Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;There are four seasons in the mind of man:He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clearTakes in all beauty with an easy span:He has his Summer, when luxuriouslySpring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he lovesTo ruminate, and by such dreaming highIs nearest unto heaven: quiet covesHis soul has in its Autumn, when his wingsHe furleth close; contented so to lookOn mists in idleness—to let fair thingsPass by unheeded as a threshold brook.He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;There are four seasons in the mind of man:He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clearTakes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriouslySpring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he lovesTo ruminate, and by such dreaming highIs nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wingsHe furleth close; contented so to lookOn mists in idleness—to let fair thingsPass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
J. Keats
Rough wind, that meanest loudGrief too sad for song;Wild wind, when sullen cloudKnells all the night long;Sad storm whose tears are vain,Bare woods whose branches stain,Deep caves and dreary main,—Wail for the world's wrong!
Rough wind, that meanest loudGrief too sad for song;Wild wind, when sullen cloudKnells all the night long;Sad storm whose tears are vain,Bare woods whose branches stain,Deep caves and dreary main,—Wail for the world's wrong!
P. B. Shelley
O World! O Life! O Time!On whose last steps I climb,Trembling at that where I had stood before;When will return the glory of your prime?No more—Oh, never more!Out of the day and nightA joy has taken flight:Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoarMove my faint heart with grief, but with delightNo more—Oh, never more!
O World! O Life! O Time!On whose last steps I climb,Trembling at that where I had stood before;When will return the glory of your prime?No more—Oh, never more!
Out of the day and nightA joy has taken flight:Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoarMove my faint heart with grief, but with delightNo more—Oh, never more!
P. B. Shelley
There's not a nook within this solemn Pass,But were an apt confessional for OneTaught by his summer spent, his autumn gone,That Life is but a tale of morning grassWither'd at eve. From scenes of art which chaseThat thought away, turn, and with watchful eyesFeed it 'mid Nature's old felicities,Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glassUntouch'd, unbreathed upon:—Thrice happy quest,If from a golden perch of aspen spray(October's workmanship to rival May),The pensive warbler of the ruddy breastThat moral sweeten by a heaven-taught lay,Lulling the year, with all its cares, to rest!
There's not a nook within this solemn Pass,But were an apt confessional for OneTaught by his summer spent, his autumn gone,That Life is but a tale of morning grass
Wither'd at eve. From scenes of art which chaseThat thought away, turn, and with watchful eyesFeed it 'mid Nature's old felicities,Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glass
Untouch'd, unbreathed upon:—Thrice happy quest,If from a golden perch of aspen spray(October's workmanship to rival May),
The pensive warbler of the ruddy breastThat moral sweeten by a heaven-taught lay,Lulling the year, with all its cares, to rest!
W. Wordsworth
My heart leaps up when I beholdA rainbow in the sky:So was it when my life began,So is it now I am a man,So be it when I shall grow oldOr let me die!The Child is father of the Man:And I could wish my days to beBound each to each by natural piety.
My heart leaps up when I beholdA rainbow in the sky:So was it when my life began,So is it now I am a man,So be it when I shall grow oldOr let me die!The Child is father of the Man:And I could wish my days to beBound each to each by natural piety.
