Across the everlasting Alp
I poured the torrent of my powers, And feeble Cæsars shrieked for help,
In vain, within their seven-hilled towers!
I quenched in blood the brightest gem
That glittered in their diadem,
And struck a darker, deeper dye
In the purple of their majesty,
And bade my Northern banners shine
Upon the conquered Palatine.
My course is run, my errand done;
I go to Him from whom I came ;
But never yet shall set the sun
Of glory that adorns my name;
And Roman hearts shall long be sick,
When men shall think of Alaric.
My course is run, my errand done;
But darker ministers of fate,
Impatient, round the eternal throne,
Aud in the caves of vengeance, wait;
And soon mankind shall blench away
Before the name of Attila.
THE COMPLEYNTE OF CHAUCER TO
HIS PURSE.*
To you, my purse, and to noon other wight
Compleyn I, for ye be my lady dere!
I am so sorry now that ye been lyght,
For certes, but-yf ye make me hevy chere,
Me were as leaf be layde upon my bere,
For whiche unto your mercy thus I crye,
Beeth hevy ageyne, or ellès mote I dye !
Now voucheth sauf this day, or it be nyghte,
That I of you the blissful soune may here,
Or see your colour lyke the sonnè bryghte,
That of yelownesse haddè never pere.
Ye be my lyfe! ye be myn hertys stere !+
Quene of comfort and good companye!
Beth hevy ageyne, or ellès mote I dye.
Now, purse, that ben to me my lyves lyght
And saveour, as doun in this worlde here, Oute of this toune helpe me thurgh your myght,
"From this unique petition," says Mr. Gilman in his "Riverside" Chaucer, "there seems to have resulted an additional pension of forty marks a year, on the strength of which Chaucer took a lease of a house in the garden of St. Mary's Chapel, Westminster, for fifty-three years, at an annual rent of two pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence, the lease to be void on the poet's death." So that the practical results of this poetical plaint show that Chaucer well described one of his own characteristics in his description of the MARCHANT, among his Canterbury Pilgrims, —
"This worthy man ful wel his wit bisette [used]." ↑ guide.
![[blocks in formation]](https://books.google.co.kr/books/content?id=VH0CAAAAYAAJ&hl=ko&output=html_text&pg=PA904&img=1&zoom=3&q=father&cds=1&sig=ACfU3U2doaEhFihd6PK7IgOZtDqwLCBN3A&edge=0&edge=stretch&ci=515,171,414,1277)
But were it to my fancy given
To rate her charms, I'd call them heaven;
For, though a mortal made of clay,
Angels must love Anne Hathaway;
She hath a way so to control,
To rapture, the imprisoned soul,
And sweetest heaven on earth display,
That to be heaven Anne hath a way;
She hath a way,
Anne Hathaway;
To be heaven's self, Anne hath a way.
ON THE PORTRAIT OF SHAKESPEARE.
THIS figure, that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
Wherein the Graver had a strife
With Nature to outdo the life:
O, could he but have drawn his wit
As well in brass, as he hath hit
TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED
MASTER, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
AND WHAT HE HATH LEFT US.
To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor Muse can praise too much.
'T is true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For silliest ignorance on these would light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urges all by chance;
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin, where it seemed to raise.
But thou art proof against them, and, indeed,
Above the ill fortune of them, or the need.
I therefore will begin: Soul of the age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!
My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further off, to make thee room :
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still, while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses,
I mean with great but disproportioned Muses:
For if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd or Marlowe's mighty line.
And though thou had small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee I will not seek
This poem has sometimes, but without much reason, been For names; but call forth thundering Eschylus,
attributed to Shakespeare.
+ The engraving by Martin Droeshout.
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead, To live again, to hear thy buskin tread,
And stock reserved of every living kind, So, in the compass of the single mind,
And shake a stage or when thy socks were on, The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie,
Leave thee alone for the comparison
Of all, that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show,
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury, to charm!
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines!
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please:
But antiquated and deserted lie,
As they were not of nature's family.
Yet must I not give nature all; thy art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet's matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion; and, that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvil; turn the same,
And himself with it, that he thinks to frame;
Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn;
For a good poet's made as well as born.
And such wert thou! Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so the race
Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly
In his well turned and true filed lines:
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandished at the eyes of ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our water yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames
That so did take Eliza and our James!
But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanced, and made a constellation there!
Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage,
Or influence, chide, or cheer the drooping stage
Which since thy flight from hence hath mourned
like night,
And despairs day, but for thy volume's light!
THE soul of man is larger than the sky,
Deeper than ocean, or the abysmal dark
Of the unfathomed centre. Like that ark,
Which in its sacred hold uplifted high,
O'er the drowned hills, the human family,
WHAT needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones,
The labor of an age in pilèd stones?
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid
Under a star-y-pointing pyramid ?
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy
name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a livelong monument.
For whilst to the shame of slow-endeavoring art
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiv-
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
TO THE MEMORY OF BEN JONSON.
THE Muse's fairest light in no dark time,
The wonder of a learnèd age; the line
Which none can pass the most proportioned
wit,
To nature, the best judge of what was fit;
The deepest, plainest, highest, clearest pen;
The voice most echoed by consenting men ;
The soul which answered best to all well said
By others, and which most requital made;
Tuned to the highest key of ancient Rome,
Returning all her music with his own;
In whom, with nature, study claimed a part,
And yet who to himself owed all his art:
Here lies Ben Jonson! every age will look
With sorrow here, with wonder on his book.
That precious stock, the store
UNDER THE PORTRAIT OF JOHN
PREFIXED TO "PARADISE LOST."
THREE Poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
Of such a wit, the world should have no more. The first in loftiness of thought surpassed ;
The next in majesty; in both the last.
The force of nature could no further go;
To make a third, she joined the former two.
BEN JONSON'S COMMONPLACE BOOK.
HIS learning such, no author, old or new,
Escaped his reading that deserved his view;
And such his judgment, so exact his taste,
Of what was best in books, or what books best,
That had he joined those notes his labors took
From each most praised and praise-deserving
book,
And could the world of that choice treasure boast,
It need not care though all the rest were lost.
LUCIUS CARY (LORD FALKLAND).
EPITAPH ON THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE.
UNDERNEATH this marble hearse
Lies the subject of all yerse,
Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother.
Death, ere thou hast slain another
Fair and wise and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee!
Marble piles let no man raise
To her name in after days;
Some kind woman, born as she,
Reading this, like Niobe
Shall turn marble, and become
Both her mourner and her tomb.
TO MILTON. "LONDON, 1802."
MILTON! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men ;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart :
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
SCORN not the sonnet; critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honors; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camoëns soothed an exile's grief;
The sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
|