Produced by David Starner, Taavi Kalju and the Online
by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)

MINOR POEMS
OF
MICHAEL DRAYTON

CHOSEN AND EDITED BY
CYRIL BRETT

OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1907

Henry Frowde, M.A.
Publisher to the University of Oxford
London, Edinburgh, New York
and Toronto

CONTENTS

                                              PAGE

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE                             iv

INTRODUCTION                                     v

SONNETS (1594)                                   1

SONNETS (1599)                                  28

SONNETS (1602)                                  42

SONNETS (1605)                                  47

SONNETS (1619)                                  51

ODES (1619)                                     56

ODES (1606)                                     85

ELEGIES (1627)                                  88

NIMPHIDIA (1627)                               124

THE QUEST OF CYNTHIA                           144

THE SHEPARDS SIRENA                            151

THE MUSES ELIZIUM (1630)                       161

SONGS FROM THE SHEPHERD'S GARLAND (1593)       231

SONGS FROM THE SHEPHERD'S GARLAND (1605)       240

SONGS FROM THE SHEPHERD'S GARLAND (1606)       242

APPENDIX                                       248

NOTES                                          257

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF DRAYTON'S LIFE AND WORKS

1563       Drayton born at Hartshill, Warwickshire.

1572?      Drayton a page in the house of Sir Henry Goodere, at
                  Polesworth.

c. 1574    Anne Goodere born?

Feb. 1591  Drayton in London. _Harmony of Church_.

1593       _Idea, the Shepherd's Garland_. _Legend of Peirs Gaveston_.

1594       _Ideas Mirrour_. _Matilda_. Lucy Harrington becomes Countess
                  of Bedford.

1595       Sir Henry Goodere the elder dies. _Endimion and Phoebe_,
                  dedicated to Lucy Bedford.

1595-6     Anne Goodere married to Sir Henry Rainsford.

1596       _Mortimeriados_. _Legends of Robert, Matilda, and Gaveston_.

1597       _England's Heroical Epistles_.

1598       Drayton already at work on the _Polyolbion_.

1599       _Epistles_ and _Idea_ sonnets, new edition. (Date of Portrait
                  of Drayton in National Portrait Gallery.)

1600       _Sir John Oldcastle_.

1602       New edition of _Epistles_ and _Idea_.

1603       Drayton made an Esquire of the Bath, to Sir Walter Aston.
                  _To the Maiestie of King James_. _Barons' Wars_.

1604       _The Owle_. _A Pean Triumphall_. _Moyses in a Map of his
                  Miracles_.

1605       First collected edition of _Poems_. Another edition of
                  _Idea_ and _Epistles_.

1606       _Poemes Lyrick and Pastorall_. _Odes_. _Eglogs_.
                  _The Man in the Moone_.

1607       _Legend of Great Cromwell_.

1608       Reprint of Collected Poems.

1609       Another edition of _Cromwell_.

1610       Reprint of Collected Poems.

1613       Reprint of Collected Poems. First Part of _Polyolbion_.

1618       Two _Elegies_ in FitzGeoffrey's _Satyrs and Epigrames_.

1619       Collected Folio edition of Poems.

1620       Second edition of _Elegies_, and reprint of 1619 Poems.

1622       _Polyolbion_ complete.

1627       _Battle of Agincourt_, _Nymphidia_, &c.

1630       _Muses Elizium_. _Noah's Floud_. _Moses his Birth and
                  Miracles_. _David and Goliah_.

1631       Second edition of 1627 folio. Drayton dies towards the end
                  of the year.

1636       Posthumous poem appeared in _Annalia Dubrensia_.

1637       _Poems_.

INTRODUCTION

Michael Drayton was born in 1563, at Hartshill, near Atherstone, in
Warwickshire, where a cottage, said to have been his, is still shown. He
early became a page to Sir Henry Goodere, at Polesworth Hall: his own
words give the best picture of his early years here.[1] His education
would seem to have been good, but ordinary; and it is very doubtful if
he ever went to a university.[2] Besides the authors mentioned in the
Epistle to Henry Reynolds, he was certainly familiar with Ovid and
Horace, and possibly with Catullus: while there seems no reason to doubt
that he read Greek, though it is quite true that his references to Greek
authors do not prove any first-hand acquaintance. He understood French,
and read Rabelais and the French sonneteers, and he seems to have been
acquainted with Italian.[3] His knowledge of English literature was
wide, and his judgement good: but his chief bent lay towards the
history, legendary and otherwise, of his native country, and his vast
stores of learning on this subject bore fruit in the _Polyolbion_.

While still at Polesworth, Drayton fell in love with his patron's
younger daughter, Anne;[4] and, though she married, in 1596, Sir Henry
Rainsford of Clifford, Drayton continued his devotion to her for many
years, and also became an intimate friend of her husband's, writing a
sincere elegy on his death.[5] About February, 1591, Drayton paid a
visit to London, and published his first work, the _Harmony of the
Church_, a series of paraphrases from the Old Testament, in
fourteen-syllabled verse of no particular vigour or grace. This book was
immediately suppressed by order of Archbishop Whitgift, possibly because
it was supposed to savour of Puritanism.[6] The author, however,
published another edition in 1610; indeed, he seems to have had a
fondness for this style of work; for in 1604 he published a dull poem,
_Moyses in a Map of his Miracles_, re-issued in 1630 as _Moses his Birth
and Miracles_. Accompanying this piece, in 1630, were two other 'Divine
poems': _Noah's Floud_, and _David and Goliath_. _Noah's Floud_ is, in
part, one of Drayton's happiest attempts at the catalogue style of
bestiary; and Mr. Elton finds in it some foreshadowing of the manner of
_Paradise Lost_. But, as a whole, Drayton's attempts in this direction
deserve the oblivion into which they, in common with the similar
productions of other authors, have fallen. In the dedication and preface
to the _Harmony of the Church_ are some of the few traces of Euphuism
shown in Drayton's work; passages in the _Heroical Epistles_ also occur
to the mind.[7] He was always averse to affectation, literary or
otherwise, and in Elegy viij deliberately condemns Lyly's fantastic
style.

Probably before Drayton went up to London, Sir Henry Goodere saw that he
would stand in need of a patron more powerful than the master of
Polesworth, and introduced him to the Earl and Countess of Bedford.
Those who believe[8] Drayton to have been a Pope in petty spite,
identify the 'Idea' of his earlier poems with Lucy, Countess of Bedford;
though they are forced to acknowledge as self-evident that the 'Idea' of
his later work is Anne, Lady Rainsford. They then proceed to say that
Drayton, after consistently honouring the Countess in his verse for
twelve years, abruptly transferred his allegiance, not forgetting to
heap foul abuse on his former patroness, out of pique at some temporary
withdrawal of favour. Not only is this directly contrary to all we know
and can infer of Drayton's character, but Mr. Elton has decisively
disproved it by a summary of bibliographical and other evidence. Into
the question it is here unnecessary to enter, and it has been mentioned
only because it alone, of the many Drayton-controversies, has cast any
slur on the poet's reputation.

In 1593, Drayton published _Idea, the Shepherds Garland_, in nine
Eclogues; in 1606 he added a tenth, the best of all, to the new edition,
and rearranged the order, so that the new eclogue became the ninth. In
these Pastorals, while following the _Shepherds Calendar_ in many ways,
he already displays something of the sturdy independence which
characterized him through life. He abandons Spenser's quasi-rustic
dialect, and, while keeping to most of the pastoral conventions, such as
the singing-match and threnody, he contrives to introduce something of a
more natural and homely strain. He keeps the political allusions,
notably in the Eclogue containing the song in praise of _Beta_, who is,
of course, Queen Elizabeth. But an over-bold remark in the last line of
that song was struck out in 1606; and the new eclogue has no political
reference. He is not ashamed to allude directly to Spenser; and indeed
his direct debts are limited to a few scattered phrases, as in the
_Ballad_ of _Dowsabel_. Almost to the end of his literary career,
Drayton mentions Spenser with reverence and praise.[9]

It is in the songs interspersed in the Eclogues that Drayton's best work
at this time is to be found: already his metrical versatility is
discernible; for though he doubtless remembered the many varieties of
metre employed by Spenser in the _Calendar_, his verses already bear a
stamp of their own. The long but impetuous lines, such as 'Trim up her
golden tresses with Apollo's sacred tree', afford a striking contrast to
the archaic romance-metre, derived from _Sir Thopas_ and its fellows,
which appears in _Dowsabel_, and it again to the melancholy, murmuring
cadences of the lament for Elphin. It must, however, be confessed that
certain of the songs in the 1593 edition were full of recondite conceits
and laboured antitheses, and were rightly struck out, to be replaced by
lovelier poems, in the edition of 1606. The song to Beta was printed in
_Englands Helicon_, 1600; here, for the first time, appeared the song of
_Dead Love_, and for the only time, _Rowlands Madrigal_. In these songs,
Drayton offends least in grammar, always a weak point with him; in the
body of the Eclogues, in the earlier Sonnets, in the Odes, occur the
most extraordinary and perplexing inversions. Quite the most striking
feature of the Eclogues, especially in their later form, is their bold
attempt at greater realism, at a breaking-away from the conventional
images and scenery.

Having paid his tribute to one poetic fashion, Drayton in 1594 fell in
with the prevailing craze for sonneteering, and published _Ideas
Mirrour_, a series of fifty-one 'amours' or sonnets, with two prefatory
poems, one by Drayton and one by an unknown, signing himself _Gorbo il
fidele_. The title of these poems Drayton possibly borrowed from the
French sonneteer, de Pontoux: in their style much recollection of
Sidney, Constable, and Daniel is traceable. They are ostensibly
addressed to his mistress, and some of them are genuine in feeling; but
many are merely imitative exercises in conceit; some, apparently, trials
in metre. These amours were again printed, with the title of 'sonnets',
in _1599_[10], 1600, _1602_, 1603, _1605_, 1608, 1610, 1613, _1619_, and
1631, during the poet's lifetime. It is needless here to discuss whether
Drayton were the 'rival poet' to Shakespeare, whether these sonnets were
really addressed to a man, or merely to the ideal Platonic beauty; for
those who are interested in these points, I subjoin references to the
sonnets which touch upon them.[11] From the prentice-work evident in
many of the _Amours_, it would seem that certain of them are among
Drayton's earliest poems; but others show a craftsman not meanly
advanced in his art. Nevertheless, with few exceptions, this first
'bundle of sonnets' consists rather of trials of skill, bubbles of the
mind; most of his sonnets which strike the reader as touched or
penetrated with genuine passion belong to the editions from 1599
onwards; implying that his love for Anne Goodere, if at all represented
in these poems, grew with his years, for the 'love-parting' is first
found in the edition of 1619. But for us the question should not be, are
these sonnets genuine representations of the personal feeling of the
poet? but rather, how far do they arouse or echo in us as individuals
the universal passion? There are at least some of Drayton's sonnets
which possess a direct, instant, and universal appeal, by reason of
their simple force and straightforward ring; and not in virtue of any
subtle charm of sound and rhythm, or overmastering splendour of diction
or thought. Ornament vanishes, and soberness and simplicity increase, as
we proceed in the editions of the sonnets. Drayton's chief attempt in
the jewelled or ornamental style appeared in 1595, with the title of
_Endimion and Phoebe_, and was, in a sense, an imitation of Marlowe's
_Hero and Leander_. _Hero and Leander_ is, as Swinburne says, a shrine
of Parian marble, illumined from within by a clear flame of passion;
while _Endimion and Phoebe_ is rather a curiously wrought tapestry, such
as that in Mortimer's Tower, woven in splendid and harmonious colours,
wherein, however, the figures attain no clearness or subtlety of
outline, and move in semi-conventional scenery. It is, none the less,
graceful and impressive, and of a like musical fluency with other poems
of its class, such as _Venus and Adonis_, or _Salmacis and
Hermaphrodius_. Parts of it were re-set and spoilt in a 1606 publication
of Drayton's, called _The Man in the Moone_.

In 1593 and 1594 Drayton also published his earliest pieces on the
mediaeval theme of the 'Falls of the Illustrious'; they were _Peirs
Gavesson_ and _Matilda the faire and chaste daughter of the Lord Robert
Fitzwater_. Here Drayton followed in the track of Boccaccio, Lydgate,
and the _Mirrour for Magistrates_, walking in the way which Chaucer had
derided in his _Monkes Tale_: and with only too great fidelity does
Drayton adapt himself to the dullnesses of his model: fine rhetoric is
not altogether wanting, and there is, of course, the consciousness that
these subjects deal with the history of his beloved country, but neither
these, nor _Robert, Duke of Normandy_ (1596), nor _Great Cromwell, Earl
of Essex_ (1607 and 1609), nor the _Miseries of Margaret_ (1627) can
escape the charge of tediousness.[12] _England's Heroical Epistles_ were
first published in 1597, and other editions, of 1598, 1599, and 1602,
contain new epistles. These are Drayton's first attempt to strike out a
new and original vein of English poetry: they are a series of letters,
modelled on Ovid's _Heroides_,[13] addressed by various pairs of lovers,
famous in English history, to each other, and arranged in chronological
order, from Henry II and Rosamond to Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guilford
Dudley. They are, in a sense, the most important of Drayton's writings,
and they have certainly been the most popular, up to the early
nineteenth century. In these poems Drayton foreshadowed, and probably
inspired, the smooth style of Fairfax, Waller, and Dryden. The metre,
the grammar, and the thought, are all perfectly easy to follow, even
though he employs many of the Ovidian 'turns' and 'clenches'. A certain
attempt at realization of the different characters is observable, but
the poems are fine rhetorical exercises rather than realizations of the
dramatic and passionate possibilities of their themes. In 1596, Drayton,
as we have seen, published the _Mortimeriados_, a kind of epic, with
Mortimer as its hero, of the wars between King Edward II and the
Barons.[14] It was written in the seven-line stanza of Chaucer's
_Troilus and Cressida_ and Spenser's _Hymns_. On its republication in
1603, with the title of the _Barons' Wars_, the metre was changed to
_ottava rima_, and Drayton showed, in an excellent preface, that he
fully appreciated the principles and the subtleties of the metrical art.
While possessing many fine passages, the _Barons' Wars_ is somewhat
dull, lacking much of the poetry of the older version; and does not
escape from Drayton's own criticism of Daniel's Chronicle Poems: 'too
much historian in verse, ... His rhymes were smooth, his metres well did
close, But yet his manner better fitted prose'.[15] The description of
Mortimer's Tower in the sixth book recalls the ornate style of _Endimion
and Phoebe_, while the fifth book, describing the miseries of King
Edward, is the most moving and dramatic. But there is a general
lifelessness and lack of movement for which these purple passages barely
atone. The cause of the production of so many chronicle poems about this
time has been supposed[16] to be the desire of showing the horrors of
civil war, at a time when the queen was growing old, and no successor
had, as it seemed, been accepted. Also they were a kind of parallel to
the Chronicle Play; and Drayton, in any case even if we grant him to
have been influenced by the example of Daniel, never needed much
incentive to treat a national theme.

