LET me not to the marriage of true minds That looks on tempests and is never shaken; Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks As a decrepit father takes delight I make my love engrafted to this store: So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised, Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give, That I in thy abundance am sufficed, And by a part of all thy glory live. Look what is best, that best I wish in thee; This wish I have; then ten times happy me! THOSE lips, that Love's own hand did make, No longer mourn for me when I am dead, WHEN in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, SAY that thou didst forsake me for some fault, LET me confess that we two must be twain, [dear, ALAS, 'tis true, I have gone here and there, SIR WALTER RALEIGH. [Born, 1552. Died, 1618.] Ir is difficult exactly to estimate the poetical character of this great man, as many of the pieces that are ascribed to him have not been authenticated. Among these is the "Soul's Farewell," which possesses a fire of imagination that we would willingly ascribe to him; but his claim to it, as has been already mentioned, is exceedingly doubtful. The tradition of his having written it on the night before his execution, is highly interesting to the fancy, but, like many fine stories, it has the little defect of being untrue, as the poem was in existence more than twenty years before his death. It has accordingly been placed in this collection, with several other pieces to which his name has been conjecturally affixed, among the anonymous poetry of that period. Sir Walter was born at Hayes Farm, in Devonshire, and studied at Oxford. Leaving the university at seventeen, he fought for six years under the Protestant banners in France, and afterwards served a campaign in the Netherlands. He next distinguished himself in Ireland during the rebellion of 1580, under the lord deputy Lord Grey de Wilton, with whom his personal disputes eventually promoted his fortunes; for being heard in his own cause on returning to England, he won the favour of Elizabeth, who knighted him, and raised him to such honours as alarmed the jealousy of her favourite Leicester. In the mean time, as early as 1579, he had commenced his adventures with a view to colonize America-surveyed the territory now called Virginia, in 1584, and fitted out successive fleets in support of the infant colony. In the destruction of the Spanish armada, as well as in the expedition to Portugal in behalf of Don Antonio, he had his full share of action and glory; and though recalled, in 1592, from the appointment of general of the expedition against Panama, he must have made a princely fortune by the success of his fleet, which sailed upon that occasion, and returned with the richest prize that had ever been brought to England. The queen was about this period so indignant with him for an amour which he had with one of her maids of honour, that, though he married the lady, (she was the daughter of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton,) her majesty committed THE SILENT LOVER. PASSIONS are liken'd best to floods and streams, Wrong not, sweet mistress of my heart, With thinking that he feels no smart him, with his fair partner, to the Tower. The queen forgave him, however, at last, and rewarded his services with a grant of the manor of Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, where he built a magnificent seat. Raleigh's mind was not one that was destined to travel in the wheel-ruts of common prejudice. It was rumoured that he had carried the freedom of his philosophical speculation to an heretical height on many subjects; and his acceptance of the church lands of Sherborne, already mentioned, probably supplied additional motives to the clergy to swell the outery against his principles. He was accused (by the jesuits) of atheism—a charge which his own writings sufficiently refute. Whatever were his opinions, the public saved him the trouble of explaining them; and the queen, taking it for granted that they must be bad, gave him an open, and, no doubt, edifying reprimand. To console himself under these circumstances, he projected the conquest of Guiana, sailed thither in 1595, and having captured the city of San Joseph, returned and published an account of his voyage. In the following year he acted gallantly under the Earl of Essex at Cadiz, as well as in what was called the "Island Voyage."* On the latter occasion he failed of complete success only through the jealousy of the favourite. His letter to Cecil, in which he exhorted that statesman to the destruction of Essex, forms but too sad and notorious a blot in our hero's memory; yet even that offence will not reconcile us to behold the successor of Elizabeth robbing Raleigh of his estate to bestow it on the minion Carr; and on the grounds of a plot in which his participation was never proved, condemning to fifteen years of imprisonment the man who had enlarged the empire of his country, and the boundaries of human knowledge. James could estimate the wise, but shrunk from cordiality with the brave. He released Raleigh, from avaricious hopes about the mine of Guiana; and when disappointed in that object, sacrificed him to motives still baser than avarice. On the 29th of October, 1618, Raleigh perished on a scaffold, in Old Palace-yard, by a sentence originally iniquitous, and which his commission to Guiana had virtually revoked. Since if my plaints were not t' approve It comes not from defect of love, For not knowing that I sue to serve As all desire, but none deserve A place in her affection, A voyage that was aimed principally at the Spanish Plate fleets. I rather choose to want relief Than venture the revealing; Silence in love betrays more woe Then wrong not, dearest to my heart, He smarteth most who hides his smart, And sues for no compassion.