H I IP -'11 i tl liiji!;: " lii' ■!!!!if(^• i ill 111' ill If I'!'' ' iiilii, . fill iil ii: ilii iliihii;?. >:^ >mt|j|i: M ENGLISH ELEGIES THE BODLEY HEAD ANTHOLOGIES -^ English Epithalamies By Robert Case Musa Piscatrix By John Buchan Florilegium Latinum (Pre- Vic- torian Poets) By Rev. F. St. John Thackeray and Rev. E. D. Stone English Elegies By J. C. Bailey IN PREPARATION Nineteenth-Century Pastorals By Charles Hill Dick Florilegium Latinum (Victorian Poets) By Rev. F. St. John Thackeray and Rev. E. D. Stone t ENGLISH ELEGIES Edited by J. C. Bailey J I DEDICATE THIS COLLECTION OF ENGLISH ELEGIES TO MY FRIEND FREDERIC GEORGE KENYON TO WHOSE SUGGESTION IT OWES ITS ORIGIN CONTENTS INTRODUCTION xiii Spenser . Daphnaida I Donne . . Funeral Elegy . , . . 18 JONSON . . Eupheme . 21 Dryden . . Ode on the Death of Mrs Anne Killigre w 28 Pope . Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady 34 Jonson . . Elegy on Lady Winchester . 37 Milton . . Epitaph on Lady Winchester 40 Milton . . On Shakspeare .... 42 Jonson . . To the Memory of Shakspeare 43 Cleveland . On Jonson 45 Dryden . . On Oldham 46 Basse . • . . On Shakspeare .... 47 Shakspeare , . Sonnet 71 . . . . . 48 Raleigh . " Even such is time " . . . . 48 Dunbar . Lament for the Makaris 49 Drommond . To Sir William Alexander . 52 Herrick . To Julia at his Death . . . . 53 Bridges . . Elegy on a Lady 53 Herrick b . To Bianca ix 56 CONTENTS Landor . . . "Fate! I have asked". Landor . . . '* Death stands above mo Landor . . .On Southey's Death Landor . . . To the Sister of Elia Swinburne . . In Memory ofWalter Savage Landor Collins . . On the Death of Thomson Wordsworth . Remembrance of Collins Wordsworth At the Grave of Burns Wordsworth At the Grave of Burns Burns' . . . On a Wounded Hare Burns . . .A Bard's Epitaph . Coleridge * . . Monody on Chatferton Mrs Browning ' . Cowper's Grave Cowley . . .On the Death of Crashaw Constable . . To Sir Philip Sidney's Soul Roydon . . .An Elegy for his Astrophel Surrey . . . Epitaph on Clere . Raleigh . . Epitaph on Sir Philip Sidney Marvell . . Upon the Death of His Late Highness the Lord Protector Spenser . . . Astrophel Spenser . . . The Doleful Lay of Clorinda Browne . . . The Fourth Eclogue of the "Shepherd's Pipe" Milton . . . Lycidas Surrey . . . " So cruel prison how could betide, alas " CONTENTS XI Gray . On the Death of Richard West . PAGE . 123 Arnold . . Thyrsis . 123 Cowley . . On the Death of William Hervey . • 130 TiCKELL . Lines on Addison 135 Habington . . On George Talbot . 138 Johnson . On the Death of Robert Levet 140 Gray . Elegy written in a Country Churchyard . 141 Herrick . " Fair Daffodils, we weep to see " 14s Browne . . InObitumM.S 146 Landor . " Ah what avails the sceptred race " 146 Arnold . . Requiescat • 147 Wordsworth . " She dwelt among the untrodden ways' ' 148 Wordsworth . "Three years she grew in sun and shower" ... 148 Wordsworth . " A slumber did my spirit seal " . 150 Bridges . " I never shall love the snow again " 150 Sir John Beaumc )NT On Gervase Beaumont . 151 Lefroy . . Quem Di diligunt .... 152 Landor . . On the approach of a Sister's Death 153 Milton . . On his Deceased Wife .... 153 COWPER . . On his Mother's Picture 154 Vaughan . "They are all gone into the world oi F light" 157 Bishop King . . The Exequy 159 Browne . . " Is Death so great a gamester, that he throws" 163 xu CONTENTS Donne . Donne . . . Lord Herbert \ OF Cherbury / Sir John Beaumont Pope Wolfe . Cow PER . Tennyson ScoiT Arnold . Watson Watts-Ddnton Le Gallienne Mrs Meynell Arnold . Bridges . Watts-Dunton Swinburne . Swinburne . Shelley Swinburne . Tennyson First Elegy on Mistress Boulstred . Second Elegy on Mistress Boulstred Elegy over a Tomb To the Memory of Lady Penelope Clifton On Robert and Mary Digby . The Burial of Sir John Moore On the Loss of the Royal George . Ode on the Death of the Duke of Welling ton On the Deaths of Nelson, Pitt, and Fox Memorial Verses .... Lachrymae Musarum The Last Walk from Boar's Hill . Robert Louis Stevenson To the Beloved Dead Geist's Grave On a Dead Child . In a Graveyard Light : an Epicede Ave atque Vale Adonais In Time of Mourning "Break, break, break" . INTROD UCTION It is not easy to say quite exactly what an elegy is. The word, like all such words, like epic, lyric, dramatic, like poetry itself, comes to us from the Greeks. It^ traditional derivation connects it with the natural utter- ance of grief and whatever its origin may have been,], the proper meaning of the .word eXeyos was certainly of lament. The kindred word, kXeyelov, o?i the other hand, had no reference to subject, and merely meant a poem in a particular metre, which had been frequently used for elegies. And even eXeyos itself is occasionally used in this metrical sense, irrespective of subject. The concep- tion of an elegy was, in fact, left somewhat undefined by the Greeks : and so it still remains. The task of distinguishing between the different kinds of poetry is, indeed^ only less difficult than that of finding a definition of the nature of poetry itself. We all have some sort of vague idea of what we mean by an elegy, as of what we understand by the word poetry, but when we set ourselves to convert the vague idea into a clear and definite one we are likely to find that we have faced a difficult task. And I do not know of much help to be obtained in this case from the recognised critical authorities. Coleridge has, indeed, attempted a definition. "Elegy," he says, " is the form of poetry natural to the reflective mind. It xiv INTRODUCTION viay treat of any subject, but it must treat of no subject for itself, but always and exclusively with refereiwe to the poet himself" But, though this is certainly stamped with the mark of Coleridge' s subtle critical insight, I do not think it can be accepted as a quite satisfactory or final defnition. The true elegy is unquestionably the I product of the reflective mood, it is essentially " sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," and if we divide the productions of the poetic activity into the two great classes of lyric and dramatic, or, if you will, subjective and objective work, there can be no doubt whatever that elegy belongs to the siibjective or lyrical faculty, and stands in marked contrast to the drama in particular, and to all poetry in which the poet's aim and hope is to be as little as possible himself, as much as possible the man or thing of which he writes. It is, we all feel it, the cry of the broken heart, the musing of the solitary I wanderer, the utterance now of quiet melancholy, now of passionate grief, but always and everywhere of the poet's own feelings. It comes from the heart and should go to the heart. | So far what Coleridge says is no doubt as true as i it is suggestive. But his words seem to go a good deal ' further. Is it really the case that all poems tvhich grow \ out of rejlection, and more particularly, self reflection, are necessarily elegiac ? Are we always unhappy when > thinkijig, and especially when thinking of ourselves ? A thousand songs of joy are the sufficient proof of the contrary. Or, if Coleridge did not mean this, but meant i to include all poems bom of our thoughts about ourselves under the class of elegies, he is, it will be admitted, ! INTRODUCTION xv still wider of the mark. There is no vainer occupa- tion than that of trying to force arbitrary meanings upon words of old-established use. No cunning of defini- tion, no subtlety of language, no freaks of nomenclature, such as that in which Drayton indulges when he calls his epistles to Sandys and Reynolds " Elegies," will ever make the elegy anything but what Johnsons dictionary calls it, "a mournful song." That, at least, an elegy most undoubtedly is. Mournful, in one way or another, it must be, though those ways may lie as far apart as Wordsworth' s quiet resignation and Shelley s passionate despair. Love, Grief and Death are its three notes : ■ sometimes only one of them is struck; but, when it is at its richest and sweetest, it is founded on a chord composed of all three. We are sure of our ground so far, and the only question is whether we can get a more precise definition. I do not know that we shall find any regular definition better than this of Coleridge. I have met with two which aim, even more than his, at formal and philosophical exactness, one of which regards elegy as " that form of poetry in which anything is described as at once desirable arid not present," while the other makes the motive of elegy " an ideal either lost or not yet attained, or simply imagined." Both of these are useful and suggestive, but they have each, especially the first, a tendency to limit elegy to a greater extent than Coleridge has done, or than is done in the common acceptation of the word. This is the ordinary penalty of attempts at too great logical exactness, and we shall not perhaps do amiss in turning from them to the less xvi INTRODUCTION careful remarks of ShenMone, who, without being a verif 'profound person, discusses the subject sensibly enough hi the preface to his onm Elegies. "Elegy," he says, "in its true and genuine acceptation includes a tender and querulous idea, and so long as this is sustained it admits of a variety of subjects " ; or, as he afterwards ' explains, "any kind of subject treated so as to diffuse a pleasing melancholy." And he has more in the same strain. His language is the language of the eighteenth century and not what we should use to-day, but he gives the plain common-sense account of the matter, and tells us as well as anyone what an elegy is, as distinct from how it comes to be what it is. With the help of this and the other definitions we may make out for ourselves a fairly good working idea of what the essence and spirit of elegiac poetry is, though by no means such an\ exact definition as would enable us to say, at a glance, ivhether a j)oem is, or is not, an elegy. 'I'he subjects elegies may deal with are, says Shen- stonc, almost unlimited. They have, however, as a matter of historical fact, dealt principally with two; classes of subject. These are the elegies of tmrequited [ or unhappy love, and the elegies, generally, though not always, more sincere, which lament the loss of friends, which grieve over the woimds, not of love, but oj death. And we English have in our rich and glorious literature noble specimens of both kinds ; though we possess no lament of wounded love which can be spoken of in the same breath with the elegiac outburst produced by the death of Sidney, or with " Lycidas," or " Adonais," or Matthew Arnold's " Thyrsis," or the " In Memoriam " INTRODUCTION xvii of Tennyson, a succession of noble laments over the noble dead, which, I suppose, no other literature can rival. The Romans, on the other hand, were richer in love elegies than in death songs, and though there are fine laments jover death by Horace and Catullus, one is inclined, in spite of these, and in spite of the great elegy of Propertius on Cornelia, to say that Virgil alone of Roman poets had depth and tenderness enough to write a great elegy, and he has only placed some splendid elegiac passages in his great epic, which is not the same thing. The legitimate range of the elegy is, however, not | confined to the subjects of Love and Death. It includes all expressions of what may be one of the highest a7id most spiritual moods of the human soul. There is no \ form of sorrow, from the gentle meditative melancholy of Gray to the passionate outburst of some ardent Elizabethan spirit, of which it is not the natural \ expression. Indeed, the most famous elegiacs ever i written are not those of an unhappy lover or a bereaved friend, but of an exile crying for his home. Elegy begins, one may suppose, with what have always been its two special subjects. Love and Death; and then it is an easy step from the longing for the absent mistress to the longing for the distant home; and from that it is not a great advance to the scientific definition I have quoted, which calls all poems elegies which describe any particular object as at once desirable and not present. I have thought it well to point out the wide field over which elegy may fairly claim to range. But it xviii INTRODUCTION is ohviousli/ quite impossible to cover the whole in a selection like the present. I have, therefore, confined myself to the single subject of death and the dead, the most frequent and obvious of all subjects of elegy, and that in which it has achieved its most splendid triumph. So much is this the case, indeed, that there is always a tendency, not supported by the best authorities, to restrict the use of the word altogether to laments for the dead. And certainly death, though not the only, is, at least, the most peculiar and undoubted province of elegy. Nor is there any doubt aboitt its affording ample material for a selection of this kind. My difficulty thfvughout has been 7iot where to find matter for in- sertion, but how to fnd room for it. We English have time out of mind been a grave people, apt more than others to meditate on the transitoriness of human things, and in the midst of life to let our thoughts move in the direction of death. And our poets, from Anglo- Saxon times to our own, have in this matter been no ill representatives of the national character. It has, therefore, seemed wiser to keep to this limited field of subject, of which it was possible, tvithout exceeding the limits of this Series, to present a really representative collection, rather than to attempt the wider field, which could not have been adequately covered. As to subject, then, the position is clear. However properly the name Elegy is applied to poems dealing with a variety of subjects, the pieces included in this volume will be found to deal only with one. But as to form ? Are we to be confined, as the^ Ancie?ds came to be, to poems in a jiarticular metre ? Are there any INTRODUCTION xix rules, as to language or metre, to which an elegy must f conform, if it is to deserve the name ? " The proper language of elegy," said Lord Chester- Jield, "is the unaffected plaintive language of the passions " : and Shenstone says that its style should be "simple, diffuse, and Jlorving as a mourner's veil." If this is so, and no one will doubt it, it is obvious that some metres will be more suitable to elegy than others.-^ I have felt it impossible not to include a few Sonnets in this selection, because I felt them to be elegiac in the truest sense, touched with the sadness of death and the mystery of fate in the real elegiac way, but I have i never ceased to be coiiscious of the unfitness of the] Sonnet with its too evident architecture, its too co'nscious art, to be the expression of the simple plaintive tenderness which is the most frequent and the most distinctive note of elegy. It is, no doubt, very dangerous to dogmatise about these questions of the relation of form to subject. The critic has no sooner pronounced that a particular subject cannot be treated in this or that metre, than a poet arrives to perform the hnpossible feat with success as triumphant as that with which Gainsborough' s Blue Boy refuted Sir Joshua. This much it is, how- ever, perhaps safe to say as to the proper form of elegy. The more passionate the grief is, the less obvious should be the metrical system. The heroic couplet, for instance, the structure of which is so evident and undisguised, that it is not merely felt, but understood, at once, must be generally quite un- suitable for any kind of elegy, and especially for the more passionate sort. Its aptness for epigram. XX INTRODUCTION its besetting sins of wit and rhetoric, are all against it, alien as they are to the elegiac atmosphere. ^ fitter metre for the utterance of strong feelhig is such a stanza as Matthew Arnold has employed in Thi/rsis, the Spenserian stanza which Shelley chose for Adonais, or the irregular metre of Lycidas. In all these cases we hear the music, indeed, from the first, hid it may well he that it is long before we could give any account of its system. It addresses itself to the ear, not to the mind : the artist seems absorbed in his grief, not i conscious of his art, not thinking of rules of versifica- tion, hut falling inevitably and unawares into a strain which is at once a melodious aiid a natural utterance of his sori'ow. For the quieter, more meditative elegy, on the other hand, a structure somewhat more obvious seeTns the best. Gray, ivho had made a special study of metre, and was, besides, the best of Judges in such a matter, chose the simple four-lined staiiza, with alter- nate rhymes, for his Elegy, and everybody feels that the perfect simplicity of the metre is one of the things that gave the poem its undying charm and make it stand alone as, in popular estimation, "the Elegy," unrivalled aiid unique. We may gather itidications, in this way, from theory and from practice, as to the foinnal conditions to he preferred in elegy. But whatever differences in fitness there may be bet/veen this metre and that, we shall not in I modem days think of making the mistake made by the ] amdents, who showed a tendency to confine the elegy to one form of metre. The divisions of poetry rest not on the form but on the spint. It is the lyiic inspiration, the dramatic INTRODUCTION xxi vision, which decide to which of the two great divisions a poem belongs. Beauty of form may he everything, often is and must be everything in deciding the success or failure of a poem, but it is by its mood and subject that we settle in what class that success or failure is to be registered. And so in elegy. To quote Gray again, "Nature and sorrow and tenderness are the true genius of such things," and when they are present, in whatever shape and under whatever name, we unhesi- tatingly recognise the true elegy. Spenser or Tennyson ' may make out of them a large and elaborate poem ; Herrick a few incomparable stanzas drenched- with emotion; Milton and Browne a pastoral; Milton and Gray a sonnet ; Tennyson, again, and Dryden, an ode ; but while the special name or form adopted may weigh against the poem's elegiac claim, it must never be con- sidered as important enough to bar it absolutely. Tennyson's poem on Wellington is an ode; but a definition of elegy which excluded it would be ridiculous. Gray might very well have called his greatest poem by another name; but that would not have made it any the less the supreme and typical meditative elegy. The poet must be left to choose his orvn form of expression, and, whatever it may be, we must not refuse to hear him, though inuch of his success may depend on the wisdom of his choice. After saying thus much about the elegy in general, it is time to turn to it as it has appeared in English Literature, and especially to that particular form of it represented in this volume. The elegiac mood has. xxii INTRODUCTION as I said, always been a favourite one in England, and we are not surprised to Jind elegy making very early appearance in our poetry. To say nothing of Jour remarkable Anglo-Saxon elegies, of which Mr Stopjord Brooke gives an interesting account in his " Early English Literature," we Jind that when English poetry, as we know it, begins to make its appearance in the fourteenth century, elegy at once claims the important place it has ever since occupied. " The cradle song of modem English PoetTy was a Lament ; its Vita Nuova an In Memoriam ; " says Mr Gollanz, in his edition ojthe beautful Joicrteenth century poem called "Pearl." It is a touching expression of a father s grief for his dead daughter, combining in remarkable fashion the gravity which appears to be so conspicuous in Anglo- Saxon poetry with something of that rich sense of the beatdy and hderest of the world which could not come to perfection for another two hundred years. It consists of a hundred and one verses or stanzas of twelve lines each, and takes the form of a vision in which the poet sees the "pearl of great price," his infant daughter whom he had lost, and, after a long conversation in which she instructs him in the divine wisdom, as Beatrice instructs Dante, is at length admitted to a view of the New Jerusalem, to arrive at which he is eager at once to cross the separating stream, but is awakened in his attempt, and finds himself again on earth. Even earlier than this is an Elegy on Edward I., reprinted in " Percy's Relics," the forerunner of a long series of poetic laments over dead kings and princes. This poem is not, however, in itself, of any special impoiiance, INTRODUCTION xxiii and, fine as " Pearl " is, it is too long, and written in a language too little resembling the English of to-day, to jjermit of its inclusion in a