W. Wordsworth
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,The earth, and every common sightTo me did seemApparell'd in celestial light,The glory and the freshness of a dream.It is not now as it hath been of yore;—Turn wheresoe'er I may,By night or day,The things which I have seen I now can see no more.The rainbow comes and goes,And lovely is the rose;The moon doth with delightLook round her when the heavens are bare;Waters on a starry nightAre beautiful and fair;The sunshine is a glorious birth;But yet I know, where'er I go,That there hath past away a glory from the earth.Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,And while the young lambs boundAs to the tabor's sound,To me alone there came a thought of grief:A timely utterance gave that thought relief,And I again am strong.The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;—No more shall grief of mine the season wrong:I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,And all the earth is gay;Land and seaGive themselves up to jollity.And with the heart of MayDoth every beast keep holiday;—Thou child of joyShout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy!Ye blesséd Creatures, I have heard the callYe to each other make; I seeThe heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;My heart is at your festival,My head hath its coronal,The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.Oh evil day! if I were sullenWhile Earth herself is adorningThis sweet May-morning;And the children are cullingOn every sideIn a thousand valleys far and wide,Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warmAnd the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:—I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!—But there's a tree, of many, one,A single field which I have look'd upon,Both of them speak of something that is gone:The pansy at my feetDoth the same tale repeat:Whither is fled the visionary gleam?Where is it now, the glory and the dream?Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,Hath had elsewhere its settingAnd cometh from afar;Not in entire forgetfulness,And not in utter nakedness,But trailing clouds of glory do we comeFrom God, who is our home:Heaven lies about us in our infancy!Shades of the prison-house begin to closeUpon the growing Boy,But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,He sees it in his joy;The Youth, who daily farther from the eastMust travel, still is Nature's priest,And by the vision splendidIs on his way attended;At length the Man perceives it die away,And fade into the light of common day.Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,And, even with something of a mother's mindAnd no unworthy aim,The homely nurse doth all she canTo make her foster-child, her inmate, Man,Forget the glories he hath known,And that imperial palace whence he came.Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,A six years' darling of a pigmy size:See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,With light upon him from his father's eyes!See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,Some fragment from his dream of human life,Shaped by himself with newly-learnéd art;A wedding or a festival,A mourning or a funeral;And this hath now his heart,And unto this he frames his song:Then will he fit his tongueTo dialogues of business, love, or strife;But it will not be longEre this be thrown aside,And with new joy and prideThe little actor cons another part;Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,That life brings with her in her equipage;As if his whole vocationWere endless imitation.Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belieThy soul's immensity;Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keepThy heritage, thou eye among the blind,That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,Haunted for ever by the eternal Mind,—Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!On whom those truths do restWhich we are toiling all our lives to find,In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave:Thou, over whom thy ImmortalityBroods like the day, a master o'er a slave,A Presence which is not to be put by;Thou little child, yet glorious in the mightOf heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,Why with such earnest pains dost thou provokeThe years to bring the inevitable yoke,Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,And custom lie upon thee with a weightHeavy as frost, and deep almost as life!O joy! that in our embersIs something that doth live,That Nature yet remembersWhat was so fugitive!The thought of our past years in me doth breedPerpetual benediction: not indeedFor that which is most worthy to be blest,Delight and liberty, the simple creedOf Childhood, whether busy or at rest,With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—Not for these I raiseThe song of thanks and praise;But for those obstinate questioningsOf sense and outward things,Fallings from us, vanishings;Blank misgivings of a creatureMoving about in worlds not realized,High instincts, before which our mortal natureDid tremble like a guilty thing surprized:But for those first affections,Those shadowy recollections,Which, be they what they may,Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;Uphold us, cherish, and have power to makeOur noisy years seem moments in the beingOf the eternal Silence: truths that wake,To perish never;Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,Nor man nor boyNor all that is at enmity with joy,Can utterly abolish or destroy!Hence, in a season of calm weatherThough inland far we be,Our souls have sight of that immortal seaWhich brought us hither;Can in a moment travel thither—And see the children sport upon the shore,And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.Then, sing ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!And let the young lambs boundAs to the tabor's sound!We, in thought, will join your throngYe that pipe and ye that play,Ye that through your hearts to-dayFeel the gladness of the May!What though the radiance which was once so brightBe now for ever taken from my sight,Though nothing can bring back the hourOf splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;We will grieve not, rather findStrength in what remains behind;In the primal sympathyWhich having been must ever be;In the soothing thoughts that springOut of human suffering;In the faith that looks through death,In years that bring the philosophic mind.And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,Forbode not any severing of our loves!Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;I only have relinquish'd one delightTo live beneath your more habitual sway:I love the brooks which down their channels fretEven more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;The innocent brightness of a new-born dayIs lovely yet;The clouds that gather round the setting sunDo take a sober colouring from an eyeThat hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;Another race hath been, and other palms are won.Thanks to the human heart by which we live,Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,To me the meanest flower that blows can giveThoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,The earth, and every common sightTo me did seemApparell'd in celestial light,The glory and the freshness of a dream.It is not now as it hath been of yore;—Turn wheresoe'er I may,By night or day,The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The rainbow comes and goes,And lovely is the rose;The moon doth with delightLook round her when the heavens are bare;Waters on a starry nightAre beautiful and fair;The sunshine is a glorious birth;But yet I know, where'er I go,That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,And while the young lambs boundAs to the tabor's sound,To me alone there came a thought of grief:A timely utterance gave that thought relief,And I again am strong.The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;—No more shall grief of mine the season wrong:I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,And all the earth is gay;Land and seaGive themselves up to jollity.And with the heart of MayDoth every beast keep holiday;—Thou child of joyShout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy!
