"They laid her on a couch soft, And when she more of strength caught, Her arms both forth she straught, Held up her hand, and piteously She spake, and said, Ah! where am I? Flack-flutter. b Couth-known. e Straught-stretched. "The treason and the time is shape, Thou shalt be murder'd in this stede. Which hid was there on scomerfare, Men start out, and weren ware Of this felon and he to go, • Stound-moment. b Shrihte-shrieked. d Tho-then. She goeth her down, there as he lay, And when she saw that he so ferde", She spake, and bade he should deme Which toward him she could stered, He smote: and thus when she him found And if ye wist what I am, And out of what lineage I came, Ye would not be so salvage. With that he sober'th his courage, And put away his heavy cheer. But of them two a man may lere But all was known ere that they went ; I not where that I should him seek: And never durst make her moan And he then took her in his arm; So goeth the world, now woe, now weal." "With worthy knights environed, The king himself hath abandoned Into the temple in good intent. The door is up, and in he went, Where as, with great devotion Of holy contemplation Within his heart, he made his shrift, He off'reth with great reverence; Of them that stooden all about She stretch'd unto him all at once, Ah, blessed be the high soondes, That I may see mine husband, Which whilom he and I were one." * * "Attaint they weren by the law, And doomed for to hang, and draw, And brent, and with the wind to blow, That all the world it might know. And upon this condition, The doom in execution Was put anon without fail. And every man hath great marvel Which heard tellen of this chance, And thanketh God's purveyance, Which doth mercy forth with justice. Slain is the murd'rer, and murd'ress, Through very truth of righteousness; And through mercy safe is simplessed Of her, whom mercy preserveth, Thus hath he well, that well deserveth." NOTICE. THE present Edition of the Poems of Shakspere comprises the 'VENUS AND ADONIS,' 'THE RAPE OF LUCRECE,' THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM,' 'THE LOVER'S COMPLAINT,' and the SONNETS. The Songs from the Plays of Shakspere are necessarily excluded from this Edition, it being sufficient for the reader to make a reference to the Dramas to which they respectively belong. "IF the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather." These are the words which, in relation to the 'Venus and Adonis,' Shakspere addressed, in 1593, to the Earl of Southampton. Are we to accept them literally? Was the Venus and Adonis' the first production of Shakspere's imagination? Or did he put out of his view those dramatic performances which he had then unquestionably produced, in deference to the critical opinions which regarded plays as works not belonging to "invention?" We think that he used the words in a literal sense. We regard the Venus and Adonis' as the production of a very young man, improved, perhaps, consider ably in the interval between its first composition and its publication, but distinguished by peculiarities which belong to the wild luxuriance of youthful power, such power, however, as few besides Shakspere have ever possessed. A deep thinker and eloquent writer, Julius Charles Hare, thus describes "the spirit of self-sacrifice," as applied to poetry: "The might of the imagination is manifested by its launching forth from the petty creek, where the accidents of birth moored it, into the wide ocean of being,—by its going abroad into the world around, passing into whatever it meets with, animating it, and becoming one with it. This complete union and identification of the poet with his poem,-this suppression of his own individual insulated consciousness, with its narrowness of thought and pettiness of feeling,—is what we admire in the great masters of that which for this reason we justly call classical poetry, as representing that which is symbolical and universal, not that which is merely occasional and peculiar. This gives them that majestic calmness which still breathes upon us from the statues of their gods. This invests their works with that lucid transparent atmosphere wherein every form stands out in perfect definiteness and distinctness, only beautified by the distance which idealises it. This has delivered those works from the casualties of time and space, and has lifted them up like stars into the pure firmament of thought, so that they do not shine on one spot alone, nor fade like earthly flowers, but journey on from clime to clime, shedding the light of beauty on generation after generation. The same quality, amounting to a total extinction of his own selfish being, so that his spirit became a mighty organ through which Nature gave utterance to the full diapason of her notes, is what we wonder at in our own great dramatist, and is the groundwork of all his other powers: for it is only when purged of selfishness that the intellect becomes fitted for receiving the inspirations of genius." a What Mr. Hare so justly considers as the great moving principle of "classical poetry," what he further notes as the pre-eminent characteristic of "our own great dramatist," is abundantly found in that great dramatist's earliest work. Coleridge was the first to point out this pervading quality in the 'Venus and Adonis;' and he has done this so admirably, that it would be profanation were we to attempt to elucidate the point in any other than his own words :— "It is throughout as if a superior spirit, more intuitive, more intimately conscious, even than the characters themselves, not only of every outward look and act, but of the flux and reflux of the mind in all its subtlest thoughts and feelings, were placing the whole before our view; himself meanwhile unparticipating in the passions, and actuated only by that pleasurable excitement a The Victory of Faith; and other Sermons.' By Julius Charles Hare, M.A. 1840. P. 277. |