selection of this kind. The English language, as we know it, makes its appear- ance, of course, with Chaucer; and here again it is noticeable that the first ambitious effort of our first great jjoet was an Elegy. " The Boke of the Duchesse " was a compliment paid by Chaucer to his patron, John of Gaunt, on the death of his first Dtichess, Blanche, who died in 1S69. It has been underrated, perhaps, for it already has charming passages, full of Chaucer's bright and human pleasure in birds and flowers. But its merits are hardly those of the elegy, and it is, of course, far too long for insertion in a selection. It is in the form of a dream, so common in the Middle Ages. The poet goes hunting and comes upon a man in black, sitting under an oak, who first makes great lamentations : " JVo man ?nay my sorwe glade, That maketh 7ny hewe tofalle and fade ; And hath myn understanding lorn. That me is wo that I was born. May noght make my sorwes slyde. Nought the remedies of Ovyde ; Ne Orpheus, god of melody e, Ne Dedalus, with playes slye ; Ne hele me may phisicien, Noght Ypocras, ne Galien ; Me is wo that I live houres twelve.'''' Then he sings the praises of his ivhite lady (Blanche) and finally in the last lines tells the poet that she is dead, and that that is the cause of his sorrow. xxiv INTRODUCTION The poets have, as a rule, in spite of all slanders, been loyal to each other, and especially to the princes of their order. The death of Chaucer did not produce any regular elegy, but it is the theme of several touching elegiac passages in the poems of his admiring successors. Occlive, in the Proem to his " De Regimine Principum," breaks into a noble utterance of his love and sorrow : ' ' But weleaway ! so is myne herte wo That the honour of Englisshe tonge is dede Ofwhiche I was wonte have counseile and rede. " maister dere and fader reverent, Aly maister Chaucer, floure of eloquence, Mirrour of fructtious entendement, O universal fader in science, Alias ! that thou thyne excellent prudence In thy bedde inortalle myghtest not bequethe. What eyled dethe, alias ! why wold he sle the ? " Dethe ! thou didest not harme singule7-e In slaughtre of hym, but alle this londe it smertethe ; But fiatkeles yit hast thow no fowere His name to she, his hye vertu astertethe Unslaynefro the whiche ay us lyfly hertethe. With bokes of his ornat endityng. That is to alle this lande enlumynyng." Few poets have been honoured 7vith a more beautiful lament. And there is another passage, of similar tone, in the body of the poem. John Lydgate, too, the Monk of Bury St Edmunds, pays his tribute of praise and sorrow, in the Prologues to his " Story of Thebes," and "Fall of Princes," and in his "Praise of the Virgin Mary." INTRODUCTION xxv Of other elegiac poetry in the interval between Chaucer and Surrey the most remarkable is the " Lament for the Makaris"* of William Dunbar, which I have inserted for the sake of the interest of its subject, and for the grave beauty and pathos which will not escape even those who most feel the quaintness and difficulty of his language. John Skelton, too, who was Henry VIII.' s tutor, has left us some elegies, though the real bent of his poetic gift was rather toward satire. There is one on Edward IV., and another which is maturer and finer, on the fourth Earl of Northumberland, who was killed in a riot in lJi.89. It is of considerable length; but a few verses may be quoted here: " If the hole quere of the Musis nyne In me all onely wer sett and comprysed, Enbrethed with the blast of influence devyne. As perfytly as could be thought or devised; To me also allthough it were promised Of laureat Phebus holy the eloquence. All were to ly tell for his magnificence." It finishes with a beautiful prayer : " perlese Prince of heven emperyall. That with one word formed al thing of noughte ; Heven, hell, and erth obey unto thy call ; Which to thy resemblaunce wondersly hast wrought All mankynd, whom thou full dere hast bought. With thy bloud precious our finaunce thou did pay. And us redemedfrom the fendys pray : * Poets. xxvi INTRODUCTION ' ' To the pray we, as Prince incoifiparable As thoti art of mercy andpyte the well. Thou bring unto thy Joy eterininable The soull of this lordefroiii all daunger of hell, In endles blis with the to byde and dwell In thy palace above the orient. Where thou art Lord and God omnipotent. " O quetie of mercy, lady full of grace. May den moste pur, and Goddcs iiioder dere. To sorowful hartes chef comfort and solace. Of all wojTien O flowre withoziten pere. Pray to thy Son above the sterris clere. He to vouchesaf, by thy mediacion To pardon thy se)~vaunt, and hynge to salvacion. " In joy triumphaunt the hevenly yerarchy. With all the hole sorte of that glorious place. His soule ?not receyve into theyr cojnpany Thorow bounty of Hym that formed all solace : Wei of pile, of mercy, and of grace The Father, the Sonn, and the Holy Ghost In Trinitate one God of ??iyghtes moste." Besides these, there is the curious " Bokc of Philipp Sparorve," written in the first years of the sixteenth century, on the death of a sparrow, belonging to Jane Scroupe, who was being educated in Carroiv Nunnery near Norwich. There is, of course, an imitation of Catullus, but there is much besides. The poem is some 1300 lines long, and I can only give a short passage here. Jane Scroupe is speaking : ' * Was never bird ut cage More gentle of courage INTRODUCTION xxvii In doing his homage Unto his sovereign. Alas, I say again Death hath departed us twain The false cat hath thee slain. Farewell! Philipp, adieu ! Our Lord thy soul resctie. Farewell without restore. Farewell for evermore.'''' The poem naturally wants the seriousness of elegy, which only the melancholy of a highly civilised age enabled Catullus and Matthew Arnold to give to the death of an animal, and even if the matter were more serious, this ambling metre would prevent it from making any adequate impression. Skelton has a touch of Rabelais or Marot about him, and it is not from such men that we look for elegy. The grave beauty of the lament for Lord Northumberland belongs, it should be noted, to his early life, and does not reappear. In passing from the tutor of Henry VIII.' s childhood to the poet who was one of the ornaments and one of the victims of the close of his reign, we definitely pass from the atmosphere of the Middle Ages to that of the Renaissance. Skelton has a little of each about him. The satirist of clerical abuses, and the scholar, whom Erasmus could call " Britajinicarum literarum lumen et decus," belong to the new order of things. The total want of order and method, and of any conception of the architecture of literary work, the habit of thinking that anything that occurs to him is worth saying, and that any place in any poem will suit it very well, all this, on xxviii INTRODUCTION the other hand, points back to the incoherence of the Middle Age. When we open Surrey, we feel at once that 7ve have passed out of barbarism. There is some- thing adult and almost modem in the new propriety of language, in the comparative reasonableness of the out- look upon life arid the world. The hundred years ivhich elapsed between Surrey's death and that of Charles I. form the most brilliant century in our literary history, and elegy, with which we are concerned here, fills its fill place in it. Naturally Spenser, who is so much the greatest poetic figure of the period, if we leave the drama out of account, occupies the first place also in elegy. " Astrophel," " Daph- naida," " The Ruins of Time," constitute an imposing mass of elegiac work ivhich has few parallels. Two of them relate to the death, which called forth more and finer poetic lamentation than that of any Englishman before or since, for the " Ruins of Time " is, hi fact, an additional elegy on Sidney, occasioned, perhaps, by the consciousness in Spenser himself, or in others, of the inadequacy of "Astrophel" to express a love and sorro7v so great when felt by so great a poet. Among other poets who joined Spenser in attempting to express the universal grief at what then seemed, and perhaps was the most tragic event of Elizabeth' s reign, were Fulke Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke, Henry Constable, Thomas Watson, and Sir Walter Raleigh. Two of these elegies, with others, 7vere published in the collection of ivhich Spenser's "Astrophel" was the principal poem. One may observe in nearly all these pieces, that elegy in poets of the Renaissance no longer strikes quite the same note as was INTRODUCTION xxix struck by tUe medieval elegy. The old feeling aroused by death was, as it were, that of helplessness before the inevitable; death is only one more dark incident, the final one, in a dark and difficult world. But these brave Renaissance spirits, who walked life's journey so erect and joyous and defiant, intent on seeing, knowing, enjoy- ing, daring, everything that life might put in their way to see or know or dare or enjoy, could not content them- selves, when they saw a life of noble promise cut short in its prime, with the reflection that death was universal and inevitable. They were impatient and indignant at the apparent loss and waste that death involves. If what the men of the Middle Ages felt about death amounted to little Tnore than a cold consciousness that it is the common lot, if our feeling about it to-day is principally one of wonder at its mystery, it is neither its mystery nor its universality that chiefly filled the minds of the ynen of the Renaissance ; what struck them above all things was its cruelty. That is the note we catch again and again in their elegies, and not least in those that followed Sidney's death. A generation later, when ike stars in our poetic con- stellation had become more numerous, another death occurred, about which there was much of the same feel- ing of bright hopes disappointed, and which produced a still greater body of elegiac poetry. But few arts are rarer than that of making the poetic plant flourish in courtly soil, and though Chapman, Donne, Drummond, Wither, William Browne, and Thomas Campion were among the many poets who expressed the griej' they sincerely felt for the young Prince of Wales, who had d XXX INTRODUCTION shown himself a true patron of letters, their efforts pro- duced nothing that can he described as great or important poetry. Chapman's poem, which contains more than six hundred lines, and is almost a maze of confusion and obscurity, has some fine passages here and there. In one he laments that " One that in hope took tip to topless height All his great ancestors : his one sail, freight With all, all Princes'' treasures " should die so young that he can have accomplished "... nothing solid, worthy of our souls I Nothing that reason more than sense extols I Nothing that may in perfect judgment be A ft foot for our crown eternity.'''' On this occasion Henry Peacham ptiblished a book of his poems, containing a series of laments for the Prince, and, indeed, the custom of publishing a number of elegies, by one or many authors, of which Spenser's " Astrophel" was the first example, had no7v grown not uncommon. The death of Ben Jonson in 1637, which was, perhaps, regarded as a greater loss by men of letters than that of any other English poet has ever been, was at once followed by the publication of the volume called "Jonsonus Virbius," which consists of tribides to his memory con- tributed by atdhors, among tvhom are to be found the names of Falkland, who opens it with a graceful pastoral elegy, Cleveland, whose charming little poem will be INTRODUCTION xxxi found in this selection, Waller, Ford, Cartwright, and Sir John Beaumont. In the same spirit, though with inevit- ably inferior effect, more than fifty of Cartwright' s friends, amongst tvhom were Henry Vaughan, and Henry Lawes the composer, prefixed verses to the edition of his plays and poems printed in 1651. ^Milton's " Lycidas" is, again, in the original edition of 16 S8, the last of thirteen pieces ■which were together entitled " Obsequies to the memory of Mr Edward King." They were accompanied by a collection of Greek and Latin verses by twenty-three authors. Latin, indeed, was often employed for elegiac purposes ; and, to give only one instance, the friend whose loss Milton felt most deeply is not the one com- memorated in the English " Lycidas," but the one whom he lameyited in his beautiful Latin pastoral, "Epitaphium Damonis.'y Even a hundred years later. Gray lamented West in Latin hexameter, as well as in the well-known sonnet, and the Latin poem strikes a higher note than the English. Throughout this period, from the publica- tion of " Astrophel" to that of "Lycidas," there had been a steady growth in the fashion of writing verses to the memory of the dead. The greater and lesser men are alike in following it ; and the result is naturally an immense quantity of artificial and mediocre elegy. Not much is worth a second reading j but among those who deserve to be remembered are William Browne, who succeeds by his charming, almost childish, simplicity ; Sir John Beaumont, whose elegies are an important part of his poetic achievement, and are marked, like all he did, by a certain quiet distinction, not so much of mind ns of tone and taste ; Donne, whose interest, on the xxxii INTRODUCTION other hand, is spiritual, and above all things intellectual j and Jonson, whose feeling is sincere, and often heaidifully littered, though not always easily perceived behind his more obvious qualities of learning, critical acuteness, and manly understa?iding. All these are represented in this book. Samuel Daniel's elegy on his patron, the Earl of Devonshire, which some readers may perhaps expect to find here, has seemed to me, in spite of its evident sincerity, of too pedestrian a style and conception to justify the insertion of a poem of such length. Elegy, indeed, more than once during this period, was treated on a scale entirely forbidding reproductio7i in a selection like the present. Like Chaucer in his " Boke of the Duchesse," like Skelton in " Philipp Sparowe," such men as Spenser, Donne, and Ben Jonson set themselves, but with infinitely greater seriousness, to build large and ambitious poems on the superstructure of an individual death. Sidney's death gives Spenser occasion to intro- duce the mined city of Verulam moralising on the vanity of human things ; Jonson builds up a great poem, in ten parts, on the death of that Lady Digby, whom Habington also celebrated in one of his more pleasing elegies ; and Donne chose to give his splendid creation, the " Anatomy of the World," the form of an annual lament for a child whom he had never seen. " Mrs Elizabeth Drury," who was Bacoji's niece, and is said to have been the intended bride of Prince Henry, died in 1610, when she was only ffteen. Next year the "Funeral Elegy," given in this selection, and the " First Anniversary," were published, and in 1612 the "Second Anniversary" Jollowed. The whole was entitled " An Anatomy of INTRODUCTION xxxiii the World ; wherein, hy occasion of the untimely death of Mistress Elizabeth JDrury, the frailty and decay of this whole world is represented." The "Second Anni- versary " has also the title " Of the Progress of the Soul; wherein by occasion of the religious death of Mistress Elizabeth JDrury, the incommodities of the soul in this life, and her exaltation in the next, are con- templated " ; and Donne has filed it full of power of every kind, so that it rises above its original relation to Elizabeth Drury, and becomes the vehicle of the poet's grandest thought about life and death and the body. For a parallel to it we must wait till Tennyson's "In Memoriam," or Browning's "La Saisiaz." Of these three great poems, I regret particularly that considerations of space have prevented the insertion of Spenser's "Ruins of Time," which contains some beauti- ful stanzas consecrated to Sidney's memory. A few only can be given here : " O noble spirit e! live there ever blessed. The world's late wonder, and the heaven^ s new joy ; Live ever there, and leave me here distressed With mortall cares and ctcmbrous worlds anoy ! But, where thou dost that happi^tes enjoy. Bid me, O ! bid me quicklie come to thee. That happie there I fjiaie thee alwaies see. " Yet, whitest the fates affoord me vitall breath, I will it spend in speakiftg of thy praise. And sing to thee, untill that timelie death By heavens doome doo ende my earthlie daies : Thereto doo thou my humble spirite raise, And into me that sacred breath inspire Which thou there breathest perfect and entire. xxxiv INTRODUCTION ' ' Then will I sing : but who can better sing Than thine owne sister, peerles Ladie bright. Which to thee sings with deep harts sorrowing. Sorrowing tempered with deare delight. That her to heare I feele my feeble spright RobbM of sense, and ravished with joy : O sad joy, made of mourning and anoy ! " Yet will I sing : but who can better sing Than thou thy selfe, thine owne selfes valiance, That, whitest thou livedst, madest theforrests ring. And fields resownd, andflockes to leap and dauttce, And shepheards leave their lambs unto mischaunce. To runne thy shrill Arcadian Pipe to heare : 0, happie were those dayes, thrice happie were ! " But now, more happie thou, and wretched wee Which wajit the wonted siveetnes of thy voice, M-^hiles thou, ftow in Elisian fields so free. With Orpheus, attd with Linus, and the choice Of all that ever did in limes 7-eJoice, Cottversest and doost heare their heavenlie layes, Atid they heare thine, and thine doo better praise. "So there thou livest, singittg evermore, And here thou livest, being ever song Of us, which living loved thee afore. And now thee worship mongst that blessed throng Of heavenlie Poets and Heroes strong. So thou both here and there imniortall art, And everie where through excellent desart." One cannot but be struck with the way in which Spenser, most delicately, exquisitely gifted of English- men, fills the elegy full of his ineffable charm and tenderness. Donne, on the other hand, almost buries the note of lament in his airious and subtle thinking, as INTRODUCTION xxxv he so often buries his power of thought under a tangled overgrowth of conceits. It is difficult hy quotation to give any idea of the "Anatomy" ; hut besides the " Funeral Elegy," which has been inserted in the selec- tion, a few passages may he given here which will afford some slight indication of Donne's method of treating his subject Here is the opening of the " First Anni- versary " : " When that rich soul which to her heaven is gone, Whom all do celebrate, who know they ^ve one — For who is sure he hath a soul, unless It see, and judge, and follow woi'thiness. And by deeds praise it ? he who doth not this. May lodge an innate soul, but 'tis not his — " ; or take this passage from the " Second Anniversary " : '* Think, then, my soul, that death is but a groom. Which brings a taper to the outward room. Whence thou spiest first a little glimmering light. And after brings it nearer to thy sight " ; this . ' ' She, she embraced a sickness, gave it meat. The purest blood, and breath, that e'er it eat ; And hath taught tis, that though a good man hath Title to heaven, and plead it by his faith. And though he may pretend a conquest, since Heaven was content to suffer violence. Yea though he plead a long possession too — For they 're in heaven on earth who heaven's works < Though he had right and power and place, before. Yet death must usher, and unlock the door." xxxvi INTRODUCTION There is no need to speak of Jonson's " Eupheme," for the largest and most striking of those of its ten parts which survive, has been included in the selection. It mill be found fill of fine religious feeling, 7iobly and characteristically uttered. Another instance of elegy on a large scale, though not so large as these, is afforded by FraTicis Quarles' "Alphabet of Elegies" on Arch- deacon Ailmer, who died in 1625. The title of the volume is " An Alphabet of Elegies, Upon the much and truly lamented death of that famous for Learning, Piety, and true Friendship, Doctor Ailmer, a great favourer, and fast friend to the Muses, and late Arch- deacon of London, Imprinted in his Heart, that ever loves his Memory — written by Era. Quarles. Cum . Privelegioi jy^Aoris. Dig7ium laude vinim Musa vetat mori." It consists of twenty -two " elegies," each consist- ing of six rhymed couplets. Quarles is, of course, not a poet of J he order of Spenser or Jonson or Donne ; but there is feeling and some force of expression in the "Alphabet." Here are two of the Elegies, No. 10, afid No. IS : Knowledge {the depth of whose unbounded main Hath been the wreck of many a curious braine And from her {yet unreconcilM) schooles Hath filVd tis with so many learned fooles) Hath tutoT'd thee with rules that cannot erre. And taught thee how to know thy selfe, and her ; Furnisht thy nitnble soule in height of measure. With humane riches and divijtest treasure. From whence, as from a sacred spring, did flow Fresh Oracles, to let the hearer know ^- INTRODUCTION xxxvii A way to glory : and to let hi?Ji see, The way to glory, is to study thee. " No, no, he is not dead : The mouth of fame. Honors shrill Herald, would preserve his name, And make it live in spight of death and dust. Were there no other heaven, no other trust. He is not dead : the sacred Nine deny. The soule that ?nerits Fa?