As water to the fish, to men as air, As heat to fire, as light unto the sun; Thou art the soul of that unhappy mind Which, being by nature made an idle thought, Began even then to take immortal kind, When first her virtues in thy spirits wrought. From thee therefore that mover cannot move, Whatever passion from distempered heart, Is strongly drawn when violent heat hath vent, Breaks out in earthquakes tearing all asunder; Which, till all break and all dissolve to dust, But what of those or these? or what of ought Of that which was, or that which is, to treat? What I possess is but the same I sought: My love was false, my labours were deceit. Nor less than such they are esteemed to be;" Could it be thought premeditate for those? Cold care hath bitten both the root and rind. But stay, my thoughts, make end: give fortune way: Complaints cure not, and tears do but allay To seek for moisture in the Arabian sand The links which time did break of hearty bands Words cannot knit, or wailings make anew. Seek not the sun in clouds when it is set. And were the marks to find thy hoped port, On Sestus' shore, Leander's late resort, Thou lookest for light in vain, and storms arise; E Strive then no more; bow down thy weary eyes— Eyes which to all these woes thy heart have guided. She is gone, she is lost, she is found, she is ever fair : Sorrow draws weakly, where love draws not too : Woe's cries sound nothing, but only in love's ear. Do then by dying what life cannot do. Unfold thy flocks and leave them to the fields, To feed on hills, or dales, where likes them best, Of what the summer or the spring-time yields, For love and time hath given thee leave to rest. Thy heart which was their fold, now in decay My pipe, which love's own hand gave my desire To sing her praises and my woe upon,— Despair hath often threatened to the fire, As vain to keep now all the rest are gone. Thus home I draw, as death's long night draws on ; For feeble arms or wasted strength to move: To God I leave it, who first gave it me, And I her gave, and she returned again, As it was hers; so let His mercies be Of my last comforts the essential mean. But be it so or not, the effects are past; Her love hath end; my woe must ever last. The end of the books of the "Ocean's Love to Cynthia," and the beginning of the 22nd book, entreating of Sorrow. My days' delights, my spring-time joys fordone, Which in the dawn and rising sun of youth Had their creation, and were first begun, Do in the evening and the winter sad Present my mind, which takes my time's account, The grief remaining of the joy it had. My times that then ran o'er themselves in these, And now run out in other's happiness, Bring unto those new joys and new-born days. So could she not if she were not the sun, Which sees the birth and burial of all else, And holds that power with which she first begun, Leaving each withered body to be torn By fortune, and by times tempestuous, Which, by her virtue, once fair fruit have born; Knowing she can renew, and can create Green from the ground, and flowers even out of stone, By virtue lasting over time and date, Leaving us only woe, which, like the moss, Having compassion of unburied bones, Cleaves to mischance, and unrepaired loss. For tender stalks (MS. abruptly ends here.) 2 XXI. SIR WALTER RALEIGH'S PETITION TO THE QUEEN (ANNE OF DENMARK).1 (1618.) HAD truth power, the guiltless could not fall, Malice win glory, or revenge triumph; But truth alone cannot encounter all. Mercy is fled to God, which mercy made; Compassion dead; faith turned to policy; Friends know not those who sit in sorrow's shade. For what we sometime were, we are no more : Fortune hath changed our shape, and destiny Defaced the very form we had before. All love, and all desert of former times, Malice hath covered from my sovereign's eyes, And largely laid abroad supposed crimes. But kings call not to mind what vassals were, But know them now, as envy hath described them : So can I look on no side from despair. 1 Hawthornden MSS. in the Library of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland; vol. viii. "Drummond Miscellanies," II. First printed by Mr. D. Laing in " Archæol. Scot.," vol. iv. pp. 236-8. The original title runs: "S. W. Raghlies Petition to the Queene. 1618." |