Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets Part 33

'The cushat croods, the corbie cries, The cuckoo conks, the prattling pies To geck there they begin; The jargon of the jangling jays, The cracking craws and keckling kays, They deav'd me with their din; The painted p.a.w.n, with Argus eyes, Can on his May-c.o.c.k call, The turtle wails, on wither'd trees, And Echo answers all.

Repeating, with greeting, How fair Narcissus fell, By lying, and spying His shadow in the well.

'The air was sober, saft, and sweet, Nae misty vapours, wind, nor weet, But quiet, calm, and clear; To foster Flora's fragrant flowers, Whereon Apollo's paramours Had trinkled mony a tear; The which, like silver shakers, s.h.i.+ned, Embroidering Beauty's bed, Wherewith their heavy heads declined, In Maye's colours clad; Some knopping, some dropping Of balmy liquor sweet, Excelling and smelling Through Phoebus' wholesome heat.'

The 'Cherry and the Slae' was familiar to Burns, who often, our readers will observe, copied its form of verse.

SAMUEL DANIEL.

This ingenious person was born in 1562, near Taunton, in Somersets.h.i.+re.

His father was a music-master. He was patronised by the n.o.ble family of Pembroke, who probably also maintained him at college. He went to Magdalene Hall, Oxford, in 1579; and after studying there, chiefly history and poetry, for seven years, he left without a degree. When twenty-three years of age, he translated Paulus Jovius' 'Discourse of Rare Inventions.' He became tutor to Lady Anne Clifford, the elegant and accomplished daughter of the Earl of c.u.mberland. She, at his death, raised a monument to his memory, and recorded on it, with pride, that she had been his pupil. After Spenser died, Daniel became a 'voluntary laureat' to the Court, producing masques and pageants, but was soon supplanted by 'rare Ben Jonson.' In 1603 he was appointed Master of the Queen's Revels and Inspector of the Plays to be enacted by juvenile performers. He was also promoted to be Gentleman Extraordinary and Groom of the Chambers to the Queen. He was a varied and voluminous writer, composing plays, miscellaneous poems, and prose compositions, including a 'Defence of Rhyme' and a 'History of England,'--an honest, but somewhat dry and dull production. While composing his works he resided in Old Street, St Luke's, which was then thought a suburban residence; but he was often in town, and mingled on intimate terms with Selden and Shakspeare. When approaching sixty, he took a farm at Beckington, in Somersets.h.i.+re--his native s.h.i.+re--and died there in 1619.

Daniel's Plays and History are now, as wholes, forgotten, although the former contained some vigorous pa.s.sages, such as Richard II.'s soliloquy on the morning of his murder in Pomfret Castle. His smaller pieces and his Sonnets shew no ordinary poetic powers.

RICHARD II., THE MORNING BEFORE HIS MURDER IN POMFRET CASTLE.

Whether the soul receives intelligence, By her near genius, of the body's end, And so imparts a sadness to the sense, Foregoing ruin, whereto it doth tend; Or whether nature else hath conference With profound sleep, and so doth warning send, By prophetising dreams, what hurt is near, And gives the heavv careful heart to fear:--

However, so it is, the now sad king, Toss'd here and there his quiet to confound, Feels a strange weight of sorrows gathering Upon his trembling heart, and sees no ground; Feels sudden terror bring cold s.h.i.+vering; Lists not to eat, still muses, sleeps unsound; His senses droop, his steady eyes unquick, And much he ails, and yet he is not sick.

The morning of that day which was his last, After a weary rest, rising to pain, Out at a little grate his eyes he cast Upon those bordering hills and open plain, Where others' liberty makes him complain The more his own, and grieves his soul the more, Conferring captive crowns with freedom poor.

'O happy man,' saith he, 'that lo I see, Grazing his cattle in those pleasant fields, If he but knew his good. How blessed he That feels not what affliction greatness yields!

Other than what he is he would not be, Nor change his state with him that sceptre wields.

Thine, thine is that true life: that is to live, To rest secure, and not rise up to grieve.

'Thou sitt'st at home safe by thy quiet fire, And hear'st of others' harms, but fearest none: And there thou tell'st of kings, and who aspire, Who fall, who rise, who triumph, who do moan.

Perhaps thou talk'st of me, and dost inquire Of my restraint, why here I live alone, And pitiest this my miserable fall; For pity must have part--envy not all.

'Thrice happy you that look as from the sh.o.r.e, And have no venture in the wreck you see; No interest, no occasion to deplore Other men's travails, while yourselves sit free.

How much doth your sweet rest make us the more To see our misery and what we be: Whose blinded greatness, ever in turmoil, Still seeking happy life, makes life a toil.'

EARLY LOVE.

Ah, I remember well (and how can I But evermore remember well?) when first Our flame began, when scarce we knew what was The flame we felt; when as we sat and sigh'd And look'd upon each other, and conceived Not what we ail'd, yet something we did ail, And yet were well, and yet we were not well, And what was our disease we could not tell.

Then would we kiss, then sigh, then look: and thus In that first garden of our simpleness We spent our childhood. But when years began To reap the fruit of knowledge; ah, how then Would she with sterner looks, with graver brow, Check my presumption and my forwardness!

Yet still would give me flowers, still would show What she would have me, yet not have me know.

SELECTIONS FROM SONNETS.

