Yet unto Thee, Lord-mirror of transgression—
We who for earthly idols have forsaken,
Thy heavenly image-sinless, pure impression-
And so in nets of vanity lie taken,

All desolate implore that to Thine own,
Lord, Thou no longer live a God unknown.

Yea, Lord, let Israel's plagues not be eternal,
Nor sin for ever cloud Thy sacred mountains,
Nor with false flames spiritual but infernal,
Dry up Thy Mercy's ever springing fountains:
Rather, sweet Jesus, fill up time and come,
To yield to sin her everlasting doom.

AN ELEGY ON SIR PHILIP SIDNEY1.

Silence augmenteth grief, writing increaseth rage,

Staled are my thoughts, which loved and lost the wonder of

our age;

Yet quickened now with fire, though dead with frost ere now,
Enraged I write, I know not what; dead-quick-I know not how.
Hard-hearted minds relent and Rigour's tears abound,
And Envy strangely rues his end, in whom no fault she found.
Knowledge her light hath lost, Valour hath slain her knight,
Sidney is dead, dead is my friend, dead is the world's delight.

Place pensive wails his fall, whose presence was her pride,
Time crieth out, my ebb is come; his life was my spring-tide!
Fame mourns in that she lost the ground of her reports,
Each living wight laments his lack, and all in sundry sorts.

He was (woe worth that word!) to each well-thinking mind
A spotless friend, a matchless man, whose virtue ever shined,
Declaring in his thoughts, his life and that he writ,
Highest conceits, longest foresights, and deepest works of wit.

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1 The authorship of this poem is by no means certain. Lamb however believed it to be by Lord Brooke.

Farewell to you my hopes, my wonted waking dreams,
Farewell sometimes enjoyèd joy, eclipsèd are thy beams,
Farewell self-pleasing thoughts, which quietness brings forth,
And farewell friendship's sacred league, uniting minds of worth.

And farewell merry heart, the gift of guiltless minds,
And all sports, which for life's restore, variety assigns:
Let all that sweet is void; in me no mirth may dwell:
Philip the cause of all this woe, my life's content, farewell!

Now rhyme, the son of rage, which art no kin to skill,
And endless grief, which deads my life yet knows not how to kill,
Go, seek that hapless tomb, which if ye hap to find,

Salute the stones that keep the limbs, that held so good a mind.

SIR EDWARD DYER.

[Born about 1550 at Sharpham near Glastonbury; educated at Balliol College, Oxford; ambassador to Denmark 1589; knighted 1596; died 1607.]

Sir Edward Dyer, 'for Elegy most sweete, solempne and of high conceit,' according to a contemporary judgment, makes the last in importance, though the first in date, of that trio of poet-friends celebrated in Sidney's well-known Pastoral:

'Join hearts and hands, so let it be:

Make but one mind in bodies three.'

Very little authentic verse of his is now extant, nor is it probable that he produced much. On the other hand he has been freely credited with verses that do not belong to him, especially with cer tain poems that are now known to be by Lodge. Mr. Grosart has collected twelve pieces which may be attributed to him with a fair amount of certainty. Of these 'A Fancy' is interesting as having provoked a much better poem on the same model by Lord Brooke, and a later imitation by Robert Southwell. It is however too rambling and unequal for quotation. Dyer is now remembered by one poem only, the well-known 'My mind to me a kingdom is, which though fluent and spirited verse, probably owes most of its reputation to the happiness of its opening. The little poem 'To Phillis the Fair Shepherdess' is in the lighter, less hackneyed Elizabethan vein, and makes a welcome interlude among the 'woeful ballads' which immediately surround it in England's Helicon, where it first appeared. Still, when all is said, Dyer, a man of action and affairs rather than of letters, is chiefly interesting for his connection with Sidney and Greville; and that stiff pathetic engraving of Sidney's funeral, which represents him as pall-bearer side by side with Lord Brooke, throws a light upon his memory that none of his poems have power to shed.

The last two extracts given below are taken from a book of which an apparently unique copy (dated 1588) is preserved in the Bodleian Library, under the title of Sixe Idillia (from Theocritus). Mr. Collier attributes this book to Dyer, on the ground of the initials E. D. given on the back of the title-page. This is weak evidence, but the fluency and sweetness of the translations make us loth to reject it.

MARY A. WARD.

MY MIND TO ME A KINGDOM IS.

My mind to me a kingdom is,

Such present joys therein I find, That it excels all other bliss

That earth affords or grows by kind: Though much I want which most would have, Yet still my mind forbids to crave.

No princely pomp, no wealthy store,
No force to win the victory,

No wily wit to salve a sore,

No shape to feed a loving eye;
To none of these I yield as thrall:
For why? My mind doth serve for all.

I see how plenty [surfeits] oft,
And hasty climbers soon do fall;
I see that those which are aloft

Mishap doth threaten most of all;
They get with toil, they keep with fear;
Such cares my mind could never bear.

Content to live, this is my stay;

I seek no more than may suffice;
I press to bear no haughty sway;
Look, what I lack my mind supplies:
Lo, thus I triumph like a king,
Content with that my mind doth bring.

Some have too much, yet still do crave;
I little have, and seek no more.

They are but poor, though much they have,
And I am rich with little store;

They poor, I rich; they beg, I give;

They lack, I leave; they pine, I live.

I laugh not at another's loss;

I grudge not at another's pain;
No worldly waves my mind can toss ;
My state at one doth still remain :
I fear no foe, I fawn no friend;
I loathe not life, nor dread my end.

Some weigh their pleasure by their lust,
Their wisdom by their rage of will;
Their treasure is their only trust;

A cloaked craft their store of skill:
But all the pleasure that I find
Is to maintain a quiet mind.

My wealth is health and perfect ease:
My conscience clear my chief defence;
I neither seek by bribes to please,
Nor by deceit to breed offence:
Thus do I live; thus will I die;
Would all did so as well as I!

TO PHILLIS THE FAIR SHEPHERDESS.

My Phillis hath the morning Sun,
At first to look upon her:

And Phillis hath morn-waking birds,
Her rising still to honour.

My Phillis hath prime feathered flowers,
That smile when she treads on them:

And Phillis hath a gallant flock

That leaps since she doth own them.
But Phillis hath too hard a heart,
Alas, that she should have it!

It yields no mercy to desert

Nor grace to those that crave it.