O gracious God, to thee I cry and yell: My God, my Lord, my lovely Lord, alone To thee I call, to thee I make my moan. And thou, good God, vouchsafe in grace to take This woful plaint Wherein I faint; Oh! hear me, then, for thy great mercy's sake. Oh! bend thine ears attentively to hear, Oh! turn thine eyes, behold me how I wail! Oh! hearken, Lord, give ear for mine avail, Oh! mark in mind the burdens that I bear; See how I sink in sorrows everywhere. Behold and see what dolors I endure, Give ear and mark what plaints I put in ure;a Bend willing ears; and pity therewithal My willing voice, With hasty wing From me doth fling, And striveth still unto the Lord to fly. O Israel! O household of the Lord! O Abraham's sons! O brood of blessed seed! O chosen sheep, that love the Lord indeed! O hungry hearts! feed still upon his word, And put your trust in Him with one accord. For He hath mercy evermore at hand, His fountains flow, his springs do never stand; And plenteously He loveth to redeem Such sinners all As on Him call, And faithfully his mercies most esteem. He will bring home the sheep that go astray, From all that is Or was amiss Since Abraham's heirs did first his laws reject. ARRAIGNMENT OF A LOVER. AT Beauty's bar as I did stand, My lord, quod I, this lady here, Quoth Beauty, No, it fitteth not Then Craft the crier call'd a quest, Jealous the gaoler bound me fast, c Misery. Down fell I then upon my knee, And though this Judge doth make such haste Yea, madam, quoth I, that I shall; Thus am I Beauty's bounden thrall, THE VANITY OF THE BEAUTIFUL. THEY course the glass, and let it take no rest; They pass and spy, who gazeth on their face; They darkly ask whose beauty seemeth best; They hark and mark who marketh most their grace; They stay their steps, and stalk a stately pace; They jealous are of every sight they see; They strive to seem, but never care to be.... What grudge and grief our joys may then sup press, To see our hairs, which yellow were as gold, VANITY OF YOUTH. Or lusty youth then lustily to treat, It is the very May-moon of delight; SWIFTNESS OF TIME. THE heavens on high perpetually do move; FROM GASCOIGNE'S GRIEF OF JOY, THERE is a grief in every kind of joy, JOHN HARRINGTON. [Born, 1534. Died, 1582.] JOHN HARRINGTON, the father of the translator of Ariosto, was imprisoned by Queen Mary for his suspected attachment to Queen Elizabeth, by whom he was afterwards rewarded with a grant of lands. Nothing that the younger Harrington has written seems to be worth preserving; but the few specimens of his father's poetry which are found in the Nuga Antiquæ may excite a regret that he did not write more. His love verses have an elegance and terseness, more modern, by an hundred years, than those of his contemporaries. VERSES ON A MOST STONY-HEARTED MAIDEN WHO DID SORELY BEGUILE THE NOBLE KNIGHT, MY TRUE FRIEND. WITHOUT enduring Lord Orford's cold-blooded depreciation of this hero, it must be owned that his writings fall short of his traditional glory; nor were his actions of the very highest importance to his country. Still there is no necessity for supposing the impression which he made upon his contemporaries to have been either illusive or exaggerated. Traits of character will distinguish great men, independently of their pens or their swords. The contemporaries of Sydney knew the man: and foreigners, no less than his own countrymen, seem to have felt, from his personal influence and conversation, an homage for him, that could only be paid to a commanding intellect guiding the principles of a noble heart. The variety of his ambition, perhaps, unfavourably divided the force of his genius; feeling that he could take different paths to reputation, he did not confine himself to one, but was successively occupied in the punctilious duties of a courtier, the studies and pur suits of a scholar and traveller, and in the life of a soldier, of which the chivalrous accomplishments could not be learnt without diligence and fatigue. All his excellence in those pursuits, and all the celebrity that would have placed him among the competitors for a crown, was gained in a life of thirty-two years. His sagacity and independence are recorded in the advice which he gave to his own sovereign. In the quarrel with Lord Oxford, he opposed the rights of an English commoner to the prejudices of aristocracy and of royalty itself. At home he was the patron of literature. All England wore mourning for his death. Perhaps the well-known anecdote of his generosity to the dying soldier speaks more powerfully to the heart than the whole volumes of elegies, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, that were published at his death by the universities. Mr. Ellis has exhausted the best specimens of his poetry. I have only offered a few short ones. SONNETS. COME sleep, O sleep, the certain knot of peace, Of those fierce darts despair doth at me throw: a Press, or crowd. In martial sports I had my cunning tried, When Cupid having me his slave descried O HAPPY Thames, that didst my Stella bear, WITH how sad steps,OMoon,thou climb'st the skies, ROBERT GREENE [Born, 1560. Died, 1592.] WAS born at Norwich about 1560, was educated at Cambridge, travelled in Spain and Italy, and on his return held, for about a year, the vicarage of Tollesbury, in Essex. The rest of his life seems to have been spent in London, with no other support than his pen, and in the society of men of more wit than worldly prudence. He is said to have died about 1592,* from a surfeit occasioned by pickled herrings and Rhenish wine. Greene has acknowledged, with great contrition, some of the follies of his life; but the charge of profligacy which has been so mercilessly laid on his memory must be taken with great abatement, as it was chiefly dictated by his bitterest enemy, Gabriel Harvey, who is said to have trampled on his dead body when laid in the grave. The story, it may be hoped, for the credit of human nature, is untrue; but it shows to what a pitch the malignity of Harvey was supposed to be capable of being excited. Greene is accused of having deserted an amiable wife; but his traducers