* A NYMPH'S DISDAIN OF LOVE. And so think I, with a down down derry. When women knew no woe, Unborn was false Suspect; From wanton toys and fond affect Hey down a down, did Dian sing, &c. At length men used charms, Thus women welcomed woe, Hey down a down, did Dian sing, THE SHEPHERD'S DESCRIPTION OF LOVE. Ascribed to Sir Walter Raleigh in "England's Helicon." Melib. SHEPHERD, what's love? I pray thee tell. Faust. It is that fountain and that well Where pleasure and repentance dwell; M. Yet, what is love? I prithee say. It is December match'd with May, [This poem is attributed to Lord Pembroke,-but it has been ascribed with great probability to Sir Robert Ayton in a MS. and contemporary volume of Ayton's poems once in Mr. Heber's hands.-C.] M. Yet, what is love? good shepherd, sain. F. It is a sunshine mixt with rain; It is a toothache, or like pain; It is a game where none doth gain; M. Yet, shepherd, what is love, I pray? A pretty kind of sporting fray, Then nymphs take vantage while you may, M. And what is love, good shepherd, show? A prize that passeth to and fro; HIS LOVE ADMITS NO RIVAL. SHALL I, like a hermit, dwell, What care I how fair she be! To convert them to a braid, If she lay them out to take If she seem not chaste to me, No; she must be perfect snow, A VISION UPON "THE FAIRY QUEEN." METHOUGHT I saw the grave where Laura lay, Within that temple where the vestal flame Was wont to burn: and passing by that way To see that buried dust of living fame, Whose tomb fair Love and fairer Virtue kept, All suddenly I saw the Fairy Queen, At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept; And from thenceforth those Graces were not seen, For they this Queen attended; in whose stead Oblivion laid him down on Laura's hearse. Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed, And groans of buried ghosts the heavens did pierce, Where Homer's spright did tremble all for grief, And cursed th' access of that celestial thief. JOSHUA SYLVESTER, [Born, 1563. Died, 1618.] WHO in his day obtained the epithet of the Silvertongued, was a merchant adventurer, and died abroad, at Middleburgh, in 1618. He was a candidate, in the year 1597, for the office of secretary to a trading company at Stade; on which occasion the Earl of Essex seems to have taken a friendly interest in his fortunes. Though esteemed by the court of England, (on one occasion he signs himself the pensioner of Prince Henry,)* he is said to have been driven from home by the enmity which his satires excited. This seems very extraordinary, as there is nothing in his vague and dull declamations against vice that needed to have ruffled the most thin-skinned enemies-so TO RELIGION. STANZAS FROM "ALL IS NOT GOLD THAT GLITTERS." [He had a yearly pension of twenty pounds from Prince Henry. Owen the Epigrammatist had the same sum: and Drayton had ten.-C.] that his travels were probably made more from the hope of gain than the fear of persecution. He was an eminent linguist, and writes his dedications in several languages, but in his own he often fathoms the bathos, and brings up such lines as these to King James. So much, O king, thy sacred worth presume I on, His works are chiefly translations, including that of the "Divine Weeks and Works of Du Bartas." His claim to the poem of the "Soul's Errand," as has been already mentioned, is to be entirely set aside. Under thy sacred name, all over, The proud their pride, the false their fraud, Religion, erst so venerable, What art thou now but made a fable, A holy mask on Folly's brow, Sacred Religion, where art thou? Not in the church with Simony, SAMUEL DANIEL. [Born, 1562, Died, Oct. 1619.] SAMUEL DANIEL was the son of a music-master, and was born at Taunton, in Somersetshire. He was patronized and probably maintained at Oxford, by the noble family of Pembroke. At the age of twenty-three he translated Paulus Jovius's Discourse of Rare Inventions." He was afterwards tutor to the accomplished and spirited Lady Anne Clifford, daughter to the Earl of Cumberland, who raised a monument to his memory, on which she recorded that she had been his pupil. At the death of Spenser he furnished, as a RICHARD THE SECOND, THE MORNING BEFORE The latest editor of Jonson affirms the whole conduct of that great poet towards Daniel to have been perfectly honourable. Some small exception to this must be made, when we turn to the derision of Daniel's verses, which is pointed out by the editor himself, in Cynthia's Revels. Thou sitt'st at home safe by thy quiet fire, LOVE IN INFANCY. АH! I remember well (and how can I This was unworthy of Jonson, as the verses of Daniel at which he sneers are not contemptible, and as Daniel was confessedly an amiable man, who died "beloved, honoured, and lamented."-E. |