Ye blesséd Creatures, I have heard the callYe to each other make; I seeThe heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;My heart is at your festival,My head hath its coronal,The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.Oh evil day! if I were sullenWhile Earth herself is adorningThis sweet May-morning;And the children are cullingOn every sideIn a thousand valleys far and wide,Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warmAnd the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:—I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!—But there's a tree, of many, one,A single field which I have look'd upon,Both of them speak of something that is gone:The pansy at my feetDoth the same tale repeat:Whither is fled the visionary gleam?Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,Hath had elsewhere its settingAnd cometh from afar;Not in entire forgetfulness,And not in utter nakedness,But trailing clouds of glory do we comeFrom God, who is our home:Heaven lies about us in our infancy!Shades of the prison-house begin to closeUpon the growing Boy,But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,He sees it in his joy;The Youth, who daily farther from the eastMust travel, still is Nature's priest,And by the vision splendidIs on his way attended;At length the Man perceives it die away,And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,And, even with something of a mother's mindAnd no unworthy aim,The homely nurse doth all she canTo make her foster-child, her inmate, Man,Forget the glories he hath known,And that imperial palace whence he came.
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,A six years' darling of a pigmy size:See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,With light upon him from his father's eyes!See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,Some fragment from his dream of human life,Shaped by himself with newly-learnéd art;A wedding or a festival,A mourning or a funeral;And this hath now his heart,And unto this he frames his song:Then will he fit his tongueTo dialogues of business, love, or strife;But it will not be longEre this be thrown aside,And with new joy and prideThe little actor cons another part;Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,That life brings with her in her equipage;As if his whole vocationWere endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belieThy soul's immensity;Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keepThy heritage, thou eye among the blind,That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,Haunted for ever by the eternal Mind,—Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!On whom those truths do restWhich we are toiling all our lives to find,In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave:Thou, over whom thy ImmortalityBroods like the day, a master o'er a slave,A Presence which is not to be put by;Thou little child, yet glorious in the mightOf heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,Why with such earnest pains dost thou provokeThe years to bring the inevitable yoke,Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,And custom lie upon thee with a weightHeavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
O joy! that in our embersIs something that doth live,That Nature yet remembersWhat was so fugitive!The thought of our past years in me doth breedPerpetual benediction: not indeedFor that which is most worthy to be blest,Delight and liberty, the simple creedOf Childhood, whether busy or at rest,With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—Not for these I raiseThe song of thanks and praise;But for those obstinate questioningsOf sense and outward things,Fallings from us, vanishings;Blank misgivings of a creatureMoving about in worlds not realized,High instincts, before which our mortal natureDid tremble like a guilty thing surprized:But for those first affections,Those shadowy recollections,Which, be they what they may,Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;Uphold us, cherish, and have power to makeOur noisy years seem moments in the beingOf the eternal Silence: truths that wake,To perish never;Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,Nor man nor boyNor all that is at enmity with joy,Can utterly abolish or destroy!Hence, in a season of calm weatherThough inland far we be,Our souls have sight of that immortal seaWhich brought us hither;Can in a moment travel thither—And see the children sport upon the shore,And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Then, sing ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!And let the young lambs boundAs to the tabor's sound!We, in thought, will join your throngYe that pipe and ye that play,Ye that through your hearts to-dayFeel the gladness of the May!What though the radiance which was once so brightBe now for ever taken from my sight,Though nothing can bring back the hourOf splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;We will grieve not, rather findStrength in what remains behind;In the primal sympathyWhich having been must ever be;In the soothing thoughts that springOut of human suffering;In the faith that looks through death,In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,Forbode not any severing of our loves!Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;I only have relinquish'd one delightTo live beneath your more habitual sway:I love the brooks which down their channels fretEven more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;The innocent brightness of a new-born dayIs lovely yet;The clouds that gather round the setting sunDo take a sober colouring from an eyeThat hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;Another race hath been, and other palms are won.Thanks to the human heart by which we live,Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,To me the meanest flower that blows can giveThoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
W. Wordsworth
Music, when soft voices die,Vibrates in the memory—Odours, when sweet violets sicken,Live within the sense they quicken.Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,Are heap'd for the beloved's bed;And so thy thoughts, when Thou art gone,Love itself shall slumber on.
Music, when soft voices die,Vibrates in the memory—Odours, when sweet violets sicken,Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,Are heap'd for the beloved's bed;And so thy thoughts, when Thou art gone,Love itself shall slumber on.