About this time, we find Drayton writing for the stage. It seems
unnecessary here to discuss whether the writing of plays is evidence of
Drayton's poverty, or his versatility;[17] but the fact remains that he
had a hand in the production of about twenty. Of these, the only one
which certainly survives is _The first part of the true and honorable
historie, of the life of Sir John Oldcastle, the good Lord Cobham,_ &c.
It is practically impossible to distinguish Drayton's share in this
curious play, and it does not, therefore, materially assist the
elucidation of the question whether he had any dramatic feeling or
skill. It can be safely affirmed that the dramatic instinct was nor
uppermost in his mind; he was a Seneca rather than a Euripides: but to
deny him all dramatic idea, as does Dr. Whitaker, is too severe. There
is decided, if slender, dramatic skill and feeling in certain of the
_Nymphals_. Drayton's persons are usually, it must be said, rather
figures in a tableau, or series of tableaux; but in the second and
seventh _Nymphals_, and occasionally in the tenth, there is real
dramatic movement. Closely connected with this question is the
consideration of humour, which is wrongly denied to Drayton. Humour is
observable first, perhaps, in the _Owle_ (1604); then in the _Ode to his
Rival_ (1619); and later in the _Nymphidia_, _Shepheards Sirena_, and
_Muses Elyzium_. The second _Nymphal_ shows us the quiet laughter, the
humorous twinkle, with which Drayton writes at times. The subject is an
[Greek: agôn] or contest between two shepherds for the affections of a
nymph called Lirope: Lalus is a vale-bred swain, of refined and elegant
manners, skilled, nevertheless, in all manly sports and exercises;
Cleon, no less a master in physical prowess, was nurtured by a hind in
the mountains; the contrast between their manners is admirably
sustained: Cleon is rough, inclined to be rude and scoffing, totally
without tact, even where his mistress is concerned. Lalus remembers her
upbringing and her tastes; he makes no unnecessary or ostentatious
display of wealth; his gifts are simple and charming, while Cleon's are
so grotesquely unsuited to a swain, that it is tempting to suppose that
Drayton was quietly satirizing Marlowe's _Passionate Shepherd_. Lirope
listens gravely to the swains in turn, and makes demure but provoking
answers, raising each to the height of hope, and then casting them both
down into the depths of despair; finally she refuses both, yet without
altogether killing hope. Her first answer is a good specimen of her
banter and of Drayton's humour.[18]

On the accession of James I, Drayton hastened to greet the King with a
somewhat laboured song _To the Maiestie of King James_; but this poem
was apparently considered to be premature: he cried _Vivat Rex_, without
having said, _Mortua est eheu Regina_, and accordingly he suffered the
penalty of his 'forward pen',[19] and was severely neglected by King and
Court. Throughout James's reign a darker and more satirical mood
possesses Drayton, intruding at times even into his strenuous
recreation-ground, the _Polyolbion_, and manifesting itself more
directly in his satires, the _Owle_ (1604), the _Moon-Calfe_ (1627), the
_Man in the Moone_ (1606), and his verse-letters and elegies; while his
disappointment with the times, the country, and the King, flashes out
occasionally even in the Odes, and is heard in his last publication, the
_Muses Elizium_ (1630). To counterbalance the disappointment in his
hopes from the King, Drayton found a new and life-long friend in Walter
Aston, of Tixall, in Staffordshire; this gentleman was created Knight of
the Bath by James, and made Drayton one of his esquires. By Aston's
'continual bounty' the poet was able to devote himself almost entirely
to more congenial literary work; for, while Meres speaks of the
_Polyolbion_ in 1598,[20] and we may easily see that Drayton had the
idea of that work at least as early as 1594,[21] yet he cannot have been
able to give much time to it till now. Nevertheless, the 'declining and
corrupt times' worked on Drayton's mind and grieved and darkened his
soul, for we must remember that he was perfectly prosperous then and was
not therefore incited to satire by bodily want or distress.

In 1604 he published the _Owle_, a mild satire, under the form of a
moral fable of government, reminding the reader a little of the
_Parlement of Foules_. _The Man in the Moone_ (1606) is partly a
recension of _Endimion and Phoebe_, but is a heterogeneous mass of
weakly satire, of no particular merit. The _Moon-Calfe_ (1627) is
Drayton's most savage and misanthropic excursion into the region of
Satire; in which, though occasionally nobly ironic, he is more usually
coarse and blustering, in the style of Marston.[22] In 1605 Drayton
brought out his first 'collected poems', from which the _Eclogues_ and
the _Owle_ are omitted; and in 1606 he published his _Poemes Lyrick and
Pastorall_, _Odes_, _Eglogs_, _The Man in the Moone_. Of these the
_Eglogs_ are a recension of the _Shepherd's Garland_ of 1593: we have
already spoken of _The Man in the Moone_. The _Odes_ are by far the most
important and striking feature of the book. In the preface, Drayton
professes to be following Pindar, Anacreon, and Horace, though, as he
modestly implies, at a great distance. Under the title of _Odes_ he
includes a variety of subjects, and a variety of metres; ranging from an
_Ode to his Harp_ or _to his Criticks_, to a _Ballad of Agincourt_, or a
poem on the Rose compared with his Mistress. In the edition of 1619
appeared several more Odes, including some of the best; while many of
the others underwent careful revision, notably the _Ballad_. 'Sing wee
the Rose,' perhaps because of its unintelligibility, and the Ode to his
friend John Savage, perhaps because too closely imitated from Horace,
were omitted. Drayton was not the first to use the term _Ode_ for a
lyrical poem, in English: Soothern in 1584, and Daniel in 1592 had
preceded him; but he was the first to give the name popularity in
England, and to lift the kind as Ronsard had lifted it in France; and
till the time of Cowper no other English poet showed mastery of the
short, staccato measure of the Anacreontic as distinct from the Pindaric
Ode. In the _Odes_ Drayton shows to the fullest extent his metrical
versatility: he touches the Skeltonic metre, the long ten-syllabled line
of the _Sacrifice to Apollo_; and ascends from the smooth and melodious
rhythms of the _New Year_ through the inspiring harp-tones of the
_Virginian Voyage_ to the clangour and swing of the _Ballad of
Agincourt_. His grammar is possibly more distorted here than anywhere,
but, as Mr. Elton says, 'these are the obstacles of any poet who uses
measures of four or six syllables.' His tone throughout is rather that
of the harp, as played, perhaps, in Polesworth Hall, than that of any
other instrument; but in 1619 Drayton has taken to him the lute of Carew
and his compeers. In 1619 the style is lighter, the fancy gayer, more
exquisite, more recondite. Most of his few metaphysical conceits are to
be found in these later Odes, as in the _Heart_, the _Valentine_, and
the _Crier_. In the comparison of the two editions the nobler, if more
strained, tone of the earlier is obvious; it is still Elizabethan, in
its nobility of ideal and purpose, in its enthusiasm, in its belief and
confidence in England and her men; and this even though we catch a
glimpse of the Jacobean woe in the _Ode to John Savage_: the 1619 Odes
are of a different world; their spirit is lighter, more insouciant in
appearance, though perhaps studiedly so; the rhythms are more fantastic,
with less of strength and firmness, though with more of grace and
superficial beauty; even the very textual alterations, while usually
increasing the grace and the music of the lines, remind the reader that
something of the old spontaneity and freshness is gone.

In 1607 and 1609, Drayton published two editions of the last and weakest
of his mediaeval poems--the _Legend of Great Cromwell_; and for the next
few years he produced nothing new, only attending to the publication of
certain reprints and new editions. During this time, however, he was
working steadily at the _Polyolbion_, helped by the patronage of Aston
and of Prince Henry. In 1612-13, Drayton burst upon an indifferent world
with the first part of the great poem, containing eighteen songs; the
title-page will give the best idea of the contents and plan of the book:
'Poly-Olbion or a Chorographicall Description of the Tracts, Riuers,
Mountaines, Forests, and other Parts of this renowned Isle of Great
Britaine, With intermixture of the most Remarquable Stories,
Antiquities, Wonders, Rarityes, Pleasures, and Commodities of the same:
Digested in a Poem by Michael Drayton, Esq. With a Table added, for
direction to those occurrences of Story and Antiquities, whereunto the
Course of the Volume easily leades not.' &c. On this work Drayton had
been engaged for nearly the whole of his poetical career. The learning
and research displayed in the poem are extraordinary, almost equalling
the erudition of Selden in his Annotations to each Song. The first part
was, for various reasons, a drug in the market, and Drayton found great
difficulty in securing a publisher for the second part. But during the
years from 1613 to 1622, he became acquainted with Drummond of
Hawthornden through a common friend, Sir William Alexander of Menstry,
afterwards Earl of Stirling. In 1618, Drayton starts a correspondence;
and towards the end of the year mentions that he is corresponding also
with Andro Hart, bookseller, of Edinburgh. The subject of his letter was
probably the publication of the Second Part; which Drayton alludes to in
a letter of 1619 thus: 'I have done twelve books more, that is from the
eighteenth book, which was Kent, if you note it; all the East part and
North to the river Tweed; but it lies by me; for the booksellers and I
are in terms; they are a company of base knaves, whom I both scorn and
kick at.' Finally, in 1622, Drayton got Marriott, Grismand, and Dewe, of
London, to take the work, and it was published with a dedication to
Prince Charles, who, after his brother's death, had given Drayton
patronage. Drayton's preface to the Second Part is well worth quoting:

'_To any that will read it._ When I first undertook this Poem, or, as
some very skilful in this kind have pleased to term it, this Herculean
labour, I was by some virtuous friends persuaded, that I should receive
much comfort and encouragement therein; and for these reasons; First,
that it was a new, clear, way, never before gone by any; then, that it
contained all the Delicacies, Delights, and Rarities of this renowned
Isle, interwoven with the Histories of the Britons, Saxons, Normans, and
the later English: And further that there is scarcely any of the
Nobility or Gentry of this land, but that he is in some way or other by
his Blood interested therein. But it hath fallen out otherwise; for
instead of that comfort, which my noble friends (from the freedom of
their spirits) proposed as my due, I have met with barbarous ignorance,
and base detraction; such a cloud hath the Devil drawn over the world's
judgment, whose opinion is in few years fallen so far below all
ballatry, that the lethargy is incurable: nay, some of the Stationers,
that had the selling of the First Part of this Poem, because it went not
so fast away in the sale, as some of their beastly and abominable trash,
(a shame both to our language and nation) have either despitefully left
out, or at least carelessly neglected the Epistles to the Readers, and
so have cozened the buyers with unperfected books; which these that have
undertaken the Second Part, have been forced to amend in the First, for
the small number that are yet remaining in their hands. And some of our
outlandish, unnatural, English, (I know not how otherwise to express
them) stick not to say that there is nothing in this Island worth
studying for, and take a great pride to be ignorant in any thing
thereof; for these, since they delight in their folly, I wish it may be
hereditary from them to their posterity, that their children may be
begg'd for fools to the fifth generation, until it may be beyond the
memory of man to know that there was ever other of their families:
neither can this deter me from going on with Scotland, if means and time
do not hinder me, to perform as much as I have promised in my First
Song:

    Till through the sleepy main, to _Thuly_ I have gone,
    And seen the Frozen Isles, the cold _Deucalidon_,
    Amongst whose iron Rocks, grim _Saturn_ yet remains
    Bound in those gloomy caves with adamantine chains.

And as for those cattle whereof I spake before, _Odi profanum vulgus, et
arceo_, of which I account them, be they never so great, and so I leave
them. To my friends, and the lovers of my labours, I wish all happiness.
_Michael Drayton._'

The _Polyolbion_ as a whole is easy and pleasant to read; and though in
some parts it savours too much of a mere catalogue, yet it has many
things truly poetical. The best books are perhaps the xiij, xiv, and xv,
where he is on his own ground, and therefore naturally at his best. It
is interesting to notice how much attention and space he devotes to
Wales. He describes not only the 'wonders' but also the fauna and flora
of each district; and of the two it would seem that the flowers
interested him more. Though he was a keen observer of country sights and
sounds (a fact sufficiently attested by the _Nymphidia_ and the
_Nymphals_), it is evident that his interest in most things except
flowers was rather momentary or conventional than continuous and
heart-felt; but of the flowers he loves to talk, whether he weaves us a
garland for the Thame's wedding, or gives us the contents of a maund of
simples; and his love, if somewhat homely and unimaginative, is apparent
enough. But the main inspiration, as it is the main theme, of the
_Polyolbion_ is the glory and might and wealth, past, present, and
future, of England, her possessions and her folk. Through all this
glory, however, we catch the tone of Elizabethan sorrow over the 'Ruines
of Time'; grief that all these mighty men and their works will perish
and be forgotten, unless the poet makes them live for ever on the lips
of men. Drayton's own voluminousness has defeated his purpose, and sunk
his poem by its own bulk. Though it is difficult to go so far as Mr.
Bullen, and say that the only thing better than a stroll in the
_Polyolbion_ is one in a Sussex lane, it is still harder to agree with
Canon Beeching, that 'there are few beauties on the road', the beauties
are many, though of a quietly rural type, and the road, if long and
winding, is of good surface, while its cranks constitute much of its
charm. It is doubtless, from the outside, an appalling poem in these
days of epitomes and monographs, but it certainly deserves to be rescued
from oblivion and read.

In 1618 Drayton contributed two _Elegies_ to Henry FitzGeoffrey's
_Satyrs and Epigrames_. These were on the Lady Penelope Clifton, and on
'the death of the three sonnes of the Lord Sheffield, drowned neere
where Trent falleth into Humber'. Neither is remarkable save for
far-fetched conceits; they were reprinted in 1610, and again, with many
others, in the volume of 1627. In 1619 Drayton issued a folio collected
edition of his works, and reprinted it in 1620. In 1627 followed a folio
of wholly fresh matter, including the _Battaile of Agincourt_; _the
Miseries of Queene Margarite_, _Nimphidia_, _Quest of Cinthia_,
_Shepheards Sirena_, _Moone-Calfe_, and _Elegies upon sundry occasions_.
The _Battaile of Agincourt_ is a somewhat otiose expansion, with purple
patches, of the _Ballad_; it is, nevertheless, Drayton's best lengthy
piece on a historical theme. Of the _Miseries of Queene Margarite_ and
of the _Moone-Calfe_ we have already spoken. The most notable piece in
the book is the _Nimphidia_. This poem of the Court of Fairy has
'invention, grace, and humour', as Canon Beeching has said. It would be
interesting to know exactly when it was composed and committed to paper,
for it is thought that the three fairy poems in Herrick's _Hesperides_
were written about 1626. In any case, Drayton's poem touches very
little, and chiefly in the beginning, on the subject of any one of
Herrick's three pieces. The style, execution, and impression left on the
reader are quite different; even as they are totally unlike those of the
_Midsummer Night's Dream_. Herrick's pieces are extraordinary
combinations of the idea of 'King of Shadows', with a reality
fantastically sober: the poems are steeped in moonlight. In Drayton all
is clear day, or the most unromantic of nights; though everything is
charming, there is no attempt at idealization, little of the higher
faculty of imagination; but great realism, and much play of fancy.
Herrick's verses were written by Cobweb and Moth together, Drayton's by
Puck. Granting, however, the initial deficiency in subtlety of charm,
the whole poem is inimitably graceful and piquant. The gay humour, the
demure horror of the witchcraft, the terrible seriousness of the battle,
wonderfully realize the mock-heroic gigantesque; and while there is not
the minute accuracy of Gulliver in Lilliput, Drayton did not write for a
sceptical or too-prying audience; quite half his readers believed more
or less in fairies. In the metre of the poem Drayton again echoes that
of the older romances, as he did in _Dowsabel_. In the _Quest of
Cinthia_, while ostensibly we come to the real world of mortals, we are
really in a non-existent land of pastoral convention, in the most
pseudo-Arcadian atmosphere in which Drayton ever worked. The metre and
the language are, however, charmingly managed. _The Shepheards Sirena_
is a poem, apparently, 'where more is meant than meets the ear,' as so
often in pastoral poetry[23]; it is difficult to see exactly what is
meant; but the Jacobean strain of doubt and fear is there, and the poem
would seem to have been written some time earlier than 1627. The
_Elegies_ comprise a great variety of styles and themes; some are really
threnodies, some verse-letters, some laments over the evil times, and
one a summary of Drayton's literary opinions. He employs the couplet in
his _Elegies_ with a masterly hand, often with a deliberately rugged
effect, as in his broader Marstonic satire addressed to William Browne;
while the line of greater smoothness but equal strength is to be seen in
the letters to Sandys and Jeffreys. He is fantastic and conceited in
most of the threnodies; but, as is natural, that on his old friend, Sir
Henry Rainsford, is least artificial and fullest of true feeling. The
epistle to _Henery Reynolds. Of Poets and Poesie_ shows Drayton as a
sane and sagacious critic, ready to see the good, but keen to discern
the weakness also; perhaps the clearest evidence of his critical skill
is the way in which nearly all of his judgements on his contemporaries
coincide with the received modern opinions.

