Lean'd her breast up-till a thorn, And there sung the dolefuU'st ditty That to hear it was great pity. Fie, fie, fie, now would she cry: Teru, teru, by and by. 1..^ That to hear' her so complain Scarce I could from tears refrain 78 PaJgrave's Golden Treasury [xlv 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: 5 Senseless trees, they cannot hear thee, Ruthless beasts, they will not cheer thee; King Pandion, he is dead, All thy friends are lapp'd in lead: All thy fellow birds do sing 10 Careless of thy sorrowing: Even so, poor bird, like thee None alive will pity me. R. Barne field XhVl 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. 5 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, 10 To model forth the passions of the morrow; Never let rising Svm 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. S. Daniel XLVII The nightingale, as soon as April bringeth Unto her rested sense a perfect waking. While late-bare earth, proud of new clothing, springeth, Sings out her woes, a thorn her song-book making; xlviii] Book First 79 And mournfully bewailing, Her throat in tunes expresseth What grief her breast oppresseth For Tereus' force on iier chaste will prevailing, 5 O Philomela fair, O take some gladness. That here is juster cause of plaintful sadness: Tliine earth now springs, mine fadeth; Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth. Alas, she hath no other cause of anguish 10 But Tereus' love, on her by strong hand wroken, Wherein she suffering, all her spirits languish, Full womanlike complains her will was broken. But I, who, daily craving, Cannot have to content me, 15 Have more cause to lament me, Since w-anting is more woe than too much having, *0' O Philomela fair, O take some gladness That here is juster cause of plaintful sadness: Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth; 20 Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth. Sir P. Sidney XLVIII FRUSTRA Take, O take those lips away That so sweetly were forsworn. And those eyes, the break of day, Lights that do mislead the mom: But my kisses bring again, Bring again — Seals of love, but seal'd in vain, Seal'd in vain! W Shakespeare 80 I 'algravca Golden Treasury [xlix XLIX LOVE'S FAREWELL 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; 5 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. Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath, 10 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! M. Drayton IN IMAGINE PERTRANSIT HOMO Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadowl Though thou be black as night And she made all of light, Yet follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow! 5 Follow her, w'hose light thy light depriveth? Though here thou liv'st disgraced. And she in heaven is placed. Yet follow her whose light the world revivethj Follow those pure beams, whose beauty burneth, 10 That so have scorched thee As thou still black must be Till lier kind beams thy black to brightness turneth. lii] Book First 81 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. 5 Follow 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. T. Campion LI BLIXD LOVE O me! what eyes liath 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? 5 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, XO That is so vex'd with watching and with tears? No marvel then though I mistake my view: The sun itself sees not till heaven clears. O cunning Love! with tears thou keep'st me blind, Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find! W. SJmkespeare LII Sleep, angry beauty, sleep and fear not mel For who a sleeping lion dares provoke? It shall suffice me here to sit and see Those lips shut Aip that never kindly spoke: What sight can more content a lover's mind Than beauty seeming harmless, if not kind? 82 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [lii My words have charm'd her, for secure she sleeps, Though guiUy much of wrong done to my love; And in her slumber, see! she close-eyed weeps: Dreams often more than waking passions move. 5 Plead, Sleep, my cause, and make her soft like thee: That she in peace may wake and pity me. T. Campion LIII THE UNFAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS While that the sun with his beams hot Scorched the fruits in vale and mountain, Philon the shepherd, late forgot, Sitting beside a crystal fountain, 5 In shadow of a green oak tree Upon his pipe this song play'd he: Adieu, Love, adieu. Love, untrue Love, Untrue Love, untrue Love, adieu. Love; Your mind is light, soon lost for new love. 10 So long as I was in your sight I w-as your heart, your soul and treasure; And evermore you sobb'd and sigh'd Burning in flames beyond all measure: — Three days endured your love to me. 15 And it was lost in other three! Adieu, Love, adieu. Love, untrue Love, Untrue Love, untrue Love, adieu. Love; Your mind is light, soon lost for new love. Another Shepherd you did see 20 To whom your heart was soon enchained; Full soon your love was leapt from me, Full soon my place he had obtained. Soon came a third, your love to win, And we were out and he was in. 25 Adieu, Love, adieu, Love, vmtrue Love, L'^ntrue Love, untrue Love, adieu. Love; Your mind is light, soon lost for new love. liv] Book First 83 Sure you have made me passing glad That you your mind so soon removed. Before that I tlie leisure had To choose you for my best beloved: 5 For all your love was past and done Two days before it was begun:— .Adieu, Love, adieu, Love, untrue Love, L'ntrue Love, untrue Love, adieu, Love; Your mind is light, soon lost for new love. Anon. LIV ADVICE TO A LOVER The sea hath many thousand sands, The sun hath motes as many; The sky is full of stars, and Love As full of woes as any: 6 Beheve me, that do know the elf, And make no trial by thyselfl It is in truth a pretty toy For babes to play withal: — But O! the honeys of our youth 10 Are oft our age's gall! Self-proof in time will make thee know He was a prophet told thee so; A prophet that, Cassandra-hke, Tells truth without belief; 15 For headstrong Youth will rvui his race, Although his goal be grief: — Love's Martyr, when his heat is past, Proves Care's Confessor at the last. Anon 84 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [Iv liV A RENUNCIATION Thou art not fair, for all thy red and wliite, For all those rosy ornaments in thee, — Thou art not sweet, though made of mere delight Nor fair, nor sweet — unless thou pity me! 5 I will not soothe thy fancies: thou shalt prove That beauty is no beauty without love. — Yet love not me^ nor seek not to allure My thoughts with beauty, were it more divine: Thy smiles and kisses I cannot endure, 10 I'll not be wrapp'd up in those arms of thine- — Now show it, if thou be a woman right — Embrace and kiss and love me in despite! T. Campion LVI Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude; Thy tooth is not so keen 5 Because thou art not seen. Although thy breath be rude. Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly: Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly: Then, heigh ho! the holly! 10 This life is most jolly. Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, Thou dost not bite so nigh As benefits forgot: Though thou the waters warp, 15 Thy sting is not so shaq> As friend remember'd not. Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly: Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly: Then, heigh ho! the holly! 20 This life is most jolly. W. Shakespeare Ivii] Book Fu-st 85 LVII A SWEET LULLABY Come little babe, come silly soul, Thy father's shame, thy mother's grief, Born as 1 doubt to all our dole, And to thy self unhappy chief: 6 Sing Lullaby and lap it warm. Poor soul that thinks no creature harm. Thou little think'st and less "dost know, The cause of this thy mother's moan, Thou want'st the wit to wail her woe, 10 And I myself am all alone: Why dost thou weep? why dost thou wail? And knowest not yet what thou dost ail. Come little wretch, ah silly heart, Mine only joy, what can I more? 15 If there be any wrong thy smart That may the destinies implore: 'Twas I, I say, against my will, I wail the time, but be thou still. And dost thou smile, oh thy sweet face! 20 Would God Himself He might thee see, No doubt thou would'st soon purchase grace, I know right well, for thee and me: But come to mother, babe, and play, For father false is fled away. 25 Sweet boy, if it by fortune chance, Thy father home again to send. If death do strike me with his lance. Yet mayst thou me to him commend; If any ask thy mother's name, 30 Tell how by love she purchased blame, Then will his gentle heart soon yield, I know him of a noble mind, Although a Lion in the field, 86 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [Ivii A Lamb in town thou shalt him find: Ask blessing, babe, be not afraid, His sugar'd words hath me betray'd. Then mayst thou joy and be right glad, 5 Although in woe I seem to moan, Thy father is no rascal lad, A noble youth of blood and bone: His glancing looks, if he once smile, Right honest women may beguile. 10 Come, little boy,' and rock asleep, Sing lullaby and be thou still, I that can do nought else but weep; Will sit by thee and wail my fill: God bless my babe, and lullaby 15 From this thy father's quahty! Anon. LVIII 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! 5 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 languish'd grace. To me, that feel the like, thy state descries. Then, e'en of fellowship, O Moon, tell me, 10 Is constant love deem'd 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? Sir P. Sidney Ix] Book First 87 LIX CRU DELIS AMOR When thou must home to shades of underground. And there arrived, a new admired guest, The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round, White lope, bhtlie Helen, and the rest, 5 To hear the stories of thy finish'd love From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move; Then wilt thou speak of banqueting delights, Of masques and revels which sweet youth did make, Of tourneys and great challenges of Knights, 10 And all these triumphs for thy beauty's sake: When thou hast told these honours done to thee, Then tell, O tell, how thou didst nuu-der me! T. Campion LX 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; 5 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 10 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, 15 Fell by course from his eyes. That one another's place supplies; Thus he grieved in ever>' part, Tears of blood fell from his heart, W^hen he left his pretty boy, 20 Father's sorrow, father's joy. 88 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [Ix Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee. When thou art ohl, there's grief enough for thee. The wanton smiled, father wept, Mother cried, baby leapt; 5 More he crow'd, more we cried. Nature could not sorrow hide: He must go, he must kiss Cliild and mother, baby bless, For he left his pretty boy, to Father's sorrow, father's joy. Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee, When thou art old, there's grief enough for thee. R. Greene LXI A LAMENT My thoughts hold mortal strife; I do detest my life, And with lamenting cries Peace to my soul to bring Oft call that prince which here doth monarchize — But he, grim grinning King, Who caitiffs scorns, and doth the blest surprise, Late having deck'd with beauty's rose his tomb, Disdains to crop a weed, and will not come. W. Drummond Lxn DIRGE OF LOVE (jome away, come away, Death, And in sad cyprer, let me be laid; Fly away, fly away, breath; I am slain by a fair cruel maid. Ixiii] Book Fir si 89 My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, O prepare it ! My part of death, no one so true Did share it. 5 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, 10 Lay me, O where Sad true lover never find my grave, To weep there. W. Shakespeare LXIII TO HIS LUTE My lute, be as thou wert when thou didst grow With thy green mother in some shady grove, When immelodiovis winds but made thee move. And birds their ramage did on thee bestow. 5 Siiice that dear Voice which did thy sounds approve Which wont in such harmonious strains to flow, Is reft from Earth to tune those spheres above, What art thou but a harbinger of woe? Thy pleasing notes be pleasing notes no more, 10 But orphans' wailings to the fainting ear; Each stroke a sigh, each sound draws forth a tear; For which be silent as in woods before: Or if that any hand to touch thee deign, Like widow'd turtle, still her loss complain. W. Drummond 90 PaJgrave's Golden Treasury [Ixiv LXIV FIDELE Fear no more the heat o' the sun Nor the furiovis winter's rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone and ta'en thy wages, 5 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; 10 To thee the reed is as the oak: The sceptie, learning, physic, must All follow this, and come to dust. Fear no more the lightning flash Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone; 15 Fear not slander, censure rash; Thou hast finish' d joy and moan: All lovers young, all lovers must Consign to thee, and come to dust. W. ShakespeaT'- LXV A SEA DIRGE 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. ir. Shakespearp Ixvii] Book First LXVI A LAND DIRGE 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. 