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A nymph no tongue, no heart, no eye, might praise, might wish, might see,

For life, for love, for form, more good, more worth, more fair than she;

Yea, such a one as such was none, save only she was such ;

Of Argentile, to say the most, were to be silent much.

I knew the lady very well, but worthless of such praise,

The neatress said, and muse I do a shepherd thus. should blaze

The coat of beauty; credit me, thy latter speech bewrays

Thy clownish shape a colour'd show ; but where

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Her loved I, wretch that I am, a recreant to be,

I loved her that hated love, but now I die for thee.

At Kirkland is my father's court, and Curan is my name,

In Edel's court sometime in pomp, till love controll'd the same;

But now-what now? dear heart, how now, what aileth thou to weep ?—

The damsel wept, and he was woe, and both did silence keep.

I grant, quoth she, it was too much, that you did love so much,

But whom your former could not move, your second love doth touch;

Thy twice-beloved Argentile submitteth her to thee,

And, for thy double love, presents herself a single fee ;

In passion, not in person, changed; and I, my lord, am she;—

Thus sweetly surfeiting in joy, and silent for a

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SIR JOHN HARRINGTON.

[Born, 1561? Died, 1612?]

A SPECIMEN of the poetry of Sir John Harrington's father has been already given in this volume, which is so polished and refined, as almost to warrant a suspicion that the editor of the Nuge Antiquæ got it from a more modern quarter. The elder Harrington was imprisoned in the Tower, under Queen Mary, for holding a correspondence with Elizabeth; on whose accession his fidelity was rewarded by her favour.

His son, the translator of Ariosto, was knighted on the field by the Earl of Essex, not much to the satisfaction of Elizabeth, who was sparing of such honours, and chose to confer them herself. He was created a knight of the Bath in the reign of James, and distinguished himself, to the violent offence of the high church party, by his zeal against the marriage of bishops.

FROM SIR JOHN HARRINGTON'S EPIGRAMS. OF A PRECISE TAILOR.

A TAILOR, thought a man of upright dealing-
True, but for lying-honest, but for stealing,
Did fall one day extremely sick by chance,
And on the sudden was in wond'rous trance;
The fiends of hell, mustering in fearful manner,
Of sundry colour'd silks display'd a banner
Which he had stolen, and wish'd, as they did tell,
That he might find it all one day in hell.
The man, affrighted with this apparition,
Upon recovery grew a great precisian :
He bought a Bible of the best translation,
And in his life he show'd great reformation;

He walked mannerly, he talked meekly,
He heard three lectures and two sermons weekly;
He vow'd to shun all company unruly,
And in his speech he used no oath ; but truly
And zealously to keep the sabbath's rest,
His meat for that day on the eve was drest;
And lest the custom which he had to steal
Might cause him sometimes to forget his zeal,
He gives his journeyman a special charge,
That if the stuff, allowance being large,
He found his fingers were to filch inclined,
Bid him to have the banner in his mind.

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Was born in 1581, and perished in the Tower of London, 1613, by a fate that is too well known. The compassion of the public for a man of worth, "whose spirit still walked unrevenged amongst them," together with the contrast of his ideal Wife with the Countess of Essex, who was his murderess, attached an interest and popularity to his poem, and made it pass through sixteen editions before the year 1653. His Characters, or Witty Descriptions of the Properties of sundry Persons, is a work of considerable merit; but unfortunately his prose, as well as his verse, has

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*

FROM SIR THOMAS OVERBURY'S POEM,
THE WIFE.

THEN may I trust her body with her mind,
And, thereupon secure, need never know
The pangs of jealousy and love doth find
More pain to doubt her false than find her so;
For patience is, of evils that are known,
The certain remedy; but doubt hath none.

And be that thought once stirr'd, 'twill never
die,
Nor will the grief more mild by custom prove,
Nor yet amendment can it satisfy;
The anguish more or less is as our love;
This misery doth from jealousy ensue,
That we may prove her false, but cannot true.

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Give me, next good, an understanding wife,
By nature wise, not learned by much art;
Some knowledge on her part will, all her life,
More scope of conversation impart ;
Besides her inborn virtue fortify;

They are most firmly good that best know why,

A passive understanding to conceive,
And judgment to discern, I wish to find;
Beyond that all as hazardous I leave;
Learning and pregnant wit, in womankind,
What it finds malleable (it) makes frail,
And doth not add more ballast, but more sail.