In his later years Drayton enjoyed the patronage of the third Earl and
Countess of Dorset; and in _1630_ he published his last volume, the
_Muses Elizium_, of which he dedicated the pastoral part to the Earl,
and the three divine poems at the end to the Countess. The _Muses
Elizium_ proper consists of Ten Pastorals or Nymphals, prefaced by a
_Description of Elizium_. The three divine poems have been mentioned
before, and were _Noah's Floud_, _Moses his Birth and Miracles_, and
_David and Goliah_. The _Nymphals_ are the crown and summary of much of
the best in Drayton's work. Here he departed from the conventional type
of pastoral, even more than in the _Shepherd's Garland_; but to say that
he sang of English rustic life would hardly be true: the sixth
_Nymphal_, allowing for a few pardonable exaggerations by the
competitors, is almost all English, if we except the names; so is the
tenth with the same exception; the first and fourth might take place
anywhere, but are not likely in any country; the second is more
conventional; the fifth is almost, but not quite, English; the third,
seventh, and ninth are avowedly classical in theme; while the eighth is
a more delicate and subtle fairy poem than the _Nymphidia_. The fourth
and tenth _Nymphals_ are also touched with the sadder, almost satiric
vein; the former inveighing against the English imitation of foreigners
and love of extravagance in dress; while the tenth complains of the
improvident and wasteful felling of trees in the English forests. This
last _Nymphal_, though designedly an epilogue, is probably rather a
warning than a despairing lament, even though we conceive the old satyr
to be Drayton himself. As a whole the _Nymphals_ show Drayton at his
happiest and lightest in style and metre; at his moments of greatest
serenity and even gaiety; an atmosphere of sunshine seems to envelope
them all, though the sun sink behind a cloud in the last. His music now
is that of a rippling stream, whereas in his earlier days he spoke
weightier and more sonorous words, with a mouth of gold.[24]

To estimate the poetical faculty of Drayton is a somewhat perplexing
task; for, while rarely subtle, or rising to empyrean heights, he wrote
in such varied styles, on such various themes, that the task, at first,
seems that of criticizing many poets, not one. But through all his work
runs the same eminently English spirit, the same honesty and clearness
of idea, the same stolidity of purpose, and not infrequently of
execution also; the same enthusiasm characterizes all his earlier, and
much of his later work; the enthusiasm especially characteristic of
Elizabethan England, and shown by Drayton in his passion for England and
the English, in his triumphant joy in their splendid past, and his
certainty of their future glory. As a poet, he lacked imagination and
fine fury; he supplied their place by the airiest and clearest of
fancies, by the strenuous labour of a great brain illumined by the
steady flame of love for his country and for his lady. Mr. Courthope has
said that he lacked loftiness and resolution of artistic purpose;
without these, we ask, how could a man, not lavishly dowered with poetry
in his soul, have achieved so much of it? It was his very fixity and
loftiness of purpose, his English stubbornness and doggedness of
resolution that enabled him to surmount so many obstacles of style and
metre, of subject and thought. His two purposes, of glorifying his
mistress and his friends, and of sounding England's glories past and
future, while insisting on the dangers of a present decadence, never
flagged or failed. All his poetry up to 1627 has this object directly or
secondarily; and much after this date. Of the more abstract and
universal aspects of his art he had not much conception; but he caught
eagerly at the fashionable belief in the eternizing power of poetry; and
had it not been that, where his patriotism was uppermost, he was
deficient in humour and sense of proportion, he would have succeeded
better: as it is, his more directly patriotic pieces are usually the
dullest or longest of his works. He requires, like all other poets, the
impulse of an absolutely personal and individual feeling, a moment of
more intimate sympathy, to rouse him to his heights of song. Thus the
_Ballad of Agincourt_ is on the very theme of all patriotic themes that
most attracted him; Virginian and other Voyages lay very close to his
heart; and in certain sonnets to his lady lies his only imperishable
work. Of sheer melody and power of song he had little, apart from his
themes: he could not have sat down and written a few lark's or
nightingale's notes about nothing as some of his contemporaries were
able to do: he required the stimulus of a subject, and if he were really
moved thereby he beat the music out. Only in one or two of the later
Odes, and in the volumes of 1627 and 1630, does his music ever seem to
flow from him naturally. Akin to this quality of broad and extensive
workmanship, to this faculty of taking a subject and when writing, with
all thought concentrated on it, rather than on the method of writing
about it, is his strange lack of what are usually called 'quotations'.
For this is not only due to the fact that he is little known; there are,
besides, so few detached remarks or aphorisms that are separately
quotable; so few examples of that _curiosa felicitas_ of diction: lines
like these,

    Thy Bowe, halfe broke, is peec'd with old desire;
    Her Bowe is beauty with ten thousand strings....

are rare enough. Drayton, in fact, comes as near controverting the
statement _Poeta nascitur, non fit_, as any one in English literature:
by diligent toil and earnest desire he won a place for himself in the
second rank of English poets: through love he once set foot in the
circle of the mightiest. Sincere he was always, simple often, sensuous
rarely. His great industry, his careful study, and his great receptivity
are shown in the unusual spectacle of a man who has sung well in the
language of his youth, suddenly learning, in his age, the tongue spoken
by the younger generation, and reproducing it with individuality and
sureness of touch. It is in rhetoric, splendid or rugged, in argument,
in plain statement or description, in the outline sketch of a picture,
that Drayton excels; magic of atmosphere and colouring are rarely
present. Stolidity is, perhaps, his besetting sin; yet it is the sign of
a slow, not a dull, intellect; an intellect, like his heart, which never
let slip what it had once taken to itself.

As a man Drayton would seem to have been an excellent type of the
sturdy, clear-headed, but yet romantic and enthusiastic Englishman;
gifted with much natural ability, sedulously increased by study; quietly
humorous, self-restrained; and if temporarily soured by disappointment
and the disjointed times, yet emerging at last into a greater serenity,
a more unadulterated gaiety than had ever before characterized him. It
is possible, but from his clear and sane balance of mind improbable,
that many of his light later poems are due to deliberate self-blinding
and self-deception, a walking in enchanted lands of the mind.

Of Drayton's three known portraits the earliest shows him at the age of
thirty-six, and is now in the National Portrait Gallery. A look of
quiet, speculative melancholy seems to pervade it; there is, as yet, no
moroseness, no evidence of severe conflict with the world, no shadow of
stress or of doubt. The second and best-known portrait shows us Drayton
at the age of fifty, and was engraved by Hole, as a frontispiece to the
poems of 1619. Here a notable change has come over the face; the mouth
is hardened, and depressed at the corners through disappointment and
disillusionment; the eyes are full of a pathos increased by the puzzled
and perturbed uplift of the brows. Yet a stubbornness and tenacity of
purpose invests the features and reminds us that Drayton is of the old
and sound Elizabethan stock, 'on evil days though fallen.' Let it be
remembered, that he was in 1613, when the portrait was taken, in more or
less prosperous circumstances; it was the sad degeneracy, the meanness
and feebleness of the generation around him, that chiefly depressed and
embittered him. The final portrait, now in the Dulwich Gallery,
represents the poet as a man of sixty-five; and is quite in keeping with
the sunnier and calmer tone of his later poetry. It is the face of one
who has not emerged unscathed from the world's conflict, but has
attained to a certain calm, a measure of tranquillity, a portion of
content, who has learnt the lesson that there is a soul of goodness in
things evil. The Hole portrait shows him with long hair, small 'goatee'
beard, and aquiline nose drawn up at the nostrils: while the National
portrait shows a type of nose and beard intermediate between the Hole
and the Dulwich pictures: the general contour of the face, though the
forehead is broad enough, is long and oval. Drayton seems to have been
tall and thin, and to have been very susceptible of cold, and therefore
to have hated Winter and the North.[25] He is said to have shared in the
supper which caused Shakespeare's death; but his own verses[26] breathe
the spirit of Milton's sonnet to Cyriack Skinner, rather than that of a
devotee of Bacchus.

He died in 1631, possibly on December 23, and was buried under the North
wall of Westminster Abbey. Meres's[27] opinion of his character during
his early life is as follows: 'As Aulus Persius Flaccus is reported
among al writers to be of an honest life and vpright conuersation: so
Michael Drayton, _quem totics honoris et amoris causa nomino_, among
schollers, souldiours, Poets, and all sorts of people is helde for a man
of uertuous disposition, honest conversation, and well gouerned cariage;
which is almost miraculous among good wits in these declining and
corrupt times, when there is nothing but rogery in villanous man, and
when cheating and craftines is counted the cleanest wit, and soundest
wisedome.'[28] Fuller also, in a similar strain, says, 'He was a pious
poet, his conscience having the command of his fancy, very temperate in
his life, slow of speech, and inoffensive in company.'

In conclusion I have to thank Mr. H.M. Sanders, of Pembroke College,
Oxford, for help and advice, and Professor Raleigh and Mr. R.W. Chapman
for help and criticism while the volume was in the press. Above all, I
am at every turn indebted to Professor Elton's invaluable _Michael
Drayton_,[29] without which the work of any student of Drayton would be
rendered, if not impossible, at least infinitely harder.

    CYRIL BRETT.
ALTON, STAFFORDSHIRE.

[Footnote 1: Cf. Elegy viij, _To Henery Reynolds, Esquire_, p. 108.]

[Footnote 2: Sir Aston Cokayne, in 1658, says that he went to Oxford,
while Fleay asserts, without authority, that his university was probably
Cambridge.]

[Footnote 3: Cf. the motto of _Ideas Mirrour_, the allusions to
_Ariosto_ in the _Nymphidia_, p. 129; and above all, the _Heroical
Epistles_; Dedic. of _Ep._ of _D._ of _Suffolk to Q. Margaret_: 'Sweet
is the _French_ Tongue, more sweet the _Italian_, but most sweet are
they both, if spoken by your admired self.' Cf. _Surrey to Geraldine_,
ll. 5 sqq., with Drayton's note.]

[Footnote 4: Cf. Sonnet xij (ed. 1602), p. 42, ''Tis nine years now
since first I lost my wit.' (This sonnet may, of course, occur in the
supposed 1600 ed., which would fix an earlier date for Drayton's
beginning of love.)]

[Footnote 5: Elegy ix, p. 113.]

[Footnote 6: Cf. Morley's ed. of _Barons' Wars_, &c. (1887), p. 6.]

[Footnote 7: Cf. _E.H. Ep._ 'Mat. to K.J.,' 100 sqq., &c.]

[Footnote 8: Professor Courthope and others. There was some excuse for
blunders before the publication of Professor Elton's book; and they have
been made easier by an unfortunate misprint. Professor Courthope twice
misprints the first line of the Love-Parting Sonnet, as 'Since there's
no help, come let us _rise_ and part', and, so printed, the line
supports better the theory that the poem refers to a patroness and not
to a mistress. Cf. Courthope, _Hist. Eng. Poetry_, iii. pp. 40 and 43.]

[Footnote 9: Cf. _E. and Phoebe_, sub fin.; _Shep. Sir._ 145-8; _Ep. Hy.
Reyn._ 79 sqq.]

[Footnote 10: Those reprints which were really new _editions_ are in
italics.]

[Footnote 11: 1594 ed., Pref. Son. and nos. 12, 18, 28; 1599 ed., nos.
3, 31, 46; 1602 ed., 12, 27, 31; and 1603 ed., 47.]

[Footnote 12: Meres thought otherwise. Cf. _Palladis Tamia_ (1598), 'As
Accius, M. Atilius, and Milithus were called _Tragediographi_, because
they writ tragedies: so may wee truly terme Michael Drayton
_Tragaediographus_ for his passionate penning the downfals of valiant
Robert of Normandy, chast Matilda, and great Gaueston.' Cf. Barnefield,
_Poems: in diuers humors_ (ed. Arber, p. 119), 'And Drayton, whose
wel-written Tragedies, | And Sweete Epistles, soare thy fame to skies. |
Thy learned name is equall with the rest; | Whose stately Numbers are so
well addrest.']

[Footnote 13: Cf. Meres, _Palladis Tamia_ (1598), 'Michael Drayton doth
imitate Ouid in his _England's Heroical Epistles_.']

[Footnote 14: Cf. id., _ibid._, 'As Lucan hath mournefully depainted the
ciuil wars of Pompey and Cæsar: so hath Daniel the ciuill wars of Yorke
and Lancaster, and Drayton the civill wars of Edward the second and the
Barons.']

[Footnote 15: Cf. Elegy viij. 126-8.]

[Footnote 16: Cf. Morley's ed., _Barons' Wars_, &c., 1887, pp. 6-7.]

[Footnote 17: Cf. Elron, pp. 83-93, and Whitaker, _M. Drayton as a
Dramatist_ (Public. Mod. Lang. Assoc. of America, vol. xviij. 3).]

[Footnote 18: Cf. _Nl._ ij. 127 sqq., p. 172.]

[Footnote 19: Cf. Elegy ij. 20.]

[Footnote 20: Cf. _Palladis Tamia_: 'Michael Drayton is now in penning,
in English verse, a Poem called _Poly-olbion_, Geographicall &
Hydrographicall of all the forests, woods, mountaines, fountaines,
riuers, lakes, flouds, bathes, & springs that be in England.']

[Footnote 21: Cf. _Amours_ (1594), xx and xxiv.]

[Footnote 22: Cf. Sonnet vj (1619 edition); which is a dignified summary
of much that he says more coarsely in the _Moone-Calfe_.]

[Footnote 23: Cf. Morley's ed. _Barons' Wars, &c._, p. 8.]