5 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 robb'd) sustain no harm; But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men, 10 For with liis nails he'll dig them up again. J. Webster LXVI I POST MORTEM If Thou survive my well-contented day When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover; 5 Compare them with the bettering of the time, And though they be outstripp'd by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme Exceeded by the height of happier men. O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought — 10 'Had my friend's Muse grown with tliis growing age, A dearer birth than this his love had brought, To march in ranks of better equipage: But since he died, and poets better prove. Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love.' W . Shakespeare 92 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [Ixviii LXVIII THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH No longer mourn for me when I am dead Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world, that I am fled From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell; 5 Nay, if you read this line, remember not The hand that writ it; for I love you so. That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot If thinking on me then should make you woe. O if, I say, you look vipon this verse 10 When I perhaps compounded am with clay, Do not so much as my poor name rehearse. But let your love even with my life decay; Lest the wis^ world should look into your moan, And mock you with me after I am gone. W. Shakespeare LXIX YOUNG LOVE Tell me where is Fancy bred, Or in the heart, or in the head? How begot, how nourished? Reply, reply. 5 It is engender' d 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. TO — Ding, dong, bell. W, Shakesveare Ixxi] Book First 93 LXX A DILEMMA Lady, when I behold the roses sprouting Which clad in damask mantles deck the arbours, And then behold your hps where sweet love harbours, My eyes present me with a double doubting: For viewing both aUke, hardly my mind supposes V hether the roses be your lips, or your lips the roses Anon. LXXI 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. 5 Within mine eyes he makes his nest, His bed amidst my tender breast; My kisses are his daily feiist, And yet he robs me of my rest: Ah! wanton, will ye? IC 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; 15 He music plays if so I sing; He lends me ever\' lovely thing, Yet cruel he my heart doth sting Whist, wanton, will yei* Else I with roses every day 20 Will whip you hence. 94 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [Ixxi 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; 6 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? 10 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, 15 O Cupid! so thou pity me, Spare not, but play thee! T. Lodge LXXII CUPID AND CAMPASPE Cupid and my Campaspe play'd At cards for kisses; Cupid paid: He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows, His mother's doves, and team of sparrows; 5 Loses them too; then down he throws The coral of his lip, the rose Growing on's cheek (but none knows how); With these, the crystal of his brow, And then the dimple on his chin; 10 All these did my Campaspe win: And last he set her both his eyes — She won, and Cupid blind did rise. O Love! has she done this to thee? What shall, ?las! become of me? J. Lylys Ixxiv] Book First 95 LXXIII Pack, clouds, away, and welcome day, With night we banish sorrow; Sweet air blow soft, mount larks aloft To give my Love good-morrow! 5 Wings from the wind to please her mind Notes from the lark I'll borrow; Bird, pmne thy wing, nightingale sing, To give my Love good-morrow; To give my Love good-morrow; 10 Notes from them both I'll borrow. Wake from thy nest, Robin-red-breast, Sing, birds, in every furrow; And from each hill, let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! 15 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 20 Sing, birds, in every furrow! T. HeyiDood LXXIV PROTHALAMION Calm was the day, and through the trembling ail Sweet-breathing Zephyrus di'd softly play — A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay Hot Titan's beams, which then did glister fair; 5 When I, (whom sullen care. Through discontent of my long fruitless stay In princes' court, and expectation \ain Of idle hopes, which still do fly away Like empty shadows, did afflict my bra;.., 10 Walk'd forth to ease my pain 96 Palgrave's Golden Treasury pxxiv Along the shore of silver-streaming Thames; Whose rutty bank, the which liis river hems, Was painted all with variable flowers, And all the meads adorn'd -with dainty gems 5 Fit to deck maidens' bowers, And crov\Ti their paramours Against the bridal day, which is not long: Sweet Thames! nm softly, till I end my song. There in a meadow by the river's side 10 A ilock of nymphs I chanced to espy, All lovely daughters of the flood thereby. With goodly greenish locks all loose untied As each had been a bride; And each one had a little wicker basket 15 Made of fine twigs, entrailed curiously. In which they gather'd flowers to fill their flasket, And with fine fingers cropt full feateously The tender stalks on high. Of every sort which in that meadow grew 20 They gather'd some; the violet, pallid blue, The little daisy that at evening closes. The virgin lily and the primrose true, With store of vermeil roses. To deck their bridegrooms' posies 25 Against the bridal day, which was not long: Sweet Thames! nm softly, till I end my song. With that I saw two swans of goodly hue Come softly swimming down along the Lee: Two fairer birds I yet did never see; SO The snow which doth the top of Pindus strow Did never whiter show. Nor Jove himself, when he a swan would be For love of Leda, whiter cUd appear; Yet Leda was (they say) as white as he, 35 Yet not so white as these, nor nothing near; So purely white they were That even the gentle stream, the which them bare, Seem'd foul to them, and bade his billows spare To wet their silken feathers, lest they might 40 Soil their fair plumes with water not so fair. Ixxiv] Book First 97 And mar their beauties bright That shone as Heaven's Ught Against their bridal day, which was not long: Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song, 5 Eftsoons the nymphs, which now had flowers their fill, Ran all in haste to see that silver brood As they came floating on the crystal flood; Whom when they saw, thev stood amazed still Their wondering eyes to fill; 10 Them seem'd they never saw a sight so fair Of fowls, so lovely, that they sure did deem Them heavenly born, or to be that same pair Wliich through the sky draw Venus' silver team; For sure they did not seem 15 To be begot of any earthly seed, But rather Angels, or of Angels' breed; Yet