}ie, should ever die : He lives ; and when the latest breath of fame Shall want her Trumpe, to glorifie a name. He shall stirvive, and these selfe-closM eyes. That now lie slumbring in the dust, shall rise. And fiWd with endlesse glory, shall enjoy The perfect vision of eternalljoy." This period closes, as I said, with Milton's " Lycidas.'^ There grief is still passionate in utterance, whatever it may have been in feeling ; still passionate, outspeaking, deep-feeling, as the men of the Renaissance and the early seventeenth century were ; as Herrick still shows himself in a hundred little pieces, not professed elegies, hut fuller, some of them, of elegiac sentiment than many poems which enjoy the name ; hut with Herrick and Milton the old world goes, politeness takes the place of passion, and elegy is hardly recognisable in its critical, panegyrical, complimentary dress, as seen in MarveU's and Drydens poems on Cromwell, or in the great ode on " Mrs Anne Killigrew." It is not in the main poetic current of the age of prose that we must look for its highest utterance of the elegiac sentiment. Great elegies are not easily written with the applause of " the town " i?i view. But side by side with the dominant taste for wit and epigram. xxxviii INTRODUCTION there existed throughout the eighteenth century a simpler poetry, the tone of which is quiet, tetider, meditative. Its principal representatives are, of course, Gray and Collins. Elegy, in their hands, is no longer a passionate tdterance of grief; it becomes simply a quiet meditation on mortality. Still, unambitious as this fonn appears. Gray has known how to discover in it suck great possi- bilities, and to realise them with a perfection so unique, that we all think of him, more than of anyone else, as tittering the universal elegiac sentiment of humanity, and even a critic, so little disposed to overpraise him as Mr Swinburne, is compelled to declare that " as an elegiac poet, he holds for all ages his unassailable and sovereign station." There is the less need to say much here of elegy as it has appeared in the last two centuries of our literature, as the general lines on 7vhich English poetry has moved are well known, and elegy has followed them as much as any other form of verse. The selection may accordingly be left to speak for itself. It is hoped that it will be found fairly representative. With D)yden and Pope to stand for the main stream of poetic activity after the Restoration, with Gray and Collins for that smaller stream which mingled with the other without losing characteristics of its own, Cowper for the revival of truth and simplicity. Bums for that of passion, Shelley for that of the higher poetic imagination, Wordsworth for that profound sense of the seriousness of life, always latent in the English character, which he more than anyone gave back to English poehy, I hope it will be felt that nothing important has been omitted. I am happy, too, in being able now to add INTRODUCTION xxxix some noble specimens of the elegiac work of Tennyson and Matthew Arnold. For, of course, there is no poetic form in which the special gifts both of Tennyson and of Arnold found more complete expression than in that of elegy. The extent of their elegiac work, too, is very considerable. Much of it is, however, still under the restrictions of copyright. It was a special pleasure to me that Messrs Macmillan felt able to relax these so far as to allow me to print " Thyrsis" and " Geist's Grave." For the " Memorial Verses," beautiful as they are, could not by themselves have given any adequate representation of the elegy as Matthew Arnold treated it. And if Arnold also had been poorly represented in the selection, I should have felt an even keener regret than I now do at my inability to obtain permission for the insertion of any copyright poems of Tennyson. For Tennyson and Arnold, I think, each in his own special way, and more than anyone else, represented the peculiar thoughtfulness, descended frofn Wordsworth perhaps, but no longer the same as his, belonging now half to doubt as well as half to faith., which is a conspicuous characteristic of our own day. I have been so fortunate, however, as to obtain the leave of the greatest of living English poets to insert four of his many noble laments ; and I cannot too warmly express my gratitude to him for allowing me so to enrich my selection. I owe also a great debt of gratitude to Mr Robert Bridges for the kindness by which I have been enabled to print three beautiful elegies of his, one of which, in its rich loveli- ness, recalls the Elizabethans, while nothing could be more modern than the others, with their Whitmanlike xl INTRODUCTION gift of making the actual fact, in its most naked reality, serve the full purpose of poetry. Everyone into whose hands this book may come will he glad that they are here; and everyone, again, will feel with me that no selection of English Elegies could to-day be considered anything but most incomplete which did not include Mr William Watsons noble poem on the death of Tennyson; and will be as grateful to him, as I am, for allowing me to insert it. I am also greatly indebted to Mr Le Gallienne for his generosity iti givitig me leave to print his fine Elegy on Stevenson : as well as to Mr Watts-Duntofi, Mrs Meynell, and the representatives of the Rev. E. C. Lefroy, all of whom have enriched the selection by their kindness. On the whole, I hope, in spite of omissions which are my misfortune, and some, too, perhaps, which are my fault, that the book may be thought to include an adequate selection from the immense mass of English elegiac poetry. I can only say that I have tried to coiisider everything that had a claim to be admitted, that, while most of the poems included are included on what I conceive to be their intrinsic merits, some have also been given oti account of their representa- tive or historic interest, and that I have greatly regretted the necessary exclusion of many the insertion of which has only been prevented by considerations of space. In any case, I thiiik it will be admitted that the elegies reprinted are reynarkable proof that hardly any moment in the life of English poetry has failed to find expression in elegy. It has not been thought necessary to say anything INTRODUCTION xli of the classes into which elegies have sometimes been divided. The Love Elegy is, indeed, a class hy itself, but we have nothing to do with it here, as this selection is confined to elegies dealing with death. It is, no doubt, possible to distinguish different forms among these, such as the large poem involving something like a story, as the " Boke of the Dtichesse," the Pastoral elegy which ex- tends from Spenser's " Daphnaida " to Dry den s " Tears of Amyntas," the simple lament which is the one most largely represented in this volume, the literary and critical elegy like Dry den's " Oldham," and the poem of general meditation and refection tinged with melan- choly, like Gray's '"Elegy," and minor productions of the same class, like Michael Bruce' s " Elegy in Spring." The Comic Elegy and the Satirical Elegy, which have sometimes been added, have no more to do with that form of poetry called Elegy than a comic history has with that form of prose called History. There is another set of poems represented in this volume, which perhaps deserves to be considered a separate class. It might be said that a man cannot, strictly speaking, write his own elegy, any more than he can pronounce his own funeral oration. But many poets have spoken with touching effect of their own deaths; and I have thought myself entitled to treat such poems as essentially elegies. There is a remark- able series of them : the thoughts of such men as Raleigh, Shakspeare, Drummond, Herrick, Gray, Bums, Landor — and I wish I had been allowed to add Tennyson and Browning — on their, own deaths, give us, it seems xlii INTRODUCTION to me, a long line of poems of quite unique and truly elegiac interest. A note should, perhaps, be added on the distinction betweai the Elegy and the Epitaph. The words have been so cotistantly interchanged, and the one form so easily passes into the other, that it would have been easy to justify the inclusion of a good many epitaphs. The proper distinction, however, seems to me to be that an elegy is a lament, while an epitaph is an in- scription. The one is a statement of facts about the dead, the other an expression of the feelings of the living. Of course they easily pass into each other. But the distinction is a real one, and I have endeavoured to observe it ; though I have not felt bound to exclude such a piece as Pope's lines on the Digbys, which, although actually inscribed on their monument, seem to me to strike the note of elegy; or, again, Cleveland's epitaph on Ben Jonson, which was all that I could find room for of that famous elegiac collection, " Jon- sonus Virbius." There is something oj the same diffi- culty about the literary or critical elegy; but it has not been thought necessaiy to refrain from including such a piece as Jonson's noble poem on Shalcspeare, though it is certainly at least as muck a eulogy as a lament. Definitions in a matter so delicate as poetry must not be too rigidly pressed. Jonson was a critic, and he took a critic's way of expressing his sense of loss. With this, I will leave the selection to speak for itself. Much may, no doubt, be said against the making of more and ever more Anthologies. But a genera- INTRODUCTION xliii tion which has seen the popularity of Mr Palgrave's " Golden Treasury of Lyrics," and of such volumes as Matthew Arnold's "Selection from Wordsworth," can hardly deny their possibilities of usefulness. It is to he hoped that in a volume like the present, the tracing of a special form of poetry throughout the history of our literature has a value of its own. But, apart from such considerations, there is surely an advantage of a more popular order in volumes of selections. If choice poems, even those that are the work of great men, are to be found only in complete editions of their authors, by the large majority they will never be found at all. There must be many people, who really appreci- ate poetry, but have neither opportunity nor inclination to study such poets as Donne and Ben Jonson for them- selves. There is always much in an old writer that is difficult to the ordinary modem reader; and he is probably unable or unwilling to search out the part which is not. The humblest of Anthologies may play a useful function here. It represents the small, the new, the easy, in contrast with the large, the old, the difficult; and it may be a stepping-stone to something better than itself How many of us owe our knowledge of some of our favourite poets, whom we should not otherwise have so much as heard of, to a chance poem seen and learnt by heart in the " Golden Treasury," which sent us on to all the rest ? There is only one more word to say. We are all — all of us, at any rate, who are likely to care for poetry — certain to have from time to time our elegiac moods. Sorrow is a visitor at every gate, one day or the next ; xliv INTRODUCTION a7id in her presence those of us who really believe in the high injluence poetry has, or may have, over us, are inclined to turn to poetry for part, and perhaps for a large part, of the needed consolation. No poetry should he nearer to us at such times than that which was itself written, as elegy has so often been, under the shado7v of actual and personal grief The chief thing which distinguishes poets from other men is not that they feel differently from the rest of us, but that they can idler what we can only feel. It is natural, then, that we should go to them ; aiid it may well be that by breathing for a while their higher at7nosphere, we may learn some- thing of their sources of consolation, and gain for our- selves, too, some portion of that power of mastering the emotions without ceasing to feel them at their fullest, which is for them the necessary condition of their utter- ance, and for us all, as 7vell as for thern, the tnie secret of life. J. C. B. ENGLISH ELEGIES DAPHNAIDA [An Elegie upon the Death of the noble and vertuous Douglas Howard, daughter and heire of Henry Lord Howard, and wife of Arthur Gorges, Esquire. By Ed. Sp. 1591.] What-ever man be he whose heavy mind, With grief of mournful great mishap oppressed, Fit matter for his cares increase would find, Let read the rueful plaint herein expressed, Of one, (I ween), the woefulst man alive, • Even sad Alcyon, whose empierced breast Sharp sorrow did in thousand pieces rive. But whoso else in pleasure findeth sense, Or in this wretched life doth take delight, Let him be banished far away from hence ; Ne let the sacred Sisters here be hight,* Though they of sorrow heavily can sing ; For even their heavy song would breed delight ; But here no tunes, save sobs and groans, shall ring. In stead of them, and their sweet harmony, Let those three fatal Sisters, whose sad hands Do weave the direful threads of destiny. And in their wrath break off the vital bands, Approach hereto ; and let the dreadful Queen Of Darkness deep come from the Stygian strands. And grisly Ghosts, to hear the doleful teene.t called. t sorrow. A ENGLISH ELEGIES In gloomy evening, when the weary Sun, After his day's long labour drew to rest, And sweaty steeds, now having overrun The compassed sky, 'gan water in the west, I walked abroad to breathe the freshing air In open fields, whose flowering pride, oppressed With early frosts, had lost their beauty fair. There came unto my mind a troublous thought, Which daily doth my weaker wit possess, Ne* lets it rest until it forth have brought Her long borne Infant, fruit of heaviness. Which she conceived hath through meditation Of this world's vainness and life's wretchedness, That yet my soul it deeply doth empassion. So as I mused on the misery In which men live, and I of many most Most miserable man ; I did espy Where towards me a sorry wight did cost, t Clad all in black, that mourning did bewray, And Jacob staff in hand devoutly crossed. Like to some Pilgrim come from far away. His careless locks uncombed and unshorn, Hung long adown, and beard all overgrown. That well he seemed to be some wight forlorn ; Down to the earth his heavy eyes were thrown. As loathing light ; and ever as he went He sighed soft, and inly deep did groan. As if his heart in pieces would have rent. Approaching nigh, his face I viewed near, And by the semblantj of his countenance Me seemed I had his person seen elsewhere, Most like Alcyon seeming at a glance ; Alcyon he, the jolly Shepherd swain That wont full merrily to pipe and dance. And fill with pleasance every wood and plain. * nor. t approach. J semblance. SPENSER 3 Yet half in doubt, because of his disguise, I softly said, "Alcyon!" There- with-all He looked aside as in disdainful! wise, Yet stayed not, till I again did call : Then, turning back, he said, with hollow sound, "Who is it that doth name me, woeful thrall, The wretched'st man that treads this day on ground ? " •'One, whom like woefulness, impressed deep, Hath made fit mate thy wretched case to hear, And given like cause with thee to wail and weep ; Grief finds some ease by him that like does bear. Then stay, Alcyon, gentle shepherd ! stay, (Quoth I) till thou have to my trusty ear Committed what thee doth so ill apay." * " Cease, foolish man ! " (said he, half wrothfully) "To seek to hear that which cannot be told, For the huge anguish, which doth multiply My dying pains, no tongue can well unfold ; Ne do I care that any should bemoan My hard mishap, or any weep that would, But seek alone to weep, and die alone." "Then be it so," (quoth I) "that thou art bent To die alone, unpitied, unplained ; Yet, ere thou die, it were convenient To tell the cause which thee thereto constrained, Lest that the world thee dead accuse of guilt. And say, when thou of none shalt be maintained, That thou for secret crime thy blood hast spilt." "Who life does loathe, and longs to be unbound From the strong shackles of frail flesh," quoth he, " Nought cares at all what they, that live on ground,' Deem the occasion of his death to be ; Rather desires to be forgotten quite. Than question made of his calamity. For hearts deep sorrow hates both life and light. * please. 4 ENGLISH ELEGIES " Yet since so much thou seem'st to rue ray grief, And car'st for one that for himself cares nought, (Sign of thy love, though nought for my relief. For my relief exceedeth living thought ;) I will to thee this heavy case relate : Then hearken well till it to end be brought. For never didst thou hear more hapless fate. " Whilom I used (as thou right well dost know) My little flock on western downs to keep, Not far from whence Sabrina's stream doth flow. And flowery banks with silver liquor steep ; Nought cared I then for worldly change or chance, For all my joy was on my gentle sheep, And to my pipe to carol and to dance. •'It there befel, as I the fields did range Fearless and free, a fair young Lioness, White as the native Rose before the change Which Venus blood did in her leaves impress, I spied playing on the grassy plain Her youthful sports and kindly wantonness, That did all other Beasts in beauty stain. " Much was I moved at so goodly sight. Whose like before mine eye had seldom seen. And 'gan to cast how I her compass might. And bring to hand that yet had never been ; So well I wrought with mildness and with pain, That I her caught disporting on the green. And brought away fast bound with silver chain. " And afterwards I handled her so fair, That though by kind she stout and savage were. For being born an ancient Lion's heir. And of the race that all wild beasts do fear. Yet I her framed, and won so to my bent. That she became so meek and mild of cheer. As the least lamb in all my flock that went : SPENSER " For she in field, wherever I did wend, Would wend with me, and wait by me all day ; And all the night that I in watch did spend, If cause required, or else in sleep, if nay, She would all night by me or watch or sleep ; And evermore when I did sleep or play. She of my flock would take full wary keep. " Safe then, and safest were my silly sheep, Ne feared the Wolf, ne feared the wildest beast, All were I drowned in careless, quiet deep ; My lovely Lioness without behest, So careful was for them, and for my good. That when I waked, neither most nor least, I found miscarried or in plain or wood. " Oft did the Shepherds which my hap did hear, And oft their lasses, which my luck envied. Daily resort to me from far and near, To see my Lioness, whose praises wide Were spread abroad ; and when her worthiness, Much greater than the rude report they tried. They her did praise, and my good fortune bless. " Long thus I joyed in my happiness, And well did hope my joy would have no end ; But oh, fond man ! that in world's fickleness Reposedst hope, or weenedst her thy friend That glories most in mortal miseries. And daily doth her changeful counsels bend. To make new matter fit for Tragedies ; " For whilst I was thus without dread or doubt, A cruel Satyr with his murd'rous dart. Greedy of mischief, ranging all about. Gave her the fatal wound of deadly smart, And reft from me my sweet companion, And reft from me my love, my life, my heart : My Lioness (ah, woe is me ! ) is gone ! ENGLISH ELEGIES " Out of the world thus was she reft away, Out of the world, unworthy such a spoil, And borne to heaven, for heaven a fitter prey ; Much fitter than the Lion, which with toil Alcides slew, and fixed in firmament ; Her now I seek throughout this earthly soil, And seeking miss, and missing do lament." Therewith he 'gan afresh to wail and weep, That I for pity of his heavy plight Could not abstain mine eyes with tears to steep ; But when I saw the anguish of his spright Some deal allayed, I him bespake again ; " Certes, Alcyon, painful is thy plight. That