[Footnote 24: Charles FitzGeoffrey, _Drake_ (1596), 'golden-mouthed
Drayton musical.' Guilpin, _Skialetheia_ (1598), 'Drayton's condemned of
some for imitation, But others say, 'tis the best poet's fashion ...
Drayton's justly surnam'd golden-mouth'd.' Meres, _Palladis Tamia_
(1598),' In Charles Fitz-Jefferies _Drake_ Drayton is termed
"golden-mouth'd" for the purity and pretiousnesse of his stile and
phrase.']

[Footnote 25: Cf. _E. H. E._, pp. 90, 99 (ed. 1737); Elegy i; and _Ode
written in the Peak_.]

[Footnote 26: Elegy viij, ad init.]

[Footnote 27: _Palladis Tamia_ (1598).]

[Footnote 28: Cf. _Returne from Parnassus_, i. 2 (1600) ed. Arb. p. 11.]

[Footnote 29: _Michael Drayton. A Critical Study_. Oliver Elton, M.A.
London: A. Constable & Co., 1905.]

SONNETS

[from the Edition of 1594]

To the deere Chyld of the Muses, and
 _his euer kind_ Mecænas, _Ma._ Anthony
          Cooke, Esquire

    Vovchsafe to grace these rude vnpolish'd rymes,
    Which long (dear friend) haue slept in sable night,
    And, come abroad now in these glorious tymes,
    Can hardly brook the purenes of the light.
    But still you see their desteny is such,
    That in the world theyr fortune they must try,
    Perhaps they better shall abide the tuch,
    Wearing your name, theyr gracious liuery.
    Yet these mine owne: I wrong not other men,
    Nor trafique further then thys happy Clyme,
    Nor filch from _Portes_, nor from _Petrarchs_ pen,
    A fault too common in this latter time.
      Diuine Syr Phillip, I auouch thy writ,
      I am no Pickpurse of anothers wit.
                          Yours deuoted,
                              M. DRAYTON.

Amour 1

    Reade heere (sweet Mayd) the story of my wo,
    The drery abstracts of my endles cares,
    With my liues sorow enterlyned so;
    Smok'd with my sighes, and blotted with my teares:
    The sad memorials of my miseries,
    Pend in the griefe of myne afflicted ghost;
    My liues complaint in doleful Elegies,
    With so pure loue as tyme could neuer boast.
    Receaue the incense which I offer heere,
    By my strong fayth ascending to thy fame,
    My zeale, my hope, my vowes, my praise, my prayer,
    My soules oblation to thy sacred name:
      Which name my Muse to highest heauen shal raise
      By chast desire, true loue, and vertues praise.

Amour 2

    My fayre, if thou wilt register my loue,
    More then worlds volumes shall thereof arise;
    Preserue my teares, and thou thy selfe shall proue
    A second flood downe rayning from mine eyes.
    Note but my sighes, and thine eyes shal behold
    The Sun-beames smothered with immortall smoke;
    And if by thee, my prayers may be enrold,
    They heauen and earth to pitty shall prouoke.
    Looke thou into my breast, and thou shall see
    Chaste holy vowes for my soules sacrifice:
    That soule (sweet Maide) which so hath honoured thee,
    Erecting Trophies to thy sacred eyes;
      Those eyes to my heart shining euer bright,
      When darknes hath obscur'd each other light.

Amour 3

    My thoughts bred vp with Eagle-birds of loue,
    And, for their vertues I desiered to know,
    Vpon the nest I set them forth, to proue
    If they were of the Eagles kinde or no:
    But they no sooner saw my Sunne appeare,
    But on her rayes with gazing eyes they stood;
    Which proou'd my birds delighted in the ayre,
    And that they came of this rare kinglie brood.
    But now their plumes, full sumd with sweet desire,
    To shew their kinde began to clime the skies:
    Doe what I could my Eaglets would aspire,
    Straight mounting vp to thy celestiall eyes.
      And thus (my faire) my thoughts away be flowne,
      And from my breast into thine eyes be gone.

Amour 4

    My faire, had I not erst adorned my Lute
    With those sweet strings stolne from thy golden hayre,
    Vnto the world had all my ioyes been mute,
    Nor had I learn'd to descant on my faire.
    Had not mine eye seene thy Celestiall eye,
    Nor my hart knowne the power of thy name,
    My soule had ne'er felt thy Diuinitie,
    Nor my Muse been the trumpet of thy fame.
    But thy diuine perfections, by their skill,
    This miracle on my poore Muse haue tried,
    And, by inspiring, glorifide my quill,
    And in my verse thy selfe art deified:
      Thus from thy selfe the cause is thus deriued,
      That by thy fame all fame shall be suruiued.

Amour 5

    Since holy Vestall lawes haue been neglected,
    The Gods pure fire hath been extinguisht quite;
    No Virgin once attending on that light,
    Nor yet those heauenly secrets once respected;
    Till thou alone, to pay the heauens their dutie
    Within the Temple of thy sacred name,
    With thine eyes kindling that Celestiall flame,
    By those reflecting Sun-beames of thy beautie.
    Here Chastity that Vestall most diuine,
    Attends that Lampe with eye which neuer sleepeth;
    The volumes of Religions lawes shee keepeth,
    Making thy breast that sacred reliques shryne,
      Where blessed Angels, singing day and night,
      Praise him which made that fire, which lends that light.

Amour 6

    In one whole world is but one Phoenix found,
    A Phoenix thou, this Phoenix then alone:
    By thy rare plume thy kind is easly knowne,
    With heauenly colours dide, with natures wonder cround.
    Heape thine own vertues, seasoned by their sunne,
    On heauenly top of thy diuine desire;
    Then with thy beautie set the same on fire,
    So by thy death thy life shall be begunne.
    Thy selfe, thus burned in this sacred flame,
    With thine owne sweetnes al the heauens perfuming,
    And stil increasing as thou art consuming,
    Shalt spring againe from th' ashes of thy fame;
      And mounting vp shall to the heauens ascend:
      So maist thou liue, past world, past fame, past end.

Amour 7

    Stay, stay, sweet Time; behold, or ere thou passe
    From world to world, thou long hast sought to see,
    That wonder now wherein all wonders be,
    Where heauen beholds her in a mortall glasse.
    Nay, looke thee, Time, in this Celesteall glasse,
    And thy youth past in this faire mirror see:
    Behold worlds Beautie in her infancie,
    What shee was then, and thou, or ere shee was.
    Now passe on, Time: to after-worlds tell this,
    Tell truelie, Time, what in thy time hath beene,
    That they may tel more worlds what Time hath seene,
    And heauen may ioy to think on past worlds blisse.
      Heere make a Period, Time, and saie for mee,
      She was the like that neuer was, nor neuer more shalbe.

Amour 8

    Vnto the World, to Learning, and to Heauen,
    Three nines there are, to euerie one a nine;
    One number of the earth, the other both diuine,
    One wonder woman now makes three od numbers euen.
    Nine orders, first, of Angels be in heauen;
    Nine Muses doe with learning still frequent:
    These with the Gods are euer resident.
    Nine worthy men vnto the world were giuen.
    My Worthie one to these nine Worthies addeth,
    And my faire Muse one Muse vnto the nine;
    And my good Angell, in my soule diuine,
    With one more order these nine orders gladdeth.
      My Muse, my Worthy, and my Angell, then,
      Makes euery one of these three nines a ten.

Amour 9

    Beauty sometime, in all her glory crowned,
    Passing by that cleere fountain of thine eye,
    Her sun-shine face there chaunsing to espy,
    Forgot herselfe, and thought she had been drowned.
    And thus, whilst Beautie on her beauty gazed,
    Who then, yet liuing, deemd she had been dying,
    And yet in death some hope of life espying,
    At her owne rare perfections so amazed;
    Twixt ioy and griefe, yet with a smyling frowning,
    The glorious sun-beames of her eyes bright shining,
    And shee, in her owne destiny diuining,
    Threw in herselfe, to saue herselfe by drowning;
      The Well of Nectar, pau'd with pearle and gold,
      Where shee remaines for all eyes to behold.

Amour 10

    Oft taking pen in hand, with words to cast my woes,
    Beginning to account the sum of all my cares,
    I well perceiue my griefe innumerable growes,
    And still in reckonings rise more millions of dispayres.
    And thus, deuiding of my fatall howres,
    The payments of my loue I read, and reading crosse,
    And in substracting set my sweets vnto my sowres;
    Th' average of my ioyes directs me to my losse.
    And thus mine eyes, a debtor to thine eye,
    Who by extortion gaineth all theyr lookes,
    My hart hath payd such grieuous vsury,
    That all her wealth lyes in thy Beauties bookes;
      And all is thine which hath been due to mee,
      And I a Banckrupt, quite vndone by thee.

Amour 11

    Thine eyes taught mee the Alphabet of loue,
    To con my Cros-rowe ere I learn'd to spell;
    For I was apt, a scholler like to proue,
    Gaue mee sweet lookes when as I learned well.
    Vowes were my vowels, when I then begun
    At my first Lesson in thy sacred name:
    My consonants the next when I had done,
    Words consonant, and sounding to thy fame.
    My liquids then were liquid christall teares,
    My cares my mutes, so mute to craue reliefe;
    My dolefull Dypthongs were my liues dispaires,
    Redoubling sighes the accents of my griefe:
      My loues Schoole-mistris now hath taught me so,
      That I can read a story of my woe.

Amour 12

    Some Atheist or vile Infidell in loue,
    When I doe speake of thy diuinitie,
    May blaspheme thus, and say I flatter thee,
    And onely write my skill in verse to proue.
    See myracles, ye vnbeleeuing! see
    A dumbe-born Muse made to expresse the mind,
    A cripple hand to write, yet lame by kind,
    One by thy name, the other touching thee.
    Blind were mine eyes, till they were seene of thine,
    And mine eares deafe by thy fame healed be;
    My vices cur'd by vertues sprung from thee,
    My hopes reuiu'd, which long in graue had lyne:
      All vncleane thoughts, foule spirits, cast out in mee
      By thy great power, and by strong fayth in thee.

Amour 13

    Cleere _Ankor_, on whose siluer-sanded shore
    My soule-shrinde Saint, my faire _Idea_, lyes;
    O blessed Brooke! whose milk-white Swans adore
    The christall streame refined by her eyes:
    Where sweet Myrh-breathing _Zephyre_ in the spring
    Gently distils his Nectar-dropping showers;
    Where Nightingales in _Arden_ sit and sing
    Amongst those dainty dew-empearled flowers.
    Say thus, fayre Brooke, when thou shall see thy Queene:
    Loe! heere thy Shepheard spent his wandring yeeres,
    And in these shades (deer Nimphe) he oft hath been,
    And heere to thee he sacrifiz'd his teares.
      Fayre _Arden_, thou my _Tempe_ art alone,
      And thou, sweet _Ankor_, art my _Helicon_.

Amour 14

    Looking into the glasse of my youths miseries,
    I see the ugly face of my deformed cares,
    With withered browes, all wrinckled with dispaires,
    That for my mis-spent youth the tears fel from my eyes.
    Then, in these teares, the mirror of these eyes,
    Thy fayrest youth and Beautie doe I see
    Imprinted in my teares by looking still on thee:
    Thus midst a thousand woes ten thousand joyes arise.
    Yet in those joyes, the shadowes of my good,
    In this fayre limned ground as white as snow,
    Paynted the blackest Image of my woe,
    With murthering hands imbru'd in mine own blood:
      And in this Image his darke clowdy eyes,
      My life, my youth, my loue, I heere Anotamize.

Amour 15

    Now, Loue, if thou wilt proue a Conqueror,
    Subdue thys Tyrant euer martyring mee;
    And but appoint me for her Tormentor,
    Then for a Monarch will I honour thee.
    My hart shall be the prison for my fayre;
    Ile fetter her in chaines of purest loue,
    My sighs shall stop the passage of the ayre:
    This punishment the pittilesse may moue.
    With teares out of the Channels of mine eyes
    She'st quench her thirst as duly as they fall:
    Kinde words vnkindest meate I can deuise,
    My sweet, my faire, my good, my best of all.
    Ile binde her then with my torne-tressed haire,
    And racke her with a thousand holy wishes;
    Then, on a place prepared for her there,
    Ile execute her with a thousand kisses.
      Thus will I crucifie, my cruell shee;
      Thus Ile plague her which hath so plagued mee.

Amour 16

    Vertues _Idea_ in virginitie,
    By inspiration, came conceau'd with thought:
    The time is come deliuered she must be,
    Where first my loue into the world was brought.
    Vnhappy borne, of all vnhappy day!
    So luckles was my Babes nativity,
    _Saturne_ chiefe Lord of the Ascendant lay,
    The wandring Moone in earths triplicitie.
    Now, or by chaunce or heauens hie prouidence,
    His Mother died, and by her Legacie
    (Fearing the stars presaging influence)
    Bequeath'd his wardship to my soueraignes eye;
    Where hunger-staruen, wanting lookes to liue,
    Still empty gorg'd, with cares consumption pynde,
    Salt luke-warm teares shee for his drink did giue,
    And euer-more with sighes he supt and dynde:
      And thus (poore Orphan) lying in distresse
      Cryes in his pangs, God helpe the motherlesse.

Amour 17

    If euer wonder could report a wonder,
    Or tongue of wonder worth could tell a wonder thought,
    Or euer ioy expresse what perfect ioy hath taught,
    Then wonder, tongue, then ioy, might wel report a wonder.
    Could all conceite conclude, which past conceit admireth,
    Or could mine eye but ayme her obiects past perfection,
    My words might imitate my deerest thoughts direction,
    And my soule then obtaine which so my soule desireth.
    Were not Inuention stauld, treading Inuentions maze,
    Or my swift-winged Muse tyred by too hie flying;
    Did not perfection still on her perfection gaze,
    Whilst Loue (my Phoenix bird) in her owne flame is dying,
      Inuention and my Muse, perfection and her loue,
      Should teach the world to know the wonder that I proue.

Amour 18

    Some, when in ryme they of their Loues doe tell,
    With flames and lightning their exordiums paynt:
    Some inuocate the Gods, some spirits of Hell,
    And heauen, and earth doe with their woes acquaint.
    _Elizia_ is too hie a seate for mee:
    I wyll not come in _Stixe_ or _Phlegiton_;
    The Muses nice, the Furies cruell be,
    I lyke not _Limbo_, nor blacke _Acheron_,
    Spightful _Erinnis_ frights mee with her lookes,
    My manhood dares not with foule _Ate_ mell:
    I quake to looke on _Hecats_ charming bookes,
    I styll feare bugbeares in _Apollos_ cell.
      I passe not for _Minerua_ nor _Astræa_.
      But euer call vpon diuine _Idea_.

Amour 19

    If those ten Regions, registred by Fame,
    By theyr ten Sibils haue the world controld,
    Who prophecied of Christ or ere he came,
    And of his blessed birth before fore-told;
    That man-god now, of whom they did diuine,
    This earth of those sweet Prophets hath bereft,
    And since the world to iudgement doth declyne,
    Instead of ten, one Sibil to vs left.
    Thys pure _Idea_, vertues right Idea,
    Shee of whom _Merlin_ long tyme did fore-tell,
    Excelling her of _Delphos_ or _Cumæa_,
    Whose lyfe doth saue a thousand soules from hell:
      That life (I meane) which doth Religion teach,
      And by example true repentance preach.