were they bred of summer's heat, they say. In sweetest season, when each flower and weed The earth did fresh array; 10 So fresh they seem'd as day, Ev'n as their bridal day, which was not long: Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song. Then forth they all out of their baskets drew Great store of flowers, the honour of the field, 25 That to the sense did fragrant odours yield, All wliich upon those goodly birds they threw And all the waves did strew, That like old Peneus' waters they did seem When down along by pleasant Tempe's shore 30 Scatter'd with flowers, through Thessaly they stream, That they appear, through UUes' plenteous store, Like a bride's chamber-floor. Two of those nymphs meanwhile two garlands bound Of freshest flowers which in that mead they found, 35 The which presenting all in trim array. Their snowy foreheads therewithal they crown d; Whilst one did sing this lay Prepared against that da/. Against their bridal day, which was not long: 40 Sweet Thames! run softly till I end my song 98 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [Ixxiv 'Ye gentle birds! the world's fair ornament, ^\nd Heaven's glory, whom tliis happy hour Doth lead unto your lovers' blissful bower, Joy may you have, and gentle hearts' content 5 Of your love's couplement; And let fair Venus, that is queen of love, With her heart-quelling son upon you smile, Whose smile, they say, hath virtue to remove All love's dislike, and fi'ieiidsliip's faulty guile 10 For ever to assoil. Let endless peace your steadfast hearts accord, And blessed plenty wait upon your board; And let your bed with pleasures chaste abound. That fruitful issue may to you afford 15 Which may your foes confound. And make your joys redound Upon your bridal day, which is not long: Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song.' So ended she; and all the rest around 20 To her redoubled that her undersong, Which said their bridal day should not be long: And gentle Echo from the neighbour ground Their accents did resound. So forth those joyous birds did pass along 25 Adown the Lee that to them murmur'd low, As he would speak but that he lack'd a tongue; Yet did by signs his glad affection show. Making his stream run slow. -.4Lnd all the fowl which in his flood did dwell 30 'Gan flock about these twain, that did excel The rest, so far as Cyntliia doth shend The lesser stars. So they, enranged well. Did on those two attend. And their best service lend 35 Against their wedding day, which was not longi Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song. At length they all to merry London came, To merry London, my most kindly nurse. That to me gave this life's first native source, ■to Though from another place I take my name, [xxiv] Book First , 99 An house of ancient fame: There when they came whereas those bricky towers The wliich on Thames' broad aged back do ride. Where now the studious lawyers have tJieir bowers, 5 There whilome wont the Templar-knights to bide, Till they decay'd through pride; Next whereunto there stands a stately place, Where oft I gained gifts and goodly grace Of that great lord, which therein wont to dwell, 10 Whose want too well now feels my friendless case, But ah! here fits not well Old woes, but joys to tell Against the bridal day, which is not long: Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song. 15 Yet therein now doth lodge a noble peer, Great England's glory and the world's wide wonder, Whose dreadful name late through all Spain dirt thunder, And Hercules' two pillars standing near Did make to quake and fear: 20 Fair branch of honour, flower of chivalry! That fillest England with thy triumphs' fame Joy have thou of thy noble victory, And endless happiness of thine own name That promiseth the same; 25 That through thy prowess and victorious arms Thy country may be freed from foreign harms, Ancl great Elisa's glorious name may rmg Through all the world, fill'd with thy wide alarms. Which some brave Muse may sing 30 To ages following: Upon the bridal day, which is not long: Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song. From those high towers this noble lord issuing Like Radiant Hesper, when his golden hair 35 In th' ocean billows he hath bathed fair, Descended to the river's open viewing With a great train ensuing. Above the rest were goodly to be seen Two gentle knights of lovely face and feature. lOG Paigrave s Goiaen Treasury Ixxiv Beseeming •nell the bower of any queen, With gifts of AA-it and ornaments of nature, Fit for so goodly stature. That hke the twins of Jove they seem'd in sight 5 Wliich deck tlie baldric of the Heavens bright; They two, forth pacing to the river's side. Received those two fair brides, their love's delight: Which, at th' appointed tide, Each one did make his bride 10 Against their bridal day, which is not long: Sweet Thames' run softly, till I end my song. E. Spenser LXXV THE HAPPY HEART Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers? O sweet content! Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplex'd? O punishment ! 5 Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vex'd To add to golden numbers, golden numbers? O sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content! Work apace, apace, apace, apace; Honest labour bears a lovely face; 10 Then hey nonny nonny, hey nonny nonny! Canst drink the waters of the crisped spring? O sweet content! S'wimm'st thou in wealth, yet sink'st in thine own tears? O punishment! 15 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; 20 Then hey nonny nonnv, bey nonny nonnv' f. Dekker XKv\\] Booh First 101 LXXVI SIC TRAXSIT Come, cheerful day, part of my life to me; For while thou view'st me with thy fading light Part of my life doth still depart vdth. thee, And I still onward haste to my last -uglit; 5 Time's fatal wings do ever forward fly — So every day we live a day we die. But O ye nights, ordain'd for barren rest, How are my days deprived of life in you When hea\^ sleep' my soul hath dispossest, 10 By feigned death life sweetly to renew! Part of my life, in that, you life deny: So everv day we live, a day we die. T. Campion This Life, which seems so fair. Is like a bubble blo-ivn up in the air By sporting children's breath, Who chase it everywhere 5 And strive who can most motion it bequeath. And though it sometimes seem of its own might Like to an eye of gold to be fix'd there, And firm to hover in that empty height, That only is because it is so light. 10 — But in' that pomp it doth not long appear; For when 'tis most admired, in a thought. Because it erst was nought, it turns to nought. W. Drummond 102 Palyrave's Golden Treasury flxxviij LXXVIII SOUL AND BODY Poor Soul, the centre of my sinful earth, [Foil'd by] those rebel powers that thee arra;y, Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? 