it in me breeds almost equal pain. " Yet doth not my dull wit well understand The riddle of thy loved Lioness ; For rare it seems in reason to be scanned. That man, who doth the whole world's rule possess. Should to a beast his noble heart embase, And be the vassal of his vassaless ; Therefore more plain aread this doubtful case." Then sighing sore, " Daphne thou knew'st," quoth he, " She now is dead" ; ne more endured to say, But fell to ground for great extremity ; That I, beholding it, with deep dismay Was much appalled, and, lightly him uprearing. Revoked life, that would have fled away, All were my self, through grief, in deadly drearing. Then 'gan I him to comfort all my best, And with mild counsel strove to mitigate The stormy passion of his troubled breast. But he thereby was more empassionate ; As stubborn steed, that is with curb restrained, Becomes more fierce and fervent in his gait ; And, breaking forth at last, thus dearnly * plained : * secretly, sadly. SPENSER I *• What man henceforth that breatheth vital air Will honour heaven, or heavenly powers adore, Which so unjustly do their judgments share 'Mongst earthly wights, as to afflict so sore The innocent, as those which do transgress, And do not spare the best or fairest, more Than worst or foulest, but do both oppress? " If this be right, why did they then create The world so fair, sith fairness is neglected ? Or why be they themselves immaculate, If purest things be not by them respected ? . She fair, she pure, most fair, most pure she was. Yet was by them as thing impure rejected ; Yet she in pureness heaven itself did pass. " In pureness and in all celestial grace. That men admire in goodly womankind, She did excel, and seemed of angels race, Living on earth like angel new divinde,* Adorned with wisdom and with chastity. And all the dowries of a noble mind. Which did her beauty much more beautify. " No age hath bred (since fair Astraea left The sinful world) more virtue in a wight ; And, when she parted hence, with her she reft Great hope, and robbed her race of bounty quite. Well may the shepherd lasses now lament ; For double loss by her hath on them light, To lose both her and bounty's ornament. " Ne let Elisa, royal Shepherdess, The praises of my parted love envy. For she hath praises in all plenteousness Poured upon her, like showers of Castaly, * deified. ENGLISH ELEGIES By her own Shepherd, Colin, her own Shepherd, That her with heavenly hymns doth deify, Of rustic muse full hardly to be bettered. " She is the Rose, the glory of the day, And mine the Primrose in the lowly shade : Mine, ah ! not mine ; amiss I mine did say : Not mine, but His, which mine awhile her made ; Mine to be His, with Him to live for aye. Oh that so fair a flower so soon should fade. And through untimely tempest fall away ! '• She fell away in her first age's spring. Whilst yet her leaf was green, and fresh her rind. And whilst her branch fair blossoms forth did bring. She fell away against all course of kind. For age to die is right, but youth is wrong ; She fell away like fruit blown down with winde. Weep, Shepherd ! weep, to make my under-song. II '* What heart so stony-hard but that would weep, And pour forth fountains of incessant tears ? What Timon but would let compassion creep Into his breast, and pierce his frozen ears? In stead of tears, whose brackish bitter well, I wasted have, my heart-blood dropping wears, To think to ground how that fair blossom fell. " Yet fell she not as one enforced to die, Ne died with dread and grudging discontent, But as one toiled with travel down doth lie, So lay she down, as if to sleep she went. And closed her eyes with careless quietness ; The whiles soft death away her spirit hent,* And soul assoiled from sinful fleshliness. * took. SPENSER < " Yet ere that life her lodging did forsake, She, all resolved, and ready to remove. Calling to me (ay me I) this wise bespake ; * Alcyon 1 ah, my first and latest love ! Ah ! why does my Alcyon weep and mourn. And grieve my ghost, that ill mote him behove, As if to me had chanced some evil turn ! *" I, since the messenger is come for me. That summons souls unto the bridal feast Of his great Lord, must needs depart from thee. And straight obey His sovereign behest ; Why should Alcyon then so sore lament That I from misery shall be released, And freed from wretched long imprisonment ! •' ' Our days are full of dolour and disease. Our life afflicted with incessant pain. That nought on earth may lessen or appease ; Why then should I desire here to remain ! Or why should he, that loves me, sorry be For my deliverance, or at all complain My good to hear, and toward joys to see ! " ' I go, and long desired have to go ; I go with gladness to my wished rest. Whereas* no world's sad care, nor wasting woe May come their happy quiet to molest ; But Saints and Angels in celestial thrones Eternally Him praise that hath them blest ; There shall I be amongst those blessed ones. '•'Yet, ere I go, a pledge I leave with thee Of the late love the which betwixt us passed. My young Ambrosia ; in lieu of me, Love her ; so shall our love for ever last. Thus, dear ! adieu, whom I expect ere long.' So having said, away she softly passed : Weep, Shepherd I weep, to make mine under-song. * where. 10 ENGLISH ELEGIES III " So oft as I record those piercing words, Which yet are deep engraven in ray breast, And those last deadly accents, which like swords Did wound my heart, and rend my bleeding chest, With those sweet sugared speeches do compare. The which my soul first conquered and possest. The first beginners of my endless care ; " And when those pallid cheeks and ashy hue, In which sad Death his portraiture had writ, And when those hollow eyes and deadly view, On which the cloud of ghastly night did sit, I match with that sweet smile and cheerful brow, Which all the world subdued unto it. How happy was I then, and wretched now ! *• How happy was I when I saw her lead The Shepherds' daughters dancing in a round ! How trimly would she trace and softly tread The tender grass, with rosy garland crowned I And when she list advance her heavenly voice, Both Nymphs and Muses nigh she made astound, And flocks and shepherds caused to rejoice. " But now, ye Shepherd lasses ! who shall lead Your wandering troops, or sing your virelayes ? * Or who shall dight your bowers, sith she is dead That was the Lady of your holy-days ? Let now your bliss be turned into bale. And into plaints convert your joyous plays, And with the same fill every hill and dale. " Let Bagpipe never more be heard to shrill. That may allure the senses to delight, Ne ever Shepherd sound his Oaten quill Unto the many that provoke them might * light songs. SPENSER II To idle pleasance ; but let ghastliness And dreary horrour dim the cheerful light, To make the image of true heaviness : " Let birds be silent on the naked spray, And shady woods resound with dreadful yells ; Let streaming floods their hasty courses stay, And parching drought dry up the crystal wells ; Let th' earth be barren, and bring forth no flowers, And th' air be filled with noise of doleful knells, And wandering spirits walk untimely hours. " And Nature, nurse of every living thing, Let rest herself from her long weariness. And cease henceforth things kindly forth to bring. But hideous monsters full of ugliness ; For she it is that hath me done this wrong, No nurse, but Stepdame, cruel, merciless. Weep, Shepherd ! weep, to make my under-song. IV *' My little flock, whom erst I loved so well. And wont to feed with finest grass that grew, Feed ye henceforth on bitter Astrofel, And stinking Smallage, and unsavoury Rue ; And, when your maws are with those weeds corrupted. Be ye the prey of Wolves ; ne will I rue That with your carcases wild beasts be glutted. " Ne worse to you, my silly sheep ! I pray, Ne sorer vengeance wish on you to fall Than to myself, for whose confused decay To careless heavens I do daily call ; But heavens refuse to hear a wretch's cry ; And cruel Death doth scorn to come at call, Or grant his boon that most desires to die. 12 ENGLISH ELEGIES " The good and righteous he away doth take, To plague th' unrighteous which alive remain ; But the ungodly ones he doth forsake, By living long to multiply their pain ; Else surely death should be no punishment, As the Great Judge at first did it ordain, But rather riddance from long languishment. " Therefore, my Daphne they have ta'en away ; For worthy of a better place was she : But me unworthy willed here to stay, That vnth her lack I might tormented be. Sith then they so have ordered, I will pay Penance to her, according their decree, And to her ghost do service day by day. " For I will walk this wandering pilgrimage, Throughout the world from one to other end. And in affliction waste my better age : My bread shall be the anguish of my mind, My drink the tears which from mine eyes do rain. My bed the ground that hardest I may find ,- So will I wilfully increase my pain. " And she, my love that was, my Saint that is, When she beholds from her celestial throne (In which she joyeth in eternal bliss) My bitter penance, will my case bemoan. And pity me that living thus do die ; For heavenly spirits have compassion On mortal men, and rue their misery. " So when I have with sorrow satisfied Th' importune fates, which vengeance on me seek. And th' heavens with long languour pacified. She, for pure pity of my sufferance meek. Will send for me ; for which I daily long ; And will till then my painful penance eke. Weep, Shepherd 1 weep, to make my under-song. SPENSER 13 V " Henceforth I hate whatever Nature made, And in her workmanship no pleasure find, For they be all but vain, and quickly fade ; So soon as on them blows the Northern wind, They tarry not, but flit and fall away, Leaving behind them nought but grief of mind, And mocking such as think they long will stay. "I hate the heaven, because it doth withhold Me from my love, and eke my love from me ; I hate the earth, because it is the mould Of fleshly slime and frail mortality ; I hate the fire, because to nought it flies ; I hate the air, because sighs of it be ; I hate the sea, because it tears supplies. " I hate the day, because it lendeth light To see all things, and not my love to see ; I hate the darkness and the dreary night, Because they breed sad balefulness in me ; I hate all times, because all times do fly So fast away, and may not stayed be. But as a speedy post that passeth by. " I hate to speak, my voice is spent with crying ; I hate to hear, loud plaints have dulled mine ears ; I hate to taste, for food withholds my dying ; I hate to see, mine eyes are dimmed with tears ; I hate to smell, no sweet on earth is left ; I hate to feel, my flesh is numbed with fears : So all my senses from me are bereft. " I hate all men, and shun all womankind ; The one, because as I they wretched are ; The other, for because I do not find My love with them, that wont to be their Star : And life I hate, because it will not last; And death I hate, because it life doth mar ; And all I hate that is to come or past. 14 ENGLISH ELEGIES " So all the world, and all in it I hate, Because it changeth ever to and fro, And never standeth in one certain state. But still unstedfast, round about doth go Like a Mill-wheel in midst of misery, Driven with streams of wretchedness and woe, That dying lives, and living still does die. "So do I live, so do I daily die, And pine away in self-consuming pain ! Sith she that did my vital powers supply, And feeble spirits in their force maintain, Is fetched from me, why seek I to prolong My weary days in dolour and disdain? Weep, Shepherd, weep, to make my under-song. VI " Why do I longer live in life's despite, And do not die then in despite of death ; Why do I longer see this loathsome light, And do in darkness not abridge my breath, Sith all my sorrow shall have end thereby, And cares find quiet ! Is it so uneath To leave this life, or dolorous to die ? " To live I find it deadly dolorous. For life draws care, and care continual woe ; Therefore to die must needs be joyeous, And wishful thing this sad life to forgo : But I must stay ; I may it not amend. My Daphne hence departing bade me so ; She bade me stay, till she for me did send. "Yet, whilst I in this wretched vale do stay My weary feet shall ever wandering be, That still I may be ready on my way When as her messenger doth come for me ; SPENSER 15 Ne will I rest my feet for feebleness, Ne will I rest my limbs for frailty, Ne will I rest mine eyes for heaviness. " But, as the mother of the Gods, that sought For fair Eurydice, her daughter dear, Throughout the world, with woeful heavy thought ; So will I travel whilst I tarry here, Ne will I lodge, ne will I ever lin,* Ne, when as drooping Titan draweth near To loose his team, will I take up my Inn. " Ne sleep (the harbinger of weary vnghts) Shall ever lodge upon mine eyelids more ; Ne shall with rest refresh my fainting sprites, Nor failing force to former strength restore : But I will wake and sorrow all the night With Philumene, my fortune to deplore ; With Philumene, the partner of my plight. " And ever as I see the stars to fall. And underground to go to give them light Which dwell in darkness, I to mind will call How my fair Star (that shined on me so bright) Fell suddenly, and faded underground ; Since whose departure, day is turned to night, And night without a Venus star is found. " But soon as day doth show his dewy face, And calls forth men imto their toilsome trade, I will withdraw me to some darksome place. Or some deep cave, or solitary shade; There will I sigh, and sorrow all day long. And the huge burden of my cares unlade. Weep, Shepherd! weep, to make my under-song. i6 ENGLISH ELEGIES VII " Henceforth mine eyes shall never more behold Fair thing on earth, ne feed on false delight Of ought that framed is of mortal mould, Sith that my fairest flower is faded quite ; For all I see is vain and transitory, Ne will be held in any stedfast plight, But in a moment lose their grace and glory. •'And ye fond men! on fortune's wheel that ride, Or in ought under Heaven repose assurance, Be it riches, beauty, or honour's pride. Be sure that they shall have no long endurance. But ere ye be aware will flit away ; For nought of them is yours, but th' only usance Of a small time, which none ascertain may. "And ye, true Lovers ! whom disastrous chance Hath far exiled from your Ladies' grace, To mourn in sorrow and sad sufferance, When ye do hear me in that desert place Lamenting loud my Daphne's Elegy, Help me to wail my miserable case. And when life parts vouchsafe to close mine eye. "And ye, more happy Lovers! which enjoy The presence of your dearest love's delight, When ye do hear my sorrowful annoy, Yet pity me in your empassioned sprite, And think that such mishap, as chanced to me. May happen unto the most happiest wight ; For all men's states alike unstedfast be. "And ye, my fellow Shepherds! which do feed Your careless flocks on hills and open plains, With better fortune than did me succeed. Remember yet my undeserved pains ; SPENSER 17 And, when ye hear that I am dead or slain, Lament my lot, and tell your fellow-swains, That sad Alcyon died in life's disdain. " And ye, fair Damsels I Shepherds' dear delights. That with your loves do their rude hearts possess. When as my hearse shall happen to your sights, Vouchsafe to deck the same with Cyparesse ; And ever sprinkle brackish tears among, In pity of my undeserved distress, The which, I, wretch, endured have thus long. "And ye, poor Pilgrims! that with restless toil Weary yourselves in wandring desert ways. Till that you come where ye your vows assoil, ^ When passing by ye read these woeful lays, On my grave written, rue my Daphne's wrong. And mourn for me that languish out my days. Cease, Shepherd! cease, and end thy under-song." Thus when he ended had his heavy plaint. The heaviest plaint that ever I heard sound, His cheeks waxed pale, and sprites began to faint, As if again he would have fallen to ground ; Which, when I saw, I (stepping to him light) Amoved him out of his stony swound. And 'gan him to re-comfort as I might. But he no way re-comforted would be. Nor suffer solace to approach him nigh, But casting up a 'sdainful eye at me. That in his trance I would not let him lie, Did rend his hair, and beat his blubbered face. As one disposed wilfully to die. That I sore grieved to see his wretched case. pay. 6 i8 ENGLISH ELEGIES Tho* when the pang was somewhat overpassed, And the outrageous passion nigh appeased, I him desired sith day was overcast, And dark night fast approached, to be pleased To turn aside unto my Cabinet, And stay with me, till he were better eased Of that strong stound which him so sore beset. But by no means I could him win thereto, Ne longer him intreat with me to stay, But without taking leave he forth did go With staggering pace and dismal looks' dismay. As if that death he in the face had seen. Or hellish hags had met upon the way ; But what of him became I cannot ween. Edmund Spenser, 9> 1552—1598. A FUNERAL ELEGY [From "An Anatomy of the world; Wherein, by occasion of the tmtimely death of Mrs Elizabeth Drtiry, the frailty and the decay of this whole world is represented" ; with the "First Anniversary" of which, it was first published in 1611. The Seco7id Anniversary was added to the second edition of 1612,] 'Tis loss to trust a tomb with such a guest, Or to confine her in a marble chest. Alas I what 's marble, jet, or porphyry. Prized with the chrysolite of either eye. Or with those pearls and rubies which she was? Join the two Indies in one tomb, 'tis glass ; And so is all, to her materials. Though every inch were ten Escurials ; Yet she 's demolished ; can we keep her then In works of hands, or of the wits of men ? Can these memorials, rags of paper, give Life to that name, by which name they must live? •then. DONNE 19 Sickly, alas ! short lived, abortive be Those carcase verses, whose soul is not she ; And can she, who no longer would be she, Being such a tabernacle stoop to be In paper wrapped : or when she would not lie In such a house, dwell in an elegy ? But 'tis no matter : we may well allow Verse to live so long as the world will now, For her death wounded it. The world contains Princes for arms and counsellors for brains, Lawyers for tongues, divines for hearts, and more, The rich for stomachs, and for backs the poor ; The officers for hands, merchants for feet. By which remote and distant countries meet: But those fine spirits, which do tune and set This organ, are those pieces which beget Wonder and love ; and these were she : and she Being spent, the world must needs decrepit be. For since death will proceed to triumph still, He can find nothing, after her, to kill, Except the world itself, so great as she. Thus brave and confident may nature be. Death cannot give her such another blow. Because she cannot such another show. But must we say she's dead? may't not be said. That as a sundered clock is piecemeal laid, Not to be lost, but by the maker's hand Repolished without error then to stand. Or as the Afric Niger stream enwombs ""-- Itself into the earth, and after comes — Having first made a natural bridge, to pass For many leagues — far greater than it was, May't not be said, that her grave shall restore Her, greater, purer, firmer than before? Heaven may say this, and joy in't but can we Who live, and lack her here, this vantage see? What is 't to us, alas I if there have been An angel made, a throne, or cherubin? 