109

110

so weake my powres, so sore my wounds appeare,
that wonder is how I should live a jot,

seeing my hart through launched everywhere
with thousand arrowes, which your eies have shot,
yet shoot ye sharpely still, and spare me not,
but glory thinke to make these cruel stoures.
Ye cruell one! what glory can be got,

in slaying him that would live gladly yours?
Make peace therefore, and graunt me timely grace
that al my wound wil heale in little space.

E. SPENSER
NON POSSVNT HÆC MONVMENTA MORI

of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; but you shall shine more bright in these contents than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn, and broils root out the work of masonry,

nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn the living record of your memory.

'Gainst death and all oblivious enmity

shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
even in the eyes of all posterity

that wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgement that yourself arise,

you live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

WHEN

TIME AND LOVE

W. SHAKESPEARE

HEN I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
the rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;
when sometime lofty towers I see downrazed,
and brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
when I have seen the hungry ocean gain
advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
and the firm soil win of the watery main,
increasing store with loss and loss with store;
when I have seen such interchange of state,
or state itself confounded to decay;

ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate—
that Time will come and take my Love away:
-This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
but weep to have that which it fears to lose.

W. SHAKESPEARE

III

I 12

113

WHEN

REMEMBRANCE

to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
and with old woes new wail my dear time's waste;
then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,

for precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
and weep afresh love's long-since-cancell'd woe,
and moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight.
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
and heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
the sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,
which I new pay as if not paid before:
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
all losses are restored, and sorrows end.

W

W. SHAKESPEARE

ON HIS OWN BLINDNESS

HEN I consider how my light is spent

ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, and that one talent, which is death to hide, lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

to serve therewith my Maker, and present

my true account, lest He, returning, chide;
Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?'
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent

that murmur, soon replies: 'God doth not need
either man's work, or his own gifts; who best
bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
is kingly. Thousands at His bidding speed
and post o'er land and ocean without rest;
they also serve who only stand and wait.'

TO MR LAWRENCE

J. MILTON

AWRENCE, of virtuous father virtuous son,

now that the fields are dank, and ways all mire, where shall we sometimes meet and by the fire help waste a sullen day, what may be won from the hard season gaining? Time will run on smoother, till Favonius re-inspire the frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire the lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun.

114

What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
of Attic taste with wine, whence we may rise
to hear the lute well touched, or artful voice
warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?
He, who of those delights can judge, and spare
to interpose them oft, is not unwise.

TO THE NIGHTINGALE

J. MILTON

NIGHTINGALE, that on yon bloomy spray warblest at eve, when all the woods are still; thou with fresh hopes the lover's heart dost fill, while the jolly Hours lead on propitious May. Thy liquid notes that close the eye of Day,

first heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill, portend success in love. Oh! if Jove's will have linked that amorous power to thy soft lay, now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate

foretell my hopeless doom, in some grove nigh as thou from year to year hast sung too late for my relief, yet hadst no reason why: whether the Muse or Love call thee his mate,

both them I serve, and of their train am I.

J. MILTON

115 THE POET'S HOUSE WHEN THE ASSAULT WAS

IN TENDED TO THE CITY OF LONDON

APTAIN or Colonel, or Knight in arms,

CAPT

whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize,

if deed of honour did thee ever please, guard them, and him within protect from harms. He can requite thee; for he knows the charms that call fame on such gentle acts as these, and he can spread thy name o'er lands and seas, whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms. Lift not thy spear against the Muses' bower: the great Emathian conqueror bid spare the house of Pindarus, when temple and tower went to the ground: and the repeated air of sad Electra's poet had the pow'r

to save the Athenian walls from ruin bare.

J. MILTON

116

ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEMONT

AVER

VENGE, O Lord, thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones

lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, when all our fathers worshipt stocks and stones, forget not: in thy book record their groans

who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold slain by the bloody Piemontese, that rolled mother with infant down the rocks; their moans the vales redoubled to the hills, and they

to heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow o'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway the triple tyrant; that from these may grow a hundredfold, who, having learned thy way, early may fly the Babylonian woe.

J. MILTON

117 ON THE DEATH OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

118

G

IVE pardon, blessed soul, to my bold cries, if they, importunate, interrupt the song which now, with joyful notes, thou sing'st among the angel-choristers of heavenly skies.

Give pardon eke, sweet soul, to my slow eyes,
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.

SONNET

H. CONSTABLE

S when it happeneth that some lovely town
unto a barbarous besieger falls,

who both by sword and flame himself installs,
and shameless it in tears and blood doth drown;

her beauty spoiled, her citizens made thralls,
his spite yet cannot so her all throw down,
but that some statue, arch, fane of renown,
yet lurks unmaimed within her weeping walls:
so after all the spoil, disgrace and wreck,

that time, the world and death could bring combined,
amidst that mass of ruins they did make,

safe and all scarless yet remains my mind:
from this so high transcendent rapture springs,
that I, all else defaced, not envy kings.

W. DRUMMOND

119

PLEASURES OF RETIREMENT

THRICE yous world doth live his own, 'HRICE happy he, who by some shady grove,

though solitary, who is not alone,

but doth converse with that eternal love.

O how more sweet is birds' harmonious moan,
or the hoarse sobbings of the widowed dove,
than those smooth whisperings near a prince's throne,
which good make doubtful, do the evil approve!
O how more sweet is zephyr's wholesome breath,
and sighs embalmed, which new-born flow'rs unfold,
than that applause vain honour doth bequeath!
how sweet are streams to poison drunk in gold!
the world is full of horrors, falehoods, slights:
woods' harmless shades have only true delights.

W. DRUMMOND

120

SONNET

OOK as the flow'r which lingeringly doth fade; the morning's darling late, the summer's Queen, spoil'd of that juice which kept it fresh and green, as high as it did raise, bows low the head; (right so the pleasures of my life being dead,

or in their contraries but only seen)

with swifter speed declines than erst it spread,

and, blasted, scarce now shows what it hath been: therefore, as doth the pilgrim, whom the night hastes darkly to imprison on his way,