5 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, •.0 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. W. Shakespeare LXXIX The man of life upright, Whose guiltless heart is free from all (hshonest deeds, Or thought of vanity; 5 The man whose silent days In harmless joys are spent, Whom hopes cannot delude Nor sorrow discontent: That man needs neither towers 10 Nor armour for defence, Nor secret vaults to fly From thundei's violence: Ixxx] Book First 103 He only can behold With unaff righted eyes The horrors of the deep And terrors of the skies. 5 Thus scorning all the cares That fate or fortune brings, He makes the heaven his book, His wisdom heavenly things; Good thoughts his only friends, 1.0 His wealth a well-spent age, The earth his sober inn And quiet pilgrimage. T. Campion LXXX THE LESSONS OF NATURE Of this fair volume w^uch we World do name If we the sheets and leaves could turn with care, Of Him who it corrects, and did it frame, We clear might read the art and wisdom rare: 5 Find out His power which wildest powers doth tame, His providence extending everywhere. His justice which proud rebels doth not spare. In every page, no period of the same But silly we, like foolish cliildren, rest 10 Well pleased with colour'd vellum, leaves of gold. Fair dangling ribbands, leaving what is best, On the great Writer's sense ne'er taking hold; Or if by chance we stay our minds on aught. It is some Picture on the margin wrought. W. Drummond 104 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [Ixxxi LXXXl Doth then the world go thus, doth all thus move? Is this the justice which on Earth we find? Is this that firm decree which all doth bind? Are these your influences, Powers above? 5 Those souls wliich vice's moody mists most blind, Blind Fortune, blindly, most their friend doth prove; And they who thee, poor idol Virtue! love. Ply like a feather toss'd by storm and wind. All! if a Providence doth sway tins all 10 Why should best minds groan under most distress? Or why should pride humility make thrall, And injuries the innocent oppress? Heavens! hinder, stop this fate; or grant a time When good may have, at; ws'I as bad, their prime! W . Drummond LXXXII THE WORLD'S WAY Tired with all these, for restful death J cry — ^ As, to behold desert a beggar bom, And needy nothing trinmi'd in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn, 5 And gilded honour shamefully misplaced, And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted. And right perfection wrongfully disgraced. And strength by limping sway disabled, And art made tongue-tied by authority, 10 And folly, doctor-like, controlHng skill, And simple truth miscall 'd simphcity, And captive Good attending captain 111: — — Tired with all these, from these woukl I be gone, Save that, to die I leave my Love alone. W^. Shakespeare Ixxivl Book First lOi LXXXIII A WISH Happy were he could finish forth his fate In some unhaunted desert where, obscure From all society from love and hate Of worldly folk, there should he sleep secure; 5 Then wake again, and yield God ever praise; Content with hip, with haws, and brambleberry; In contemplation passing still liis days. And change of holy thoughts to make liim merry: Who, when he dies, his tomb might be the bush 10 Where harmless robin resteth with the thrush: — Happy were he I R. Devereux, Ear] of Essex LXXXIV SAINT JOHN BAPTIST The last and greatest Herald of Heaven's King Girt with rough skins, hies to the deserts wild. Among that savage brood the woods forth bring. Which he more harmless found than man, and miliJ You may train the eagle To stoop to your fist; Or you may inveigle The phoenix of the east; 5 The lioness, ye may move her To give o'er her prey; But you'll ne'er stop a lover: He will find out his way. Anon cv THE PICTURE OF LITTLE 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 5 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 iO This darling of the Gods was born? Yet this is she whose chaster laws Tlie wanton Love shall one day fear And, under her command severe, See his bow broke, and ensigns torn. 15 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; 20 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. 136 Palgrave's Golden Treasury fcv Mean time, whilst every verdant thing Itself does at thy beauty charm, Reform the errors of the Spring; Make that the tulips may have share 5 Of 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, 10 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 th' example yours; 15 And ere we see — Nip in the blossom — all our hopes and thee. A. Marvell cvi CHILD AND MAIDEN Ah, Chloris! could I now but sit As unconcern'd as when Your infant beauty could beget No happiness or pain! 5 When I the dawn vised to admire, And praised the coming day, I little thought the rising fire Would take my rest away. Your charms in harmless childhootl lay 10 Like metals in a mine; Age from no face takes more away Than youth conceal 'd in thine. But as your charms insensibly To their perfection prest, 15 So love as unperceived did fly, And center'd in my breast. cviii] Book Second 137 My passion with your beauty grew, While Cupid at my heart, Still as his mother favour'd you, Threw a new flaming dart: 5 Each gloried in their wanton part; To make a lover, he Employ'd the utmost of his art — To make a beauty, she. Sir C. Sedley CVII CONSTANCY I cannot change as others do, Though you unjustly scorn, Since that poor swain that sighs for you, For you alone was born; 5 No, Phyllis, no, your heart to move A surer way I'll try, — And to revenge my slighted love. Will still love on, and die. When, kill'd with grief, Amintas lies, 10 And you to mind shall call The sighs that now unpitied rise, The tears that vainly fall. That welcome hour that ends his smart Will then begin your pain, 15 For such a faithful tender heart Can never break in vain. J . Wilrnot, Earl of Rochester CVIII COUNSEL TO GIRLS 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. 138 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [cviii 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. 5 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 tiine; 10 And while ye may, go marry: For having lost but once your prime, You may for ever tarry. R. Herrick cix TO LUCASTA, 0\ 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. 