VIII.

TRUE SELF-SACRIFICE OF LOVE.

No longer mourn for me when I am dead

Than you

shall hear the surly, sullen bell

Give notice to the world that I am fled

From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not

The hand that writ it; for I love you so,

That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
Oh! if, I say, you look upon this verse,
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,
But let your love even with my life decay;
Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.*

*This divine sonnet has been noticed in the Introductory Essay, p. 77.

BEN JONSON.

TO THE KING'S HOUSEHOLD ON THEIR WITHHOLDING HIS
ALLOWANCE OF SACK.*

WHAT can the cause be, when the King hath given
His poet sack, the Household will not pay?
Are they so scanted in their store? or driven,
For want of knowing the poet, to say him nay?
Well, they should know him, would the King but grant
His poet leave to sing his Household true :
He'd frame such ditties of their store and want,

Would make the very Greencloth to look blue,
And rather wish, in their expense of sack,
So the allowance from the King to use,

As the old bard should no canary lack :

'T were better spare a butt, than spill his muse; For in the genius of a poet's verse

The King's fame lives. Go now, deny his tierce.†

*To which he was entitled as Poet Laureate.

†The tierce was not denied, but it is said to have been further withheld, till Ben wrote a more civil request. The misgovernment of all the Stuarts often caused their exchequers to run dry; and perhaps the poet offended higher persons than he suspected, by this amusing but confident remonstrance. One can imagine the momentary perplexity and confusion of the King-Charles the First-if the verses were shown him, between his regard for his Laureate's praises, and annoyance at his irritability.

WILLIAM DRUMMOND, OF HAWTHORNDEN.

I.

YOUTH UNEXPECTEDLY SMITTEN BY LOVE.

As the young fawn, when winter's gone away (Unto a sweeter season granting place),

More wanton grown by smiles of heaven's fair face,
Leaveth the silent woods at break of day,

And now on hills and now by brooks doth prey
On tender flowers, secure and solitar,*

Far from all cabins, and where shepherds are ;
Where his desire him guides, his foot doth stray;

He feareth not the dart, nor other arms,

Till he be shot into the noblest part

By cunning archer who in dark bush lies:

So innocent, not fearing coming harms,

Wandering was I that day when your fair eyes,

World-killing shafts, gave death-wounds to my heart.†

* Solitary, a Scotticism, from the French solitaire; that is to say, from the ordinary pronunciation of that word; — solitary itself having come from the older poetical pronunciation solitairě.

†This appears to have been one of the earliest productions of Drummond. It is translated from a sonnet of Bembo, which is printed with it in the edition of Drummond's poems published by the Maitland Club (Edinburgh, 1832); and it is there accompanied by two variations of itself, which look like poetical studies. One is in couplets, which he calls "freer sort of rhyme," — or in his older

northern spelling, "frier sort of rime." The other is " paraphrasticalie translated." The study seems to lie chiefly in the versification; and he is so bent on giving variety to the experiments, that the stricken deer is a "fawn" in the first effusion, a "stag" in the second, and a "hart" in the third. It thus appears that Drummond did not get his reputation as a versifier for nothing. The sonnet is very pleasing and graceful.

II.

SENSE OF THE FRAGILITY OF ALL THINGS AND OF THE

UNSEASONABLENESS OF PASSION IN LOVE, NO PRE-
VENTIVE OF LOVE OR POETRY.

I KNOW that all beneath the moon decays,
And what by mortals in this world is brought
In time's great periods shall return to naught;
That fairest states have fatal nights and days.
I know how all the Muse's heavenly lays,
With toil of sprite which are so dearly bought,
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought;
And that naught lighter is than airy praise.
I know frail beauty like the purple flower
To which one morn oft birth and death affords;
That love a jarring is of minds' accords,
Where sense and will invassall reason's power.

Know what I list, this all cannot me move,
But that, O me! I both must write and love.