PAGE " writers of song in gaiety and ease; it not equally clear that he has ever since been surpassed.' 45, lix. The lyrics of Carew are a perpetual feast of nectared sweets. Oldys says they were more in request than any poet's of his time-that is, between 1630 and 1640. Wood speaks of the "charming sweetness of his lyric odes and amorous sonnets.' 46, lx. In his lyrics, as in everything else he wrote, Dryden was emphatically before his age. His style 47, is consummate. 46, lxi. An elegant specimen of the kind of poetry in which Suckling, Carew, Herrick, Prior, and Congreve were facile principes. It is happily free from the licentiousness which disfigures her other writings. lxii. 'Prior's," says Thackeray, "seem to me among the easiest, the richest, the most charmingly humorous of English lyrical poems. Horace is always in his mind, and his songs, his philosophy, his good sense, his happy easy turns and melody, his loves and his epicureanism, bear a great resemblance to that most delightful and accomplished master." 47, lxiii. The remark quoted in the note to No. xlviii. àp plies, I think, as much to Shenstone as to Thomson. 49. lxvi. These verses have surely something of the manner of Carew himself. They scarcely read like a production of the nineteenth century. 51, lxviii. From Pippa Passes. 51, lxix. From the Princess. 53, 1xxi. From Maud. 54, lxxii. From The Window, or the Loves of the Wrens: an inimitably graceful poem. 54, lxxiii. From the Idylls of the King: "Gareth and Lynette" another, and the latest (let us hope, not the last) of those songs which only Mr. Tennyson can write. 55, lxxiv. This poem is wholly free from that mawkish sentimentality that disfigures so much of Moore's love-poetry. 56, lxxv. Mr. Swinburne says that for melody this poem is perfect. 59, lxxvi. Hallam calls all Herrick's poetry the poetry of kisses. Yet Herrick has written nothing so exquisite as the lyric which follows this. 62, lxxxi. Mr. Arnold has been called the poet of English flowers; but surely that is a title which belongs at least as much, if not more, to Mr. Tenny PAGE son. The present poem especially is pervaded by the scent of rose and violet. 68, lxxxviii. It is too frequently taken for granted that Mr. Swinburne has written nothing that is not in an extremely sensuous-I will not say sensual-strain. Perhaps this, and the other pieces he contributes to this selection, will do something to remove that impression. I presume that no one questions the copiousness of his vocabulary and the melodious rhythm of his verse. 70, xc. Sonnet cvi. The last line of this piece recalls the last line of No. cclxi., by Mr. Browning. 70, xci. Sonnet xviii. "That fair thou owest," that beauty thou ownest. The concluding couplet is one of those remarkable passages in which Shakespeare proclaims his assurance of immortal fame. 71, xcii. Sonnet xcix. "Forward," early. 71, xciii. Sonnet cv. 72, xciv. From The Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iv., scene 2. 73, XCV. "Readers who have visited Italy will be reminded," says Mr. Palgrave, "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 a small portion of the qualities which marked the almost contemporary art of Venice, the glory and the glow of Veronese, or Titian, or Tintoret." "The clear" is the crystalline or outermost heaven of the old cosmography. For "resembling," other copies give fining the correct reading is perhaps "revealing." xcvi. From Alexander and Campaspe. 75, xcvii. From The Forest, Song vii. 75, xcviii. From the Reliquiæ Wottonianæ. 74, re It was printed, with music, as early as 1624, and is to be found anonymously in Wit's Recreations (1640) and Wit's Interpreter (1671). "This sprightly poem," says Dr. Hannah, "must have been written during the short interval which elapsed after Sept. 1619, before the brief day of Elizabeth's Bohemian sovereignty was clouded." 80, cvii. Few finer compliments than this have ever been paid by poet to his lady-love. 80, cviii. No one who knows anything of Sedley's PAGE 82, poems will agree with Lord Macaulay, that the licentiousness of his writings is not redeemed by much grace or vivacity.' The present song, and the next, would be a sufficient refutation of the criticism. cx. Gaiety, wit, and ingenuity, are, in Hume's opinion, the leading characteristics of Waller's verses. These, on a lady's girdle, are described by Mr. Carruthers as finished with great care and elegance.' The last quatrain seems likely to prove one of the eternal possessions of English poetry. 84, cxiii. Landor is another of those old literary Titans with whom this generation will have nothing to do. Are we really losing our appreciation of classic grace in style? 86, cxvii. This lyric was written by Lord Byron on returning from a ball-room, where he had seen Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Wilmot Horton, the wife of a sometime Governor of Ceylon. On this occasion the lady had appeared in mourning, with numerous spangles on her dress; hence the image in the opening lines. 