20 ENGLISH ELEGIES We lose by 't : and as aged men are glad Being tasteless grown, to joy in joys they had, So now the sick, starved world must feed upon This joy, that we had her, who now is gone. Rejoice, then, nature, and this world, that you, Fearing the last fires hastening to subdue Your force and vigour, ere it were near gone. Wisely bestowed and laid it all on one ; One, whose clear body was so pure and thin, Because it need disguise no thought within ; 'Twas but a through-light scarf her mind to enroll. Or exhalation breathed out from her soul ; One whom all men, who durst no more, admired ; And whom, whoe'er had worth enough, desired ; As when a temple's built saints emulate To which of them it shall be consecrate. But as, when heaven looks on us with new eyes. Those new stars every artist exercise ; What place they should assign to them they doubt, Argue, and agree not, till those stars go out ; So the world studied whose this piece should be, Till she can be nobody's else, nor she ; But like a lump of balsamum, desired Rather to adorn than last, she soon expired. Clothed in her virgin white integrity — For marriage, though it doth not stain, doth dye- To escape the infirmities which wait upon Woman, she went away before she was one ; And the world's busy noise to overcome. Took so much death as served for opium ; For though she could not, nor could choose to die, She hath yielded to too long an ecstacy. He which, not knowing her sad history. Should come to read the book of destiny. How fair, and chaste, humble and high she'd been Much promised, much performed, at not fifteen, And measuring future things by things before. Should turn the leaf to read, and read no more, JONSON 21 Would think that either destiny mistook, Or that some leaves were torn out of the book. But 'tis not so : fate did but usher her To years of reason's use, and then infer Her destiny to herself, which liberty She took, but for thus much, thus much to die. Her modesty not suffering her to be Fellow-commissioner with destiny, She did no more but die : if after her Any shall live, which dare true good prefer. Every such person is her delegate. To accomplish that which should have been her fate. They shall make up that book and shall have thanks Of fate, and her, for filling up their blanks ; For future virtuous deeds are legacies Which from the gift of her example rise ; And 'tis in heaven part of spiritual mirth. To see how well the good play her, on earth. John Donne, 1573-1631. ELEGY On my Muse the truly honoured Lady, the Lady Venetia Digby ; who living, gave me leave to call her so. Being her diroOewo-is, or Relation to the Saints. [From "Eupheme or the Fair Fame left to Posterity of that Truly noble Lady the Lady Venetia Digby, Late Wife of Sir Kenelme Digby, Knt." of which it is Part IX.*'\ 'Twere time that I died too, now she is dead, Who was my Muse, and life of all I said ; The spirit that I wrote with, and conceived : All that was good, or great with me, she weaved, * From " Underwoods : consisting of Divers Poems," 164 1, part of the second folio edition. 22 ENGLISH ELEGIES And set it forth ; the rest were cobwebs fine, Spun out in name of some of the old Nine, To hang a window, or make dark the room. Till swept away, they were cancelled with a broom ! Nothing that could remain, or yet can stir A sorrow in me, fit to wait to her ! 1 had I seen her laid out a fair corse, By death, on earth, I should have had remorse On Nature for her : who did let her lie, And saw that portion of herself to die. Sleepy or stupid Nature, couldst thou part With such a rarity, and not rouse Art, With all her aids, to save her from the seize Of vulture Death, and those relentless cleis* ? Thou wouldst have lost the Phoenix, had the kind Been trusted to thee ; not to itself assigned. Look on thy sloth, and give thyself undone, (For so thou art with me) now she is gone : My wounded mind cannot sustain this stroke, It rages, runs, flies, stands, and would provoke The world to ruin with it; in her fall, 1 sum up mine own breaking, and wish all. Thou hast no more blows. Fate, to drive at one ; What's left a poet, when his Muse is gone? Sure I am dead and know it not ! I feel Nothing I do ; but like a heavy wheel. Am turned with another's powers : my passion Whirls me about, and, to blaspheme in fashion, I murmur against God, for having ta'en Her blessed soul hence, forth this valley vain Of tears, and dungeon of calamity ! I envy it the angels amity. The joy of saints, the crown for which it lives. The glory and gain of rest, which the place gives I Dare I profane so irreligious be. To greet or grieve her soft euthanasy ! * claws. JONSON 23 So sweetly taken to the court of bliss As spirits had stolen her spirit in a kiss, From off her pillow and deluded bed ; And left her lovely body unthought dead ! Indeed she is not dead ! but laid to sleep In earth, till the last trump awake the sheep And goats together, whither they must come To hear their judge, and his eternal doom ; To have that final retribution, Expected vdth the flesh's restitution. For, as there are three natures, schoolmen call One corporal only, the other spiritual, Like single ; so there is a third commixt. Of body and spirit together, placed betwixt Those other two ; which must be judged or crowned : This, as it guilty is, or guiltless found. Must come to take a sentence, by the sense Of that great evidence, the Conscience, Who will be there, against that day prepared. To accuse or quit all parties be heard ! O day of joy, and surety to the just. Who in that feast of resurrection trust ! That great eternal holy day of rest To body and soul, where love is all the guest ! And the whole banquet is full sight of God, Of joy the circle, and sole period ! All other gladness with the thought is barred ; Hope hath her end, and Faith hath her reward 1 This being thus, why should my tongue or pen Presume to interpel that fulness, when Nothing can more adorn it than the seat That she is in, or make it more complete? Better be dumb than superstitious : Who violates the Godhead is most vicious Against the nature he would worship. He Will honoured be in all simplicity, Have all his actions wondered at, and viewed With silence and amazement ; not with rude. 24 ENGLISH ELEGIES Dull and profane, weak and imperfect eyes, Have busy search made in his mysteries ! He knows what work he hath done, to call this guest, Out of her noble body to this feast : And give her place according to her blood Amongst her peers, those princes of all good ! Saints, Martyrs, Prophets, with those Hierarchies, Angels, Arch-angels, Principalities, The Dominations, Virtues, and the Powers, The Thrones, the Cherubs, and Seraphic bowers. That, planted round, there sing before the Lamb A new song to his praise, and great I AM : And she doth know, out of the shade of death, What 'tis to enjoy an everlasting breath ! To have her captived spirit freed from flesh. And on her innocence, a garment fresh And white as that put on : and in her hand With boughs of palm, a crowned victrice stand I And will you, worthy son, sir, knowing this, Put black and mourning on? and say you miss A wife, a friend, a lady, or a love ; Whom her Redeemer honoured hath above Her fellows, with the oil of gladness, bright In heaven's empire, and with a robe of light ? Thither you hope to come ; and there to find That pure, that precious, and exalted mind You once enjoyed : a short space severs ye, Compared unto that long eternity. That shall rejoin ye. Was she, then, so dear, When she departed ? you will meet her there, Much more desired, and dearer than before. By all the wealth of blessings, and the store Accumulated on her, by the Lord Of life and light, the son of God, the Word ! There all the happy souls that ever were, Shall meet with gladness in one theatre ; And each shall know there one another's face. By beatific virtue of the place. JONSON 25 There shall the brother with the sister walk, And sons and daughters with their parents talk ; But all of God ; they still shall have to say, But make him All in All, their Theme, that day ; That happy day that never shall see night 1 Where he will be all beauty to the sight ; Wine or deUcious fruits unto the taste ; A music in the ears will ever last ; Unto the scent, a spicery or balm ; And to the touch, a flower like soft as palm. He will all glory, all perfection be, God in the Union, and the Trinity ! That holy, great and glorious mystery, Will there revealed be in majesty ! By light and comfort of spiritual grace : The vision of our Saviour face to face In his humanity ! to hear him preach The price of our redemption, and to teach Through his inherent righteousness, in death. The safety of our souls, and forfeit breath 1 What fulness of beatitude is here ? What love with mercy mixed doth appear. To style us friends, who were by nature foes? Adopt us heirs by grace, who were of those Had lost ourselves, and prodigally spent Our native portions, and possessed rent ? Yet have all debts forgiven us, and advance By imputed right to an inheritance In his eternal kingdom, where we sit Equal with angels, and co-heirs of it. Nor dare we under blasphemy conceive He that shall be our supreme judge, shall leave Himself so uninformed of his elect. Who knows the hearts of all, and can dissect The smallest fibre of our flesh ; he can Find all our atoms from a point to a span : Our closest creeks and corners, and can trace Each line, as it were graphic, in the face. 26 ENGLISH ELEGIES And best he knew her noble character, For 'twas himself who formed and gave it her. And to that form lent two such veins of blood, As nature could not more increase the flood Of title in her ! all nobility But pride, that schism of incivility, She had, and it became her ! she was fit To have known no envy, but by suffering it ! She had a mind as calm as she was fair; Not tossed or troubled with light lady-air, But kept an even gait, as some straight tree Moved by the wind, so comely moved she. And by the awful manage of her eye. She swayed all business in the family. To one she said, do this, he did it ; so To another, move, he went ; to a third, go. He ran ; and all did strive with diligence To obey, and serve her sweet commandements. She w^as in one a many parts of life ; A tender mother, a discreeter wife, A solemn mistress, and so good a friend. So charitable to religious end In all her petite actions, so devote, As her whole life was now become one note Of piety and private holiness. She spent more time in tears herself to dress For her devotions, and those sad essays Of sorrow, than all pomp of gaudy days ; And came forth ever cheered with the rod Of divine comfort, when she had talked with God. Her broken sighs did never miss whole sense ; Nor can the bruised heart want eloquence : For prayer is the incense most perfumes The holy altars, when it least presumes. And hers were all humility I they beat The door of grace, and found the mercy-seat. In frequent speaking by the pious psalms Her solemn hours she spent, or giving alms. JONSON 27 Or doing other deeds of charity, To clothe the naked, feed the hungry. She Would sit in an infirmary whole days Poring, as on a map, to find the ways To that eternal rest, where now she hath place By sure election and predestined grace ! She saw her Saviour, by an early light, Incarnate in the manger, shining bright On all the world ! she saw him on the cross Suff'ring and dying to redeem our loss : She saw him rise triumphing over death. To justify and quicken us in breath ; She saw him too in glory to ascend For his designed work the perfect end Of raising, judging and rewarding all The kind of man, on whom his doom should fall ! All this by faith she saw, and framed a plea. In manner of a daily apostrophe. To him should be her judge, true God, true Man, Jesus, the only-gotten Christ ! who can, As being redeemer and repairer too Of lapsed nature, best know what to do. In that great act of judgment, which the father Hath given wholly to the son (the rather As being the son of man) to show his power. His wisdom, and his justice, in that hour. The last of hours, and shutter up of all ; Where first his power will appear, by call Of all are dead to life ; his wisdom show In the discerning of each conscience so ; And most his justice, in the fitting parts. And giving dues to all mankind's deserts ! In this sweet ecstasy she was rapt hence. Who reads, will pardon my intelligence, That thus have ventured these true strains upon. To publish her a saint. MY MUSE IS GONE! Benjoasoa, 1573 7-1637. 28 ENGLISH ELEGIES To The Pious Memory Of the Accomplished Young Lady, Mrs. ANNE KILLIGREW, Excellent in The Two Sister Arts of Poesy and Painting. An Ode. [First p7'inted in ^^ Poems by Mrs Anne Killigrew, 1686."] Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies, Made in the last promotion of the blest ; Whose palms, new plucked from paradise, In spreading branches more sublimely rise, Rich with immortal green above the rest ; Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star, Thou roll'st above us in thy wandering race, Or, in procession fixed and regular, Mov'st with the heaven's majestic pace ; Or, called to more superior bliss. Thou tread'st with seraphims the vast abyss : Whatever happy region is thy place. Cease thy celestial song a little space ; Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine. Since Heaven's eternal year is thine. Hear, then, a mortal muse thy praise rehearse, In no ignoble verse ; But such as thy own voice did practise here, When thy first fruits of jwjgsy^ were given, To make thyself a welcome inmUte there ; While yet a young probationer. And candidate of heaven. DRYDEN 29 II If by traduction came thy mind, Our wonder is the less to find A soul so charming from a stock so ^ood ; TH ty fat l i ^ ^iis: transfused into thy bloody- So wert thou born into a tuneful strain, An early, rich, and inexhausted vein. But if thy pre-existing soul Was formed, at first, with myriads more. It did through all the mighty poets roll. Who Greek or Latin laurels wore, And was that Sappho last, which once it was before. If so, then cease thy flight, O heaven-born mind ! Thou hast no dross to purge from thy rich ore : Nor can thy soul a fairer mansion find. Than was the beauteous frame she left behind : Return to fill or mend the choir of thy celestial kind. Ill May we presume to say, that, at thy birth. New joy was sprung in Heaven, as well as here on earth? For sure the milder planets did combine On thy auspicious horoscope to shine. And e'en the most malicious were in trine. Thy brother-angels at thy birth Strung each his lyre, and tuned it high, That all the people of the sky Might know a poetess was born on earth ; And then, if ever, mortal ears Had heard the music of the spheres. And if no clustering swarm of bees On thy sweet mouth distilled their golden dew, 'Twas that such vulgar miracles Heaven had not leisure to renew : For all the blest fraternity of love Solemnised there thy birth, and kept thy holiday above. 30 ENGLISH ELEGIES IV O gracious God ! how far have we Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy ? Made prostitute and profligate the muse, Debased to each obscene and impious use, Whose harmony was first ordained above For tongues of angels, and for hymns of love? O wretched we ! why were we hurried down This lubrique and adulterate age, (Nay, added fat pollutions of our own) T' increase the steaming ordures of the stage? What can we say t' excuse our second fall? Let this thy vestal, heaven, atone for all : Her Arethusian stream remains unsoiled. Unmixed with foreign fllth, and undeflled ; Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child. V Art she had none, yet wanted none ; For Nature did that want supply : So rich in treasures of her own, She might our boasted stores defy : Such noble vigour did her verse adorn, That it seemed borrowed where 'twas only born. Her morals, too, were in her bosom bred. By great examples daily fed, What in the best of books, her father's life, she read : And to be read herself she need not fear ; Each test, and every light, her muse will bear, Though Epictetus with his lamp were there. E'en love (for love sometimes her muse exprest) Was but a lambent flame which played about her breast ; Light as the vapours of a morning dream, So cold herself, whilst she such warmth exprest, 'Twas Cupid bathing in Diana's stream. DRYDEN 31 VI Born to the spacious empire of the Nine, One would have thought she should have been content To manage well that mighty government; But what can young ambitious souls confine? To the next realm she stretched her sway, For Painture near adjoining lay, A plenteous province, and alluring prey. A chamber of dependencies was framed, (As conquerers will never want pretence. When armed, to justify the offence,) And the whole fief, in right of poetry, she claimed. The country open lay without defence ; For poets frequent inroads there had made, And perfectly could represent The shape, the face, with every lineament, And all the large domains which the Dumb Sister swayed ; All bowed beneath her government. Received in triumph wheresoe'er she went. Her pencil drew whate'er her soul designed. And oft the happy draught surpassed the image in her mind. The sylvan scenes of herds and flocks. And fruitful plains and barren rocks. Of shallow brooks that flowed so clear, The bottom did the top appear ; Of deeper too and ampler floods, Which, as in mirrors, showed the woods ; Of lofty trees, with sacred shades. And perspectives of pleasant glades. Where nymphs of brightest form appear, And shaggy satyrs standing near. Which them at once admire and fear. The ruins, too, of some majestic piece, Boasting the power of ancient Rome or Greece, Whose statues, friezes, columns, broken lie. And, though defaced, the wonder of the eye ; 32 ENGLISH ELEGIES What nature, art, bold fiction, e'er durst frame, Her forming hand gave feature to the name. So strange a concourse ne'er was seen before, But when the peopled ark the whole creation bore. VII The scene then changed ; with bold erected look Our martial king the sight with reverence strook : For, not content to express his outward part, Her hand called out the image of his heart : His warlike mind, his soul devoid of fear. His high-designing thoughts were figured there, As when, by magic, ghosts are made appear. Our phoenix-queen was pourtrayed too so bright, Beauty alone could beauty take so right : Her dress, her shape, her matchless grace. Were all observed, as well as heavenly face. With such a peerless majesty she stands, As in that day she took the crown from sacred hands : Before a train of heroines was seen. In beauty foremost, as in rank, the queen. Thus nothing to her genius was denied. But like a ball of fire the further thrown, Still with a greater blaze she shone. And her bright soul broke out on every side. What next she had designed, Heaven only knows : To such immoderate growth her conquest rose, That fate alone its progress could oppose. VIII Now all those charms, that blooming grace. The well-proportioned shape, and beauteous face. Shall never more be seen by mortal eyes ; In earth the much-lamented virgin lies. DRYDEN 33 Not wit, nor piety, could fate prevent ; Nor was the cruel destiny content To finish all the murder at a blow, To sweep at once her life and beauty too ; But, like a hardened felon, took a pride To work more mischievously slow. And plundered first, and then destroyed. O double sacrilege on things divine. To rob the relic, and deface the shrine ! But thus Orinda died ; IX Heaven, by the same disease, did both translate ; As equal were their souls, so equal was their fate. Meantime, her warlike brother on the seas His waving streamers to the winds displays. And vows for his return, with vain devotion, pays. Ah, generous youth ! that wish forbear. The winds too soon will waft thee here : Slack all thy sails, and fear to come ; Alas, thou know'st not, thou art wrecked at home ! No more shalt thou behold thy sister's face, Thou hast already had her last embrace. But look aloft, and if thou ken'st from far Among the Pleiads a new-kindled star. If any sparkles than the rest more bright, 'Tis she that shines in that propitious light. When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound. To raise the nations under ground ; When in the valley of Jehosaphat, The judging God shall close the book of fate, , And there the last assizes keep. For those who wake, and those who sleep ; 34 ENGLISH ELEGIES When rattling bones together fly, From the four corners of the sky ; When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread, Those clothed with flesh, and life inspires the dead ; The sacred poets first shall hear the sound, And foremost from the tomb shall bound, For they are covered with the lightest ground ; And straight, with inborn vigour, on the wing, Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing. There thou, sweet saint, before the choir shalt go. As harbinger of heaven, the way to show. The way which thou so well hast learnt below. John Dryden, 1631-1700. ¥ ELEGY To the Memory of An Unfortunate Lady \First pniited in " The Works of Mr Alexander Pope, London 1717," 4/0 and folio. It is thet-e entitled " Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady." In the Edition THOUGHTS Suggested the day following, on the banks of Nith, near the poet's residence [The Poems of William Wordsworth, D.C.L., Poet-Laureate, etc., 1845.] Too frail to keep the lofty vow That must have followed when his brow Was wreathed — "The Vision" tells us how — With holly spray, He faultered, drifted to and fro. And passed away. Well might such thoughts, dear Sister, throng Our minds when, lingering all too long. Over the grave of Burns we hung In social grief- Indulged as if it were a wrong To seek relief. But, leaving each unquiet theme Where gentlest judgments may misdeem, And prompt to welcome every gleam Of good and fair, Let us beside this limpid Stream Breathe hopeful air. WORDSWORTH 67 Enough of sorrow, wreck, and blight ; Think rather of those moments bright When to the consciousness of right His course was true. When Wisdom prospered in his sight, And virtue grew. Yes, freely let our hearts expand, Freely as in youth's season bland, When side by side, his Book in hand, We wont to stray. Our pleasure varying at command Of each sweet Lay. How oft inspired must he have trod These pathways, yon far-stretching road! There lurks his home ; in that Abode, With mirth elate, Or in his nobly-pensive mood. The Rustic sate. Proud thoughts that Image overawes, Before it humbly let us pause. And ask of Nature, from what cause, And by what rules She trained her Burns to win applause That shames the Schools. Through busiest street and loneliest glen Are felt the flashes of his pen ; He rules 'mid winter snows, and when Bees fill their hives ; Deep in the general heart of men His power survives. What need of fields in some far clime Where Heroes, Sages, Bards subHme, • And all that fetched the flowing rhyme From genuine springs. Shall dwell together till old Time Folds up his wings? 