Amour 20

    Reading sometyme, my sorrowes to beguile,
    I find old Poets hylls and floods admire:
    One, he doth wonder monster-breeding _Nyle_,
    Another meruailes Sulphure _Aetnas_ fire.
    Now broad-brymd _Indus_, then of _Pindus_ height,
    _Pelion_ and _Ossa_, frosty _Caucase_ old,
    The Delian _Cynthus_, then _Olympus_ weight,
    Slow _Arrer_, franticke _Gallus_, _Cydnus_ cold.
    Some _Ganges_, _Ister_, and of _Tagus_ tell,
    Some whir-poole _Po_, and slyding _Hypasis_;
    Some old _Pernassus_ where the Muses dwell,
    Some _Helycon_, and some faire _Simois_:
      A, fooles! thinke I, had you _Idea_ seene,
      Poore Brookes and Banks had no such wonders beene.

Amour 21

    Letters and lynes, we see, are soone defaced,
    Mettles doe waste and fret with cankers rust;
    The Diamond shall once consume to dust,
    And freshest colours with foule staines disgraced.
    Paper and yncke can paynt but naked words,
    To write with blood of force offends the sight,
    And if with teares, I find them all too light;
    And sighes and signes a silly hope affoords.
    O, sweetest shadow! how thou seru'st my turne,
    Which still shalt be as long as there is Sunne,
    Nor whilst the world is neuer shall be done,
    Whilst Moone shall shyne by night, or any fire shall burne:
      That euery thing whence shadow doth proceede,
      May in his shadow my Loues story reade.

Amour 22

    My hart, imprisoned in a hopeless Ile,
    Peopled with Armies of pale iealous eyes,
    The shores beset with thousand secret spyes,
    Must passe by ayre, or else dye in exile.
    He framd him wings with feathers of his thought,
    Which by theyr nature learn'd to mount the skye;
    And with the same he practised to flye,
    Till he himself thys Eagles art had taught.
    Thus soring still, not looking once below,
    So neere thyne eyes celesteall sunne aspyred,
    That with the rayes his wafting pyneons fired:
    Thus was the wanton cause of his owne woe.
      Downe fell he, in thy Beauties Ocean drenched,
      Yet there he burnes in fire thats neuer quenched.

Amour 23

    Wonder of Heauen, glasse of diuinitie,
    Rare beautie, Natures joy, perfections Mother,
    The worke of that vnited Trinitie,
    Wherein each fayrest part excelleth other!
    Loues Mithridate, the purest of perfection,
    Celestiall Image, Load-stone of desire,
    The soules delight, the sences true direction,
    Sunne of the world, thou hart reuyuing fire!
    Why should'st thou place thy Trophies in those eyes,
    Which scorne the honor that is done to thee,
    Or make my pen her name immortalize,
    Who in her pride sdaynes once to look on me?
      It is thy heauen within her face to dwell,
      And in thy heauen, there onely, is my hell.

Amour 24

    Our floods-Queene, _Thames_, for shyps and Swans is crowned,
    And stately _Seuerne_ for her shores is praised,
    The christall _Trent_ for Foords and fishe renowned,
    And _Auons_ fame to _Albyons_ Cliues is raysed.
    _Carlegion Chester_ vaunts her holy _Dee_,
    _Yorke_ many wonders of her _Ouse_ can tell,
    The _Peake_ her _Doue_, whose bancks so fertill bee,
    And _Kent_ will say her _Medway_ doth excell.
    Cotswoold commends her _Isis_ and her _Tame_,
    Our Northern borders boast of _Tweeds_ faire flood;
    Our Westerne parts extoll theyr Wilys fame,
    And old _Legea_ brags of _Danish_ blood:
      _Ardens_ sweet _Ankor_, let thy glory be
      That fayre _Idea_ shee doth liue by thee.

Amour 25

    The glorious sunne went blushing to his bed,
    When my soules sunne, from her fayre Cabynet,
    Her golden beames had now discouered,
    Lightning the world, eclipsed by his set.
    Some muz'd to see the earth enuy the ayre,
    Which from her lyps exhald refined sweet,
    A world to see, yet how he ioyd to heare
    The dainty grasse make musicke with her feete.
    But my most meruaile was when from the skyes,
    So Comet-like, each starre aduanc'd her lyght,
    As though the heauen had now awak'd her eyes,
    And summond Angels to this blessed sight.
      No clowde was seene, but christalline the ayre,
      Laughing for ioy upon my louely fayre.

Amour 26

    Cupid, dumbe-Idoll, peeuish Saint of loue,
    No more shalt thou nor Saint nor Idoll be;
    No God art thou, a Goddesse shee doth proue,
    Of all thine honour shee hath robbed thee.
    Thy Bowe, halfe broke, is peec'd with old desire;
    Her Bowe is beauty with ten thousand strings
    Of purest gold, tempred with vertues fire,
    The least able to kyll an hoste of Kings.
    Thy shafts be spent, and shee (to warre appointed)
    Hydes in those christall quiuers of her eyes
    More Arrowes, with hart-piercing mettel poynted,
    Then there be starres at midnight in the skyes.
      With these she steales mens harts for her reliefe,
      Yet happy he thats robd of such a thiefe!

Amour 27

    My Loue makes hote the fire whose heat is spent,
    The water moisture from my teares deriueth,
    And my strong sighes the ayres weake force reuiueth:
    Thus loue, tears, sighes, maintaine each one his element.
    The fire, vnto my loue, compare a painted fire,
    The water, to my teares as drops to Oceans be,
    The ayre, vnto my sighes as Eagle to the flie,
    The passions of dispaire but ioyes to my desire.
    Onely my loue is in the fire ingraued,
    Onely my teares by Oceans may be gessed,
    Onely my sighes are by the ayre expressed;
    Yet fire, water, ayre, of nature not depriued.
      Whilst fire, water, ayre, twixt heauen and earth shal be,
      My loue, my teares, my sighes, extinguisht cannot be.

Amour 28

    Some wits there be which lyke my method well,
    And say my verse runnes in a lofty vayne;
    Some say, I haue a passing pleasing straine,
    Some say that in my humour I excell.
    Some who reach not the height of my conceite,
    They say, (as Poets doe) I vse to fayne,
    And in bare words paynt out my passions payne:
    Thus sundry men their sundry minds repeate.
    I passe not I how men affected be,
    Nor who commend, or discommend my verse;
    It pleaseth me if I my plaints rehearse,
    And in my lynes if shee my loue may see.
      I proue my verse autentique still in thys,
      Who writes my Mistres praise can neuer write amisse.

Amour 29

    O eyes! behold your happy _Hesperus_,
    That luckie Load-starre of eternall light,
    Left as that sunne alone to comfort vs,
    When our worlds sunne is vanisht out of sight.
    O starre of starres! fayre Planet mildly moouing,
    O Lampe of vertue! sun-bright, euer shyning,
    O mine eyes Comet! so admyr'd by louing,
    O cleerest day-starre! neuer more declyning.
    O our worlds wonder! crowne of heauen aboue,
    Thrice happy be those eyes which may behold thee!
    Lou'd more then life, yet onely art his loue
    Whose glorious hand immortal hath enrold thee!
      O blessed fayre! now vaile those heauenly eyes,
      That I may blesse mee at thy sweet arise.

Amour 30

    Three sorts of serpents doe resemble thee;
    That daungerous eye-killing Cockatrice,
    Th' inchaunting Syren, which doth so entice,
    The weeping Crocodile; these vile pernicious three.
    The Basiliske his nature takes from thee,
    Who for my life in secret wait do'st lye,
    And to my heart send'st poyson from thine eye:
    Thus do I feele the paine, the cause yet cannot see.
    Faire-mayd no more, but Mayr-maid be thy name,
    Who with thy sweet aluring harmony
    Hast playd the thiefe, and stolne my hart from me,
    And, like a Tyrant, mak'st my griefe thy game.
      The Crocodile, who, when thou hast me slaine,
      Lament'st my death with teares of thy disdaine.

Amour 31

    Sitting alone, loue bids me goe and write;
    Reason plucks backe, commaunding me to stay,
    Boasting that shee doth still direct the way,
    Els senceles loue could neuer once indite.
    Loue, growing angry, vexed at the spleene,
    And scorning Reasons maymed Argument,
    Straight taxeth Reason, wanting to invent
    Where shee with Loue conuersing hath not beene.
    Reason, reproched with this coy disdaine,
    Dispighteth Loue, and laugheth at her folly,
    And Loue, contemning Reasons reason wholy,
    Thought her in weight too light by many a graine.
      Reason, put back, doth out of sight remoue,
      And Loue alone finds reason in my loue.

Amour 32

    Those teares, which quench my hope, still kindle my desire,
    Those sighes, which coole my hart, are coles vnto my loue,
    Disdayne, Ice to my life, is to my soule a fire:
    With teares, sighes, and disdaine, this contrary I proue.
    Quenchles desire makes hope burne, dryes my teares,
    Loue heats my hart, my hart-heat my sighes warmeth;
    With my soules fire my life disdaine out-weares,
    Desire, my loue, my soule, my hope, hart, and life charmeth.
    My hope becomes a friend to my desire,
    My hart imbraceth Loue, Loue doth imbrace my hart;
    My life a Phoenix is in my soules fire,
    From thence (they vow) they neuer will depart.
      Desire, my loue, my soule, my hope, my hart, my life,
      With teares, sighes, and disdaine, shall haue immortal strife.

Amour 33

    Whilst thus mine eyes doe surfet with delight,
    My wofull hart, imprisond in my breast,
    Wishing to be trans-formd into my sight,
    To looke on her by whom mine eyes are blest;
    But whilst mine eyes thus greedily doe gaze,
    Behold! their obiects ouer-soone depart,
    And treading in this neuer-ending maze,
    Wish now to be trans-formd into my hart:
    My hart, surcharg'd with thoughts, sighes in abundance raise,
    My eyes, made dim with lookes, poure down a flood of tears;
    And whilst my hart and eye enuy each others praise,
    My dying lookes and thoughts are peiz'd in equall feares:
      And thus, whilst sighes and teares together doe contende,
      Each one of these doth ayde vnto the other lende.

Amour 34

    My fayre, looke from those turrets of thine eyes,
    Into the Ocean of a troubled minde,
    Where my poor soule, the Barke of sorrow, lyes,
    Left to the mercy of the waues and winde.
    See where she flotes, laden with purest loue,
    Which those fayre Ilands of thy lookes affoord,
    Desiring yet a thousand deaths to proue,
    Then so to cast her Ballase ouerboard.
    See how her sayles be rent, her tacklings worne,
    Her Cable broke, her surest Anchor lost:
    Her Marryners doe leaue her all forlorne,
    Yet how shee bends towards that blessed Coast!
      Loe! where she drownes in stormes of thy displeasure,
      Whose worthy prize should haue enricht thy treasure.

Amour 35

    See, chaste _Diana_, where my harmles hart,
    Rouz'd from my breast, his sure and safest layre,
    Nor chaste by hound, nor forc'd by Hunters arte,
    Yet see how right he comes vnto my fayre.
    See how my Deere comes to thy Beauties stand,
    And there stands gazing on those darting eyes,
    Whilst from theyr rayes, by _Cupids_ skilfull hand,
    Into his hart the piercing Arrow flyes.
    See how he lookes vpon his bleeding wound,
    Whilst thus he panteth for his latest breath,
    And, looking on thee, falls vpon the ground,
    Smyling, as though he gloried in his death.
      And wallowing in his blood, some lyfe yet laft;
      His stone-cold lips doth kisse the blessed shaft.

Amour 36

    Sweete, sleepe so arm'd with Beauties arrowes darting,
    Sleepe in thy Beauty, Beauty in sleepe appeareth;
    Sleepe lightning Beauty, Beauty sleepes, darknes cleereth,
    Sleepes wonder Beauty, wonders to worlds imparting.
    Sleep watching Beauty, Beauty waking, sleepe guarding
    Beauty in sleepe, sleepe in Beauty charmed,
    Sleepes aged coldnes with Beauties fire warmed,
    Sleepe with delight, Beauty with loue rewarding.
    Sleepe and Beauty, with equall forces stryuing,
    Beauty her strength vnto sleepes weaknes lending,
    Sleepe with Beauty, Beauty with sleepe contending,
    Yet others force the others force reuiuing,
      And others foe the others foe imbrace.
      Myne eyes beheld thys conflict in thy face.

Amour 37

    I euer loue where neuer hope appeares,
    Yet hope drawes on my neuer-hoping care,
    And my liues hope would die but for dyspaire;
    My neuer certaine ioy breeds euer-certaine feares.
    Vncertaine dread gyues wings vnto my hope,
    Yet my hopes wings are loden so with feare,
    As they cannot ascend to my hopes spheare,
    Yet feare gyues them more then a heauenly scope.
    Yet this large roome is bounded with dyspaire,
    So my loue is still fettered with vaine hope,
    And lyberty depriues him of hys scope,
    And thus am I imprisond in the ayre:
      Then, sweet Dispaire, awhile hold vp thy head,
      Or all my hope for sorrow will be dead.

Amour 38

    If chaste and pure deuotion of my youth,
    Or glorie of my Aprill-springing yeeres,
    Vnfained loue in naked simple truth,
    A thousand vowes, a thousand sighes and teares;
    Or if a world of faithful seruice done,
    Words, thoughts, and deeds deuoted to her honor,
    Or eyes that haue beheld her as theyr sunne,
    With admiration euer looking on her:
    A lyfe that neuer ioyd but in her loue,
    A soule that euer hath ador'd her name,
    A fayth that time nor fortune could not moue,
    A Muse that vnto heauen hath raised her fame.
      Though these, nor these deserue to be imbraced,
      Yet, faire vnkinde, too good to be disgraced.

Amour 39

    Die, die, my soule, and neuer taste of ioy,
    If sighes, nor teares, nor vowes, nor prayers can moue;
    If fayth and zeale be but esteemd a toy,
    And kindnes be vnkindnes in my loue.
    Then, with vnkindnes, Loue, reuenge thy wrong:
    O sweet'st reuenge that ere the heauens gaue!
    And with the swan record thy dying song,
    And praise her still to thy vntimely graue.
    So in loues death shall loues perfection proue
    That loue diuine which I haue borne to you,
    By doome concealed to the heauens aboue,
    That yet the world vnworthy neuer knew;
      Whose pure _Idea_ neuer tongue exprest:
      I feele, you know, the heauens can tell the rest.

Amour 40

    O thou vnkindest fayre! most fayrest shee,
    In thine eyes tryumph murthering my poore hart,
    Now doe I sweare by heauens, before we part,
    My halfe-slaine hart shall take reuenge on thee.
    Thy mother dyd her lyfe to death resigne,
    And thou an Angell art, and from aboue;
    Thy father was a man, that will I proue,
    Yet thou a Goddesse art, and so diuine.
    And thus, if thou be not of humaine kinde,
    A Bastard on both sides needes must thou be;
    Our Lawes allow no land to basterdy:
    By natures Lawes we thee a bastard finde.
      Then hence to heauen, vnkind, for thy childs part:
      Goe bastard goe, for sure of thence thou art.