I must not grieve, my love, whose eyes would read Lines of delight, whereon her youth might smile; Flowers have time before they come to seed, And she is young, and now must sport the while.

And sport, sweet maid, in season of these years, And learn to gather flowers before they wither; And where the sweetest blossom first appears, Let love and youth conduct thy pleasures thither, Lighten forth smiles to clear the clouded air, And calm the tempest which my sighs do raise: Pity and smiles do best become the fair; Pity and smiles must only yield thee praise.

Make me to say, when all my griefs are gone, Happy the heart that sigh'd for such a one.

Fair is my love, and cruel as she's fair; Her brow shades frown, although her eyes are sunny; Her smiles are lightning, though her pride despair; And her disdains are gall, her favours honey.

A modest maid, deck'd with a blush of honour, Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love; The wonder of all eyes that look upon her: Sacred on earth; design'd a saint above; Chast.i.ty and Beauty, which are deadly foes, Live reconciled friends within her brow; And had she Pity to conjoin with those, Then who had heard the plaints I utter now?

For had she not been fair, and thus unkind, My muse had slept, and none had known my mind.

Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night, Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, Relieve my anguish, and restore the light, With dark forgetting of my care, return.

And let the day be time enough to mourn The s.h.i.+pwreck 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 pa.s.sions of to-morrow; Never let the rising sun prove 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.

SIR JOHN DAVIES.

This knight, says Campbell, 'wrote, at twenty-five years of age, a poem on the "Immortality of the Soul," and at fifty-two, when he was a judge and a statesman, another on the "_Art of Dancing_." Well might the teacher of that n.o.ble accomplishment, in Moliere's comedy, exclaim, "_La philosophie est quelque chose--mais la danse!_" This, however, is more pointed than correct, since the first of these poems was written in 1592, when the author was only twenty-two years of age, and the latter appeared in 1599, when he was only twenty-nine.

Tisbury, in Wilts.h.i.+re, was the birthplace of this poet, and 1570 the date of his birth. His father was a practising lawyer. John was expelled from the Temple for beating one Richard Martyn, afterwards Recorder, but was restored, and subsequently elected for Parliament. In 1592, as aforesaid, appeared his poem, 'Nosce Teipsum; or, The Immortality of the Soul.' Its fame soon travelled to Scotland; and when Davies, along with Lord Hunsdon, visited that country, James received him most graciously as the author of 'Nosce Teipsum.' His history became, for some time, a list of promotions. He was appointed, in 1603, first Solicitor and then Attorney-General in Ireland, was next made Sergeant, was then knighted, then appointed King's Sergeant, next elected representative of the county of Fermanagh, and, in fine, after a violent contest between the Roman Catholic and Protestant parties, was chosen Speaker of the House of Commons in the Protestant interest. While in Ireland he married Eleanor, a daughter of Lord Audley, who turned out a raving prophetess, and was sent, in 1649, to the Tower, and then to Bethlehem Hospital, by the Revolutionary Government. In 1616, Sir John returned to England, continued to practise as a barrister, sat in Parliament for Newcastle- under-Lyne, and received a promise of being made Chief-Justice of England; but was suddenly cut off by apoplexy in 1626.

His poem on dancing, which was written in fifteen days, and left a fragment, is a piece of beautiful, though somewhat extravagant fancy.

His 'Nosce Teipsum,' if it casts little new light, and rears no demonstrative argument on the grand and difficult problem of immortality, is full of ingenuity, and has many apt and memorable similes. Feeling he happily likens to the

'subtle spider, which doth sit In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide; If aught do touch the utmost thread of it, She feels it instantly on every side.'

In answering an objection, 'Why, if souls continue to exist, do they not return and bring us news of that strange world?' he replies--

'But as Noah's pigeon, which return'd no more, Did show she footing found, for all the flood, So when good souls, departed through death's door, Come not again, it shows their dwelling good.'

The poem is interesting from the musical use he makes of the quatrain, a form of verse in which Dryden afterwards wrote his 'Annus Mirabilis,'

and as one of the earliest philosophical poems in the language. It is proverbially difficult to reason in verse, but Davies reasons, if not always with conclusive result, always with energy and skill.

INTRODUCTION TO THE POEM ON THE SOUL OF MAN.

1 The lights of heaven, which are the world's fair eyes, Look down into the world, the world to see; And as they turn or wander in the skies, Survey all things that on this centre be.

2 And yet the lights which in my tower do s.h.i.+ne, Mine eyes, which view all objects nigh and far, Look not into this little world of mine, Nor see my face, wherein they fixed are.

3 Since Nature fails us in no needful thing, Why want I means my inward self to see?

Which sight the knowledge of myself might bring, Which to true wisdom is the first degree.

4 That Power, which gave me eyes the world to view, To view myself, infused an inward light, Whereby my soul, as by a mirror true, Of her own form may take a perfect sight.

5 But as the sharpest eye discerneth nought, Except the sunbeams in the air do s.h.i.+ne; So the best soul, with her reflecting thought, Sees not herself without some light divine.

6 O light, which mak'st the light which makes the day!

Which sett'st the eye without, and mind within, Lighten my spirit with one clear heavenly ray, Which now to view itself doth first begin.

7 For her true form how can my spark discern, Which, dim by nature, art did never clear, When the great wits, of whom all skill we learn, Are ignorant both what she is, and where?