Witness those rings and rounddelayes Of theirs, which yet remaine; Were footed in queene Maries dayes On many a grassy playne. But since of late Elizabeth And later James came in; They never danc'd on any heath, As when the time hath bin. By which wee note the fairies Their dances were procession. Or farther for religion fled, Or else they take their ease. A tell-tale in their company They never could endure; And whoso kept not secretly Their mirth, was punished sure: To pinch such blacke and blue: Now they have left our quarters; Are kept in store; con twenty thanks To William Churne of Staffordshire And pray yee for noddle: To his Son, Vincent Corbet. Nor too much wealth, nor wit come to thee, I wish thee all thy mother's graces, Phineas Fletcher. Dieser zu seiner Zeit gefeierteste Nachahmer Spenser's, ward 1584 geboren, zu Eton und Cambridge wissenschaftlich gebildet und trat dann in den geistlichen Stand. 1621 erhielt er ein geistliches Amt zu Hilgay in Norfolk, das er neun und zwanzig Jahre hindurch bekleidete und in dem er wahrscheinlich 1650 starb. Seine Gedichte, the Purple Island, Piscatory Eglogues und Miscellaneous poems enthaltend, erschienen zuerst gesammelt 1633 und sind seitdem öfter wieder aufgelegt worden; sie finden sich auch im 4. Bande von Anderson's British Poets. Unter ihnen ist das beschreibende Gedicht die Purpurinsel, das eigenthümlichste; es soll nämlich das ganze Leben umfassen und ist eine poetische Anthropologie; zuerst schildert nämlich der Dichter bald wirk lich, bald allegorisch den Körper des Menschen, dann die Seele bis in das Kleinste. Trotz der Geschmacklosigkeit der Idee und der Ausführung der ersten Gesänge namentlich, finden sich doch viele sehr schöne und erhabene Stellen in diesem Werke, so dass man lebhaft die Verirrung eines so begabten Dichters beklagen muss, der so reiche Phantasie, einen solchen Schwung des Geistes und eine so energische Ausdrucksweise besitzt; glänzende Eigenschaften, die sich auch in seinen übrigen Gedichten offenbaren. The Shepherd's Home. (From the Purple-Island.) Thrice, oh, thrice happie shepherd's life and state No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep: Singing all day, his flocks he learns to keep; Himself as innocent as are his simple sheep. No Serian worms he knows, that with their threed Draw out their silken lives: -nor silken pride: His lambes' warm fleece well fits his little need, Not in that proud Sidonian tincture di'd: No emptie hopes, no courtly fears him fright; No begging wants his middle fortune bite: But sweet content exiles both miserie and spite. Instead of music and base flattering tongues, Which wait to first-salute my lord's uprise; The cheerfull lark wakes him with early songs, And birds' sweet whistling notes unlock his eyes. In countrey playes is all the strife he uses; Or sing, or dance, unto the rural Muses; And but in music's sports, all difference refuses. His certain life, that never can deceive him, Is full of thousand sweets, and rich content: The smooth-leav'd beeches in the field receive him With coolest shades, till noon-tide's rage is spent: His life is neither tost in boist'rous seas Of troublous world, nor lost in slothfull ease; Pleas'd and full blest he lives, when he his God can please. His bed of wool yeelds safe and quiet sleeps, While by his side his faithfull spouse hath place: His little sonne into his bosome creeps, Never his humble house or state torment him; Lesse he could like, if lesse his God had sent him; And when he dies, green turfs, with grassie tombe, content him. The world's great Light his lowly state hath bless'd, And left his Heav'n to be a shepherd base: Thousand sweet songs he to his pipe addrest: Swift rivers stood, beasts, trees, stones, ranne apace, And serpents flew, to heare his softest strains: He fed his flock where rolling Jordan reignes; There took our rags, gave us his robes, and bore our pains. Fond man, that looks on Earth for happinesse, And here long seeks what here is never found! For all our good we hold from Heav'n by lease, With many forfeits and conditions bound; Nor can we pay the fine and rentage due: Tho' now but writ, and seal'd, and giv'n anew, Yet daily we it break, then daily must renew. Why should'st thou here look for perpetuall good, And loving pelican in safety breeds; There shrieking satyres fill the people's emptie steads. Where is th' Assyrian lion's golden hide, That all the east once graspt in lordly paw? Where that great Persian beare, whose swelling pride The lion's self tore out with ravenous jaw? Or he which, 'twixt a lion and a pard, Thro' all the world with nimble pineons far'd, And to his greedy whelps his conquer'd kingdomes shar'd? Hardly the place of such antiquitie, And empty name in writ, is left behinde: That monstrous beast, which, nurst in Tiber's | And that black vulture, which with deathfull wing fenne, Did all the world with hideous shape affray; That fill'd with costly spoil his gaping denne, And trode down all the rest to dust and clay: His