Suffolk his axe did ply;
Beaumont and Willoughby
Bare them right doughtily,
Ferrers, and Fanhope
Upon Saint Crispin's day1
Fought was this noble fray;
Which fame did not delay

To England to carry :
O, when shall Englishmen
With such acts fill a pen,
Or England breed again
Such a King Harry?

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.

(1564-1593.)

MARLOWE ranks among the most eminent of our Elizabethan dramatists. He was the son of a shoemaker in Canterbury; but he obtained, probably through the patronage of a discerning friend, a good school education, and afterwards studied at Cambridge University. When he took his Master of Arts degree in 1587, he was already known as the writer of Tamburlaine the Great. Other plays followed; and for a time Marlowe and Shakespeare were rivals. This splendid rivalry and all it might have led to was, however, cut short in 1593, when poor Marlowe, still not thirty years of age, received a stab in a brawl in some inn at Deptford, and died from its effects. The Hero and Leander, one of the most luscious pieces of narrative verse in the language, was at the time lying unfinished; and Chapman completed it. That fragment, and the pastoral song contained in England's Helicon, to which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote a Reply, are all that we possess of Marlowe's non-dramatic verse.

FROM HERO AND LEANDER.

HERO.

On Hellespont, guilty of true love's blood,
In view and opposite two cities stood,

1 The Battle of Agincourt was fought on Oct. 25th, 1415.

Sea-borderers, disjoined by Neptune's might;
The one Abydos, the other Sestos hight.
At Sestos Hero dwelt: Hero the fair,
Whom young Apollo courted for her hair,
And offered as a dower his burning throne,
Where she should sit for men to gaze upon.
The outside of her garments were of lawn,
The lining purple silk, with gilt stars drawn ;
Her wide sleeves green, and bordered with a grove,
Where Venus in her naked glory strove
To please the careless and disdainful eyes
Of proud Adonis, that before her lies;
Her kirtle blue, whereon was many a stain
Made with the blood of wretched lovers slain.
Upon her head she ware a myrtle wreath,

From whence her veil reached to the ground beneath.
Her veil was artificial flowers and leaves,

Whose workmanship both man and beast deceives.
Many would praise the sweet smell as she passed,
When 'twas the odour which her breath forth cast;
And there for honey bees have sought in vain,
And, beat from thence, have lighted there again.
About her neck hung chains of pebble stone,
Which, lightened by her neck, like diamonds shone.
She ware no gloves; for neither sun nor wind
Would burn or parch her hands, but, to her mind,
Or warm or cool them, for they took delight
To play upon those hands, they were so white. . . .
Some say, for her the fairest Cupid pined,
And, looking in her face, was strooken blind.
But this is true; so like was one the other
As he imagined Hero was his mother,
And oftentimes into her bosom flew ;
About her naked neck his bare arms threw,
And laid his childish head upon her breast,
And, with still panting rock, there took his rest.
So lovely fair was Hero, Venus' nun,
As Nature wept, thinking she was undone,
Because she took more from her than she left,
And of such wondrous beauty her bereft :
Therefore, in sign her treasure suffered wrack,
Since Hero's time hath half the world been black.

A SONG.1

Come live with me, and be my love!
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, or hills and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountains yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair linèd slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs ;
And, if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love!

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning;
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love!

THE ANSWER.

By Sir Walter Raleigh.

If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love!

1 Marlowe's Song and Raleigh's Reply continued popular for two generations. They are mentioned by Izaak Walton (1593-1683) in his Complete Angler as follows:-"As I left this place and entered into the next field, a second pleasure entertained me: 'twas a handsome milk-maid: she cast away all care and sung like a nightingale. Her voice was good and the ditty fitted for it; it was that smooth song which was made by Kit Marlowe, now at least fifty years ago. And the milk-maid's mother sung an answer to it, which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days." Both are contained in England's Helicon, 1600.

Y

Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.1

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies,
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.

Thy belt of straw and ivy-buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.

But, could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

(1564-1616.)

THE so-called "Minor Poems" of Shakespeare, minor merely in the sense of quantity, are of sufficient merit to constitute him second only among our writers of non-dramatic verse. The Venus and Adonis, written possibly before he left Stratford-on-Avon to try his fortune in London, was not published until 1593, while London was still ablaze with the beauty of Spenser's Faerie Queene; and the Lucrece followed in 1594. Both works were at once crowned with the popular praise. Among the Idylls of the ancient Sicilians, one of the most exquisitely beautiful is Bion's Lament for the Death of Adonis, and this theme had a peculiar charm for the pastoral poets of the Middle Ages. Into the familiar story of the Roman Lucretia Shakespeare has

1 Love's spring, but sorrow's autumn.

woven some of his finest thinking. The Sonnets of Shakespeare represent him in the full maturity of manhood and at the height of his fame. They were written probably between the years 1595 and 1603, but were not published until 1609, when he had been already for some years living in dignified ease and retirement in his native town. That these Sonnets, or some of them, were, however, known in manuscript from the time when they were first written, may be inferred from the allusion of Francis Meres, a critic of poetry, who, writing in 1598, in the euphuistic style which Lyly had made popular, says of them ;-" As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare; witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugared Sonnets among his private friends, etc." Shakespeare's lyrics scattered through his plays are acknowledged to be the most perfect in the English language; and, although every line of them be familiar to our readers, any collection of verses would seem to us poor which did not contain at least some of them. Nor can the lyrics of our other poets be so fairly judged and enjoyed as by reading them side by side with these our highest standards.

FROM VENUS AND ADONIS.

VENUS EXCLAIMS ON DEATH FOR SLAYING ADONIS.

"Hard-favoured tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean,

Hateful divorce of love," thus chides she Death,— "Grim-grinning ghost, earth's worm, what dost thou mean

To stifle beauty and to steal his breath,

Who when he lived,1 his breath and beauty set

Gloss on the rose, smell to the violet?

"If he be dead,-O no, it cannot be,

Seeing his beauty, thou shouldst strike at it!
O yes, it may ! thou hast no eyes to see,

But hatefully at random dost thou hit.

Thy mark is feeble age; but thy false dart
Mistakes that aim, and cleaves an infant's heart.

1i.e. "Who living" (case absolute).