5 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. Yet this inconstancy is such iO As you too shall adore; I could not love thee. Dear, so much, Loved I not Honour more. Colonel Lovelace ex ELIZABETH OF BOHEMIA You meaner beauties of the night. That poorly satisfy our eyes More by yr-ur number than your light, cxij Book Second 139 You common people of the skies, What are you, when the Moon shall rise? You curious chanters of the wood That warble forth dame Nature's lays, 5 Thinking your passions understood By your weak accents; what's your praise When Philomel her voice doth raise? You violets that first appear, By your pure purple mantles known 10 Like the proud virgins of the year, As if the spring were all your own, — What are you, when the Rose is blown? So when my Mistress shall be seen In form and beauty of her mind, 15 By virtue first, then choice, a Queen, Tell me, if she were not design 'd Th' eclipse and glory cf her kind? Sir H. Wotton CXI TO THE LADY MARGARET LEY Daughter to that good Earl, once President Of England's Council and her Treasury, Who lived in both, unstain'd with gold or fee, And left them botli, more in himself content, 5 Till the sad breaking of that Parliament Broke him, as that dishonest victory At Chaeroneia, fatal to liberty, Kill'd with report that old man eloquent; — Though later born than to have known the day? 10 Wherein your father flourish'd, yet by you. Madam, methinks I see him living yet; So well yom- words his noble virtues praise. That air both judge you to relate them true, And to possess them, honour'd Margaret. J. Milton 140 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [cxii CXII THE TRUE BEAUTY He that loves a rosy cheek Or a coral lip admires, Or from star-like eyes doth seek Fuel to maintain his fires; *i As old Time makes these decay, So his flames must waste away. But a smooth and steadfast mind, Gentle thoughts, and calm desires. Hearts with equal love combined, Kindle never-dying fires: — Where these are not, I despise Lovely cheeks or lips or eyes. T. Carew CXIII. TO DIANEME Sweet, be not proud of those two eyes Which starlike sparkle in their skies; Nor be you proud, that you can see All hearts your captives; yours yet free: 5 Be you not proud of that rich hair Wliich wantons with the lovesick air; Whenas that ruby which you wear, Sunk from the tip of your soft ear. Will last to be a precious stone 10 When all your world of beauty's gone. R. Herrick cxiv Love in thy youth, fair Maid, be wise; Old Time will make thee colder. And though each morning new arise Yet we each day grow older. cxvl Book Second 141 Thou as Heaven art fair and young, Thine eyes Uke twin stars sliining; But ere another day be sprung All these will be dechning. Then winter comes with all his fears, And all thy sweets shall borrow; Too late then wilt thou shower thy tears, — And I too late shall sorrow! Anon. cxv Go, lovely Rose! Tell her, that wastes her time and me, That now she knows, When I resemble her to thee, 5 How sweet and fair she seems to l>e. Tell her that's yovmg And shuns to have her graces spied, That hadst thou sprung In deserts, where no men abide, 10 Thou must have uncommended died. Small is the worth Of beauty from the light retired: Bid her come forth. Suffer herself to be desired, 1" 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 sliare ?0 That are so wondrous sweet and fair! E. Waller 142 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [cxvi cxvi TO CELIA Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup And I '11 not look for wine. 5 The thirst that from the soul doth rise Doth ask a drink divine; But might I of Jove's nectar sup, I would not change for thine. I sent thee late a rosy wreath, 10 Not so much honouring thee As giving it a hope that there It could not wither'd be; But thou thereon didst only breathe And sent'st it back to me; 15 Since when it gi'ows, and smells, I swear. Not of itself but thee! B. Jonson CXVII 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; B 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, 10 They look like rose-buds fill 'd with snow: Yet them no peer nor prince may buy, Till Cherry-Ripe themselves do cry. cxviii] Book Second 143 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 5 These sacred cherries to come nigh, Till Cherry-Ripe themselves do cry! Anon. CXVIII CORINNA'S MAYING Get up, get up for shame! The blooming mom Upon her wings presents the god unshorn. See how Aurora throws her fair Fresh-quilted colours through the air: 5 Get up, sweet Slug-a-bed, and see The dew bespangling herb and tree. Each flower has wept, and bow'd toward the east, Above an hour since; yet you not drest, Nay! not so much as out of bed? 10 When all the birds have matins said. And 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. 15 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 20 Gems in abundance upon you: Besides, the childhood of the day has kept, Against you come, some orient pearls imwept: Come, and receive them while the light Hangs on the dew-locks of the night: 25 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. 144 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [cxviii Come, my Corinna, come; and coming, mark How each field turns a street; eacii street a park Made green, and trimm'd with trees: see how Devotion gives each house a bough 5 Or brancli: Each porch, each door, ere tliis, 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, 10 And open fields, and we not see't? Come, we'll abroad: and let's obey The proclamation made for May: And sin no more, as we have done, by staying; But, my Corinna, come, let's go a Maying. 15 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-thom laden home. Some have despatch'd their cakes and cream, 20 Before that we have left to dream: And some have wept, and woo'd, and plighted troth. And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth: Many a green-gown has been given; Many a kiss, both odd and even: 25 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 pick'd:— Yet we're not a May- — Come, let us go, while we are in our prime; 30 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 : — 35 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: cxx] Book Second Ht All love, all liking, all delight Lies drown'd with us in endless night. Then while time serves, and we are but decaying, Come, my Corinna! come, let's go a Maying. R. Herrick cxix THE POETRY OF DRESS 1 A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantonness: — • A lawn about the shoulders thrown Into a fine distraction, — 6 An erring lace, which here and there Enthrals the crimson stomacher, — A cuff neglectful, and thereby Ribbands to flow confusedly, — A winning wave, deserving note, 10 In the tempestuous petticoat, — A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility,- — Do more bewitch me, t'^an when art Is too precise in every part. R. Herrick cxx 2 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! R. Herrick 146 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [cxxi CXXI My Love in her attire doth shew her wic, It doth so well become her: For every season she hath dressings fit, For, Winter, Spring, and Summer. 