rather inconsistently reproach him also with the necessity of writing for her maintenance. DORASTUS Ан, were she pitiful as she is fair, Or but as mild as she is seeming so, Then were my hopes greater than my despair, Then all the world were Heaven, nothing woe. Ah, were her heart relenting as her hand, That seems to melt e'en with the mildest touch, Then knew I where to seat me in a land, Under the wide Heavens, but yet not such. So as she shows, she seems the budding rose, Yet sweeter far than is an earthly flower; Sovereign of beauty, like the spray she grows; Compass'd she is with thorns and canker'd flower; Yet, were she willing to be pluck'd and worn, She would be gather'd, though she grew on thorn. Ah, when she sings, all music else be still, For none must be compared to her note; Ne'er breathed such glee from Philomela's bill, Nor from the morning singer's swelling throat. [* Reduced to utter beggary.and abandoned by the friends of his festive hours,Greene died in London, on Sept. 3, 1592. See his Dramatic Works, by Dyce, London, 1831.-G.] A list of his writings, amounting to forty-five separate productions, is given in the Censura Literaria, including five plays, several amatory romances, and other pamphlets, of quaint titles and rambling contents. The writer of that article has vindicated the personal memory of Greene with proper feeling, but he seems to overrate the importance that could have ever been attached to him as a writer. In proof of the once great popularity of Greene's writings, a passage is quoted from Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour, where it is said that Saviolina uses as choice figures as any in the Arcadia, and Carlo subjoins, "or in Greene's works, whence she may steal with more security." This allusion to the facility of stealing without detection from an author surely argues the reverse of his being popular and well known.† Greene's style is in truth most whimsical and grotesque. He lived before there was a good model of familiar prose; and his wit, like a stream that is too weak to force a channel for itself, is lost in rhapsody and diffuseness. ON FAWNIA. And when she riseth from her blissful bed, She comforts all the world, as doth the sun. JEALOUSY. FROM TULLY'S LOVE. WHEN gods had framed the sweets of woman's face, And lockt men's looks within her golden hair, [See Gifford's Ben Jonson, vol. ii. p. 71.-C.] CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE. [Born, 1563. Died, May 1593.] [CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, the son of a shoemaker, at Canterbury, was born in February, 1563-4,] took a bachelor's degree at Cambridge, [in 1683,] and came to London, where he was a contemporary player and dramatic writer with Shakspeare. Had he lived longer to profit by the example of Shakspeare, it is not straining conjecture to suppose, that the strong misguided energy of Marlowe would have been kindled and refined to excellence by the rivalship; but his death, at the age of thirty, is alike to be lamented for its disgracefulness and prematurity, his own sword being forced upon him, in a quarrel at a brothel.* Six tragedies, however, and his numerous translations from the classics, evince that if his life was profligate, it was not idle. The bishops ordered his translations of Ovid's Love Elegies to be burnt in public for their licentiousness. If all the licentious poems of that period had been included in the THE PASSIONATE COME live with me and be my love, And I will make thee beds of roses, Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle. martyrdom, Shakspeare's Venus and Adonis would have hardly escaped the flames. In Marlowe's tragedy of "Lust's Dominion" there is a scene of singular coincidence with an event that was two hundred years after exhibited in the same country, namely Spain. A Spanish queen, instigated by an usurper, falsely proclaims her own son to be a bastard. Prince Philip is a bastard born; O give me leave to blush at mine own shame: Compare this avowal with the confession which Bonaparte either obtained, or pretended to have obtained, from the mother of Ferdinand VII., in 1808, and one might almost imagine that he had consulted Marlowe's tragedy. SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE. [* Marlowe closed his life of gross impiety and careless debauchery, at Deptford, where, in the register of the church of St. Nicholas, may still be read the entry, "Christopher Marlow, slaine by ffrancis Archer, the 1 of June, A gown made of the finest wool, A belt of straw and ivy buds, 1593." See for the circumstances of his death, and a very interesting biographical and critical notice of Marlowe and his works, Mr. Dyce's edition, 3 vols. 8vo, London, Pickering, 1850.-G.] ROBERT SOUTHWELL [Born, 1560. Died, 1595.] Is said to have been descended from an ancient and respectable family in Norfolk, and being sent abroad for his education, became a jesuit at Rome. He was appointed prefect of studies there in 1585, and, not long after, was sent as a missionary into England. His chief residence was with Anne, Countess of Arundel, who died in the Tower of London. Southwell was apprehended in July, 1592, and carried before Queen Elizabeth's agents, who endeavoured to extort from him some disclosure of secret conspiracies against the government; but he was cautious at his examination, and declined answering a number of ensnaring questions. Upon which, being sent to prison, he remained near three years in strict confinement, was repeatedly put to the rack, and, as he himself affirmed, underwent very severe tortures no less than ten times. He owned that he was a priest and a jesuit, that he came into England to preach the Catholic religion, and was prepared to lay down his life in the cause. On the 20th of February, 1595, he was brought to his trial at the King's Bench, was condemned to die, and was executed the next day, at Tyburn. His writings, of which a numerous list is given in the sixty-seventh volume of the Gentleman's Magazine, together with the preceding sketch of his life, were probably at one time popular among the Catholics. |