Dangerous to deal with, vain, of none avail;
Costly in keeping, past not worth two peason;1
Slipper in sliding, as is an eel's tail;

2

Hard to obtain, once gotten, not geason:
Jewel of jeopardy, that peril doth assail;
False and untrue, enticed oft to treason;
Enemy to youth, that most may I bewail;
Ah! bitter sweet, infecting as the poison,
Thou farest as fruit that with the frost is taken;
To-day ready ripe, to-morrow all to shaken.

A COMPLAINT BY NIGHT OF THE LOVER
NOT BELOVED.3

ALAS! so all things now do hold their peace!

Heaven and earth disturbed in no thing;
The beasts, the air, the birds their song do cease;
The nightès car the stars about doth bring.
Calm is the sea; the waves work less and less:
So am not I, whom love, alas! doth wring,
Bringing before my face the great increase
Of my desires, whereat I weep and sing,
In joy and woe, as in a doubtful ease.

4

For my sweet thoughts sometime do pleasure bring;
But by and by, the cause of my disease

Gives me a pang, that inwardly doth sting,
When that I think what grief it is again,

To live and lack the thing should rid my pain.

1 The early form of the plural peas, sometimes spelt pesen.

2 Rare, scarce; sometimes geson. Frequently used by the Elizabethan writers.

3 Dr. Nott traces this sonnet to Petrarch, Son. 131. It was closely imitated by Sackville in the Complaint of the Duke of Buckingham.

4 There is an apparent corruption in these lines, which cannot be satisfactorily removed by any change of punctuation.

HOW EACH THING, SAVE THE LOVER, IN SPRING, REVIVETH TO PLEASURE.

WHEN Windsor walls sustained

my

wearied arm;

My hand my chin, to ease my restless head; The pleasant plot revested green with warm; The blossomed boughs, with lusty Ver y-spread; The flowered meads, the wedded birds so late Mine eyes discover; and to my mind resort The jolly woes, the hateless, short debate, The rakehell' life, that 'longs to love's disport. Wherewith, alas! the heavy charge of care Heaped in my breast breaks forth, against my will In smoky sighs, that overcast the air.

My vapoured eyes such dreary tears distil,

The tender spring which quicken where they fall;
And I half bend to throw me down withal.

A VOW TO LOVE FAITHFULLY, HOWSOEVER HE BE REWARDED.2

ET me whereas the sun doth parch the green,

SET

Or where his beams do not dissolve the ice;

1 More properly rakel, rash, careless, reckless. Rakehell was used to designate a dissolute profligate fellow.

2 Translated from Petrarch. Puttenham (Art of English Poesie, p. 186, Ed. 1589,) says that this translation was made by Sir Thomas Wyatt. His criticism upon it is quaint enough. He instances it as an example of what he calls the figure of distribution,' by which, instead of stating a thing in a single proposition, it is amplified piecemeal; as, he that might say, a house was outrageously plucked down, will not be satisfied so to say, but rather will speake it in this sort; they first undermined the groundsills, they beate down the walls, they unfloored the lofts, they untiled it, and pulled down the roofe.' Applying this principle to the sonnet, he adds, that the whole of it might have been expressed in these two lines:

Set me wheresoe'er ye will,
I am, and will be, yours still!

In temperate heat, where he is felt and seen;
In presence prest of people, mad, or wise;'
Set me in high, or yet in low degree;

In longest night, or in the shortest day;"
In clearest sky, or where clouds thickest be;
In lusty youth, or when my hairs are gray:
Set me in heaven, in earth, or else in hell,
In hill, or dale, or in the foaming flood;
Thrall, or at large, alive whereso I dwell,
Sick, or in health, in evil fame or good,

Hers will I be; and only with this thought
Content myself, although my chance be nought.

COMPLAINT

THAT HIS LADY, AFTER SHE KNEW HIS LOVE, KEPT HER FACE ALWAYS HIDDEN FROM HIM.

I

NEVER saw my lady lay apart

Her cornet black, in cold nor yet in heat, Sith first she knew my grief was grown so great; Which other fancies driveth from my heart, That to myself I do the thought reserve, The which unwares did wound my woful breast; But on her face mine eyes might never rest. Yet since she knew I did her love and serve,

1 The line is obscure. Prest is generally employed in the sense of ready, or prepared to do a thing. Here it may possibly mean pressure -the pressure of a number of people.

