SIGH NO MORE, LADIES. [From Much Ado about Nothing.] Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Sing no more ditties, sing no moe, A LOVER'S LAMENT. [From Twelfth Night.] Come away, come away, death, And in sad cypress let me be laid; Fly away, fly away, breath; I am slain by a fair cruel maid. My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, O, prepare it! My part of death, no one so true Did share it. Not a flower, not a flower sweet, On my black coffin let there be strown; Not a friend, not a friend greet My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown: A thousand thousand sighs to save, Lay me, O, where Sad true lover never find my grave, ARIEL'S SONG. [From The Tempest.] Where the bee sucks, there suck I: There I couch when owls do cry. After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily, shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. A SEA DIRGE. [From The Tempest.] Full fathom five thy father lies; But doth suffer a sea-change Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong. Hark! now I hear them,-Ding-dong, bell. IN THE GREENWOOD. [From As You Like It.] Under the greenwood tree Unto the sweet bird's throat, No enemy But winter and rough weather. Who doth ambition shun And pleased with what he gets, No enemy But winter and rough weather. VOL. I. WINTER. [From Love's Labour's Lost.] When icicles hang by the wall And Dick the shepherd blows his nail And milk comes frozen home in pail, Tu-who, a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. When all aloud the wind doth blow When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Tu-who, a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. SONG OF AUTOLYCUS. [From The Winter's Tale.] When daffodils begin to peer, With heigh! the doxy over the dale, The white sheet bleaching on the hedge, With heigh! the sweet birds, O, how they sing! Doth set my pugging tooth on edge; For a quart of ale is a dish for a king. The lark, that tirra-lyra chants, With heigh! with heigh! the thrush and the jay, But shall I go mourn for that, my dear? If tinkers may have leave to live, Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way, SAMUEL DANIEL. -The Com [SAMUEL DANIEL was born near Taunton in 1562. He died at Beckington in the county of his birth in 1619. His chief works were— plaint of Rosamond, 1594; Cleopatra, 1594; Epistles to Various Great Personages, 1601; The Civil Wars, 1604; Philotas, 1611; Hymen's Triumph, 1623; A Defence of Rhyme, 1611.] There are few poets, not of the first class, to whose merits a stronger consensus of weighty opinion can be produced than that which attests the value of Samuel Daniel's work. His contemporaries, while expressing some doubts as to his choice of subjects, speak of him as 'well-languaged,'' sharp-conceited,' and as a master of pure English. The critics of the eighteenth century were surprised to find in him so little that they could deem obsolete or in bad taste. The more catholic censorship of Hazlitt, Lamb, and Coleridge was delighted with his extraordinary felicity of expression, and the simple grace of his imagery and phrase. There can be no doubt however that his choice of historical subjects for his poetry was unfortunate for his fame. The sentence of Joubert is not likely to be reversed: 'Il faut que son sujet offre au génie du poëte une espèce de lieu fantastique qu'il puisse étendre et resserrer à volonté. Un lieu trop réel, une population trop historique emprisonnent l'esprit et en gênent les mouvements.' This holds true of all the Elizabethan historians; and it holds truer perhaps of Daniel than of Drayton. For the genius of the former had a tender and delicate quality about it which was least of all applicable to such work, and seems to have lacked altogether the faculty of narrative. Daniel's one qualification for the task was his power of dignified moral reflection, in which, as the following extracts will show, he has hardly a superior. This however, though an admirable adjunct to the other qualities required for the task, could by no means compensate for their absence; and the result is that the History of the Civil Wars is with difficulty readable. The Complaint of Rosamond is better. |