P. B. Shelley
The Elizabethan Poetry, as it is rather vaguely termed, forms the substance of this Book, which contains pieces from Wyat under Henry VIII to Shakespeare midway through the reign of James I, and Drummond who carried on the early manner to a still later period. There is here a wide range of style;—from simplicity expressed in a language hardly yet broken-in to verse,—through the pastoral fancies and Italian conceits of the strictly Elizabethan time,—to the passionate reality of Shakespeare: yet a general uniformity of tone prevails. Few readers can fail to observe the natural sweetness of the verse, the single-hearted straightforwardness of the thoughts:—nor less, the limitation of subject to the many phases of one passion, which then characterized our lyrical poetry,—unless when, as in especial with Shakespeare, the 'purple light of Love' is tempered by a spirit of sterner reflection. For the didactic verse of the century, although lyrical in form, yet very rarely rises to the pervading emotion, the golden cadence, proper to the lyric.
It should be observed that this and the following Summaries apply in the main to the Collection here presented, in which (besides its restriction to Lyrical Poetry) a strictly representative or historical Anthology has not been aimed at. Great excellence, in human art as in human character, has from the beginning of things been even more uniform than mediocrity, by virtue of the closeness of its approach to Nature:—and so far as the standard of Excellence kept in view has been attained in this volume, a comparative absence of extreme or temporary phases in style, a similarity of tone and manner, will be found throughout:—something neither modern nor ancient, but true and speaking to the heart of man alike throughout all ages.
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23whist: hushed, quieted.
— 4Rouse Memnon's mother: Awaken the Dawn from the dark Earth and the clouds where she is resting. This is one of that limited class of early mythes which may be reasonably interpreted as representations of natural phenomena. Aurora in the old mythology is mother of Memnon (the East), and wife of Tithonus (the appearances of Earth and Sky during the last hours of Night). She leaves him every morning in renewed youth, to prepare the way for Phoebus (the Sun), whilst Tithonus remains in perpetual old age and grayness.
3— l. 23by Peneus' stream: Phoebus loved the Nymph Daphne whom he met by the river Peneus in the vale of Tempe. L. 27Amphion's lyre: He was said to have built the walls of Thebes to the sound of his music. L. 35Night like a drunkard reels: Compare Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene 3: 'The grey-eyed morn smiles,' &c.—It should be added that three lines, which appeared hopelessly misprinted, have been omitted in this Poem.
46Time's chest: in which he is figuratively supposed to lay up past treasures. So in Troilus, Act III, Scene 3, 'Time hath a wallet at his back' &c. In theArcadia,chestis used to signifytomb.
57 A fine example of the high wrought and conventional Elizabethan Pastoralism, which it would be unreasonable to criticize on the ground of the unshepherdlike or unreal character of some images suggested. Stanza 6 was perhaps inserted by Izaak Walton.
68 This beautiful lyric is one of several recovered from the very rare Elizabethan Song-books, for the publication of which our thanks are due to Mr. A. H. Bullen (1887, 1888).
812 One stanza has been here omitted, in accordance with the principle noticed in the Preface. Similar omissions occur in a few other poems. The more serious abbreviation by which it has been attempted to bring Crashaw's 'Wishes' and Shelley's 'Euganean Hills,' with one or two more, within the scheme of this selection, is commended with much diffidence to the judgment of readers acquainted with the original pieces.
913 Sidney's poetry is singularly unequal; his short life, his frequent absorption in public employment, hindered doubtless the development of his genius. His great contemporary fame, second only, it appears, to Spenser's, has been hence obscured. At times he is heavy and even prosaic; his simplicity is rude and bare; his verse unmelodious. These, however, are the 'defects of his merits.' Ina certain depth and chivalry of feeling,—in the rare and noble quality of disinterestedness (to put it in one word),—he has no superior, hardly perhaps an equal, amongst our Poets; and after or beside Shakespeare's Sonnets, hisAstrophel and Stella, in the Editor's judgment, offers the most intense and powerful picture of the passion of love in the whole range of our poetry.—Hundreds of years: 'The very rapture of love,' says Mr. Ruskin; 'A lover like this does not believe his mistress can grow old or die.'
1219 Readers who have visited Italy will be reminded of more than one picture by this gorgeous Vision of Beauty, equally sublime and pure in its Paradisaical naturalness. Lodge wrote it on a voyage to 'the Islands of Terceras and the Canaries;' and he seems to have caught, in those southern seas, no small portion of the qualities which marked the almost contemporary Art of Venice,—the glory and the glow of Veronese, Titian, or Tintoret.—From the same romance is No. 71: a charming picture in the purest style of the later Italian Renaissance.