2 As different seasons, or climates, are here obviously meant, and the longest day and shortest night describe the same season, Selden proposed, with reason, to read

The longest night, or in the longest day.

An alteration which clears up the sense, but does not improve the turn of expression.

3 A head-dress, so called from the horns or points which branched from it, with a veil or wimple attached. Petrarch has a sonnet, in which he expostulates with Laura for wearing a veil. Surrey imitates him throughout.

Her golden tresses clad alway with black,
Her smiling looks that hid thus evermore,
And that restrains which I desire so sore.
So doth this cornet govern me alack!

In summer, sun, in winter's breath, a frost;
Whereby the light of her fair looks I lost.

REQUEST TO HIS LOVE TO JOIN BOUNTY WITH BEAUTY.

TH

sown,

HE golden gift that Nature did thee give, To fasten friends, and feed them at thy will, With form and favour, taught me to believe, How thou art made to show her greatest skill, Whose hidden virtues are not so unknown, But lively dooms1 might gather at the first Where beauty so her perfect seed hath Of other graces follow needs there must. Now certes, Garret, since all this is true, That from above thy gifts are thus elect, Do not deface them then with fancies new; Nor change of minds, let not the mind infect: But mercy3 him thy friend that doth thee serve; Who seeks alway thine honour to preserve.

2

1 Judgments-alluding to persons of quick observation.

2 The name identifies the person to whom the sonnet was addressed. It appears that Garret was the appellation by which Geraldine was always called when she was attending on the princess. The Fitz geralds usually wrote their name Garret; and Geraldine designates her sister, Lady Margaret Fitzgerald, as Lady Margaret Garret in her will. In most of the editions the line reads, ' Now certes, Lady.'

·

3 It was not unusual to convert substantives into verbs. In this instance the expression appears to be an ellipsis.

SURREY.

5

PRISONED IN WINDSOR, HE RECOUNTETH HIS PLEASURE THERE PASSED.'

SO cruel prison how could betide, alas,

1

As proud Windsor, where I in lust and joy, With a Kinges son, my childish years did pass, In greater feast than Priam's sons of Troy." Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour. The large green courts, where we were wont to hove,3 With eyes cast up into the maiden's tower,* And easy sighs, such as folk draw in love."

It is

1 The date of this beautiful poem cannot be determined. generally supposed to refer to the imprisonment Surrey underwent in 1543, when he was condemned by the privy-council for having eaten meat in Lent. Dr. Nott conjectures that it was written in 1546, when he was committed to prison at Windsor for threatening Lord Hertford. All the circumstances sustain this conjecture.

sor.

2 These lines furnish the authority for the commonly received opinion that Surrey and the Duke of Richmond were educated together at WindDr. Nott, drawing his inferences from the jousts alluded to in the remainder of the poem, and interpreting the word 'childish' in the sense of 'childe,' as used to designate young persons of noble birth who had embraced the profession of arms, thinks that their intercourse at Windsor took place at a later period of their lives-a conjecture which the recollections called up in the poem fully justify. The longing eyes cast up to the Maiden's Tower, the easy sighs, and the favours tied on the helm in the tournament, are not amongst the memories of 'childish years,' in the modern acceptation of the word.

3 To linger, or hover, or draw near. The term is commonly applied to ships. There was an old dance called the hove-dance.

4 Not the donjon, as Dr. Nott observes, but that part of the castle where the ladies had their apartments. Surrey's expression makes the distinction sufficiently plain. Maiden's tower is not to be confounded with maiden-tower. Warton (Hist. of Poetry, iii. 13) has fallen into an error about the latter, which, he says, means the principal tower, of the greatest strength and defence, tracing it to the old French magne or mayne, great. The term maiden is applied to a tower or fortress that has never been taken, and is still used in that sense in military language. See Nares' Glossary. The mere fact of being the principal tower, or a tower of great strength, does not necessarily constitute a maiden tower.

5 This happy line is traced by Dr. Nott to Chaucer:

Not such sorrowful sighès as men make

For woe, or elles when that folk be sike,

But easy sighès, such as been to like.'-Troil. and Cres.