Amour 41

    Rare of-spring of my thoughts, my dearest Loue,
    Begot by fancy on sweet hope exhortiue,
    In whom all purenes with perfection stroue,
    Hurt in the Embryon makes my ioyes abhortiue.
    And you, my sighes, Symtomas of my woe,
    The dolefull Anthems of my endelesse care,
    Lyke idle Ecchoes euer answering; so,
    The mournfull accents of my loues dispayre.
    And thou, Conceite, the shadow of my blisse,
    Declyning with the setting of my sunne,
    Springing with that, and fading straight with this,
    Now hast thou end, and now thou wast begun:
      Now was thy pryme, and loe! is now thy waine;
      Now wast thou borne, now in thy cradle slayne.

Amour 42

    Plac'd in the forlorne hope of all dispayre
    Against the Forte where Beauties Army lies,
    Assayld with death, yet armed with gastly feare,
    Loe! thus my loue, my lyfe, my fortune tryes.
    Wounded with Arrowes from thy lightning eyes,
    My tongue in payne my harts counsels bewraying,
    My rebell thought for me in Ambushe lyes,
    To my lyues foe her Chieftaine still betraying.
    Record my loue in Ocean waues (vnkind)
    Cast my desarts into the open ayre,
    Commit my words vnto the fleeting wind,
    Cancell my name, and blot it with dispayre;
      So shall I bee as I had neuer beene,
      Nor my disgraces to the world be seene.

Amour 43

    Why doe I speake of ioy, or write of loue,
    When my hart is the very Den of horror,
    And in my soule the paynes of hell I proue,
    With all his torments and infernall terror?
    Myne eyes want teares thus to bewayle my woe,
    My brayne is dry with weeping all too long;
    My sighes be spent with griefe and sighing so,
    And I want words for to expresse my wrong.
    But still, distracted in loues lunacy,
    And Bedlam like thus rauing in my griefe,
    Now rayle vpon her hayre, now on her eye,
    Now call her Goddesse, then I call her thiefe;
      Now I deny her, then I doe confesse her,
      Now I doe curse her, then againe I blesse her.

Amour 44

    My hart the Anuile where my thoughts doe beate,
    My words the hammers fashioning my desire,
    My breast the forge, including all the heate,
    Loue is the fuell which maintaines the fire:
    My sighes the bellowes which the flame increaseth,
    Filling mine eares with noise and nightly groning,
    Toyling with paine my labour neuer ceaseth,
    In greeuous passions my woes styll bemoning.
    Myne eyes with teares against the fire stryuing,
    With scorching gleed my hart to cynders turneth;
    But with those drops the coles againe reuyuing,
    Still more and more vnto my torment burneth.
      With _Sisiphus_ thus doe I role the stone,
      And turne the wheele with damned _Ixion_.

Amour 45

    Blacke pytchy Night, companyon of my woe,
    The Inne of care, the Nurse of drery sorrow,
    Why lengthnest thou thy darkest howres so,
    Still to prolong my long tyme lookt-for morrow?
    Thou Sable shadow, Image of dispayre,
    Portraite of hell, the ayres black mourning weed,
    Recorder of reuenge, remembrancer of care,
    The shadow and the vaile of euery sinfull deed.
    Death like to thee, so lyue thou still in death,
    The graue of ioy, prison of dayes delight.
    Let heauens withdraw their sweet Ambrozian breath,
    Nor Moone nor stars lend thee their shining light;
      For thou alone renew'st that olde desire,
      Which still torments me in dayes burning fire.

Amour 46

    Sweete secrecie, what tongue can tell thy worth?
    What mortall pen sufficiently can prayse thee?
    What curious Pensill serues to lim thee forth?
    What Muse hath power aboue thy height to raise thee?
    Strong locke of kindnesse, Closet of loues store,
    Harts Methridate, the soules preseruatiue;
    O vertue! which all vertues doe adore,
    Cheefe good, from whom all good things wee deriue.
    O rare effect! true bond of friendships measure,
    Conceite of Angels, which all wisdom teachest;
    O, richest Casket of all heauenly treasure,
    In secret silence which such wonders preachest.
      O purest mirror! wherein men may see
      The liuely Image of Diuinitie.

Amour 47

    The golden Sunne vpon his fiery wheeles
    The horned Ram doth in his course awake,
    And of iust length our night and day doth make,
    Flinging the Fishes backward with his heeles:
    Then to the Tropicke takes his full Careere,
    Trotting his sun-steeds till the Palfrays sweat,
    Bayting the Lyon in his furious heat,
    Till Virgins smyles doe sound his sweet reteere.
    But my faire Planet, who directs me still,
    Vnkindly such distemperature doth bring,
    Makes Summer Winter, Autumne in the Spring,
    Crossing sweet nature by vnruly will.
      Such is the sunne who guides my youthfull season,
      Whose thwarting course depriues the world of reason.

Amour 48

    Who list to praise the dayes delicious lyght,
    Let him compare it to her heauenly eye,
    The sun-beames to the lustre of her sight;
    So may the learned like the similie.
    The mornings Crimson to her lyps alike,
    The sweet of _Eden_ to her breathes perfume,
    The fayre _Elizia_ to her fayrer cheeke,
    Vnto her veynes the onely Phœnix plume.
    The Angels tresses to her tressed hayre,
    The _Galixia_ to her more then white.
    Praysing the fayrest, compare it to my faire,
    Still naming her in naming all delight.
      So may he grace all these in her alone,
      Superlatiue in all comparison.

Amour 49

    Define my loue, and tell the ioyes of heauen,
    Expresse my woes, and shew the paynes of hell;
    Declare what fate vnlucky starres haue giuen,
    And aske a world vpon my life to dwell.
    Make knowne that fayth vnkindnes could not moue;
    Compare my worth with others base desert:
    Let vertue be the tuch-stone of my loue,
    So may the heauens reade wonders in my hart.
    Behold the Clowdes which haue eclips'd my sunne,
    And view the crosses which my course doth let;
    Tell mee, if euer since the world begunne,
    So faire a Morning had so foule a set?
      And, by all meanes, let black vnkindnes proue
      The patience of so rare, diuine a loue.

Amour 50

    When I first ended, then I first began;
    The more I trauell, further from my rest;
    Where most I lost, there most of all I wan;
    Pyned with hunger, rysing from a feast.
    Mee thinks I flee, yet want I legs to goe,
    Wise in conceite, in acte a very sot;
    Rauisht with ioy amidst a hell of woe,
    What most I seeme, that surest I am not.
    I build my hopes a world aboue the skye,
    Yet with a Mole I creepe into the earth:
    In plenty am I staru'd with penury,
    And yet I serfet in the greatest dearth.
      I haue, I want, dispayre, and yet desire,
      Burn'd in a Sea of Ice, and drown'd amidst a fire.

Amour 51

    Goe you, my lynes, Embassadours of loue,
    With my harts tribute to her conquering eyes,
    From whence, if you one tear of pitty moue
    For all my woes, that onely shall suffise.
    When you _Minerua_ in the sunne behold,
    At her perfections stand you then and gaze,
    Where in the compasse of a Marygold,
    _Meridianis_ sits within a maze.
    And let Inuention of her beauty vaunt
    When _Dorus_ sings his sweet Pamelas loue,
    And tell the Gods, _Mars_ is predominant,
    Seated with _Sol_, and weares Mineruas gloue:
      And tell the world, that in the world there is
      A heauen on earth, on earth no heauen but this.

FINIS.

[from the Edition of 1599]

Sonet 1

    The worlds faire Rose, and _Henries_ frosty fire,
    Iohns tyrannie; and chast _Matilda's_ wrong,
    Th'inraged Queene, and furious _Mortimer_,
    The scourge of Fraunce, and his chast loue I song;
    Deposed _Richard_, _Isabell_ exil'd,
    The gallant _Tudor_, and fayre _Katherine_,
    Duke _Humfrey_, and old _Cobhams_ haplesse child,
    Couragious _Pole_, and that braue spiritfull Queene;
    _Edward_, and that delicious London Dame,
    _Brandon_, and that rich dowager of Fraunce,
    _Surrey_, with his fayre paragon of fame,
    _Dudleys_ mishap, and vertuous _Grays_ mischance;
      Their seuerall loues since I before haue showne,
      Now giue me leaue at last to sing mine owne.

Sonet 2

_To the Reader of his Poems_

    Into these loues who but for passion lookes,
    At this first sight, here let him lay them by,
    And seeke elsewhere in turning other bookes,
    Which better may his labour satisfie.
    No far-fetch'd sigh shall euer wound my brest,
    Loue from mine eye, a teare shall neuer wring,
    Nor in ah-mees my whyning Sonets drest,
    (A Libertine) fantasticklie I sing;
    My verse is the true image of my mind,
    Euer in motion, still desiring change,
    To choyce of all varietie inclin'd,
    And in all humors sportiuely I range;
      My actiue Muse is of the worlds right straine,
      That cannot long one fashion entertaine.

Sonet 3

    Many there be excelling in this kind,
    Whose well trick'd rimes with all inuention swell,
    Let each commend as best shall like his minde,
    Some _Sidney_, _Constable_, some _Daniell_.
    That thus theyr names familiarly I sing,
    Let none think them disparaged to be,
    Poore men with reuerence may speake of a King,
    And so may these be spoken of by mee;
    My wanton verse nere keepes one certaine stay,
    But now, at hand; then, seekes inuention far,
    And with each little motion runnes astray,
    Wilde, madding, iocond, and irreguler;
      Like me that lust, my honest merry rimes,
      Nor care for Criticke, nor regard the times.

Sonet 5

    My hart was slaine, and none but you and I,
    Who should I thinke the murder should commit?
    Since but your selfe, there was no creature by
    But onely I, guiltlesse of murth'ring it.
    It slew it selfe; the verdict on the view
    Doe quit the dead and me not accessarie;
    Well, well, I feare it will be prou'd by you,
    The euidence so great a proofe doth carry.
    But O, see, see, we need enquire no further,
    Vpon your lips the scarlet drops are found,
    And in your eye, the boy that did the murther,
    Your cheekes yet pale since first they gaue the wound.
      By this, I see, how euer things be past,
      Yet heauen will still haue murther out at last.

Sonet 8

    Nothing but no and I, and I and no,
    How falls it out so strangely you reply?
    I tell yee (Faire) Ile not be aunswered so,
    With this affirming no, denying I,
    I say I loue, you slightly aunswer I?
    I say you loue, you pule me out a no;
    I say I die, you eccho me with I,
    Saue me I cry, you sigh me out a no:
    Must woe and I, haue naught but no and I?
    No, I am I, If I no more can haue,
    Aunswer no more, with silence make reply,
    And let me take my selfe what I doe craue;
      Let no and I, with I and you be so,
      Then aunswer no, and I, and I, and no.

Sonet 9

    Loue once would daunce within my Mistres eye,
    And wanting musique fitting for the place,
    Swore that I should the Instrument supply,
    And sodainly presents me with her face:
    Straightwayes my pulse playes liuely in my vaines,
    My panting breath doth keepe a meaner time,
    My quau'ring artiers be the Tenours Straynes,
    My trembling sinewes serue the Counterchime,
    My hollow sighs the deepest base doe beare,
    True diapazon in distincted sound:
    My panting hart the treble makes the ayre,
    And descants finely on the musiques ground;
      Thus like a Lute or Violl did I lye,
      Whilst the proud slaue daunc'd galliards in her eye.

Sonet 10

    Loue in an humor played the prodigall,
    And bids my sences to a solemne feast,
    Yet more to grace the company withall,
    Inuites my heart to be the chiefest guest;
    No other drinke would serue this gluttons turne,
    But precious teares distilling from mine eyne,
    Which with my sighs this Epicure doth burne,
    Quaffing carouses in this costly wine,
    Where, in his cups or'come with foule excesse,
    Begins to play a swaggering Ruffins part,
    And at the banquet, in his drunkennes,
    Slew my deare friend, his kind and truest hart;
      A gentle warning, friends, thus may you see
      What 'tis to keepe a drunkard company.

Sonet 11

_To the Moone_

    Phæbe looke downe, and here behold in mee,
    The elements within thy sphere inclosed,
    How kindly Nature plac'd them vnder thee,
    And in my world, see how they are disposed;
    My hope is earth, the lowest, cold and dry,
    The grosser mother of deepe melancholie,
    Water my teares, coold with humidity,
    Wan, flegmatick, inclind by nature wholie;
    My sighs, the ayre, hote, moyst, ascending hier,
    Subtile of sanguine, dy'de in my harts dolor,
    My thoughts, they be the element of fire,
    Hote, dry, and piercing, still inclind to choller,
      Thine eye the Orbe vnto all these, from whence,
      Proceeds th' effects of powerfull influence.

Sonet 12

    To nothing fitter can I thee compare,
    Then to the sonne of some rich penyfather,
    Who hauing now brought on his end with care,
    Leaues to his son all he had heap'd together;
    This newe rich nouice, lauish of his chest,
    To one man giues, and on another spends,
    Then here he ryots, yet amongst the rest,
    Haps to lend some to one true honest friend.
    Thy gifts thou in obscuritie doost wast,
    False friends thy kindnes, borne but to deceiue thee,
    Thy loue, that is on the unworthy plac'd,
    Time hath thy beauty, which with age will leaue thee;
      Onely that little which to me was lent,
      I giue thee back, when all the rest is spent.

Sonet 13

    You not alone, when you are still alone,
    O God from you that I could priuate be,
    Since you one were, I neuer since was one,
    Since you in me, my selfe since out of me
    Transported from my selfe into your beeing
    Though either distant, present yet to eyther,
    Senceles with too much ioy, each other seeing,
    And onely absent when we are together.
    Giue me my selfe, and take your selfe againe,
    Deuise some means but how I may forsake you,
    So much is mine that doth with you remaine,
    That taking what is mine, with me I take you,
      You doe bewitch me, O that I could flie
      From my selfe you, or from your owne selfe I.

Sonet 14

_To the Soule_

    That learned Father which so firmly proues
    The soule of man immortall and diuine,
    And doth the seuerall offices define,
    _Anima._ Giues her that name as shee the body moues,
    _Amor._ Then is she loue imbracing Charitie,
    _Animus._ Mouing a will in vs, it is the mind,
    _Mens._ Retayning knowledge, still the same in kind;
    _Memoria._ As intelectuall it is the memorie,
    _Ratio._ In judging, Reason onely is her name,
    _Sensus._ In speedy apprehension it is sence,
    _Conscientia._ In right or wrong, they call her conscience.
    _Spiritus._ The spirit, when it to Godward doth inflame.
      These of the soule the seuerall functions bee,
      Which my hart lightned by thy loue doth see.

Sonet 21

    You cannot loue my pretty hart, and why?
    There was a time, you told me that you would,
    But now againe you will the same deny,
    If it might please you, would to God you could;
    What will you hate? nay, that you will not neither,
    Nor loue, nor hate, how then? what will you do,
    What will you keepe a meane then betwixt eyther?
    Or will you loue me, and yet hate me to?
    Yet serues not this, what next, what other shift?
    You will, and will not, what a coyle is heere,
    I see your craft, now I perceaue your drift,
    And all this while, I was mistaken there.
      Your loue and hate is this, I now doe proue you,
      You loue in hate, by hate to make me loue you.