batt'ring horns pull'd out by civil hands, And iron teeth, lie scatter'd on the sands; Backt, bridled by a monk, with sev'n heads yoked stands. Oreshadows half the Earth, whose dismall sight Frighted the Muses from their native spring, Already stoops, and flagges with weary flight: Who then shall look for happiness beneath? Where each new day proclaims chance, change, and death, And life itself's as flit as is the aire we breathe. Giles Fletcher. Er war des Vorigen Bruder; Beide dürfen nicht mit dem dramatischen Dichter John Fletcher verwechselt werden. Der hier Genannte ward einige Jahre nach seinem Bruder geboren, studirte ebenfalls Theologie, erhielt eine Pfründe zu Alderton in Suffolk und starb daselbst um 1623. Ausser zwei Elegieen hinterliess er ein grösseres Gedicht, episch-descriptiver Art, das zuerst 1610 in Cambridge erschien und seitdem nur selten wieder aufgelegt worden ist. Es findet sich auch in Anderson's British Poets Bd. IV. wieder abgedruckt, führt den Titel Christ's Victory and Triumph, und besteht aus vier Gesängen, von denen der erste sich auf die Menschwerdung Christi, der zweite auf dessen Versuchung, der dritte auf die Kreuzigung und der vierte auf die Auferstehung bezieht; doch hat der Dichter so viel Profanes, namentlich aus der klassischen Mythologie eingemischt, dass das Ganze sehr buntscheckig geworden ist und den beabsichtigten Eindruck natürlich verfehlt. Trotz dem sind aber sehr schöne Stellen darin, die des Verfassers poetischen Beruf lebendig beurkunden, wie z. B. die hier mitgetheilten, in welchen der Erlöser geschildert wird, wie er in der Wildniss weilt, dann einen alten Einsiedler begleitet und nun vergeblich auf verschiedene Weise vom Satan versucht wird. From Christ's Triumph on Earth. (Christ's Victory and Triumph C. II.) Twice had Diana bent her golden bowe, And all the waie he went, he ever blest With benedicities, and prayers store, But the bud ground was blessed ne'r the more, And shot from Heav'n her silver shafts, to rouse And all his head with snowe of age was waxen The sluggish salvages, that den belowe, And all the day in lazie covert drouse Since him the silent wildernesse did house: The Heav'n his roofe, and arbour harbour was, grasse: At length an aged syre farre off he sawe hore. That for devotion had the world forsaken, Since to his beads he had himselfe betaken, And almes, and fasts, and churche's discipline: And dead, might rest his bones under the holy shrine. The garden like a ladie faire was cut, That hung upon their azure leaves, did shew blew. Upon a hillie banke her head shee cast, What should I here depeint her lillie hand, mour. Under the shadowe of these drunken elmes A fountaine rose, where Pangloretta uses (When her some flood of fancie overwhelms, Like cockatrice's eyes, that sparks of poison And one of all her favourites she chuses) throwe. His clothes wear ragged clouts, with thornes pin'd fast; And as he musing lay, to stonie fright To bathe herselfe, whom she in lust abuses, The font of silver was, and so his showrs On liquid silver leaves of roses lay: The roofe thicke cloudes did paint, from which High over all, Panglorie's blazing throne, three boyes In her bright turret, all of christall wrought, Three gaping mermaides with their eawrs did Like Phoebus' lampe, in midst of Heaven, shone: Whose starry top, with pride infernall fraught, feede, noise, Whose brests let fall the streame, with sleepie Selfe-arching columns to uphold wear taught: To lions mouths, from whence it leapt with speede, And in the rosie laver seem'd to bleed; The naked boyes unto the water's fall, Their stonie nightingales had taught to call, When Zephyr breath'd into their watery intervall. And all about, embayed in soft sleepe, Through this false Eden, to his leman's bowre, Others within their arbours swilling sat, To quench his fierie cheeks, and all about Small cocks broke through the wall, and sallied out Flaggons of wine, to set on fire that spueing rout. This their inhumed soules esteem'd their wealths, Some vomiting, all drunken with delight. They came, whear whiter ladies naked went, Melted in pleasure and soft languishment, And sunke in beds of roses, amorous glaunces sent. "Love is the blossome where thear blowes Every thing that lives or growes: Love doth make the Heav'ns to move, And the Sun doth burne in love: Love the strong and weake doth yoke, And makes the yvie climbe the oke; Under whose shadowes lions wilde, Soften'd by love, growe tame and mild: Love no med'cine can appease, He burnes the fishes in the seas; Not all the skill his wounds can stench, Not all the sea his fire can quench: Love did make the bloody spear Once a levie coat to wear, While in his leaves thear shrouded lay Sweete birds, for love that sing and play: And of all love's joyfull flame, I the bud and blossome am. Onely bend thy knee to me, "See, see the flowers that belowe, Now as fresh as morning blowe, And of all, the virgin rose, That as bright Aurora showes: How they all unleaved die, Losing their virginitie; |