Page images
PDF
EPUB

:

Let Venus have thy graces her resign'd,
And thy sweet voice give back unto the spheres;
But yet restore thy fierce and cruel mind
To Hyrcan tigers and to ruthless bears.

Yield to the marble thy hard heart again,
So shalt thou cease to plague, and I to pain.

Daniel, Son. 19.

SINCE there's no help, come, let us kiss and part;
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free ;
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows;
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,

And Innocence is closing up his eyes,

Now if thou would'st, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.

Drayton, Son, 61.

[blocks in formation]

My Lute, be as thou wast, when thou didst grow
With thy green mother in some shady grove,
When immelodious* winds but made thee move,
And birds on thee their ramage did bestow.
Sith that dear voice which did thy sounds approve,
Which used in such harmonious strains to flow,
Is reft from earth to tune those spheres above,
What art thou but a harbinger of woe ?
Thy pleasing notes be pleasing notes no more,
But orphan wailings to the fainting ear;
Each stop a sigh, each sound draws forth a tear,
Be therefore silent as in woods before :

Or if that any hand to touch thee deign,
Like widow'd turtle still her loss complain.

DRUMMOND.

*

immelodious.] A word very harmonious and uncomTO SLEEP.

mon. Milton uses " ineloquent," Paradise Lost, VIІІ. 219.

CARE-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born,
Relieve my languish, and restore the light,
With dark forgetting of my care, return.
And let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill-advised youth *;
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,
Without the torments of the night's untruth.
Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires,
To model forth the passions of the morrow;
Never let rising sun approve you liars,
To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow.

Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain,
And never wake to feel the day's disdain.

Daniel, Son. 41.

* The shipwreck of my ill-advised youth.] He again says, Look on the dear expenses of my youth.

P. 111.

Lord Surrey upbraids Beauty, and calls it

Enemy to youth, that most may I bewail.

P. 96.

My heart was slain, and none but you and I ;
Who should I think the murder should commit ?
Since but yourself there was no creature by,
But only I; guiltless of murd'ring it.
It slew itself; the verdict on the view
Do quit the dead, and me not accessary :
Well, well, I fear it will be prov'd by you,
The evidence so great a proof doth carry.
But O, see, see, we need inquire no further,
Upon your lips the scarlet drops are found,
And in your eye the boy that did the murder,
Your cheeks yet pale, since first he gave the wound.
By this I see, however things be past,
Yet heaven will still have murder out at last.

Drayton, Son. 2.

ALEXIS, here she stay'd, among these pines
(Sweet hermitress) she did alone repair,
Here did she spread the treasure of her hair,
More rich than that brought from the Colchian mines.
She set her by these musket eglantines,

The happy place the print seems yet to bear;

Her voice did sweeten here thy sugar'd lines,
To which winds, trees, beasts, birds, did lend their ear :

Me here she first perceiv'd, and here a morn
Of bright carnations did o'erspread her face ;
Here did she sigh, here first my hopes were born,
And I first got a pledge of promis'd grace.

But, ah! what serv'd it to be happy so?
Sith passed pleasures double but new woe.

DRUMMOND.

UNTO the boundless ocean of thy beauty
Runs this poor river, charg'd with streams of zeal;
Returning thee the tribute of my duty,
Which here my love, my youth, my plaints reveal.
Here I unclasp the book of my chang'd soul,
Where I have cast th' accounts of all my care :
Here have I summ'd my sighs; here I enrol
How they were spent for thee; look what they are,
Look on the dear expenses of my youth,
And see how just I reckon with thine eyes :
Examine well thy beauty with my truth,
And cross my cares, ere greater sums arise.

Read it, sweet maid, though it be done but slightly;
Who can show all his love, doth love but lightly.

Daniel, Son. 1.

TRUST not, sweet soul, those curled waves of gold
With gentle tides which on your temples flow;
Nor temples spread with flakes of virgin snow,
Nor snow of cheeks with Tyrian grain enroll'd.
Trust not those shining lights which wrought my woe,
When first I did their burning rays behold;
Nor voice, whose sounds more strange effects do show,
Than of the Thracian harper have been told.
Look to this dying lily, fading rose,
Dark hyacinth, of late whose blushing beams
Made all the neighbouring herbs and grass rejoice,
And think how little is 'twixt life's extremes.

The cruel tyrant that did kill those flowers
Shall once (aye me!) not spare that spring of yours.

DRUMMOND.

« PreviousContinue »