87, cxviii. If, as it is said, these lines were composed in honour of Mrs. Wordsworth, who but will envy the poet the partner of his joys and sorrows? 88, cxx. The pieces by Campbell quoted in this volume are not the most popular, but they are, perhaps, the most truly poetical of all his works, not excepting his famous war-songs, full as they are of fire and energy. 91, cxxii. The best critics now recognize in Mr. Warren one who follows worthily in the footsteps of the elder poets of our day. His latest work is a volume entitled Searching the Net. See, also, Philoctetes, Præterita, and others. 91, cxxiii. One of the most tender and true of the author's poems. 92, cxxvi. One of the Sonnets from the Portuguese, which are now well known to be original and not translated. 96, cxxxii. Sonnet xci. The opening lines will remind the classical reader of the first ode of Horace. 97, cxxxiii. Sonnet lvii. 97, cxxxiv. Sonnet cix. 98, CXXXV. From Lodge's Rosalind: Euphues' Golden PAGE 99, 102, 104, is to be found in the works of Greene; as in his Unto Alphonsus, whom I honour so.' cxxxvi. This poem was written from prison," to which, says Mr. Palgrave, "his active support of Charles I. twice brought the high-spirited writer." cxli. This poem finds a sort of parallel in the opening verse of "The Silent Lover," by Sir Walter Raleigh: "Passions are likened best to floods and streams; The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb; So, when affections yield discourse, it seems The bottom is but shallow whence they come. They that are rich in words, in words discover That they are poor in that which makes a lover." cxlv. "A little masterpiece in a very difficult style: Catullus himself," says the critic above quoted, "could scarcely have bettered it. In grace, tenderness, simplicity, and humour, it is worthy of the ancients, and even more so, from the completeness and unity of the picture presented." "As a poet," says Sir John Hawkins, "Carey was the last of that class of which D'Urfey was the first." cxlvii. "Highland Mary " was a maidservant in 107, "Burns," says one of his biographers, "loved her as he loved no other woman, and her memory is preserved in the finest expression of his love and grief." 108, cxlviii. The "Jean" of this poem is, of course, Jean Armour, with whom Burns had been in love before the brief and touching episode of Highland Mary. 114, clvii. Another Sonnet from the Portuguese. It is to be doubted whether Mrs. Browning has left any finer compositions than the series of which this is one. They are full of passionate fervour, expressed in the happiest form, and with the most delightful imagery. 115, clviii. Beddoes is, perhaps, a little too antique in tone to be relished by the modern reader; but to the sincere lover of poetry, his works must always be PAGE 115, full of interest, if only on account of the remarkable way in which he imbued himself with the sentiment of Elizabethan times. Mr. Procter attempted something of the kind in his Dramatic Scenes," but not so successfully. " clix. From Twilight Hours, a legacy of verse by one of those sweet minor singers who are so plentiful in these days of general culture. Miss Williams' pieces are generally characterized by tender feeling. 116, clx. From James Lee. 117, clxii. This little poem appeared originally in the Athenæum, and is more serious in tone than the majority of Mr. Locker's lyrics. 118, clxiv. From The Princess. 121, 122, clxvii. As a rule, Clough's lyrics are wanting in the finish and completeness to which Mr. Tennyson has so long accustomed us; but they are very striking, nevertheless. This, and No. cclii., are the only specimens of his love-poetry which are worth preserving. clxviii. This sonnet was the last work of its gifted author, who merits, Mr. Palgrave thinks, the appellation of "The Marvellous Boy," much more than Chatterton, to whom Wordsworth originally applied it. 124, clxxi. From Sonnets from the Portuguese. 124, clxxii See No. cxx. 125, clxxiii. Sonnet xcvii. 125, clxxiv. Sonnet xcviii. 126, clxxv. From Davison's Poetical Rhapsody (1602), minus one verse. Mr. Palgrave's version is the one adopted here. 127, clxxvi. This is only a portion of a longer poem ; but it is, at the same time, so perfect in itself that its presence among these "Lyrics of Love" scarcely needs apology. Lucasta was a certain Lucy Sacheverell, whose love for Lovelace did not prevent her from marrying another, on a false report of her first lover's death. Lucasta is "lux casta," i.e. chaste light. 129, clxxx. One of the tenderest of Mr. Arnold's many tender pieces. 132, clxxxv. Sonnet xxx. "And with old woes:" compare the Greek, καινοῖς παλαιᾶ δακρύοις στένειν κακά. Expense" means "loss." 133, clxxvi. Another of those (unhappily) few pieces in which Moore is at his best. |