5 No beauty she doth miss When all her robes are on: But Beauty's self she is When all her robes are gone. Anon. CXXII ON A GIRDLE That which her slender waist confined Shall now my joyful temples bind: No monarch but would give his crown His arms might do wliat this has done. 5 It was my Heaven's extremest sphere, The pale which held that lovely deer: My joy, my grief, my hope, my love Did all within this circle move. A narrow compass! and yet there 10 Dwelt all that's good, and all that's fair: Give me but what this ribband bound, Take all the rest the Sun goes round. E. Waller CXXIII A MYSTICAL ECSTASY j5'en like two little bank-dividing brooks, Tliat M'ash the pebbles with their wanton streams. And having ranged and search'd a thousand nooks. Meet both at length in silver-breasted Thames, 5 Where in a greater current they conjoin: So I my Best-Beloved's am; so He is mine. c-xxiv] Book Second 147 E'en so we met; and after long pursuit, E'en so we joined; we both became entire; No need for either to renew a suit, For I was flax and he was flames of fire: 5 Our firm-united souls did more than twine; So I my Best-Beloved's am; so He is mine. If all those glittering Monarchs that command The servile quarters of this earthly ball, Should tender, in exchange, their shares of land, 10 I would not change my fortunes for them all: Their wealth is but a counter to my coin: The world's but theirs; but my Beloved's mine. F. Quarks cxxiv TO AN THE A WHO MAY COMMAND HIM ANY THING Bid me to live, and I will live Thy Protestant to be: Or bid me love, and I will give A loving heart to thee. 5 A heart as soft, a heart as kind, A heart as sound and free As in the whole world thou canst find, That heart I'll give to thee. Bid that heart stay, and it will stay, 10 To honour thy decree: Or bid it languish quite away, And't shall do so for thee. Bid me to weep, and I will weep While I have eyes to sec: 15 And having none, yet I will keep A heart to weep for thee. Bid me despair, and I'll despair, Under that cj'press tree: Or bid me die, and I will dare 20 E'en Death, to die for thee 148 Palgrave's Golden Treasury fcxxiv Thou art my life, my love, my heart, The very eyes of me, And hast command of every part. To live and die for thee. R. Herrick cxxv Love not me for comely grace, For my pleasing eye or face, Nor for any outward part. No, nor for my constant heart, — 5 For those may fail, or turn to ill, So thou and I shall sever: Keep therefore a true woman's eye. And love me still, but know not why — So hast thou the same reason still 10 To doat upon me ever! Anon. cxxvi Not, Celia, that I juster am Or better than the rest; For I A\ ould change each hour, like 'them, Were not my heart at rest. 5 But I am tied to very thee By every thought I have; Thy face I only care to see, Thy heart I only crave. All that in woman is adored 10 In thy dear self I find — For the whole sex can but afford The handsome and the kind. Why then should I seek further store, And still make love anew? 15 When change itself can give no more, 'Tis easy tc bo true. Sir C. Sedley cxxvii". Book Second 149 CXXVII TO ALTHEA FROM PRISON 'When Love with unconfined wines Hovers witiiin my gates, And my divine Akhea brings To whisper at the grates; 6 When I he tangled in her hair And fetter'd to her eye, The Gods that wanton in the air Know no such hberty. When flowing cups nm swiftly round 10 With no allaying Thames, Our careless heads \\-ith roses bou''.d, Our hearts with loyal flames; When thirsty grief in wine we steep, When healths and draughts go free — 15 Fishes that tipple in the deep Know no such liberty. When, (like committed linnets), I With shriller throat shall sing The sweetness, mercy, majesty 20 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. 25 Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage; If I have freedom in my love 30 And in my soul am free, Angels alone, that soar above. Enjoy such liberty. Colonel Lovelace 159 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [cxxviii CXXVIII TO LUC AST A, GOING BEYOND THE SEAS If to be absent were to be Away from thee; Or that when I am gone You or I were alone; 5 Then, my Lucasta, might I crave Pity from bkistering wind, or swallowing wave. But I'll not sigh one blast or gale To swell my sail, Or pay a tear to 'suage 10 The foaming blue-god's rage; For whether he will let me pass Or no, I'm still as happy as I was. Though seas and land betwixt us both, Our faith and troth, 15 Like separated soul^, All time and space controls: Above the highest sphere we meet Unseen, unknown, and greet as Angels greet. So then we do anticipate 20 Our after-fate. And are alive i' the skies, If thus our lips and eyes Can speak like spirits unconfined In Heaven, their earthy bodies left behind. Colonel Lovelace CXXIX ENCOURAGEMENTS TO A LOVER Why so pale and wan, fond lover? Prythee, why so pale? Will, if looking well can't move her, Looking ill prevail? 5 Prythee, why so pale? Qxxx Book Second ^51 Why so dull and mute, young sinner? Prythee, why so mute? Will, when speaking well can't win her, Saying nothing do't? 5 Prythee, why so mute? Quit, quit, for shame! this will not move. This cannot take her; If of herself she will not love, Notliing can make her: 10 The D— 1 take her! Sir J . Suckling cxxx A SUPPLICATION Awake, awake, my Lyre! And tell thy silent master's humble tale In sounds that may prevail; Sounds that gentle thoughts inspire: 5 Though so exalted she And I so lowly be Tell her, such different notes make all thy harmony, Hark, how the strings awake! And, though the moving hand approach not near, IC Themselves with awful fear A kind of numerous trembling make. Now all thy forces try; Now all thy charms apply; Revenge upon her ear the conquests of her eye. 15 Weak Lyre! thy virtu? sure Is useless here, since thou art only found To cure, but not to wound. And she to wound, but not to cure. Too weak too wilt thou prove 2C My passion to remove; Physic to other ills, thou'rt nourishment to Love 152 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [cxxx Sleep, sleep again, my Lyre! For thou canst never tell my humble tale In sounds that will prevail, Nor gentle thoughts in her inspire; 5 All thy vain mirth lay by, Bid thy strings silent lie, Sleep, sleep, again, my Lyre, and let thy master die A. Cowley cxxxi THE MANLY HEART Shall I, wasting in despair. Die because a woman's fair? Or make pale my cheeks with care 'Cause