ページの画像
PDF
ePub

In garb, and speech, and manners, stood confest
To outward view, by hues and signs exprest,
And told their state and calling by their vest.

SPENSER.

SWEET was the youth of virgin Poesy,
That virgin sweetness which she gave to thee,
My SPENSER, bard of happy innocence !

For thou didst with a bridegroom's love intense
Caress the fair inventions of thy brain,
Those babes of paradise, without the pain
Of mortal birth, to fairest heritage

Born in the freshness of their perfect age.
Thy Faery Knight had all the world in fee,
For all the world was Faeryland to thee.

Thine is no

tale, once acted, then forgot;

Thy creatures never were, and never will be not.
Oh! look not for them in the dark abyss
Where all things have been, and where nothing is-
The spectral past;—nor in the troubled sea
Where all strange fancies are about to be-

The unabiding present. Seek them where
For ever lives the Good, the True, the Fair,
In the eternal silence of the heart.

There Spenser found them; thence his magic art
Their shades evoked in feature, form, and limb,
Real as a human self, and bright as cherubim.
And what though wistful love and emulous arms,
And all the wizard might of mutter'd charms,-
Though slimy snakes disgorge their loathly rage,
And monstrous phantoms wait on Archimage:
These are but dreams, that come, and go, and реер
Through the thin curtain of a morning sleep,
And leave no pressure on the soul, that wakes
And hails the glad creation that it makes.

SHAKESPEARE.

SHAKESPEARE, what art thou? Could'st thou rise again
To praise thyself, thy praise were old and vain;
Thy highest flight would sink beneath thy due;
Thy own invention would find nothing new.
In the whole orb of nature that thou art,
Complete in essence, and distinct in part;
No theme, no topic, and no simile,

But busy men have stolen in praise of thee.
Then let thy cumbrous critics keep their shelves;
We find thy truest comment in ourselves.
In thee our thoughts find utterance, and combine
Their airy substance with those thoughts of thine.
By thee our feelings all are judged, acquitted,
Reproved, condemn'd, with seemly action fitted.
What chance, or change, affection, or the faith
Of hope and fear, the benison or scathe
Of Fortune infinite can make of man,-
What man has been since first the world began,

Thou well hast shown.

One task alone remains,

One great adventure for succeeding brains;
The golden branch upon the mystic tree,
Unpluck'd, to show-man as he ought to be.

DRAYTON.

HAIL to thee, DRAYTON ! true, pains-taking wight, So various that 'tis hard to praise thee right; For driest fact and finest faery fable

Employ'd thy genius indefatigable.

What bard more zealous of our England's glory, More deeply versed in all her antique story, Recorded feat, tradition quaint and hoary? What muse like thine so patiently would plod From shire to shire in pilgrim sandal shod, Calling to life and voice, and conscious will, The shifting streamlet and the sluggish hill? Great genealogist of earth and water,

The very Plutarch of insensate matter.

DONNE.

BRIEF was the reign of pure poetic truth ;
A race of thinkers next, with rhymes uncouth,
And fancies fashion'd in laborious brains,
Made verses heavy as o'erloaded wains.

Love was their theme, but love that dwelt in stones,
Or charm'd the stars in their concentric zones;
Love that did first the nuptial bond conclude
'Twixt immaterial form and matter rude;
Love that was riddled, sphered, transacted, spelt,
Sublimed, projected, everything but felt.
Or if in age, in orders, or the cholic,
They damn'd all loving as a heathen frolic;
They changed their topic, but in style the same,
Adored their Maker as they would their dame.
Thus DONNE, not first, but greatest of the line,
Of stubborn thoughts a garland thought to twine;

VOL. II.

Y

« 前へ次へ »