Books are a part of man's prerogative;
In formal ink they thoughts and voices hold,
That we to them our solitude may give,
And make time present travel that of old;
Our life fame pieceth longer at the end,
And books it farther backward do extend.

So fair at least let me imagine her ; That thought to me is truth. Opinion Cannot in matters of opinion err;

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WHEN forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed of small worth held ;
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,-
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days-
To say “within thine own deep sunken eyes,”
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise;
How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer "This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,"
Proving his beauty by succession thine:
This were to be new-made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

SONNET LIV.

OH! how much more doth Beauty beauteous seem,
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live;
The canker'd blooms have full as deep a dye,
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,

Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses;
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo'd, and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves-Sweet roses do not so,
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made;
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade my verse distils your truth.

SONNET CXVI.

LET me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove;
O no, it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark, [taken.
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error, and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

SONNET CXLV.

THOSE lips, that Love's own hand did make,
Breathed forth the sound that said "I hate,"
To me that languish for her sake.
But when she saw my woeful state,
Straight in her heart did mercy come,
Chiding that tongue that, ever sweet,

Was used in giving gentle doom;
And taught it thus anew to greet:
"I hate" she alter'd with an end
That follow'd it as gentle day
Doth follow night, who, like a fiend,
From heav'n to hell is flown away.
"I hate"-from hate away she threw,
And saved my life, saying-"not you."

SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

[Born, 1552. Died, 1618.]

It is difficult exactly to estimate the poetical character of this great man, as many of the pieces that are ascribed to him have not been authenticated. Among these is the "Soul's Farewell," which possesses a fire of imagination that we would willingly ascribe to him; but his claim to it, as has been already mentioned, is exceedingly doubtful. The tradition of his having written it on the night before his execution, is highly interesting to the fancy, but, like many fine stories, it has the little defect of being untrue, as the poem was in existence more than twenty years before his death. It has accordingly been placed in this collection, with several other pieces to which his name has been conjecturally affixed, among the anonymous poetry of that period.

Sir Walter was born at Hayes Farm, in Devonshire, and studied at Oxford. Leaving the university at seventeen, he fought for six years under the Protestant banners in France, and afterwards served a campaign in the Netherlands. He next distinguished himself in Ireland during the rebellion of 1580, under the lord deputy Lord Grey de Wilton, with whom his personal disputes eventually promoted his fortunes; for being heard in his own cause on returning to England, he won the favour of Elizabeth, who knighted him, and raised him to such honours as alarmed the jealousy of her favourite Lei

cester.

In the mean time, as early as 1579, he had commenced his adventures with a view to colonize America-surveyed the territory now called Virginia, in 1584, and fitted out successive fleets in support of the infant colony. In the destruction of the Spanish armada, as well as in the expedition to Portugal in behalf of Don Antonio, he had his full share of action and glory; and though recalled, in 1592, from the appointment of general of the expedition against Panama, he must have made a princely fortune by the success of his fleet, which sailed upon that occasion, and returned with the richest prize that had ever been brought to England. The queen was about

this period so indignant with him for an amour which he had with one of her maids of honour, that, though he married the lady (she was the daughter of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton), her majesty committed him, with his fair partner, to the Tower. The queen forgave him, however, at last, and rewarded his services with a grant of the manor of Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, where he built a magnificent seat. Raleigh's mind was not one that was destined to travel in the wheel-ruts of common prejudice. It was rumoured that he had carried the freedom of his philosophical speculation to an heretical height on many subjects; and his acceptance of the church lands of Sherborne, already mentioned, probably supplied additional motives to the clergy to swell the outcry against his principles. He was accused (by the jesuits) of atheism—a charge which his own writings sufficiently refute. Whatever were his opinions, the public saved him the trouble of explaining them; and the queen, taking it for granted that they must be bad, gave him an open, and, no doubt, edifying reprimand. To console himself under these circumstances, he projected the conquest of Guiana, sailed thither in 1595, and having captured the city of San Joseph, returned and published an account of his voyage. In the following year he acted gallantly under the Earl of Essex at Cadiz, as well as in what was called the "Island Voyage *" On the latter occasion he failed of complete success only through the jealousy of the favourite.