Sonet 22

    An euill spirit your beauty haunts me still,
    Where-with (alas) I haue been long possest,
    Which ceaseth not to tempt me vnto ill,
    Nor giues me once but one pore minutes rest.
    In me it speakes, whether I sleepe or wake,
    And when by meanes to driue it out I try,
    With greater torments then it me doth take,
    And tortures me in most extreamity.
    Before my face, it layes all my dispaires,
    And hasts me on vnto a suddaine death;
    Now tempting me, to drown my selfe in teares,
    And then in sighing to giue vp my breath:
      Thus am I still prouok'd to euery euill,
      By this good wicked spirit, sweet Angel deuill.

Sonet 23

_To the Spheares_

    Thou which do'st guide this little world of loue,
    Thy planets mansions heere thou mayst behold,
    My brow the spheare where _Saturne_ still doth moue,
    Wrinkled with cares: and withered, dry, and cold;
    Mine eyes the Orbe where _Iupiter_ doth trace,
    Which gently smile because they looke on thee,
    _Mars_ in my swarty visage takes his place,
    Made leane with loue, where furious conflicts bee.
    _Sol_ in my breast with his hote scorching flame,
    And in my hart alone doth _Venus_ raigne:
    _Mercury_ my hands the Organs of thy fame,
    And _Luna_ glides in my fantastick braine;
      The starry heauen thy prayse by me exprest,
      Thou the first moouer, guiding all the rest.

Sonet 24

    Love banish'd heauen, in earth was held in scorne,
    Wandring abroad in neede and beggery,
    And wanting friends though of a Goddesse borne,
    Yet crau'd the almes of such as passed by.
    I like a man, deuout and charitable;
    Clothed the naked, lodg'd this wandring guest,
    With sighs and teares still furnishing his table,
    With what might make the miserable blest;
    But this vngratefull for my good desart,
    Entic'd my thoughts against me to conspire,
    Who gaue consent to steale away my hart,
    And set my breast his lodging on a fire:
      Well, well, my friends, when beggers grow thus bold,
      No meruaile then though charity grow cold.

Sonet 25

    O why should nature nigardly restraine,
    The Sotherne Nations relish not our tongue,
    Else should my lines glide on the waues of Rhene,
    And crowne the Pirens with my liuing song;
    But bounded thus to Scotland get you forth:
    Thence take you wing vnto the Orcades,
    There let my verse get glory in the North,
    Making my sighs to thawe the frozen seas,
    And let the Bards within the Irish Ile,
    To whom my Muse with fiery wings shall passe,
    Call backe the stifneckd rebels from exile,
    And molifie the slaughtering Galliglasse:
      And when my flowing numbers they rehearse,
      Let Wolues and Bears be charmed with my verse.

Sonet 27

    I gaue my faith to Loue, Loue his to mee,
    That hee and I, sworne brothers should remaine,
    Thus fayth receiu'd, fayth giuen back againe,
    Who would imagine bond more sure could be?
    Loue flies to her, yet holds he my fayth taken,
    Thus from my vertue raiseth my offence,
    Making me guilty by mine innocence;
    And surer bond by beeing so forsaken,
    He makes her aske what I before had vow'd,
    Giuing her that, which he had giuen me,
    I bound by him, and he by her made free,
    Who euer so hard breach of fayth alow'd?
      Speake you that should of right and wrong discusse,
      Was right ere wrong'd, or wrong ere righted thus?

Sonet 29

_To the Sences_

    When conquering loue did first my hart assaile,
    Vnto mine ayde I summond euery sence,
    Doubting if that proude tyrant should preuaile,
    My hart should suffer for mine eyes offence;
    But he with beauty, first corrupted sight,
    My hearing bryb'd with her tongues harmony,
    My taste, by her sweet lips drawne with delight,
    My smelling wonne with her breaths spicerie;
    But when my touching came to play his part,
    (The King of sences, greater than the rest)
    That yeelds loue up the keyes vnto my hart,
    And tells the other how they should be blest;
      And thus by those of whom I hop'd for ayde,
      To cruell Loue my soule was first betrayd.

Sonet 30

_To the Vestalls_

    Those Priests, which first the Vestall fire begun,
    Which might be borrowed from no earthly flame,
    Deuisd a vessell to receiue the sunne,
    Beeing stedfastly opposed to the same;
    Where with sweet wood laid curiously by Art,
    Whereon the sunne might by reflection beate,
    Receiuing strength from euery secret part,
    The fuell kindled with celestiall heate.
    Thy blessed eyes, the sunne which lights this fire,
    My holy thoughts, they be the Vestall flame,
    The precious odors be my chast desire,
    My breast the fuell which includes the same;
      Thou art my Vesta, thou my Goddesse art,
      Thy hollowed Temple, onely is my hart.

Sonet 31

    Me thinks I see some crooked Mimick ieere
    And taxe my Muse with this fantastick grace,
    Turning my papers, asks what haue we heere?
    Making withall, some filthy anticke face;
    I feare no censure, nor what thou canst say,
    Nor shall my spirit one iote of vigor lose,
    Think'st thou my wit shall keepe the pack-horse way,
    That euery dudgen low inuention goes?
    Since Sonnets thus in bundles are imprest,
    And euery drudge doth dull our satiate eare,
    Think'st thou my loue, shall in those rags be drest
    That euery dowdie, euery trull doth weare?
      Vnto my pitch no common iudgement flies,
      I scorne all earthlie dung-bred scarabies.

Sonet 34

_To Admiration_

    Maruaile not Loue, though I thy power admire,
    Rauish'd a world beyond the farthest thought,
    That knowing more then euer hath beene taught,
    That I am onely staru'd in my desire;
    Maruaile not Loue, though I thy power admire,
    Ayming at things exceeding all perfection,
    To wisedoms selfe, to minister direction,
    That I am onely staru'd in my desire;
    Maruaile not Loue, though I thy power admire,
    Though my conceite I farther seeme to bend,
    Then possibly inuention can extend,
    And yet am onely staru'd in my desire;
      If thou wilt wonder, heers the wonder loue,
      That this to mee doth yet no wonder proue.

Sonet 43

    Whilst thus my pen striues to eternize thee,
    Age rules my lines with wrincles in my face,
    Where in the Map of all my misery,
    Is modeld out the world of my disgrace,
    Whilst in despight of tyrannizing times,
    _Medea_ like I make thee young againe,
    Proudly thou scorn'st my world-outwearing rimes,
    And murther'st vertue with thy coy disdaine;
    And though in youth, my youth vntimely perrish,
    To keepe thee from obliuion and the graue,
    Ensuing ages yet my rimes shall cherrish,
    Where I entomb'd, my better part shall saue;
      And though this earthly body fade and die
      My name shall mount vpon eternitie.

Sonet 44

    Muses which sadly sit about my chayre,
    Drownd in the teares extorted by my lines,
    With heauy sighs whilst thus I breake the ayre,
    Paynting my passions in these sad dissignes,
    Since she disdaines to blesse my happy verse,
    The strong built Trophies to her liuing fame,
    Euer hence-forth my bosome be your hearse,
    Wherein the world shal now entombe her name,
    Enclose my musick you poor sencelesse walls,
    Sith she is deafe and will not heare my mones,
    Soften your selues with euery teare that falls,
    Whilst I like _Orpheus_ sing to trees and stones:
      Which with my plaints seeme yet with pitty moued,
      Kinder then she who I so long haue loued.

Sonet 45

    Thou leaden braine, which censur'st what I write,
    And say'st my lines be dull and doe not moue,
    I meruaile not thou feelst not my delight,
    Which neuer felt my fiery tuch of loue.
    But thou whose pen hath like a Pack-horse seru'd,
    Whose stomack vnto gaule hath turn'd thy foode,
    Whose sences like poore prisoners hunger-staru'd,
    Whose griefe hath parch'd thy body, dry'd thy blood.
    Thou which hast scorned life, and hated death,
    And in a moment mad, sober, glad, and sorry,
    Thou which hast band thy thoughts and curst thy breath,
    With thousand plagues more then in purgatory.
      Thou thus whose spirit Loue in his fire refines,
      Come thou and reade, admire, applaud my lines.

Sonet 55

    Truce gentle loue, a parly now I craue,
    Me thinks, 'tis long since first these wars begun,
    Nor thou nor I, the better yet can haue:
    Bad is the match where neither party wone.
    I offer free conditions of faire peace,
    My hart for hostage, that it shall remaine,
    Discharge our forces heere, let malice cease,
    So for my pledge, thou giue me pledge againe.
    Or if nothing but death will serue thy turne,
    Still thirsting for subuersion of my state;
    Doe what thou canst, raze, massacre, and burne,
    Let the world see the vtmost of thy hate:
      I send defiance, since if ouerthrowne,
      Thou vanquishing, the conquest is mine owne.

Sonet 56

_A Consonet_

    Eyes with your teares, blind if you bee,
    Why haue these teares such eyes to see,
    Poore eyes, if yours teares cannot moue,
    My teares, eyes, then must mone my loue,
      Then eyes, since you haue lost your sight,
      Weepe still, and teares shall lend you light,
      Till both desolu'd, and both want might.
    No, no, cleere eyes, you are not blind,
    But in my teares discerne my mind:
    Teares be the language which you speake,
    Which my hart wanting, yet must breake;
      My tongue must cease to tell my wrongs,
      And make my sighs to get them tongs,
      Yet more then this to her belongs.

Sonet 57

_To_ Lucie _Countesse of Bedford_

    Great Lady, essence of my chiefest good,
    Of the most pure and finest tempred spirit,
    Adorn'd with gifts, enobled by thy blood,
    Which by discent true vertue do'st inherit:
    That vertue which no fortune can depriue,
    Which thou by birth tak'st from thy gracious mother,
    Whose royall minds with equall motion striue,
    Which most in honour shall excell the other;
    Vnto thy fame my Muse herself shall taske,
    Which rain'st vpon me thy sweet golden showers,
    And but thy selfe, no subject will I aske,
    Vpon whose praise my soule shall spend her powers.
      Sweet Lady yet, grace this poore Muse of mine,
      Whose faith, whose zeale, whose life, whose all is thine.

Sonet 58

_To the Lady_ Anne Harington

    Madam, my words cannot expresse my mind,
    My zealous kindnes to make knowne to you,
    When your desarts all seuerally I find;
    In this attempt of me doe claim their due,
    Your gracious kindnes that doth claime my hart;
    Your bounty bids my hand to make it knowne,
    Of me your vertues each doe claime a part,
    And leaue me thus the least part of mine owne.
    What should commend your modesty and wit,
    Is by your wit and modesty commended
    And standeth dumbe, in much admiring it,
    And where it should begin, it there is ended;
      Returning this your prayses onely due,
      And to your selfe say you are onely you.

[from the Edition of 1602]

Sonnet 12

_To Lunacie_

    As other men, so I my selfe doe muse,
    Why in this sort I wrest Inuention so,
    And why these giddy metaphors I vse,
    Leauing the path the greater part doe goe;
    I will resolue you; I am lunaticke,
    And euer this in mad men you shall finde,
    What they last thought on when the braine grew sick,
    In most distraction keepe that still in minde.
    Thus talking idely in this bedlam fit,
    Reason and I, (you must conceiue) are twaine,
    'Tis nine yeeres, now, since first I lost my wit
    Beare with me, then, though troubled be my braine;
      With diet and correction, men distraught,
      (Not too farre past) may to their wits be brought.

Sonnet 17

    If hee from heauen that filch'd that liuing fire,
    Condemn'd by _Ioue_ to endlesse torment be,
    I greatly meruaile how you still goe free,
    That farre beyond _Promethius_ did aspire?
    The fire he stole, although of heauenly kinde,
    Which from aboue he craftily did take,
    Of liueles clods vs liuing men to make,
    Againe bestow'd in temper of the mind.
    But you broke in to heauens immortall store,
    Where vertue, honour, wit, and beautie lay,
    Which taking thence, you haue escap'd away,
    Yet stand as free as ere you did before.
      But old _Promethius_ punish'd for his rape,
      Thus poore theeues suffer, when the greater scape.

Sonnet 25

_To Folly_

    With fooles and children good discretion beares,
    Then honest people beare with Loue and me,
    Nor older yet, nor wiser made by yeeres,
    Amongst the rest of fooles and children be;
    Loues still a Baby, playes with gaudes and toyes,
    And like a wanton sports with euery feather,
    And Idiots still are running after boyes,
    Then fooles and children fitt'st to goe together;
    He still as young as when he first was borne,
    No wiser I, then when as young as he,
    You that behold vs, laugh vs not to scorne,
    Giue Nature thanks, you are not such as we;
      Yet fooles and children sometimes tell in play,
      Some wise in showe, more fooles in deede, then they.

Sonnet 27

    I heare some say, this man is not in loue,
    Who, can he loue? a likely thing they say:
    Reade but his verse, and it will easily proue;
    O iudge not rashly (gentle Sir) I pray,
    Because I loosely tryfle in this sort,
    As one that faine his sorrowes would beguile:
    You now suppose me, all this time in sport,
    And please your selfe with this conceit the while.
    You shallow censures; sometime see you not
    In greatest perills some men pleasant be,
    Where fame by death is onely to be got,
    They resolute, so stands the case with me;
      Where other men, in depth of passion cry,
      I laugh at fortune, as in iest to die.

Sonnet 31

    To such as say thy loue I ouer-prize,
    And doe not sticke to terme my praises folly,
    Against these folkes that think them selues so wise,
    I thus appose my force of reason wholly,
    Though I giue more, then well affords my state,
    In which expense the most suppose me vaine,
    Would yeeld them nothing at the easiest rate,
    Yet at this price, returnes me treble gaine,
    They value not, vnskilfull how to vse,
    And I giue much, because I gaine thereby,
    I that thus take, or they that thus refuse,
    Whether are these deccaued then, or I?
      In euery thing I hold this maxim still,
      The circumstance doth make it good or ill.

Sonnet 41

    Deare, why should you commaund me to my rest
    When now the night doth summon all to sleepe?
    Me thinks this time becommeth louers best,
    Night was ordained together friends to keepe.
    How happy are all other liuing things,
    Which though the day disioyne by seuerall flight,
    The quiet euening yet together brings,
    And each returnes vnto his loue at night.
    O thou that art so curteous vnto all,
    Why shouldst thou Night abuse me onely thus,
    That euery creature to his kinde doost call,
    And yet tis thou doost onely seuer vs.
      Well could I wish it would be euer day,
      If when night comes you bid me goe away.

Sonnet 58

_To Prouerbe_

    As Loue and I, late harbour'd in one Inne,
    With Prouerbs thus each other intertaine;
    _In loue there is no lacke, thus I beginne?
    Faire words makes fooles, replieth he againe?
    That spares to speake, doth spare to speed (quoth I)
    As well (saith he) too forward as too slow.
    Fortune assists the boldest, I replie?
    A hasty man (quoth he) nere wanted woe.
    Labour is light, where loue (quoth I) doth pay,
    (Saith he) light burthens heauy, if farre borne?
    (Quoth I) the maine lost, cast the by away:
    You haue spunne a faire thred, he replies in scorne_.
      And hauing thus a while each other thwarted,
      Fooles as we met, so fooles againe we parted.

