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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
Were of the old profession:
Their songs were Ave Maries,

Their dances were procession.
But now, alas! they all are dead,
Or gone beyond the seas,

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:
It was a just and christian deed

To pinch such blacke and blue:
O how the common-welth doth need
Such justices as you!

Now they have left our quarters;
A Register they have,
Who can preserve their charters;
A man both wise and grave.
An hundred of their merry pranks
By one that I could name

Are kept in store; con twenty thanks
To William for the same.

To William Churne of Staffordshire
Give laud and praises due,
Who every meale can mend your cheare
With tales both old and true:
To William all give audience,

And pray yee for noddle:
For all the fairies evidence
Were lost, if it were addle.

To his Son, Vincent Corbet.
What I shall leave thee none can tell,
But all shall say I wish thee well:
I wish thee, Vin, before all wealth,
Both bodily and ghostly health;

Nor too much wealth, nor wit come to thee,
So much of either may undo thee.
I wish thee learning, not for show,
Enough for to instruct, and know;
Not such as gentlemen require
To prate at table, or at fire.

I wish thee all thy mother's graces,
Thy father's fortunes, and his places.
I wish thee friends, and one at court
Not to build on, but support;
To keep thee, not in doing many
Oppressions, but from suffering any.
I wish thee peace in all thy ways,
Nor lazy nor contentious days;
And when thy soul and body part,
As innocent as now thou art.

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
When courts are happinesse, unhappie pawns!
His cottage low, and safely humble gate,
Shuts out proud Fortune, with her scorns, and
fawns:

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,
The lively picture of his father's face:

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,
At ev'ry losse against Heav'ns face repining?
Do but behold where glorious cities stood,
With gilded tops and silver turrets shining;
There now the hart, fearlesse of greyhound,
feeds,

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,
Or note of these great monarchies we finde:
Onely a fading verball memorie,

And empty name in writ, is left behinde:
But when this second life and glory fades,
And sinks at length in time's obscurer shades,
A second fall succeeds, and double death invades.

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,
The ground his bed, and his moist pillowe

grasse:
But fruit thear none did growe, nor rivers none
did passe.

At length an aged syre farre off he sawe
Come slowely footing, every step he guest
One of his feete he from the grave did drawe.
Three legges he had, the woodden was the best,

hore.

That for devotion had the world forsaken,
A good old hermit he might seeme to be,
And now was travelling some saint to see,

Since to his beads he had himselfe betaken,
Whear all his former sinnes he might awaken,
And them might wash away with dropping
brine,

And almes, and fasts, and churche's discipline: And dead, might rest his bones under the holy shrine.

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The garden like a ladie faire was cut,
That lay as if shee slumber'd in delight,
And to the open skies her eyes did shut;
The azure fields of Heav'n wear 'sembled right
In a large round, set with the flow'rs of light:
The flow'rs-de-luce, and the round sparks of
dew,

That hung upon their azure leaves, did shew
Like twinkling starrs, that sparkle in the evening

blew.

Upon a hillie banke her head shee cast,
On which the bowre of Vaine-delight was built.
White and red roses for her face wear plac't,
And for her tresses marigolds wear spilt:
Them broadly shee displaied, like flaming guilt,
Till in the ocean the glad day wear drown'd:
Then up againe her yellow locks she wound,
And with greene fillets in their prettie culls them
bound.

What should I here depeint her lillie hand,
Her veines of violets, her ermine brest,
Which there in orient colours living stand:
Or how her gowne with silken leaves is drest,
Or how her watchman, arm'd with boughie crest,
A wall of prim hid in his bushes bears,
Shaking at every winde their leavie spears
While she supinely sleeps ne to be waked fears?
Over the hedge depends the graping elme,
Whose greener head, empurpuled in wine,
Seemed to wonder at his bloodie helme,
And halfe suspect the bunches of the vine,
Least they, perhaps, his wit should undermine,
For well he knewe such fruit he never bore:
But her weake armes embraced him the more,
And her with ruby grapes laugh'd at her para-

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
A thousand wilde chimeras would him cast:
As when a fearefull dreame in midst of night,
Skips to the braine, and phansies to the sight
Some winged furie, strait the hasty foot,
Eger to flie, cannot plucke up his root:
The voyce dies in the tongue, and mouth gapes
without boot.

To bathe herselfe, whom she in lust abuses,
And from his wanton body sucks his soule,
Which, drown'd in pleasure in that shally bowle,
And swimming in delight, doth amorously rowle.

The font of silver was, and so his showrs
In silver fell, onely the gilded bowles
(Like to a fornace, that the min'rall powres)
Seemed to have moul't it in their shining holes:
And on the water, like to burning coles,

On liquid silver leaves of roses lay:
But when Panglorie here did list to play,
Rose-water then it ranne, and milke it rain'd,
they say.

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,
A heard of charmed beasts a ground wear spread,
Which the faire witch in goulden chaines did keepe,
And them in willing bondage fettired:
Once men they liv'd, but now the men were dead,!
And turn'd to beasts; so fabled Homer old,
That Circe with her potion, charm'd in gold,
Us'd manly soules in beastly bodies to immould.

Through this false Eden, to his leman's bowre,
(Whome thousand soules devoutly idolize)
Our first destroyer led our Saviour;
Thear in the lower roome, in solemne wise,
They daunc'd a round, and powr'd their sacrifice
To plumpe Lyaeus, and among the rest,
The jolly priest, in yvie garlands drest,
Chaunted wild orgialls, in honour of the feast.

Others within their arbours swilling sat,
(For all the roome about was arboured)
With laughing Bacchus, that was growne so fat,
That stand he could not, but was carried,
And every evening freshly watered,

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,
To crowne the bousing kan from day to night,
And sicke to drinke themselves with drinking
healths,

Some vomiting, all drunken with delight.
Hence to a loft, carv'd all in yvorie white,

They came, whear whiter ladies naked went, Melted in pleasure and soft languishment, And sunke in beds of roses, amorous glaunces

sent.

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"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,
Thy wooeing shall thy winning be.

"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;

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