The clear(l. 1) is the crystalline or outermost heaven of the old cosmography.For a fair there's fairer none: If you desire a Beauty, there is none more beautiful than Rosaline.
1422 Another gracious lyric from an Elizabethan Song-book, first reprinted (it is believed) in Mr. W. J. Linton's 'Rare Poems,' in 1883.
1523that fair thou owest: that beauty thou ownest.
1625 From one of the three Song-books of T. Campion, who appears to have been author of the words which he set to music. His merit as a lyrical poet (recognized in his own time, but since then forgotten) has been again brought to light by Mr. Bullen's taste and research:—swerving(st. 2) is his conjecture forchangingin the text of 1601.
2031the star Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken: apparently, Whose stellar influence is uncalculated, although his angular altitude from the plane of the astrolabe or artificial horizon used by astrologers has been determined.
2032 This lovely song appears, as here given, in Puttenham's 'Arte of English Poesie,' 1589. A longer and inferior form was published in the 'Arcadia' of 1590: but Puttenham's prefatory words clearly assign his version to Sidney's own authorship.
2337keel: keep cooler by stirring round.
2439expense: loss.
— 40prease: press.
2541Nativity, once in the main of light: when a star has risen and entered on the full stream of light;—another of the astrological phrases no longer familiar.
Crookedeclipses: as coming athwart the Sun's apparent course.
Wordsworth, thinking probably of the 'Venus' and the 'Lucrece,' said finely of Shakespeare: 'Shakespearecouldnot have written an Epic; he would have died of plethora of thought.' This prodigality of nature is exemplified equally in his Sonnets. The copious selection here given (which from the wealth of the material, required greater consideration than any other portion of the Editor's task),—contains many that will not be fully felt and understood without some earnestness of thought on the reader's part. But he is not likely to regret the labour.
2642upon misprision growing: either, granted in error, or, on the growth of contempt.
— 43 With the tone of this Sonnet compare Hamlet's 'Give me that man That is not passion's slave' &c. Shakespeare's writings show the deepest sensitiveness to passion:—hence the attraction he felt in the contrasting effects of apathy.
2644grame: sorrow. Renaissance influences long impeded the return of English poets to the charming realism of this and a few other poems by Wyat.
2845 Pandion in the ancient fable was father to Philomela.
2947 In the old legend it is now Philomela, now Procne (the swallow) who suffers violence from Tereus. This song has a fascination in its calm intensity of passion; that 'sad earnestness and vivid exactness' which Cardinal Newman ascribes to the master-pieces of ancient poetry.
3150proved: approved.
— 51censures: judges.
— 52 Exquisite in its equably-balanced metrical flow.
3253 Judging by its style, this beautiful example of old simplicity and feeling may, perhaps, be referred to the earlier years of Elizabeth.Lateforgot: lately.
3557 Printed in a little Anthology by Nicholas Breton, 1597. It is, however, a stronger and finer piece of work than any known to be his.—St. 1silly: simple;dole: grief;chief: chiefly. St. 3If there be...: obscure: Perhaps, if there be any who speak harshly of thee, thy pain may plead for pity from Fate.
This poem, with 60 and 143, are each graceful variations of a long popular theme.
3658That busy archer:Cupid.Descries: used actively;points out.—'The last line of this poem is a little obscured by transposition. He means,Do they call ungratefulness there a virtue?' (C. Lamb).
3759White Iope: suggested, Mr. Bullen notes, by a passage in Propertius (iii, 20) describing Spirits in the lower world:
Vobiscum est Iope, vobiscum candida Tyro.
Vobiscum est Iope, vobiscum candida Tyro.
3862cypresor cyprus,—used by the old writers forcrape: whether from the Frenchcrespeor from the Island whence it was imported. Its accidental similarity in spelling tocypresshas, here and in Milton's Penseroso, probably confused readers.
3963ramage: confused noise.
4166 'I never saw anything like this funeral dirge,' says Charles Lamb, 'except the ditty which reminds Ferdinand of his drowned father in the Tempest. As that is of the water, watery; so this is of the earth, earthy. Both have that intenseness of feeling, which seems to resolve itself into the element which it contemplates.'