Sonnet 63

_To the high and mighty Prince, James, King of Scots_

    Not thy graue Counsells, nor thy Subiects loue,
    Nor all that famous Scottish royaltie,
    Or what thy soueraigne greatnes may approue,
    Others in vaine doe but historifie,
    When thine owne glorie from thy selfe doth spring,
    As though thou did'st, all meaner prayses scorne:
    Of Kings a Poet, and the Poets King,
    They Princes, but thou Prophets do'st adorne;
    Whilst others by their Empires are renown'd,
    Thou do'st enrich thy Scotland with renowne,
    And Kings can but with Diadems be crown'd,
    But with thy Laurell, thou doo'st crowne thy Crowne;
      That they whose pens, euen life to Kings doe giue,
      In thee a King, shall seeke them selues to liue.

Sonnet _66_

_To the Lady_ L.S.

    Bright starre of Beauty, on whose eyelids sit,
    A thousand Nimph-like and enamoured Graces,
    The Goddesses of memory and wit,
    Which in due order take their seuerall places,
    In whose deare bosome, sweet delicious loue,
    Layes downe his quiuer, that he once did beare,
    Since he that blessed Paradice did proue,
    Forsooke his mothers lap to sport him there.
    Let others striue to entertaine with words,
    My soule is of another temper made;
    I hold it vile that vulgar wit affords,
    Deuouring time my faith, shall not inuade:
      Still let my praise be honoured thus by you,
      Be you most worthy, whilst I be most true.

[from the Edition of 1605]

Sonnet 43

    Why should your faire eyes with such soueraine grace,
    Dispearse their raies on euery vulgar spirit,
    Whilst I in darknes in the selfesame place,
    Get not one glance to recompence my merit:
    So doth the plow-man gaze the wandring starre,
    And onely rests contented with the light,
    That neuer learnd what constellations are,
    Beyond the bent of his vnknowing sight.
    O why should beautie (custome to obey)
    To their grosse sence applie her selfe so ill?
    Would God I were as ignorant as they
    When I am made vnhappy by my skill;
      Onely compeld on this poore good to boast,
      Heauens are not kind to them that know them most.

Sonnet 46

    Plain-path'd Experience the vnlearneds guide,
    Her simple followers euidently shewes,
    Sometime what schoolemen scarcely can decide,
    Nor yet wise Reason absolutely knowes:
    In making triall of a murther wrought,
    If the vile actor of the heinous deede,
    Neere the dead bodie happily be brought,
    Oft hath been prou'd the breathlesse coarse will bleed;
    She comming neere that my poore hart hath slaine,
    Long since departed, (to the world no more)
    The auncient wounds no longer can containe,
    But fall to bleeding as they did before:
      But what of this? should she to death be led,
      It furthers iustice, but helpes not the dead.

Sonnet 47

    In pride of wit, when high desire of fame
    Gaue life and courage to my labouring pen,
    And first the sound and vertue of my name,
    Won grace and credit in the eares of men:
    With those the thronged Theaters that presse,
    I in the circuite for the Lawrell stroue,
    Where the full praise I freely must confesse,
    In heate of blood a modest minde might moue:
    With showts and daps at euerie little pawse,
    When the prowd round on euerie side hath rung,
    Sadly I sit vnmou'd with the applawse,
    As though to me it nothing did belong:
      No publique glorie vainely I pursue,
      The praise I striue, is to eternize you.

Sonnet 50

    As in some Countries far remote from hence,
    The wretched creature destined to die,
    Hauing the iudgement due to his offence,
    By Surgeons begg'd, their Art on him to trie:
    Which on the liuing worke without remorce,
    First make incision on each maistring vaine,
    Then stanch the bleeding, then transperce the coarse,
    And with their balmes recure the wounds againe,
    Then poison and with Phisicke him restore,
    Not that they feare the hopelesse man to kill,
    But their experience to encrease the more;
    Euen so my Mistresse works vpon my ill,
      By curing me, and killing me each howre,
      Onely to shew her beauties soueraigne powre.

Sonnet 51

    Calling to minde since first my loue begunne,
    Th' incertaine times oft varying in their course,
    How things still vnexpectedly haue runne,
    As please the fates, by their resistlesse force:
    Lastly, mine eyes amazedly haue scene,
    _Essex_ great fall, _Tyrone_ his peace to gaine,
    The quiet end of that long-liuing Queene,
    This Kings faire entrance, and our peace with Spaine,
    We and the Dutch at length our selues to seuer.
    Thus the world doth, and euermore shall reele,
    Yet to my goddesse am I constant euer;
    How ere blind fortune turne her giddy wheele:
      Though heauen and earth proue both to mee vntrue,
      Yet am I still inuiolate to you.

Sonnet 57

    You best discern'd of my interior eies,
    And yet your graces outwardly diuine,
    Whose deare remembrance in my bosome lies,
    Too riche a relique for so poore a shrine:
    You in whome Nature chose herselfe to view,
    When she her owne perfection would admire,
    Bestowing all her excellence on you;
    At whose pure eies Loue lights his halowed fire,
    Euen as a man that in some traunce hath scene,
    More than his wondring vttrance can vnfolde,
    That rapt in spirite in better worlds hath beene,
    So must your praise distractedly be tolde;
      Most of all short, when I should shew you most,
      In your perfections altogether lost.

Sonnet 58

    In former times, such as had store of coyne,
    In warres at home, or when for conquests bound,
    For feare that some their treasures should purloyne,
    Gaue it to keepe to spirites within the ground;
    And to attend it, them so strongly tide,
    Till they return'd, home when they neuer came,
    Such as by art to get the same haue tride,
    From the strong spirits by no means get the same,
    Neerer you come, that further flies away,
    Striuing to holde it strongly in the deepe:
    Euen as this spirit, so she alone doth play,
    With those rich Beauties heauen giues her to keepe:
      Pitty so left, to coldenes of her blood,
      Not to auaile her, nor do others good.

_To Sir Walter Aston, Knight of the honourable
        order of the Bath, and my most
               worthy Patron_

    I will not striue m' inuention to inforce,
    With needlesse words your eyes to entertaine,
    T' obserue the formall ordinarie course
    That euerie one so vulgarly doth faine:
    Our interchanged and deliberate choise,
    Is with more firme and true election sorted,
    Then stands in censure of the common voice.
    That with light humor fondly is transported:
    Nor take I patterne of another's praise,
    Then what my pen may constantly avow.
    Nor walke more publique nor obscurer waies
    Then vertue bids, and iudgement will allow;
      So shall my tone, and best endeuours serue you,
      And still shall studie, still so to deserue you.
                                  _Michaell Drayton._

[from the Edition of 1619]

1

    Like an aduenturous Sea-farer am I,
    Who hath some long and dang'rous Voyage beene,
    And call'd to tell of his Discouerie,
    How farre he sayl'd, what Countries he had seene,
    Proceeding from the Port whence he put forth,
    Shewes by his Compasse, how his Course he steer'd,
    When East, when West, when South, and when by North,
    As how the Pole to eu'ry place was rear'd,
    What Capes he doubled, of what Continent,
    The Gulphes and Straits, that strangely he had past,
    Where most becalm'd, wherewith foule Weather spent,
    And on what Rocks in perill to be cast?
    Thus in my Loue, Time calls me to relate
    My tedious Trauels, and oft-varying Fate.

6

    How many paltry, foolish, painted things,
    That now in Coaches trouble eu'ry Street,
    Shall be forgotten, whom no Poet sings,
    Ere they be well wrap'd in their winding Sheet?
    Where I to thee Eternitie shall giue,
    When nothing else remayneth of these dayes,
    And Queenes hereafter shall be glad to liue
    Vpon the Almes of thy superfluous prayse;
    Virgins and Matrons reading these my Rimes,
    Shall be so much delighted with thy story,
    That they shall grieve, they liu'd not in these Times,
    To haue seene thee, their Sexes onely glory:
      So shalt thou flye aboue the vulgar Throng,
      Still to suruiue in my immortall Song.

8

    There's nothing grieues me, but that Age should haste,
    That in my dayes I may not see thee old,
    That where those two deare sparkling Eyes are plac'd,
    Onely two Loope-holes, then I might behold.
    That louely, arched, yuorie, pollish'd Brow,
    Defac'd with Wrinkles, that I might but see;
    Thy daintie Hayre, so curl'd, and crisped now,
    Like grizzled Mosse vpon some aged Tree;
    Thy Cheeke, now flush with Roses, sunke, and leane,
    Thy Lips, with age, as any Wafer thinne,
    Thy Pearly teeth out of thy head so cleane,
    That when thou feed'st, thy Nose shall touch thy Chinne:
      These Lines that now thou scorn'st, which should delight thee,
      Then would I make thee read, but to despight thee.

15

_His Remedie for Loue_

    Since to obtaine thee, nothing me will sted,
    I haue a Med'cine that shall cure my Loue,
    The powder of her Heart dry'd, when she is dead,
    That Gold nor Honour ne'r had power to moue;
    Mix'd with her Teares, that ne'r her true-Loue crost,
    Nor at Fifteene ne'r long'd to be a Bride,
    Boyl'd with her Sighes, in giuing vp the Ghost,
    That for her late deceased Husband dy'd;
    Into the same then let a Woman breathe,
    That being chid, did neuer word replie,
    With one thrice-marry'd's Pray'rs, that did bequeath
    A Legacie to stale Virginitie.
      If this Receit haue not the pow'r to winne me,
      Little Ile say, but thinke the Deuill's in me.

21

    A witlesse Gallant, a young Wench that woo'd,
    (Yet his dull Spirit her not one iot could moue)
    Intreated me, as e'r I wish'd his good,
    To write him but one Sonnet to his Loue:
    When I, as fast as e'r my Penne could trot,
    Powr'd out what first from quicke Inuention came;
    Nor neuer stood one word thereof to blot,
    Much like his Wit, that was to vse the same:
    But with my Verses he his Mistres wonne,
    Who doted on the Dolt beyond all measure.
    But soe, for you to Heau'n for Phraze I runne,
    And ransacke all APOLLO'S golden Treasure;
      Yet by my Troth, this Foole his Loue obtaines,
      And I lose you, for all my Wit and Paines.

27

    Is not Loue here, as 'tis in other Clymes,
    And diff'reth it, as doe the seu'rall Nations?
    Or hath it lost the Vertue, with the Times,
    Or in this land alt'reth with the Fashions?
    Or haue our Passions lesser pow'r then theirs,
    Who had lesse Art them liuely to expresse?
    Is Nature growne lesse pow'rfull in their Heires,
    Or in our Fathers did the more transgresse?
    I am sure my Sighes come from a Heart as true,
    As any Mans, that Memory can boast,
    And my Respects and Seruices to you
    Equall with his, that loues his Mistris most:
      Or Nature must be partiall in my Cause,
      Or onely you doe violate her Lawes.

36

_Cupid coniured_

    Thou purblind Boy, since thou hast been so slacke
    To wound her Heart, whose Eyes haue wounded me,
    And suff'red her to glory in my Wracke,
    Thus to my aid, I lastly coniure thee;
    By Hellish _Styx_ (by which the THUND'RER sweares)
    By thy faire Mothers vnauoided Power,
    By HECAT'S Names, by PROSERPINE'S sad Teares,
    When she was rapt to the infernall Bower,
    By thine own loued PSYCHES, by the Fires
    Spent on thine Altars, flaming vp to Heau'n;
    By all the Louers Sighes, Vowes, and Desires,
    By all the Wounds that euer thou hast giu'n;
      I coniure thee by all that I haue nam'd,
      To make her loue, or CUPID be thou damn'd.

48

    Cupid, I hate thee, which I'de haue thee know,
    A naked Starueling euer may'st thou be,
    Poore Rogue, goe pawne thy _Fascia_ and thy Bow,
    For some few Ragges, wherewith to couer thee;
    Or if thou'lt not, thy Archerie forbeare,
    To some base Rustick doe thy selfe preferre,
    And when Corne's sowne, or growne into the Eare,
    Practise thy Quiuer, and turne Crow-keeper;
    Or being Blind (as fittest for the Trade)
    Goe hyre thy selfe some bungling Harpers Boy;
    They that are blind, are Minstrels often made,
    So may'st thou liue, to thy faire Mothers Ioy:
      That whilst with MARS she holdeth her old way,
      Thou, her Blind Sonne, may'st sit by them, and play.

52

    What dost thou meane to Cheate me of my Heart,
    To take all Mine, and giue me none againe?
    Or haue thine Eyes such Magike, or that Art,
    That what They get, They euer doe retaine?
    Play not the Tyrant, but take some Remorse,
    Rebate thy Spleene, if but for Pitties sake;
    Or Cruell, if thou can'st not; let vs scorse,
    And for one Piece of Thine, my whole heart take.
    But what of Pitty doe I speake to Thee,
    Whose Brest is proofe against Complaint or Prayer?
    Or can I thinke what my Reward shall be
    From that proud Beauty, which was my betrayer?
      What talke I of a Heart, when thou hast none?
      Or if thou hast, it is a flinty one.

61

    Since there 's no helpe, Come let vs kisse and part,
    Nay, I haue done: You get no more of Me,
    And I am glad, yea glad withall my heart,
    That thus so cleanly, I my Selfe can free,
    Shake hands for euer, Cancell all our Vowes,
    And when we meet at any time againe,
    Be it not scene in either of our Browes,
    That We one iot of former Loue reteyne;
    Now at the last gaspe of Loues latest Breath,
    When his Pulse fayling, Passion speechlesse lies,
    When Faith is kneeling by his bed of Death,
    And Innocence is closing vp his Eyes,
      Now if thou would'st, when all haue giuen him ouer,
      From Death to Life, thou might'st him yet recouer.

ODES

[from the Edition of 1619]

TO HIMSELFE AND THE HARPE

                    And why not I, as hee
                    That's greatest, if as free,
                      (In sundry strains that striue,
                    Since there so many be)
                      Th' old _Lyrick_ kind reuiue?

                    I will, yea, and I may;
                    Who shall oppose my way?
                      For what is he alone,
                    That of himselfe can say,
                      Hee's Heire of _Helicon_?                       10

                    APOLLO, and the Nine,
                    Forbid no Man their Shrine,
                      That commeth with hands pure;
                    Else be they so diuine,
                      They will not him indure.

                    For they be such coy Things,
                    That they care not for Kings,
                      And dare let them know it;
                    Nor may he touch their Springs,
                      That is not borne a Poet.                       20

Pyreneus, _King     The _Phocean_ it did proue,
of_ Phocis,         Whom when foule Lust did moue,
_attempting to        Those Mayds vnchast to make,
rauish the Muses._  Fell, as with them he stroue,
                    His Neck and iustly brake.

                    That instrument ne'r heard,
                    Strooke by the skilfull Bard,
                      It strongly to awake;
                    But it th' infernalls skard,
                      And made Olympus quake.                         30

Sam. lib. 1.        As those Prophetike strings
cap. 16.            Whose sounds with fiery Wings,
                      Draue Fiends from their abode,