His letter to Cecil, in which he exhorted that statesman to the destruction of Essex, forms but too sad and notorious a blot in our hero's memory; yet even that offence will not reconcile us to behold the successor of Elizabeth robbing Raleigh of his estate to bestow it on the minion Carr; and on the grounds of a plot in which his participation was never proved, condemning to fifteen years of imprisonment the man who had enlarged the empire of his country, and the boundaries of * A voyage that was aimed principally at the Spanish Plate fleets.

human knowledge. James could estimate the wise, but shrunk from cordiality with the brave. He released Raleigh, from avaricious hopes about the mine of Guiana; and when disappointed in that object, sacrificed him to motives still baser

than avarice. On the 29th of October, 1618, Raleigh perished on a scaffold, in Old Palaceyard, by a sentence originally iniquitous, and which his commission to Guiana had virtually revoked.

1

F

THE SILENT LOVER.

PASSIONS are liken'd best to floods and streams,
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb;
So when affection yields discourse, it seems
The bottom is but shallow whence they come ;
They that are rich in words must needs discover
They are but poor in that which makes a lover.

Wrong not, sweet mistress of my heart,
The merit of true passion,

With thinking that he feels no smart
That sues for no compassion.

Since if my plaints were not t' approve
The conquest of thy beauty,

It comes not from defect of love,
But fear t' exceed my duty.

For not knowing that I sue to serve

A saint of such perfection

As all desire, but none deserve
A place in her affection,

I rather chuse to want relief
Than venture the revealing;
Where glory recommends the grief,
Despair disdains the healing.

Silence in love betrays more woe
Than words, though ne'er so witty;
A beggar that is dumb, you know,
May challenge double pity.

Then wrong not, dearest to my heart,
My love for secret passion;

He smarteth most who hides his smart,
And sues for no compassion *.

Unborn was false Suspect ;
No thought of Jealousy;
From wanton toys and fond affect
The virgin's life was free;

Hey down a down, did Dian sing, &c.

At length men used charms,
To which what maids gave ear,
Embracing gladly endless harms,
Anon enthralled were.

Thus women welcomed woe,
Disguised in name of love;
A jealous hell, a painted show,
So shall they find that prove.

Hey down a down, did Dian sing,
Amongst her virgins sitting,
Than love there is no vainer thing,
For maidens most unfitting.

A VISION UPON THE FAIRY QUEEN.'

METHOUGHT I saw the grave where Laura lay,
Within that temple where the vestal flame
Was wont to burn: and passing by that way
To see that buried dust of living fame,
Whose tomb fair Love and fairer Virtue kept,
All suddenly I saw the Fairy Queen,

At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept;
And from thenceforth those Graces were not seen,
For they this Queen attended; in whose stead
Oblivion laid him down on Laura's hearse.
Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed,
And groans of buried ghosts the heavens did pierce,
Where Homer's spright did tremble all for grief,
And cursed th' access of that celestial thief.

A NYMPH'S DISDAIN OF LOVE.

HEY down a down, did Dian sing,
Amongst her virgins sitting,
Than love there is no vainer thing
For maidens most unfitting:

And so think I, with a down down derry.

When women knew no woe,
But liv'd themselves to please,
Men's feigning guiles they did not know,
The ground of their disease.

[This poem is attributed to Lord Pembroke,--but it has been ascribed with great probability to Sir Robert Ayton in a MS. and contemporary volume of Ayton's poems once in Mr. Heber's hands.]

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THE SHEPHERD'S DESCRIPTION OF LOVE. Ascribed to Sir W. Raleigh in England's Helicon.' Melib. SHEPHERD, what's love? I pray thee tell. Faust. It is that fountain and that well

Where pleasure and repentance dwell;
It is, perhaps, that sauncing bell
That tolls all into heav'n or hell,
And this is love as I heard tell.
M. Yet, what is love? I prithee say.
F. It is a work on holiday;

It is December match'd with May,
When lusty blood 's in fresh array,
And this is love as I hear say.

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