4370 Paraphrased from an Italian madrigal
... Non so conoscer poiSe voi le rose, o sian le rose in voi.
... Non so conoscer poiSe voi le rose, o sian le rose in voi.
4472crystal: fairness.
4573stare: starling.
— 74 This 'Spousal Verse' was written in honour of the Ladies Elizabeth and Katherine Somerset. Nowhere has Spenser more emphatically displayed himself as the very poet of Beauty: The Renaissance impulse in England is here seen at its highest and purest.
The genius of Spenser, like Chaucer's, does itself justice only in poems of some length. Hence it is impossible to represent it in this volume by other pieces of equal merit, but of impracticable dimensions. And the same applies to such poems as theLover's Lamentor theAncient Mariner.
46—entrailed: twisted. Feateously: elegantly.
48—shend: shame.
49—a noble peer: Robert Devereux, second Lord Essex, then at the height of his brief triumph after taking Cadiz: hence the allusion following to the Pillars of Hercules, placed near Gades by ancient legend.
— —Elisa: Elizabeth.
50—twins of Jove: the stars Castor and Pollux:baldric, belt; the zodiac.
5279 This lyric may with very high probability be assigned to Campion, in whose first Book of Airs it appeared (1601). The evidence sometimes quoted ascribing it to Lord Bacon appears to be valueless.
This division, embracing generally the latter eighty years of the Seventeenth century, contains the close of our Early poetical style and the commencement of the Modern. In Dryden we see the first master of the new: in Milton, whose genius dominates here as Shakespeare's in the former book,—the crown and consummation of the early period. Their splendidOdes are far in advance of any prior attempts, Spenser's excepted: they exhibit that wider and grander range which years and experience and the struggles of the time conferred on Poetry. Our Muses now give expression to political feeling, to religious thought, to a high philosophic statesmanship in writers such as Marvell, Herbert, and Wotton: whilst in Marvell and Milton, again, we find noble attempts, hitherto rare in our literature, at pure description of nature, destined in our own age to be continued and equalled. Meanwhile the poetry of simple passion, although before 1660 often deformed by verbal fancies and conceits of thought, and afterwards by levity and an artificial tone,—produced in Herrick and Waller some charming pieces of more finished art than the Elizabethan: until in the courtly compliments of Sedley it seems to exhaust itself, and lie almost dormant for the hundred years between the days of Wither and Suckling and the days of Burns and Cowper.—That the change from our early style to the modern brought with it at first a loss of nature and simplicity is undeniable; yet the bolder and wider scope which Poetry took between 1620 and 1700, and the successful efforts then made to gain greater clearness in expression, in their results have been no slight compensation.
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5885 l. 8whist: hushed.
— — l. 32than: obsolete forthen:Pan: used here for the Lord of all.
59— l. 38consort: Milton's spelling of this word, here and elsewhere, has been followed, as it is uncertain whether he used it in the sense ofaccompanying, or simply forconcert.
61— l. 21Lars and Lemures: household gods and spirits of relations dead.Flamens(l. 24) Roman priests.That twice-batter'd god(l. 29) Dagon.
62— l. 6Osiris, the Egyptian god of Agriculture (here, perhaps by confusion with Apis, figured as a Bull), was torn to pieces by Typho and embalmed after death in a sacred chest. This mythe, reproduced in Syria and Greece in the legends of Thammuz, Adonis, and perhaps Absyrtus, may have originally signified the annual death of the Sun or the Year under the influences of the winter darkness. Horus, the son of Osiris, as the New Year, in his turn overcomes Typho. L. 8unshower'dgrass: as watered by the Nile only. L. 33youngest-teemed: last-born.Bright-harness'd(l. 37) armoured.
6487The Late Massacre: the Vaudois persecution, carried on in 1655 by the Duke of Savoy. No more mighty Sonnet than this 'collect in verse,' as it has been justly named, probably can be found in any language. Readers should observe that it is constructed on the original Italian or Provençal model. This form, in alanguage such as ours, not affluent in rhyme, presents great difficulties; the rhymes are apt to be forced, or the substance commonplace. But, when successfully handled, it has a unity and a beauty of effect which place the strict Sonnet above the less compact and less lyrical systems adopted by Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, and other Elizabethan poets.
6588 Cromwell returned from Ireland in 1650, and Marvell probably wrote his lines soon after, whilst living at Nunappleton in the Fairfax household. It is hence not surprising that (st. 21-24) he should have been deceived by Cromwell's professed submissiveness to the Parliament which, when it declined to register his decrees, he expelled by armed violence:—one despotism, by natural law, replacing another. The poet's insight has, however, truly prophesied that result in his last two lines.
