EVEN SUCH IS TIME

SIR WALTER RALEIGH

THE following poem is said to have been written by Raleigh on the eve of his execution.

Even such is time, that takes in trust

Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;

But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust!

THE PILGRIM FATHERS

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

RELIGIOUS Controversy had not taught toleration to Englishmen. Dissenters from the established church, whether Romanist or Protestant, were punished and their services forbidden. The Puritans, a body of men who desired greater simplicity and freedom of worship,. determined to plant a colony in the New World (Plymouth, 1620) with hope of being at liberty to serve God in their own way.

Well worthy to be magnified are they

Who, with sad hearts, of friends and country took
A last farewell, their loved abodes forsook,
And hallowed ground in which their fathers lay;
Then to the new-found World explored their way,
That so a Church, unforced, uncalled to brook
Ritual restraints, within some sheltering nook
Her Lord might worship and his word obey

In freedom. Men they were who could not bend,
Blest Pilgrims, surely, as they took for guide
A will by sovereign Conscience sanctified;
Blest while their Spirits from the woods ascend
Along a Galaxy that knows no end,

But in His glory who for sinners died.

TO KING CHARLES AND QUEEN
HENRIETTA

JAMES SHIRLEY

(From "The Triumph of Peace")

A MAGNIFICENT masque given in honor of Charles I. (1633), expressed the enthusiasm felt for the handsome young king. The hope for a perpetual continuance of the Stuart dynasty, voiced in this

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'Song of the Hours," was destined to speedy disappointment.

They that were never happy Hours
Till now, return to thank the powers
That made them so.

The Island doth rejoice,

And all her waves are echo to our voice,
Which, in no ages past, hath known

Such treasures of her own.

Live, royal pair, and when your sands are spent
With Heaven's and your consent,

Though late, from your high bowers,

Look down on what was yours;

For, till old Time his glass hath hurled,
And lost it in the ashes of the world,
We prophesy, you shall be read and seen,
In every branch, a king or queen.

THE PRESBYTERIANS

SAMUEL BUTLER

(From "Hudibras," Part I)

THE serious-minded clergy of Scotland had been cordially disliked by James I. from his boyhood. To his son they were still more obnoxious. Charles I. undertook to force the use of the English ritual upon the Scotch church and provoked a general rebellion (1639). Men of all classes entered into a solemn covenant to defend the Presbyterian faith against corruption. The Covenanters had many sympathizers in England. The Puritans, who protested against the king's evident leaning toward Rome, and the Parliamentarians, who steadily opposed the doctrine of divine right, were ready to join with the Scotch in the struggle against arbitrary government. The Presbyterians were, however, detested as breeders of dissension by the king's party and by the adherents of the established church. They were lampooned by Samuel Butler in the satirical poem, " Hudibras."

That stubborn crew

Of errant saints whom all men grant

To be the true Church Militant.
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun;
Decide all controversies by
Infallible artillery ;

And prove their doctrine orthodox
With apostolic blows and knocks;
Call fire and sword and desolation
A godly, thorough Reformation,
Which always must be going on,
And still be doing, never done,
As if Religion were intended
For nothing else but to be mended:

A sect whose chief devotion lies
In odd, perverse antipathies,
In falling out with that or this
And finding somewhat still amiss;
More peevish, cross, and splenetic
Than dog distract or monkey sick :
That with more care keep holyday
The wrong, than others the right way;
Compound for sins they are inclined to
By damning those they have no mind to.
Still so perverse and opposite

As if they worshipped God for spite,
The self-same thing they will abhor
One way and long another for;
Freewill they one way disavow,
Another, nothing else allow;
All piety consists therein
In them, in other men all sin.
Rather than fail they will defy

That which they love most tenderly;
Quarrel with mince-pies, and disparage
Their best and dearest friend plum-porridge;

Fat pig and goose itself oppose,

And blaspheme custard through the nose.

STRAFFORD

ROBERT BROWNING

SIR THOMAS WENTWORTH was one of the English statesmen who opposed the doctrine of divine right. He believed that the life and liberty of the subject must be guarded against arbitrary power, but he was unwilling to follow the men who were aiming to render the king subordinate to Parliament. On the passing of the Petition of Right (1629), he broke with the reform party and offered his services to Charles. Wentworth was sent to Ireland as Lord Deputy, but returned to the king's side (1641) when the Covenanters were threatening an invasion of England. Finding that the Parliamentarians were carrying on negotiations with the Scotch, he offered to bring a loyal Irish army to the defence of the king. Charles rewarded his devotion by creating him Earl of Strafford and appointed him Lieutenant General of the English army with orders to suppress rebellion in any of the king's dominions. Indignant because of his treason to the popular cause, Pym and the reform party charged Strafford with attempting to "introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government against law," and succeeded in forcing a bill of attainder through Parliament. Charles had promised Strafford upon the honor of a king “that he should not suffer in life, honor, or fortune," yet he signed the bill, hoping thus to avoid further trouble.

ACT I

SCENE I. A House near Whitehall.

Hampden,

Hollis, the younger Vane, Rudyard, Fiennes, an l many of the Presbyterian Party; Loudon and other Scots Commissioners.

Vane.

Now, by Heaven

They may be cool who can, silent who will

Some have a gift that way! Wentworth is here,
Here, and the King's safe closeted with him