another's rosy are? 5 Be she fairer than the day Or the flowery meads in May — If she think not well of me What care I how fair she be? Shall my silly heart be pined 10 'Cause I see a woman kind; Or a well disposed nature Joined with a lovely feature? Be she meeker, kinder, than Turtle-dove or pelican, 15 If she be not so to me What care I how kind she be? Shall a woman's virtues move Me to perish for her love? Or her well-deservings known 20 Make me quite forget mine own? Be she with that goodness blest Which may merit name of Best; If she be not such to me. What care I how good she be? ^xxxii] Book Second i53 'Cause her fortune seems too high. Shall I play the fool and die? She that bears a noble mind If not outward helps she find, 5 Tliinks what with them he would do Who without them dares her woo; And unless that mind I see, What care I how great she be? Great or good, or kind or fair, 10 I will ne'er the more despair; If she love me, this beheve, I will die ere she shall grieve; If she slight me when I woo, I can scorn and let her go; 1* For if she be not for me. What care I for whom she be? G. Wither CXXXII MELANCHOLY Hence, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly: There's nought in this life sweet 5 If man were wise to see't, But only melancholy, O sweetest Melancholy! Welcome, folded arms, and fixed eyes, A sigh that piercing mortifies, 10 A look that's fasten'd to the ground, A tongue chain'd up without a sound! Fountain-heads and pathless groves, Places which pale passion loves! Moonlight walks, when all the fowls 15 Are warmly housed save bats and owls! A midnight bell, a parting groan! These are the sounds we feeil upon; Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley; Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy. J. Fletcher 154 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [c::xxiii CXXXIII FORSAKEN O waly waly up the bank, And waly waly down the brae, And waly waly yon burn-side Where I and my Love wont to gael 5 I leant my back vmto an aik, I thought it was a trusty tree; But first it bow'd, and syne it brak, Sae my true Love did lichtly me. O waly walj% but love be bonny 10 A little time while it is new; But when 'tis auld, it waxeth cauld And fades awa' like morning dew. O wherefore should I busk my head? Or v>-herefore should 1 liame my hair? 15 For my true Love has me forsook, And says he'll never loe me mair. Now Arthur-seat shall be my bed; The sheets shall ne'er be prest by me: Saint Anton's well sail be my drink, 20 Since my true Love has forsaken me. Marti'mas wind, when wilt thou blaw And shake the green leaves aff the tree? O gentle Death, when wilt thou come? For of my life I am wearie. 25 'Tis not the frost, that freezes fell, Nor blawing snaw's incleinencie; 'Tis not sic cauld that makes me cry, But my Love's heart grown cauld to mec When we came in by Glasgow town 30 We were a comely sight to see; My Love was clad in the black velvet, And I mysell in cramasie. cxxxiv] Book Second • 155 But had I wist, before I kist, That love had been sae ill to -win; I had lockt my heart in a case of gowd And pinn'd it with a siller pin. 6 And, O! if my young babe were born, And set upon the nurse's knee^ And I mysell were dead and gane, And the green grass growing over mef Anon. CXXXIV Upon my lap my sovereign sits And sucks upon my breast; Meantime his love maintains my life And gives my sense her rest. Sing lullaby, my little boy, Sing lullaby, mine only joy! When thou hast taken thy repast, Repose, my babe, on me; So may thy mother and thy nurse 10 Thy cradle also be. Sing lullaby, my httle boy, Sing luHabj, mine only joy I I grieve that duty doth not work Al) that my wishing would, .ifi Because J would not be to thee But in the best 1 should. Sing lullaby, my httle boy, Sing lullaby, mine only joy! Yet as I am, and as I may, 20 I must and will be thine. Though all too little for thy self Vouchsafing to be mine. Sing lullaby, my little boy, Sing lullaby, mine only joy! Anon. 156 Palgrave's Golden Treasury [c&xse^ cxxxv FAIR HELEN I wish I were where Helen lies; Night and day on me she cries; O that I were wliere Helen lies On fair Kirconnell lea! 5 Curst be the heart that thought the thought, And curst the hand that fired the shot. When in my arms burd Helen dropt. And died to succor me! think na but my iiear;, was sair iO When my Love dropt down and spak nae Uiald 1 laid her down wi' meikle care On fair Kirconnell lea. As I went down the water-side, None but my foe to be my guide, 15 None but my foe to be iny guide, On fair Kirconnell lea; I lighted down my sword to draw, I hacked him in pieces sma', I hacked him in pieces sma', 20 For her sake that died for me. O Helen fair, beyond compare! I'll make a garland of thy hair Shall bind my heart for evermair Until the day I die. 25 O that I were where Helen liesj Night and day on me she cries; Out of my bed she bids me rise, Says, 'Haste and come to me!' O Helen fair! O Helen chaste! 30 If I were with thee, I were blest, Where thou lies low and takes thy rp-st On fair Kirconnell lea. cxxxvij BooTc Secona 157 I wish my grave were growing green, A winding-sheet drawn ower my een, And I in Helen's arms lying, On fair Kirconnell lea. 5 1 wish I were where Helen lies; Night and day on me she cries; \nd I am weary of the skies, Since my Love died for me. Anon. cxxxvi THE TWA CORBIES As i was walking all alane 1 heard twa corbies making a mane; The tane unto the t'other say, 'Where sail we gang and dine today?* 6 ' — In behint yon auld fail dyke, I wot there lies a new-slain Knight; And naebody kens that he lies there, But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair, 'His hound is to the hunting gane, 10 His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame, His lady's ta'en another mate. So we may mak our dinner sweet. 'Ye '11 sit on his white hause-bane, And I'll pick out his bonnie blue een: ]6 Wi' ae lock o' his gowden hair We'll theek our nest when it grows bare. 'Mony a one for him makes mane, But nane sail ken where he is gane; O'er his white banes, when they are bare, 20 The wind sail blaw for evermair.' A non. 158 Falgrave's Golden Treasury fcxxxvii' CXXXVII ON THE DEATH OF AIR WILLIAM HERVEY It was a dismal and a fearful night, — Scarce could the Moni drive on tli' unwilling light, When sleep, death s image, left my troubled breast. By sometlung liker death possest. 5 My eyss wUh fears did uncommanded flow, And on my soul lumg the dull weight < )t some intolerable fate. Whaf. bell was that? Ah me I Too much I knowl My sweet companion, and my gentle peer, 10 Why hast thou left me thus unkindly liere, Thj^ end for ever, and my life, to moan? O thou hast left me all alone! Thy soul