This Ode, beyond doubt one of the finest in our language, and more in Milton's style than has been reached by any other poet, is occasionally obscure from imitation of the condensed Latin syntax. The meaning of st. 5 is 'rivalry or hostility are the same to a lofty spirit, and limitation more hateful than opposition.' The allusion in st. 11 is to the old physical doctrines of the non-existence of a vacuum and the impenetrability of matter:—in st. 17 to the omen traditionally connected with the foundation of the Capitol at Rome:—forced, fated. The ancient belief that certain years in life complete natural periods and are hence peculiarly exposed to death, is introduced in st. 26 by the wordclimacteric.
6889Lycidas: The person here lamented is Milton's college contemporary, Edward King, drowned in 1637 whilst crossing from Chester to Ireland.
Strict Pastoral Poetry was first written or perfected by the Dorian Greeks settled in Sicily: but the conventional use of it, exhibited more magnificently inLycidasthan in any other pastoral, is apparently of Roman origin. Milton, employing the noble freedom of a great artist, has here united ancient mythology, with what may be called the modern mythology of Camus and Saint Peter,—to direct Christian images. Yet the poem, if it gains in historical interest, suffers in poetry by the harsh intrusion of the writer's narrow and violent theological politics.—The metrical structure of this glorious elegy is partly derived from Italian models.
69— l. 11Sisters of the sacred well: the Muses, said to frequent the Pierian Spring at the foot of Mount Olympus.
70— l. 10Mona: Anglesea, called by the Welsh poets, the Dark Island, from its dense forests.Deva(l. 11) the Dee: a river which may have derived its magicalcharacter from Celtic traditions: it was long the boundary of Briton and English.—These places are introduced, as being near the scene of the shipwreck.Orpheus(l. 14) was torn to pieces by Thracian women.AmaryllisandNeaera(l. 24, 25) names used here for the love-idols of poets: asDamoetaspreviously for a shepherd. L. 31the blind Fury: Atropos, fabled to cut the thread of life.
7189Arethuse(l. 1) andMincius: Sicilian and Italian waters here alluded to as representing the pastoral poetry of Theocritus and Vergil. L. 4oat: pipe, used here like Collins'oaten stopl. 1, No. 186, forSong. L. 12Hippotades: Aeolus, god of the Winds.Panope(l. 15) a Nereid. Certain names of local deities in the Hellenic mythology render some feature in the natural landscape, which the Greeks studied and analysed with their usual unequalled insight and feeling.Panopeseems to express the boundlessness of the ocean-horizon when seen from a height, as compared with the limited sky-line of the land in hilly countries such as Greece or Asia Minor.Camus(l. 19) the Cam: put for King's University.The sanguine flower(l. 22) the Hyacinth of the ancients: probably our Iris.The Pilot(l. 25) Saint Peter, figuratively introduced as the head of the Church on earth, to foretell 'the ruin of our corrupted clergy,' as Milton regarded them, 'then in their heighth' under Laud's primacy.
72— l. 1scrannel: screeching; apparently Milton's coinage (Masson). L. 5the wolf: the Puritans of the time were excited to alarm and persecution by a few conversions to Roman Catholicism which had recently occurred.Alpheus(l. 9) a stream in Southern Greece, supposed to flow underseas to join the Arethuse.Swart star(l. 15) the Dog-star, called swarthy because its heliacal rising in ancient times occurred soon after midsummer: l. 19rathe: early. L. 36moist vows: either tearful prayers, or prayers for one at sea.Bellerus(l. 37) a giant, apparently created here by Milton to personify Belerium, the ancient title of the Land's End.The great Vision:—the story was that the Archangel Michael had appeared on the rock by Marazion in Mount's Bay which bears his name. Milton calls on him to turn his eyes from the south homeward, and to pity Lycidas, if his body has drifted into the troubled waters off the Land's End. Finisterre being the land due south of Marazion, two places in that district (then through our trade with Corunna probably less unfamiliar to English ears), are named,—Namancosnow Mujio in Galicia,Bayonanorth of the Minho, or perhaps a fortified rock (one of theCiesIslands) not unlike Saint Michael's Mount, at the entrance of Vigo Bay.
7389 l. 6ore: rays of golden light.Doriclay (l. 25) Sicilian, pastoral.
