JOHN MITFORD.

AT GENOA, 1822.

RISE, Genoa, rise in beauty from the sea,
Old Doria's blood is flowing in thy veins !

Rise, peerless in thy beauty! what remains
Of thy old glory is enough for me.

Flow then, ye emerald waters, bright and free;
And breathe, ye orange groves, along her plains;
Ye fountains, sparkle through her marble fanes :
And hang aloft, thou rich and purple sky,
Hang up thy gorgeous canopy: thou Sun,
Shine on her marble palaces that gleam
Like silver in thy never-dying beam :
Think of the years of glory she has won;
She must not sink before her race is run,

Nor her long age of conquest seem a dream.

JOHN MITFORD.

AT DOVER CASTLE.

Look upward on yon desolated pile,

And as you mark its ruins lone and grey,
Mourn not, O mourn not for its long decay!
But see how gentle Nature, with a smile,
Sweet as a mother's, anxious to beguile

Her infant to her bosom, gone astray,
Calls on the ocean-gales from yonder bay

To breathe upon its mouldering towers; the while
The fox-glove, and the wild flower, o'er the walls
Drop silently their seeds; and sun, and rain,
And summer dews with fairy hands unchain
Each granite link; and then anon it falls,
Obedient to that voice, which once again

So tenderly her offspring lost recalls.

P

NOTES.

Sonnets by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, p. 1-2.] From his Songes and Sonnettes, 1557. In the 6th line of the second Sonnet, p. 2.

"In longest night, or in the shortest day,”

(which stands so in all the editions), Selden proposed to read" the longest day," that two distinct seasons might be described.

Sonnets by Sir Philip Sidney, p. 4-14.] From Astrophel and Stella, which was not printed till 1591, though its illustrious author died in 1586. The ed. I have used is that annexed to the Arcadia, 1598. These Sonnets-somewhat disfigured by conceits, but truly poetical, and characteristic of their author-I have placed earlier in the volume than the Sonnets of Watson and Raleigh; because there is every reason to believe that Sidney's works were handed about in manuscript long before they were given to the press.

Sonnet by Thomas Watson, p. 15.] Is the 26th "Passion" of the EKATOMIIAOIA, or Passionate Centurie of Love, n. d., but entered on the Stationers' Books, 1581. Wat

son's volume, perhaps, contains no sonnets (if pieces of 18 lines can be so termed) superior to the one I have selected :—and yet Steevens preferred them to Shakespeare's! For some account of the writings of Watson, who was an elegant classical scholar, see my note on Peele's Works, ii. 222, sec. ed. 1829. A production of Watson, not mentioned by any bibliographer, The Tears of Fancie, or loue disdained. In LX Sonnets, 1593, has been recently added to Mr. Heber's unrivalled collection of English Poetry.

Sonnet by Sir Walter Raleigh, p. 16.] Entitled A Vision upon this Conceipt of the Faery Queene, and signed W. R. is appended to the three first books of Spenser's immortal poem, 1590.

Sonnets by Samuel Daniel, p. 17-28.] From his Delia. The first ed. 1592, contains all these pieces, except the Sonnet at p. 21, which was subsequently added to the collection. I have followed the author's improved textWorks, Newly Augmented, 1602.

The Delia was, not undeservedly, popular in its day; but Daniel's claim to the approbation of posterity rests chiefly on some of his other productions, especially his moral epistles, which abound in original thought, expressed in language, as clear, simple, and vigorous, as can be found in the whole range of English poetry.

Sonnets by Michael Drayton, p. 29-33.] From his Idea, first printed, I believe, in 1593. I have used the earliest