68 ENGLISH ELEGIES Sweet Mercy! to the gates of Heaven This Minstrel lead, his sins forgiven ; The rueful conflict, the heart riven With vain endeavour. And memory of Earth's bitter leaven, Effaced for ever. But wrhy to Him confine the prayer, When kindred thoughts and yearnings bear On the frail heart the purest share With all that live ?— The best of what we do and are. Just God, forgive ! William Wordsworth, 1770-1850. ON SEEING A WOUNDED HARE LIMP BY ME WHICH A FELLOW HAD JUST SHOT AT [From " Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. By Robert Burns. In two volumes. Edinburgh^ 1793-"] Inhuman man ! curse on thy barb'rous art, And blasted be thy murder-aiming eye ! May never pity soothe thee with a sigh. Nor ever pleasure glad thy cruel heart! Go, live, poor wanderer of the wood and field, The bitter little that of life remains : No more the thickening brakes and verdant plains To thee shall home, or food, or pastime yield. Seek, mangled wretch, some place of wonted rest. No more of rest, but now thy dying bed ! The sheltering rushes whistling o'er thy head. The cold earth vrith thy bloody bosom prest. BURNS 69 Oft as by winding Nith, I, musing, wait The sober eve, or hail the cheerful dawn, I '11 miss thee sporting o'er the dewy lawn, And curse the ruffian's aim, and mourn thy hapless fate. Robert Burns, 1759—1796. A BARD'S EPITAPH [From " Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. By Robert Burns. Kilmarnock, 1786."] Is there a whim-inspired fool, Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule, Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool, Let him draw near ; And owre this grassy heap sing dool, And drap a tear. Is there a Bard of rustic song. Who, noteless, steals the crowds among, That weekly this area throng, O, pass not by ! But, with a frater-feeling strong. Here, heave a sigh. Is there a man, whose judgment clear, Can others teach the course to steer, Yet runs, himself, life's mad career. Wild as the wave ; Here pause — and, thro' the starting tear. Survey this grave. The poor Inhabitant below Was quick to learn, and wise to know, And keenly felt the friendly glow, And softer /lame; But thoughtless follies laid him low. And stain'd his name ! 70 ENGLISH ELEGIES Reader, attend — whether thy soul Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole, Or darkling grubs this earthly hole. In low pursuit ; Know, prudent, cautious, self-'control, Is wisdom's root. Robert Burns, ft 1759—1796. MONODY ON THE DEATH OF CHATTERTON [ The Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge. In three volumes, 1829.] O what a wonder seems the fear of death. Seeing how gladly we all sink to sleep, Babes, Children, Youths, and Men, Night following night for threescore years and ten ! But doubly strange, where life is but a breath To sigh and pant with, up Want's rugged steep. Away, Grim Phantom ! Scorpion king, away ! Reserve thy terrors, and thy stings display For coward Wealth and Guilt in robes of State I Lo ! by the grave I stand of one for whom A prodigal Nature and a niggard Doom (That all bestowing, this vdthholding all) Made each chance knell from distant spire or dome Sound like a seeking Mother's anxious call, Return, poor Child ! Home, weary Truant, home ! Thee, Chatterton ! these unblest stones protect From want, and the bleak freezings of neglect. Too long before the vexing Storm-blast driven Here hast thou found repose 1 beneath this sod ! Thou ! O vain word ! thou dwell'st not with the clod I Amid the shiningf^ Host of the Forgiven Thou at the throne of mercy, and thy GOD The triumph of redeeming Love dost Hymn (Believe it, O my Soul 1) to harps of Seraphim. COLERIDGE 71 Yet oft, perforce ('tis suffering Nature's call), I weep that heaven-born Genius so should fall ; And oft, in Fancy's saddest hour, my soul. Averted shudders at the poisoned bowl. Now groans my sickening heart, as still I view Thy corse of livid hue ; Now indignation checks the feeble sigh, Or flashes through the tear that glistens in mine eye I Is this the land of song-ennobled line ? 1 Is this the land, where Genius ne'er in vain Poured forth his lofty strain? Ah me ! yet Spenser, gentlest bard divine, Beneath chill Disappointment's shade, His weary limbs in lonely anguish laid ; And o'er her darling dead Pity, hopeless, hung her head. While "'mid the pelting of that merciless storm," Sunk to the cold earth Otway's famished form ! Sublime of thought, and confident of fame. From vales where Avon winds the Minstrel came. Light-hearted youth ! aye, as he hastes along, He meditates the future song, How dauntless ^lla frayed the Dacyan foe; And while the numbers, flowing strong, In eddies whirl, in surges throng, Exulting in the spirits' genial throe In tides of power his life-blood seems to flow. And now his cheeks with deeper ardours flame, His eyes have glorious meanings, that declare More than the light of outward day shines there, A holier triumph and a sterner aim ! Wings grow within him ; and he soars above Or Bard's or Minstrel's lay of war or love. Friend to the friendless, to the sufferer health, He hears the widow's prayer, the good man's praise ; 72 ENGLISH ELEGIES To scenes of bliss transmutes his fancied wealth, And young and old shall now see happy days. On many a waste he bids trim gardens rise, Gives the blue sky to many a prisoner's eyes ; And now in wrath he grasps the patriot steel, And her own iron rod he makes Oppression feel. Sweet Flower of Hope ! free Nature's genial child ! That didst so fair disclose thy early bloom. Filling the wide air with a rich perfume ! For thee in vain all heavenly aspects smiled From the hard world brief respite could they w^in, — The frost nipped sharp without, the canker preyed within ! Ah ! where are fled the charms of vernal Grace, And Joy's wild gleams that lightened o'er thy face? Youth of tumultuous soul, and haggard eye ! Thy wasted form, thy hurried steps I view, On thy wan forehead starts the lethal dew, And oh ! the anguish of that shuddering sigh ! Such were the struggles of the gloomy hour, When Care, of withered brow, Prepared the poison's death-cold power : Already to thy lips was raised the bowl. When near thee stood Affection meek (Her bosom bare, and wildly pale her cheek), Thy sullen gaze she bade thee roll On scenes that well might melt thy soul ; Thy native cot she flashed upon thy view, Thy native cot, where still, at close of day. Peace smiling sate, and listened to thy lay ; Thy sister's shrieks she bade thee hear. And mark thy mother's thrilling tear ; See, see her breast's convulsive throe. Her silent agony of woe ! Ah ! dash the poisoned chalice from thy hand ! COLERIDGE 73 And thou hadst dashed it at her soft command, But that Despair and Indignation rose, And told again the story of thy woes ; Told the keen insult of the unfeeling heart, The dread dependence on the low-born mind ; Told every pang with which thy soul must smart; Neglect, and grinning Scorn, and Want combined ! Recoiling quick, thou bad'st the friend of pain Roll the black tide of Death through every freezing vein 1 O Spirit blest ! Whether the Eternal's throne around, Amidst the blaze of. Seraphim, Thou pourest forth the grateful hymn ; Or soaring thro' the blest domain Enrapturest Angels with thy strain, — Grant me, like thee, the lyre to sound ; Like thee with fire divine to glow ; — But ah ! when rage the waves of woe. Grant me vrith firmer breast to meet their hate. And soar beyond the storm with upright eye elate! Ye woods ! that wave o'er Avon's rocky steep. To Fancy's ear sweet is your murmuring deep ! For here she loves the cypress wreath to weave ; Watching, with wistful eye, the saddening tints of eve. Here, far from men, amid this pathless grove, In solemn thought the Minstrel wont to rove. Like star-beam on the slow sequestered tide Lone-glittering, through the high tree branching wide. And here, in Inspiration's eager hour, When most the big soul feels the mastering power, These wilds, these caverns roaming o'er. Round which the screaming sea-gulls soar With wild imequal steps he passed along. Oft pouring on the winds a broken song : Anon, upon some rough rock's fearful brow Would pause abrupt — and gaze upon the waves below. 74 ENGLISH ELEGIES Poor Chatterton ! he sorrows for thy fate Who would have praised and loved thee, ere too late. Poor Chatterton ! farewell ! of darkest hues This chaplet cast I on thy unshaped tomb ; But dare no longer on the sad theme muse, Lest kindred woes persuade a kindred doom : For oh I big gall-drops, shook from Folly's wing, Have blackened the fair promise of my spring ; And the stern Fate transpierced with viewless dart The last pale Hope that shivered at my heart ! Hence, gloomy thoughts ! no more my soul shall dwell On joys that were ! No more endure to weigh The shame and anguish of the evil day, Wisely forgetful ! O'er the ocean swell Sublime of Hope I seek the cottaged dell Where Virtue calm with careless step may stray ; And, dancing to the moon-light roundelay. The wizard Passions weave a holy spell ! O Chatterton ! that thou wert yet alive ! Sure thou would'st spread the canvas to the gale, And love vnth us the tinkling team to drive O'er peaceful Freedom's undivided dale ; And we, at sober eve, would round thee throng, Hanging, enraptured, on thy stately song, And greet with smiles the young-eyed Poesy All deftly masked as hoar Antiquity. Alas, vain Phantasies ! the fleeting brood Of Woe self-solaced in her dreamy mood ! Yet will I love to follow the sweet dream. Where Susquehana pours his untamed stream ; And on some hill, whose forest-frowning side Waves o'er the murmurs of his calmer tide, Will raise a solemn Cenotaph to thee. Sweet Harper of time-shrouded Minstrelsy ! And there, soothed sadly by the dirgeful wind, Muse on the sore ills I had left behind. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772—1834, MRS BROWNING 75 COWPER'S GRAVE [From " The Seraphim and other Poems. By Elizabeth B. Barrett. London, 1838."] I It is a place where poets crowned may feel the heart's deca3ring ; It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their praying ; Yet let the grief and humbleness as low as silence languish : Earth surely now may give her calm to whom she gave her anguish. II O poets, from a maniac's tongue was poured the death- less singing! O Christians, at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging ! O men, this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling, Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye were smiling ! Ill And now, what time ye all may read through dimming tears his story. How discord on the music fell and darkness on the glory. And how when, one by one, sweet sounds and wander- ing lights departed. He wore no less a loving face because so broken- hearted. IV He shall be strong to sanctify the poet's high vocation, And bow the meekest Christian down in meeker adoration ; 76 ENGLISH ELEGIES Nor ever shall he be, in praise, by wise or good forsaken, Named softly as the household name of one whom God hath taken. With quiet sadness and no gloom I learn to think upon him, With meekness that is gratefulness to God whose heaven hath won him, Who suffered once the madness-cloud to His own love to blind him, But gently led the blind along where breath and bird could find him ; VI And wrought within his shattered brain such quick poetic senses As hills have language for, and stars harmonious in- fluences : The pulse of dew upon the grass kept his within its number. And silent shadows from the trees refreshed him like a slumber. VII Wild timid hares were drawn from woods to share his home-caresses, Uplooking to his human eyes with sylvan tendernesses : The very world, by God's constraint, from falsehood's ways removing, Its women and its men became, beside him, true and loving. VIII And though, in blindness, he remained unconscious of that guiding, MRS BROWNING 77 And things provided came without the sweet sense of providing, He testified this solemn truth, while phrenzy desolated, — Nor man nor nature satisfies whom only God created. IX Like a sick child that knoweth not his mother while she blesses, And drops upon his burning brow the coolness of her kisses, — That turns his fevered eyes around — " My mother ! where 's my mother ? " — As if such tender words and deeds could come from any other !— The fever gone, with leaps of heart he sees her bending o'er him. Her face all pale from watchful love, the unweary love she bore him 1 Thus woke the poet from the dream his life's long fever gave him. Beneath those deep pathetic Eyes which closed in death to save him. XI Thus? oh, not thus! no type of earth can image that awaking, Wherein he scarcely heard the chant of seraphs, round him breaking, Or felt the new immortal throb of soul from body parted, But felt these eyes alone, and knew— "My Saviour ! not deserted ! " XII Deserted ! Who hath dreamt that when the cross in darkness rested, Upon the Victim's hidden face no love was manifested? 78 ENGLISH ELEGIES What frantic hands outstretched have e'er the atoning drops averted? What tears have washed them from the soul, that one should be deserted? XIII Deserted ! God could separate from His own essence rather ; And Adam's sins have swept between the righteous Son and Father : Yea, once Immanuel's orphaned cry His universe hath shaken — It went up single, echoless, "My God, I am forsaken I" XIV It went up from the Holy's lips amid His lost creation, That, of the lost, no son should use those words of desolation I That earth's worst phrenzies, marring hope, should mar not hope's fruition. And I, on Cowper's grave, should see his rapture in a vision. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806-1861. ON THE DEATH OF MR CRASHAW [First printed in the folio " Poems " of 1656.] Poet and Saint ! to thee alone are given The two most sacred names of Earth and Heaven, The hard and rarest union which can be. Next that of Godhead with Humanity. Long did the Muses banish'd slaves abide, And built vain pyramids to mortal pride ; Like Moses thou (though spells and charms vnthstand) Hast brought them nobly home back to their Holy Land. COWLEY 79 Ah wretched we, poets of earth ! but thou Wert living the same poet which thou 'rt now ; Whilst angels sing to thee their airs divine, And joy in an applause so great as thine ; Equal society with them to hold, Thou need'st not make new songs, but say the old ; And they (kind spirits !) shall all rejoice to see How little less than they exalted man may be. Still the old Heathen gods in Numbers dwell ; The heavenliest thing on earth still keeps up helll Nor have we yet quite purged the Christian land ; Still idols here, like calves at Bethel, stand. And, though Pan's death long since all oracles breaks, Yet still in rhyme the fiend Apollo speaks: Nay, with the worst of heathen dotage, we (Vain men I ) the monster Woman deify ; Find stars, and tie our fates there in a face. And paradise in them, by whom we lost it, place. What different faults corrupt our Muses thus? Wanton as girls, as old wives fabulous ! Thy spotless Muse, like Mary, did contain The boundless Godhead ; she did well disdain That her eternal verse employed should be On a less subject than eternity ; And for a sacred mistress scorned to take. But her whom God himself scorned not his spouse to make. It (in a kind) her miracle did do ; A fruitful mother was, and virgin too. How well (blest swan ! ) did Fate contrive thy death, And made thee render up thy tuneful breath In thy great mistress' arms, thou most divine And richest offering of Loretto's shrine ! Where, like some holy sacrifice t' expire, A fever burns thee, and Love lights the fire. Angels (they say) brought the famed chapel there, And bore the sacred load in triumph through the air : 'Tis surer much they brought thee there, and they, And thou, their charge, went singing all the way. 8o ENGLISH ELEGIES Pardon, my Mother-church ! if I consent That angels led him when from thee he went ; For ev'n in error sure no danger is, When joined with so much piety as his. Ah, mighty God ! with shame I speak 't, and grief, Ah, that our greatest faults were in belief! And our weak reason were ev'n weaker yet, Rather than thus our wills too strong for it ! His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might Be wrong ; his life, I 'm sure, was in the right ; And I myself a Catholic will be. So far at least, great Saint ! to pray to thee. Hail, bard triumphant ! and some care bestow On us, the poets militant below ! Opposed by our old enemy, adverse Chance, Attacked by Envy and by Ignorance ; Enchained by Beauty, tortured by Desires, Exposed by Tyrant- Love to savage beasts and fires. Thou from low earth in nobler flames didst rise, And, like Elijah, mount alive the skies. Elisha-like (but with a wish much less. More fit thy greatness and my littleness) Lo ! here I beg (I, whom thou once didst prove So humble to esteem, so good to love) Not that thy spirit might on me doubled be, I ask but half thy mighty spirit for me : And, when my Muse soars with so strong a wing, 'Twill learn of things divine, and first of thee, to sing. Abraham Cowley, 1618—1667. CONSTABLE 8i TO SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S SOUL Sonnet prefixed to Sidney's Apology for Poetry [^First printed in "An Apologie for Poetrie. Written by the right noble, vertuous, and learned Sir Phillip Sidney, Knight. Odi profanum vulgiis et arceo. At London Printed for Henry Olney" etc., 1595.] Give pardon, blessed soulel to my bold cries, If they, importune, interrupt thy song. Which now with joyful notes thou singst among The angel-quiristers of the heavenly skies. Give pardon eke, sweet soul ! to my slow cries. That since I saw thee now it is so long ; And yet the tears that unto thee belong. To thee as yet they did not sacrifice ; I did not know that thou wert dead before, I did not feel the grief I did sustain ; The greater stroke astonisheth the more. Astonishment takes from us sense of pain : I stood amazed when others tears begun And now begin to weep when they have done. Henry Constable, 1555-1615. ¥ AN ELEGY, OR FRIEND'S PASSION FOR HIS ASTROPHEL Written upon the death of the Right Honourable Sir Phillip Sidney, Knight, Lord Governour of Flushing. [First printed in " The Phoenix Nest. Built up with the viost rare and refined workes of Noble men, woorthy Knights, gallant Gentlemen, Masters of Arts and brave Schollers. Fullofvarietie, excellent invention, and singular delight," etc. 1593. Reprinted ivith Spenser's Astrophel.'