7593The assaultwas an attack on London expected in 1642, when the troops of Charles I reached Brentford. 'Written on his door' was in the original title of this sonnet. Milton was then living in Aldersgate Street.
The Emathian Conqueror: When Thebes was destroyed (B.C.335) and the citizens massacred by thousands, Alexander ordered the house of Pindar to be spared.
76— l. 2,the repeated air Of sad Electra's poet: Plutarch has a tale that when the Spartan confederacy in 404 B.C. took Athens, a proposal to demolish it was rejected through the effect produced on the commanders by hearing part of a chorus from theElectraof Euripides sung at a feast. There is however no apparent congruity between the lines quoted (167, 168 Ed. Dindorf) and the result ascribed to them.
— 95 A fine example of a peculiar class of Poetry;—that written by thoughtful men who practised this Art but little. Jeremy Taylor, Bishop Berkeley, Dr. Johnson, Lord Macaulay, have left similar specimens.
7898 These beautiful verses should be compared with Wordsworth's great Ode onImmortality: and a copy of Vaughan's very rare little volume appears in the list of Wordsworth's library.—In imaginative intensity, Vaughan stands beside his contemporary Marvell.
7999Favonius: the spring wind.
80100Themis: the goddess of justice. Skinner was grandson by his mother to Sir E. Coke:—hence, as pointed out by Mr. Keightley, Milton's allusion to thebench. L. 8: Sweden was then at war with Poland, and France with the Spanish Netherlands.
82103 l. 28Sidneian showers: either in allusion to the conversations in the 'Arcadia,' or to Sidney himself as a model of 'gentleness' in spirit and demeanour.
85105 Delicate humour, delightfully united to thought, at once simple and subtle. It is full of conceit and paradox, but these are imaginative, not as with most of our Seventeenth Century poets, intellectual only.
88110Elizabeth of Bohemia: Daughter to James I, and ancestor of Sophia of Hanover. These lines are a fine specimen of gallant and courtly compliment.
89111 Lady M. Ley was daughter to Sir J. Ley, afterwards Earl of Marlborough, who died March, 1629, coincidently with the dissolution of the third Parliament of Charles' reign. Hence Milton poetically compares his death to that of the Orator Isocrates of Athens, after Philip's victory in 328 B.C.
93118 A masterpiece of humour, grace, and gentle feeling,all, with Herrick's unfailing art, kept precisely within the peculiar key which he chose,—or Nature for him,—in his Pastorals. L. 2the god unshorn: Imberbis Apollo. St. 2beads: prayers.
96123 With better taste, and less diffuseness, Quarles might (one would think) have retained more of that high place which he held in popular estimate among his contemporaries.
99127From Prison: to which his active support of Charles I twice brought the high-spirited writer. L. 7Gods: thus in the original; Lovelace, in his fanciful way, making here a mythological allusion.Birds, commonly substituted, is without authority. St. 3, l. 1committed: to prison.
100128 St. 2 l. 4blue-god: Neptune.
104133Waly waly: an exclamation of sorrow, the root and the pronunciation of which are preserved in the wordcaterwaul.Brae, hillside:burn, brook:busk, adorn.Saint Anton's Well: below Arthur's Seat by Edinburgh.Cramasie, crimson.
105134 This beautiful example of early simplicity is found in a Song-book of 1620.
106135burd, maiden.
107136corbies, crows:fail, turf:hause, neck:theek, thatch.—If not in their origin, in their present form this, with the preceding poem and 133, appear due to the Seventeenth Century, and have therefore been placed in Book II.
108137 The poetical and the prosaic, after Cowley's fashion, blend curiously in this deeply-felt elegy.
112141 Perhaps no poem in this collection is more delicately fancied, more exquisitely finished. By placing his description of the Fawn in a young girl's mouth, Marvell has, as it were, legitimated that abundance of 'imaginative hyperbole' to which he is always partial: he makes us feel it natural that a maiden's favourite should be whiter than milk, sweeter than sugar—'lilies without, roses within,' The poet's imagination is justified in its seeming extravagance by the intensity and unity with which it invests his picture.
113142 The remark quoted in the note to No. 65 applies equally to these truly wonderful verses. Marvell here throws himself into the very soul of theGardenwith the imaginative intensity of Shelley in hisWest Wind.—This poem appears also as a translation in Marvell's works. The most striking verses in it, here quoted as the book is rare, answer more or less to stanzas 2 and 6:—