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Then muse not, Nymphs, though I bemoan

The absence of fair Rosalynd;

Since for her fair there's fairer none,

Nor for her virtues so divine.

Heigh ho! fair Rosalynd!

Heigh ho! my heart, would God that she were mine!

THE HARMONY OF LOVE.

A very phoenix, in her radiant eyes

I leave mine age, and get my life again; True Hesperus, I watch her fall and rise,

And with my tears extinguish all my pain; My lips for shadows shield her springing roses,

Mine eyes for watchmen guard her while she sleepeth, My reasons serve to 'quite her faint supposes;

Her fancy, mine; my faith her fancy keepeth;
She flower, I branch; her sweet my sour supporteth,
O happy Love, where such delights consorteth !'

PHILLIS' SICKNESS.

How languisheth the primrose of Love's garden!
How trill her tears the elixir of my senses !
Ambitious sickness, what doth thee so harden?

O spare, and plague thou me for her offences !
Ah! roses! love's fair roses! do not languish !

Blush through the milk-white veil that holds you covered; If heat or cold may mitigate your anguish,

I'll burn, I'll freeze, but you shall be recovered.
Good God! would Beauty mark, now she is crazed,
How but one shower of sickness makes her tender,
Her judgments, then, to mark my woes amazed,

To mercy should opinion's fort surrender;
And I, oh! would I might, or would she meant it!
Should harry love, who now in heart lament it.

LOVE'S WANTONNESS.

Love guides the roses of thy lips,
And flies about them like a bee;
If I approach he forward skips,

And if I kiss he stingeth me.

Love in thine eyes doth build his bower, And sleeps within their pretty shine, And if I look the boy will lower,

And from their orbs shoot shafts divine.

Love works thy heart within his fire,
And in my tears doth firm the same,
And if I tempt it will retire,

And of my plaints doth make a game.

Love, let me cull her choicest flowers,
And pity me, and calm her eye,
Make soft her heart, dissolve her lowers,
Then I will praise thy deity.

WILLIAM WARNER.

[WILLIAM WARNER was born in Oxfordshire about the middle of the sixteenth century, and died on the 9th of March, 1609, at Amwell. His chief work is Albion's England, 1586. It was at first prohibited, for reasons unknown, but afterwards became very popular. He perhaps translated the Menaechmi of Plautus 1595; and certainly wrote a prose collection of moralized stories, entitled Syrinx, 1597.]

Warner's chief and only poetical work is Albion's England, a curious medley of partly traditional history, with interludes of the fabliau kind. By some accident it has, since the author's death, secured an audience, not indeed wide, but much wider than that enjoyed by the work of contemporaries of far greater power. The pastoral episode of Argentile and Curan hit the taste of the eighteenth century, and Chalmers reprinted the whole poem in his Poets, very injudiciously following Ellis in dividing the fourteen-syllable lines into eights and sixes. In this form much of it irresistibly reminds the reader of Johnson's injurious parody of that metre: but in the original editions it appears to much greater advantage. The ascending and descending slope of the long lines is often managed with a good deal of art; and as the following extract, giving the speeches of Harold and William before Hastings, will show, there is sometimes dignity in the sentiments and vigour in their expression. The author is too prone to adopt classical constructions, especially absolute cases, which often throw obscurity over his meaning. Warner is not, as he has been called, a 'good, honest, plain writer of moral rules and precepts'; nor is his work, as another authority asserts, ' written in Alexandrines.' But though he will not bear comparison with the better, even of the second-rate Elizabethans, such as Watson, Barnes, and Constable, much less with his fellow historians Drayton and Daniel, the singularity of the plan of his book, and some vigorous touches here and there, raise him above the mass.

There is, moreover, one thing in his work which is of considerable literary interest. Unlike almost all his contemporaries, he is hardly at all'Italianate.' The Italian influence, which for a full century coloured English poetry, is scarcely discernible in him, and he is thus an interesting example of an English poet with hardly any foreign strain in him except, as has been said, a certain tinge of classical study.

G. SAINTSBURY.

BEFORE THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS.

[From Albion's England, Bk. iv. Cap. 22.]

'See, valiant war-friends yonder be the first, the last, and all
The agents of our enemies: they henceforth cannot call
Supplies for weeds at Normandy by this in porches grow:
Then conquer these would conquer you, and dread no further foe.
They are no stouter than the Brutes, whom we did hence exile:
Nor stronger than the sturdy Danes, our victory erewhile :
Nor Saxony could once contain, or scarce the world beside,
Our fathers who did sway by sword where listed them to bide.
Then do not ye degenerate, take courage by descent,
And by their burials, not abode, their force and flight prevent.
Ye have in hand your country's cause, a conquest they pretend,
Which (were ye not the same ye be) even cowards would defend.
I grant that part of us are fled, and linked to the foe,
And glad I am our army is of traitors cleared so,
Yea, pardon hath he to depart that stayeth malcontent:
I prize the mind above the man, like zeal hath like event.
Yet troth it is no well or ill this island ever had,

But through the well or ill support of subjects good or bad.
Not Caesar, Hengest, Swayn, or now (which ne'ertheless shall fail)
The Norman bastard (Albion true) did, could, or can prevail.
But to be self-false in this isle a self-foe ever is,
Yet wot I, never traitor did his treason's stipend miss.

Shrink who will shrink, let armour's weight press down the burdened earth,

My foes with wondering eyes shall see I over-prize my death.
But since ye all (for all, I hope, alike affected be,
Your wives, your children, lives and land, from servitude to free)
Are armed both in show and zeal, then gloriously contend
To win and wear the home-brought spoils of victory the end.
Let not the skinner's daughter's son possess what he pretends,
He lives to die a noble death that life for freedom spends.'
As Harold heartened thus his men, so did the Norman his;
And looking wishly on the earth Duke William speaketh this:
Ff

VOL. I.

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