\ As then, no wind at all there blew. No swelling cloud accloyed the air. 82 ENGLISH ELEGIES The sky, like grass of watchet hue, Reflected Phoebus' golden hair ; The garnished tree no pendant stirred, No voice was heard of any bird. There might you see the burly Bear, The Lion king, the Elephant, The maiden Unicorn was there, So was Actaeon's horned plant : And what of wild or tame are found, Were couched in order on the ground. Alcides' speckled poplar tree ; The palm that Monarchs do obtain ; With love-juice stained the mulberry, The fruit that dews the poet's brain ; And Phillis' filbert there away Compared with myrtle and the bay: The tree that coffins doth adorn, With stately height threat'ning the sky. And, for the bed of love forlorn. The black and doleful ebony : All in a circle compassed were Like to an amphitheatre. Upon the branches of those trees. The airy winged people sat. Distinguished in odd degrees ; One sort is this, another that. Here Philomel that knows full well What force and wit in love doth dwell. The sky-bred Eagle, royal bird. Perched there upon an oak above ; The Turtle by him never stirred, Example of immortal love. The Swan that sings about to die, Leaving Meander stood thereby. ROYDON 83 And that which was of wonder most, The Phoenix left sweet Araby ; And on a Cedar in this coast, Built up her tomb of spicery,' As I conjecture by the same, Prepared to take her dying flame. In midst and centre of this plot, I saw one grovelling on the grass ; A man or stone, I knew not that ; No stone ; of man the figure was, And yet I could not count him one. More than the image made of stone. At length I might perceive him rear His body on his elbow end : Earthly and pale with ghastly cheer. Upon his knees he upward tend ; Seeming like one in uncouth stound To be ascending out the ground. A grievous sigh forthwith he throws, As might have torn the vital strings ; Then down his cheeks the tears so flows As doth the stream of many springs. So thunder rends the cloud in twain. And makes a passage for the rain. Incontinent with trembling sound. He woefully 'gan to complain : Such were the accents as might wound, And tear a diamond rock in twain ; After his throbs did somewhat stay. Thus heavily he 'gan to say "O sun!" said he, seeing the sun, "On wretched me, why dost thou shine? My star is fallen, my comfort done ; Out is the apple of my eyen. Shine upon those possess delight, And let me live in endless night I 84 ENGLISH ELEGIES "O grief! that liest upon my soul, As heavy as a mount of lead ; The remnant of my life control, Consort me quickly with the dead ! Half of this heart, this sprite and will, Died in the breast of Astrophil. "And you compassionate of my woe. Gentle birds, beasts, and shady trees 1 I am assured ye long to know What be the sorrows me aggrieves ; Listen ye then to that ensu'th, And hear a tale of tears and ruth. "You knew, who knew not Astrophil? (That I should live to say I knew. And have not in possession still ! ) Things known, permit me to renew : Of him you know his merit such, I cannot say, you hear too much. "Within these woods of Arcady, His chief delight and pleasure took ; And on the mountain Partheny, Upon the crystal liquid brook. The Muses met him every day, That taught him sing, to write, and say. "When he descended down the mount. His personage seemed most divine ; A thousand graces one might count Upon his lovely cheerful eyen ; To hear him speak, and sweetly smile ; You were in Paradise the while. "A sweet attractive kind of grace ; A full assurance given by looks ; Continual comfort in a face, The lineaments of Gospel books ; I trow that countenance cannot lie. Whose thoughts are legible in the eye. ROYDON 85 "Was never eye did see that face; Was never ear did hear that tongue ; Was never mind did mind his grace ; That never thought the travail long : But eyes and ears and every thought, Were with his sweet perfections caught. " O God ! that such a worthy man, In whom so rare deserts did reign ; Desired thus, must leave us then : And we to wish for him in vain. O could the stars that bred that wit. In force no longer fixed sit. "Then being filled with learned dew The Muses willed him to love : That instrument can aptly show, How finely our conceits will move. As Bacchus opes dissembled hearts. So love sets out our better parts. "Stella, a nymph within this wood. Most rare, and rich of heavenly bliss ; The highest in his fancy stood, And she could well demerit this. 'Tis likely, they acquainted soon : He was a sun, and she a moon. " Our Astrophil did Stella love. O Stella ! vaunt of Astrophil ! Albeit thy graces gods may move ; Where wilt thou find an Astrophil ? The rose and lily have their prime ; And so hath beauty but a time. "Although thy beauty do exceed In common sight of every eye ; Yet in his poesies when we read, It is apparent more thereby. He that hath love and judgment too, Sees more than any others do. 86 ENGLISH ELEGIES " Then Astrophil hath honoured thee ; For when thy body is extinct, Thy graces shall eternal be And live by virtue of his ink. For by his verses he doth give To shortlived beauty aye to live. "Above all others this is he, Which erst approved in his song That love and honour might agree. And that pure love will do no wrong. Sweet saints ! it is no sin nor blame To love a man of virtuous name. " Did never love so sweetly breathe In any mortal breast before ; Did never Muse inspire beneath, A poet's brain with finer store ; He wrote of love with high conceit ; And beauty reared above her height. "Then Pallas afterward attired Our Astrophil with her device, Whom in his armour heaven admired. As of the nation of the skies : He sparkled in his arms afars, As he were dight with fiery stars." "The blaze whereof, when Mars beheld (An envious eye doth see afar) 'Such majesty,' quoth he, 'is seld. Such majesty, my mart may mar. Perhaps this may a suitor be To set Mars by his deity ? ' "In this surmise, he made with speed An iron can, wherein he put The thunders that in clouds do breed ; The flame and bolt together shut. With privy force burst out again ; And so our Astrophil was slain." ROYDON 87 His word, "was slain," straightway did move, And Nature's inward life-strings twitch; The sky immediately above Was dimmed with hideous clouds of pitch ; The wrastling winds, from out the ground Filled all the air with rattling sound. The bending trees expressed a groan, And sighed the sorrow of his fall ; The forest beasts made ruthful moan ; The birds did tune their mourning call. And Philomel for Astrophil, Unto her notes, annexed a "phil." The turtle dove with tones of ruth. Showed feeling passion of his death ; Methought she said " I tell thee truth. Was never he that drew in breath. Unto his love more trusty found. Than he for whom our griefs abound." The swan that was in presence here. Began his funeral dirge to sing ; •'Good things," quoth he, "may scarce appear; But pass away with speedy vnng. This mortal life as death is tried. And death gives life, and so he died. The general sorrow that was made Among the creatures of kind, Fired the Phoenix where she laid. Her ashes flying with the wind. So as I might with reason see That such a Phoenix ne'er should be. Haply, the cinders driven about. May breed an offspring near that kind ; But hardly a peer to that, I doubt : It cannot sink into my mind That under branches e'er can be. Of worth and value as the tree. 88 ENGLISH ELEGIES The eagle marked with piercing sight The mournful habit of the place ; And parted thence with mounting flight, To signify to Jove the case : What sorrow Nature doth sustain, For Astrophil, by envy slain. And while I followed with mine eye The flight the eagle upward took ; All things did vanish by and by, And disappeared from my look. The trees, beasts, birds and grove were gone: So was the friend that made this moan. This spectacle had firmly wrought A deep compassion in my sprite ; My molten heart issued methought, In streams forth at mine eyes aright : And here my pen is forced to shrink ; My tears discolour so my ink. Matthew Roydon, floruit 1580—1622. AN EPITAPH ON CLERE ["Songes and Sonettes wntien by the ryght hojwrable Lorde Henry Howard, late Earle of Surrey, and other. Apud Richardum Tottel, 1557-"] Norfolk sprung thee, Lambeth holds thee dead ; Clere, of the Count of Cleremont, thou hight. Within the womb of Ormond's race thou bred, And sawst thy cousin crowned in thy sight. Shelton for love, Surrey for lord thou chase ; (Aye, me! whilst life did last that league was tender) Tracing whose steps thou sawest Kelsal blaze, Landrecy burnt, and battered Boulogne render. At Montreuil gates, hopeless of all recure. Thine Earl, half dead, gave in thy hand his will ; RALEIGH 89 Which cause did thee this pining death procure, Ere summers four times seven thou couldst fulfil. Ah, Clere I if love had booted, care, or cost, Heaven had not won, nor earth so timely lost. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, 1517?— 1547. ¥ AN EPITAPH Upon the Right Honourable Sir Phillip Sidney, Knight, Lord Governor of Flushing {^Originally printed in the ^^ Phoenix Nest" 1593/ reprinted with Spenser's '' Astrophel." It is ascribed to Raleigh, on the authority of Sir John Harrington, and Drummond of Hawthornden. ] To praise thy life or wail thy worthy death ; And want thy wit, thy wit pure, high, divine, Is far beyond the power of mortal line. Nor any one hath worth that draweth breath. Yet rich in zeal, though poor in learning's lore ; And friendly care obscured in secret breast. And love that envy in thy life supprest. Thy dear life done, and death hath doubled more. And I, that in thy time and living state. Did only praise thy virtues in my thought ; As one that seld the rising sun hath sought : With words and tears now wail thy timeless fate. Drawn was thy race aright from princely line. Nor less than such (by gifts that Nature gave. The common mother that all creatures have) Doth virtue show, and princely lineage shine. A King gave thee thy name ; a kingly mind That GOD thee gave : who found it now too dear For this base world ; and hath resumed it near. To sit in skies, and 'sort with powers divine. 90 ENGLISH ELEGIES Kent thy birth days ; and Oxford held thy youth. The heavens made haste, and stayed nor years nor time ; The fruits of age grew ripe in thy first prime : Thy will, thy words ; thy words, the seals of truth. Great gifts and wisdom rare employed thee thence, To treat from kings, with those more great than kings. Such hope men had to lay the highest things On thy wise youth, to be transported hence. Whence to sharp wars, sweet Honour did thee call, Thy country's love, religion, and thy friends : Of worthy men, the marks, the lives and ends ; And her defence, for whom we labour all. These didst thou vanquish shame and tedious age, Grief, sorrow, sickness, and base fortune's might. Thy rising day saw never woeful night. But passed with praise from off this worldly stage. Back to the camp, by thee that day was brought First, thine own death ; and after, thy long fame ; Tears to the soldiers ; the proud Castilians' shame ; Virtue expressed ; and honour truly taught. What hath he lost that such great grace hath won ? Young years, for endless years ; and hope unsure Of fortune's gifts, for wealth that still shall 'dure. O happy race ! with so great praises run. England doth hold thy limbs, that bred the same ; Flanders, thy valour, where it last was tried. The camp, thy sorrow, where thy body died. Thy friends, thy want ; the world, thy virtues fame. Nations, thy wit ; our minds lay up thy love. Letters, thy learning ; thy loss, years long to come. In worthy hearts, sorrow hath made thy tomb ; Thy soul and sprite enrich the heavens above. Thy liberal heart embalmed in grateful tears, Young sighs, sweet sighs, sage sighs bewail thy fall. Envy, her sting, and Spite hath left her gall, Malice herself, a mourning garment wears. MARVELL 91 That day their Hannibal died, our Scipio fell : Scipio, Cicero, and Petrarch of our time : Whose virtues, wounded by my worthless rhyme, Let angels speak, and heaven thy praises tell. Sir Walter Raleigh, 1552—1618. A POEM Upon the Death of His Late Highness the Lord Protector [First published in Captain Thompson's edition of Maf-vell, 3 vols. 4to, 1776. Cromwell died September 3, 1658.] That Providence which had so long the care Of Cromwell's head, and numbered every hair, Now in itself (the glass where all appears) Had seen the period of his golden years. And henceforth only did attend to trace What death might least so fair a life deface. The people, which, what most they fear, esteem. Death when more horrid, so more noble deem, And blame the last act, like spectators vain. Unless the Prince, whom they applaud, be slain ; Nor fate indeed can well refuse the right To those that lived in war, to die in fight. But long his valour none had left that could Endanger him, or clemency that would ; And he (whom Nature all for peace had made. But angry Heaven unto war had swayed, And so less useful where he most desired. For what he least affected was admired ;) Deserved yet an end whose every part Should speak the wondrous softness of his heart. To Love and Grief the fatal writ was 'signed, (Those nobler weaknesses of human kind, From which those Powers that issued the decree, Although immortal, found they were not free) 92 ENGLISH ELEGIES That they to whom his breast still open lies In gentle passions, should his death disguise, And leave succeeding ages cause to mourn, As long as Grief shall weep, or Love shall burn. Straight does a slow and languishing disease, Eliza, Nature's and his darling, seize ; Her, when an infant, taken with her charms, He oft would flourish in his mighty arms. And lest their force the tender burthen wrong. Slacken the vigour of his muscles strong ; Then to the mother's breast her softly move. Which, while she drained of milk, she filled with love. But as with riper years her virtue grew, And every minute adds a lustre new ; When with meridian height her beauty shined, And thorough that sparkled her fairer mind ; When she with smiles serene, in words discreet. His hidden soul at every turn could meet ; Then might you have daily his affection spied. Doubling that knot which destiny had tied. While they by sense, not knowing, comprehend How on each other both their fates depend. With her each day the pleasing hours he shares. And at her aspect calms his growing cares ; Or with a grandsire's joy her children sees. Hanging about her neck, or at his knees : Hold fast, dear infants, hold them both, or none ; This will not stay, when once the other 's gone. A silent fire now wastes those limbs of wax. And him within his tortured image racks. So the flower, withering, which the garden crowned. The sad root pines in secret under ground. Each groan he doubled, and each sigh she sighed. Repeated over to the restless night ; No trembling string, composed to numbers new. Answers the touch in notes more sad, more true. She, lest he grieve, hides what she can, her pains ; And he, to lessen hers, his sorrow feigns ; MARVELL 93 Yet both perceived, yet both concealed their skills, And so, diminishing, increased their ills, That whether by each other's grief they fell, Or on their own redoubled, none can tell. And now Eliza's purple locks were shorn. Where she so long her father's fate had worn ; And frequent lightning, to her soul that flies, Divides the air and opens all the skies. And now his life, suspended by her breath, Ran out impetuously to hastening Death. Like polished mirrors, so his steely breast Had every figure of her woes expressed. And with the damp of her last gasps obscured. Had drawn such stains as were not to be cured. Fate could not either reach with single stroke, But, the dear image fled, the mirror broke. Who now shall tell us more of mournful swans. Of halycons kind, or bleeding pelicans ? No downy breast did e'er so gently beat. Or fan with airy plumes so soft an heat ; For he no duty by his height excused. Nor, though a prince, to be a man refused ; But rather than in his Eliza's pain. Not love, not grieve, would neither live nor reign ; And in himself so oft immortal tried, Yet in compassion of another died. So have I seen a vine, whose lasting age. Of many a winter hath survived the rage. Under whose shady tent men every year At its rich blood's expense, their sorrows cheer ; If some dear branch where it extends its life Chance to be pruned by an untimely knife, The parent tree unto the grief succeeds, And through the wound its vital humour bleeds ; Trickling in watery drops, whose flowing shape Weeps that it falls ere fixed into a grape ; So the dry stock, no more that spreading vine. Frustrates the autumn, and the hopes of wine. 94 ENGLISH ELEGIES A secret cause does sure those signs ordain, Foreboding princes' falls, and seldom vain : Whether some kinder powers, that wish us well, What they above cannot prevent, foretell ; Or the great world do by consent presage, As hollow seas with future tempests rage ; Or rather Heaven, which us so long foresees Their funerals celebrates, while it decrees. But never yet was any human fate By Nature solemnised with so much state : He, unconcerned, the dreadful passage crossed. But oh 1 what pangs that death did Nature cost 1 First the great thunder was shot off, and sent The signal from the starry battlement : The winds receive it, and its force outdo. As practising how they could thunder too ; Out of the binder's hand the sheaves they tore. And thrashed the harvest in the airy floor; Or of huge trees, whose growth with his did rise, The deep foundations opened to the skies ; Then heavy showers the winged tempests lead. And pour the deluge o'er the chaos' head. The race of warlike horses at his tomb Offer themselves in many a hecatomb ; With pensive head towards the ground they fall, And helpless languish at the tainted stall. Numbers of men decrease with pains unknown. And hasten (not to see his death) their own. Such tortures all the elements unfixed. Troubled to part where so exactly mixed ; And as through air his wasting spirits flowed, The world with throes laboured beneath their load. Nature, it seemed, with him would nature vie, He with Eliza, it with him, would die. He without noise still travelled to his end. As silent suns to meet the night descend ; The stars that for him fought had only power Left to determine now his fatal hour. MARVELL 95 Which, since they might not hinder, yet they cast To choose it worthy of his glories past. No part of time but bare his mark away Of honour, — all the year was Cromwell's day ; But this, of all the most auspicious found, Twice had in open field him victor crowned ; When up the armed mountains of Dunbar He marched, and through deep Severn, ending war : What day should him eternise, but the same That had before immortalised his name? That so whoe'er would at his death have joyed, In their own griefs might find themselves employed ; But those that sadly his departure grieved, Yet joyed, remembering what he once achieved ; And the last minute his victorious ghost Gave chase to Ligny on the Belgic coast : Here ended all his mortal toils ; he laid And slept in peace under the laurel shade. O Cromwell 1 Heaven's favourite, to none Have such high honours from above been shown. For whom the elements we mourners see. And Heaven itself would the great herald be ; Which with more care set forth his obsequies Than those of Moses, hid from human eyes ; As jealous only here, lest all be less Than we could to his memory express. Then let us too our course of mourning keep ; Where Heaven leads, 'tis piety to weep. Stand back, ye seas, and shrunk beneath the veil Of your abyss, with covered head bewail Your monarch : we demand not your supplies To compass-in our isle, — our tears suffice. Since him away the dismal tempest rent, Who once more joined us to the continent ; Who planted England on the Flanderic shore, And stretched our frontier to the Indian ore ; Whose greater truths obscure the fables old, Whether of British saints or worthies told, 96 ENGLISH ELEGIES And in a valour lessening Arthur's deeds, For holiness the Confessor exceeds. He first put arms into Religion's hand, And timorous conscience unto courage manned ; The soldier taught that inward mail to wear, And fearing God, how they should nothing fear ; Those strokes, he said, will pierce through all below. Where those that strike from Heaven fetch their blow. Astonished armies did their flight prepare. And cities strong were stormed by his prayer ; Of that for ever Preston's field shall tell The story, and impregnable Clonmel, And where the sandy mountain Fenwick scaled. The sea between, yet hence his prayer prevailed. What man was ever so in Heaven obeyed Since the commanded sun o'er Gibeon stayed ? In all his wars needs must he triumph, when He conquered God, still ere he fought with men : Hence, though in battle none so brave or fierce, Yet him the adverse steel could never pierce ; Pity it seemed to hurt him more, that felt Each wound himself which he to others dealt, Danger itself refusing to offend So loose an enemy, so fast a friend. Friendship, that sacred virtue, long does claim The first foundation of his house and name : But within one its narrow limits fall. His tenderness extendeth unto all. And that deep soul through every channel flows. Where kindly Nature loves itself to lose. More strong affections never reason served, Yet still affected most what best deserved. If he Eliza loved to that degree, (Though who more worthy to be loved than she ?) If so indulgent to his own, how dear To him the children of the Highest were ! For her he once did Nature's tribute pay ; For these his life adventured every day ; MARVELL 97 And 'twould be found, could we his thoughts have cast, Their griefs struck deepest, if Eliza's last. What prudence more than human did he need, To keep so dear, so differing minds agreed ? The worser sort, so conscious of their ill. Lie weak and easy to the ruler's will ; But to the good (too many or too few) All law is useless, all reward is due. Oh 1 ill-advised, if not for love, for shame. Spare yet your own, if you neglect his fame ; Lest others dare to think your zeal a mask, And you to govern only Heaven's task. Valour, Religion, Friendship, Prudence died At once with him, and all that 's good beside ; And we, Death's refuge. Nature's dregs, confined To loathsome life, alas ! are left behind. Where we (so once we used) shall now no more To fetch day, press about his chamber-door, From which he issued with that awful state. It seemed Mars broke through Janus' double gate ; Yet always tempered with an air so mild, No April suns that ere so gentle smiled ; No more shall hear that powerful language charm. Whose force oft spared the labour of his arm ; No more shall follow where he spent the days In war, in counsel, or in prayer and praise, Whose meanest acts he would himself advance. As ungirt David to the ark did dance. All, all is gone of ours or his delight In horses fierce, wild deer, or armour bright ; Francisca fair can nothing now but weep, Nor with soft notes shall sing his cares asleep. I saw him dead : a leaden slumber lies. And mortal sleep over those wakeful eyes ; Those gentle rays under the lids were fled, Which through his looks that piercing sweetness shed ; That port which so majestic was and strong. Loose and deprived of vigour, stretched along ; 98 ENGLISH ELEGIES All withered, all discoloured, pale and wan, How much another thing, no more that man ! O, human glory vain ! O, Death I O, wings 1 O, worthless world ! O, transitory things ! Yet dwelt that greatness in his shape decayed. That still though dead, greater than Death he laid. And in his altered face you something feign That threatens Death, he yet will live again. Not much unlike the sacred oak, which shoots To Heaven its branches, and through earth its roots ; Whose spacious boughs are hung with trophies round. And honoured wreaths have oft the victor crowned ; When angry Jove darts lightning through the air At mortal sins, nor his own plant will spare. It groans and bruises all below, that stood So many years the shelter of the wood ; The tree, erewhile foreshortened to our view, When fallen shows taller yet than as it grew; So shall his praise to after times increase. When truth shall be allowed, and faction cease ; And his own shadows with him fall ; the eye Detracts from objects than itself more high ; But when Death takes them from that envied state, Seeing how little, we confess how great. Thee, many ages hence, in martial verse Shall the English soldier, ere he charge, rehearse; Singing of thee, inflame himself to fight. And, with the name of Cromwell, armies fright. As lon^ as rivers to the seas shall run, As long as Cynthia shall relieve the sun, While stags shall fly unto the forests thick. While sheep delight the grassy downs to pick, As long as future time succeeds the past. Always thy honour, praise and name, shall last I Thou in a pitch how far beyond the sphere Of human glory tower'st, and reigning there. Despoiled of mortal robes, in seas of bliss. Plunging, dost bathe, and tread the bright abyss 1 MARVELL 99 There thy great soul yet once a world doth see, Spacious enough and pure enough for thee. How soon thou Moses hast, and Joshua found, And David, for the sword and harp renowned ; How straight canst to each happy mansion go, (Far better known above than here below). And in those joys dost spend the endless day, Which in expressing, we ourselves betray ! For we, since thou art gone, with heavy doom, Wander like ghosts about thy loved tomb. And lost in tears, have neither sight nor mind To guide us upward through this region blind ; Since thou art gone, who best that way could teach. Only our sighs, perhaps, may thither reach. And Richard yet, where his great parent led, Beats on the rugged track : he virtue dead Revives, and by his milder beams assures ; And yet how much of them his grief obscures ! He, as his father, long was kept from sight In private, to be viewed by better light ; But opened once, what splendour does he throw ! A Cromwell in an hour a prince will grow. How he becomes that seat, how strongly strains. How gently winds at once the ruling reins ! Heaven to this choice prepared a diadem, Richer than any Eastern silk, or gem, A pearly rainbow, where the sun inchased. His brows, like an imperial jewel graced. We find already what those omens mean, Earth ne'er more glad, nor Heaven more serene. Cease now our griefs, calm peace succeeds a war, Rainbows to storms, Richard to Oliver. Tempt not his clemency to try his power, He threats no deluge, yet foretells a shower. Andrew Marvell, 1621—1678. 100 ENGLISH ELEGIES ASTROPHEL [Printed with " Colin Clouts Come Home Again" 1595-] A Pastoral Elegy Upon the Death of the most Noble and Valorous Knight, Sir Philip Sidney. Dedicated to the most Beautiful and Virtuous Lady, The Countess of Essex. Shepherds, that wont, on pipes of oaten reed. Oft times to plaine your loves concealed smart ; And with your piteous lays have learned to breed Compassion in a country lass's heart. Hearken, ye gentle shepherds, to my song. And place my doleful plaint your plaints among. To you alone I sing this mournful verse, The mournfulst verse that ever man heard tell : To you whose softened hearts it may empierce With dolour's dart for death of Astrophel. To you I sing and to none other wight. For well I wot my rhymes been rudely dight. Yet as they been, if any nicer wit Shall hap to hear, or covet them to read : Think he, that such are for such ones most fit. Made not to please the living but the dead. And if in him found pity ever place. Let him be moved to pity such a case. ASTROPHEL A_^eatle.^Sfee2herd_born in Arcady, Of gentlest race that eyer shepherd bore, About the grassy banks of Haemony Did keep his sheep, his little stock and store : Full carefully he kept them day and night, In fairest fields ; and Astrophel he hight. SPENSER loi Young Astrophel, the pride of shepherd's praise, Young Astrophel, the rustic lasses' love : Far passing all the pastors of his days, In all that seemly shepherd might behove. Ii^ one thing only failing ofJ he-Jjest, That he was^^not so happy^s the rest. For from the time that first the Nymph his mother Him forth did bring, and taught her lambs to feed ; A slender swain, excelling far each other. In comely shape, like her that did him breed, H^^grew up fast in goodness and in grace. And douBly fair "wox both in mind and face. Iwhich daily more and more he did augment, /With gentle usage and demeanour mild : That all men's hearts with secret ravishment He stole away, and weetingly beguiled. Ne spite itself, that all good things doth spill. Found aught in him, that she could sayjwas ill. His sports were fair, his joyance innocent, Sweet without sour, and honey without gall : And he himself seemed made for merriment. Merrily masking both in bower and hall. There was no pleasure nor delightful play, when Astrophel so ever was away. For he could pipe, and dance and carol sweet, Amongst the shepherds in their shearing feast ; As summer's lark that with her song doth greet The dawning day forth coming from the east. And lays of love he also could compose : Thrice happy she, whom he to praise did choose. Full many maidens often did him woo. Them to vouchsafe amongst his rhymes to name, Or make for them as he was wont to do For her that did his heart with love inflame. 102 ENGLISH ELEGIES For which they promised to dight for him Gay chapelets of flowers and gyrlonds trim, And many a Nymph both of the wood and brook, Soon as his oaten pipe began to shrill, Both crystal wells and shady groves forsook. To hear the charms of his enchanting skill ; And brought him presents, flowers if it were prime, Or mellow fruit if it were harvest time. But he for none of them did care a whit, Yet woodgods for them often sighed sore : Ne for their gifts unworthy of his wit, Yet not unworthy of the country's store. For one alone he cared, for one he sigh't. His life's desire, and his dear love's delight. y. ^ella the. fair, the fairest star in sky, AsTaiTas Venus ^rTlTetairest fair, (A fairer star saw never living eye) Shot her sharp pointed beams through purest air. Her he did love, her he alone did honour. His thoughts, his rhymes, his songs were all upon her. I To her he vowed the service of his days, j On her he spent the riches of his wit : For her he made hymns of immortal praise, Of only her he sung, he thought, he writ. Her, and but her, of love he worthy deemed ; For all the rest but little he esteemed. Ne her with idle words alone he wowed,* And verses vain, (yet verses are not vain,) But with brave deeds to her sole service vowed. And bold achievements her did entertain. For both in deeds and words he nurtured was, Both wise and hardy, (too hardy, alas !) * wooed. SPENSER 103 In wrestling nimble, and in running swift, In shooting steady, and in swimming strong: Well made to strike, to throw, to leap, to lift, And all the sports that shepherds are among. In every one he vanquished every one, He vanquished all, and vanquished was of none. Besides, in hunting such felicity, Or rather infelicity, he found. That every field and forest far away He sought, where savage beasts do most abound. No beast so savage but he could it kill ; No chase so hard, but he therein had skill. Such skill, matched with such courage as he had, Did prick him forth with proud desire of praise To seek abroad, of danger nought ydrad,* His mistress' name, and his own fame to raise. What needeth peril to be sought abroad, Since round about us it doth make aboad ! t It fortuned as he that perilous game In foreign soil pursued far away. Into a forest wide and waste he came. Where store he heard to be of savage prey. So wide a forest and so waste as this, Nor famous Ardeyn, nor foul Arlo, is. There his well-woven toils, and subtle trains, He laid the brutish nation to enwrap : So well he wrought with practice and with pains. That he of them great troops did soon entrap. Full happy man (misweening much) was he. So rich a spoil within his power to see. Eftsoones, all heedless of his dearest hale. Full greedily into the herd he thrust. To slaughter them, and work their final bale. Lest that his toil should of their troops be brust.J * afraid. t abode. J burst. 104 ENGLISH ELEGIES Wide wounds amongst them many one he made, Now with his sharp boar-spear, now with his blade. His care was all how he them all might kill, That none might 'scape, (so partial unto none :) 111 mind so much to mind another's ill, As to become unmindful of his own. But pardon that unto the cruel skies, That from himself to them withdrew his eyes. So as he raged amongst that beastly rout, A cruel beast of most accursed brood Upon him turned, (despair makes cowards stout,) And, with fell tooth accustomed to blood. Launched his thigh with so mischievous might, That it both bone and muscles rived quite. So deadly was the dint and deep the wound. And so huge streams of blood thereout did flow, That he endured not the direful stound, But on the cold dear earth himself did throw ; The whiles the captive herd his nets did rend. And, having none to let, to wood did wend. Ah I where were ye this while, his shepherd peers. To whom alive was nought so dear as he: And ye fair maids, the matches of his years. Which in his grace did boast you most to be I Ah ! where were ye, when he of you had need. To stop his wound that wondrously did bleed ! Ah ! wretched boy, the shape of drearyhead. And sad ensample of man's sudden end : Full little faileth but thou shalt be dead, Unpitied, unplained, of foe or friend : Whilst none is nigh, thine eyelids up to close, And kiss thy lips like faded leaves of rose. SPENSER 105 A sort of shepherds, sewing* of the chase, As they the forest ranged on a day. By fate or fortune came unto the place. Where as the luckless boy yet bleeding lay ; Yet bleeding lay, and yet would still have bled, Had not good hap those shepherds thither led. They stopped his wound, (too late to stop it was 1) And in their arms then softly did him rear : Thot (as he willed) unto his loved lass. His dearest love, him dolefully did bear. The dolefulst bear J that ever man did see, Was Astrophel, but dearest unto me! She, when she saw her love in such a plight, With curdled blood and filthy gore deformed. That wont to be with flowers and gyrlonds dight. And her dear favours dearly well adorned ; Her face, the fairest face that eye might see, She likewise did deform, like him to be. Her yellow locks that shone so bright and long. As sunny beams in fairest summer's day. She fiercely tore, and with outrageous wrong From her red cheeks the roses rent away ; And her fair breast, the treasury of joy. She spoiled thereof, and filled with annoy. His pallid face, impictured with death. She bathed oft with tears, and dried oft : And vnth sweet kisses sucked the wasting breath Out of his lips like lilies pale and soft : And oft she called to him, who answered nought. But only by his looks did tell his thought. The rest of her impatient regret. And piteous moan the which she for him made. No tongue can tell, nor any forth can set, But he whose heart like sorrow did invade. * following. t then." { burden. io6 ENGLISH ELEGIES At last, when pain his vital powers had spent, His wasted life her weary lodge forwent. Which when she saw, she stayed not a whit. But after him did make untimely haste : Forth-with her ghost out of her corpse did flit. And followed her make* like turtle chaste, To prove that death their hearts cannot divide, Which living were in love so firmly tied. The gods, which all things see, this same beheld, And, pitying this pair of lovers true, Transformed them, there lying on the field, Into one flower that is both red and blue ; It first grows red, and then to blue doth fade, Like Astrophel, which thereinto was made. And in the midst thereof a star appears. As fairly formed as any star in skies ; Resembling Stella in her freshest years. Forth darting beams of beauty from her eyes : And all the day it standeth full of dew, Which is the tears, that from her eyes did flow. That herb of some Starlight is called by name, Of others Penthia, though not so v^ell : But thou, wherever thou dost find the same. From this day forth do call it Astrophel : And, whensoever thou it up do take. Do pluck it softly for that shepherd's sake. Hereof when tidings far abroad did pass. The shepherds all which loved him full dear. And sure full dear of all he loved was. Did thither flock to see what they did hear. And when that piteous spectacle they viewed, The same with bitter tears they all bedewed. * companion. SPENSER And every one did That froni that hour, since first on grassy green Shepherds kept sheep, was fiot like mourning seen. But first his sister that Clorinda hight. The gentlest shepherdess that lives this day. And most resembling both in shape and spright Her brother dear, began this doleful lay. Which, lest I mar the sweetness of the verse. In sort as she it sung I will rehearse. THE DOLEFUL LAY OF CLORINDA [These verses are supposed to have been written by Mary, Countess of Pembroke, Sir Philip Sidney's sister j but I have been unable to resist a suspicion {entertained, I have since seen, also by Mr F. T. Palgrave ; see Grosarfs " Spenser," vol. iv. ciii. ) that it was freely revised, or evett written by Spenser. Certainly the resemblance to his style is vety striking in places. Mr Palgrave remarks that ''the mystificatio7t would be quite in accordance with the mystical character of the Introduction.^'^ " Aye me ! to whom shall I my case complain, That may compassion my impatient grief? Or where shall I unfold my inward pain That my enriven heart may find relief? Shall I unto the heavenly powers it show, Or unto earthly men that dwell below ? *• To heavens I Ah, they, alas, the authors were And workers of my unremedied woe ; For they foresee what to us happens here, And they foresaw, yet suffered this be so. From them comes good, from them comes also ill ; That which they made, who can them warn to spill ? io8 ENGLISH ELEGIES " To men ! Ah, they, alas, like wretched be And subject to the heavens' ordinance ; Bound to abide whatever they decree, Their best redress is their best sufferance. How then can they, like wretched, comfort me? The which no less need comforted to be. " Then to myself will I my sorrow mourn, Sith none alive like sorrowful remains : And to myself my plaints shall back return. To pay their usury with doubled pains. The woods, the hills, the rivers shall resound The mournful accent of my sorrow's ground. " Woods, hills, and rivers now are desolate ; Sith he is gone the which them all did grace : And all the fields do wail their widow-state ; Sith death their fairest flower did late deface. The fairest flower in field that ever grew. Was Astrophel : that 'was,' we all may rue. " What cruel hand of cursed foe unknown. Hath cropped the stalk which bore so fair a flower? Untimely cropped before it well were grown, And clean defacfed in untimely hour. Great loss to all that ever him did see, Great loss to all, but greatest loss to mel *' Break now your gyrlonds, O ye shepherds' lasses ! Sith the fair flower, which them adorned, is gone : The flower which them adorned, is gone to ashes. Never again let lass put gyrlond on. Instead of gyrlond, wear sad cypress now ; And bitter elder, broken from the bough. " Ne ever sing the love-lays which he made ; Who ever made such lays of love as he? Ne ever read the riddles, which he said Unto yourselves, to make you merry glee. SPENSER 109 Your merry glee is now laid all abed, Your merry maker now, alas ! is dead. " Death ! the devourer of all world's delight, Hath robbed you, and reft from me my joy ; Both you and me and all the world, he quite Hath robbed of joyance ; and left sad annoy. Joy of the world 1 and shepherds' pride was he ; Shepherds, hope never like again to see. " Oh, Death 1 that hast us of such riches reft, Tell us at least, what hast thou with it done? What is become of him, whose flower here left Is but the shadow of his likeness gone. Scarce like the shadow of that which he was : Nought like, but that he like a shade did pass. " But that immortal spirit, which was deckt With all the dowries of celestial grace ; By sovereign choice from th' heavenly quires select, And lineally derived from angels' race : O what is now of it become aread.* Aye me! can so divine a thing be dead? " Ah no ! It is not dead, ne can it die ; But lives for aye in blissful paradise : Where, like a new-born babe, it soft doth lie In bed of lilies, wrapped in tender wise : And compassed all about with roses sweet, And dainty violets from head to feet. " There thousand birds, all of celestial brood, To him do sweetly carol day and night ; And with strange notes, of him well understood, Lull him asleep in angelic delight : Whilst in sweet dream, to him presented be Immortal beauties, which no eye may see. * declare. no ENGLISH ELEGIES " But he them sees, and takes exceeding pleasure Of their divine aspects, appearing plain ; And kindling love in him above all measure, Sweet love, still joyous, never feeling pain ; For what so goodly form he there doth see, He may enjoy, from jealous rancour free. " There liveth he in everlasting bliss. Sweet spirit never fearing more to die : Ne dreading harm from any foes of his, Ne fearing savage beasts' more cruelty. Whilst we here, wretches, wail his private lack ; And with vain vows do oftfen call him back. " But live thou there still happy, happy spirit ! And give us leave thee here thus to lament : Not thee, that dost thy heaven's joy inherit ; But our own selves, that here in dole are drent. Thus do we weep and wail, and wear our eyes. Mourning in others our own miseries." Edmund Spenser, 1552-1599. 9> THE FOURTH ECLOGUE OF THE SHEPHERD'S PIPE [" The ShephearcCs Pipe, Londott, 1614."] The Argument. — In this the Author bewails the death of one whom he shadoweth under the name of Philarete, com- pounded of the Greek words,