THE LAST CHANCE.

INCE there's no help, come let us kiss and part

Nay, I have done; you get no more of me: And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,

That thus so cleanly I myself can free; Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,

And when we meet at any time again,

Be it not seen in either of our brows

That we one jot of former love retain. Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,

When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies, When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,

And Innocence is closing up his eyes,

Now, if thou would'st, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover,

MICHAEL DRAYTON.

TO THE RIVER ANKOR.

|LEAR Ankor, on whose silver-sanded shore My soul-shrined Saint, my fair Idea lies,

O blessed Brook, whose milk-white swans adore

The crystal stream refined by her eyes,

Where sweet myrrh-breathing zephyr in the spring
Gently distils his nectar-dropping showers,

Where nightingales in Arden sit and sing,
Amongst the dainty dew-impearled flowers;

Say thus, fair Brook, when thou shalt see thy queen,
Lo, here thy shepherd spent his wandering years;
And in these shades, dear nymph, he oft hath been;

And here to thee he sacrificed his tears:

Fair Arden, thou my Tempe art alone;
And thou, sweet Ankor, art my Heliconi

MICHAEL DRAYTON.

ARE-CHARMER Sleep, son of the sable night,
Brother to death, in silent darkness born,

Relieve my languish, and restore the light:

With dark forgetting of my care return,
And let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth:
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,
Without the torment of the night's untruth.
Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires,
To model forth the passions of the morrow;
Never let rising sun approve you liars,
To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow:
Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain,
And never wake to feel the day's disdain.

SAMUEL DANIEL.

REMEMBRANCE.

HEN to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye unused to flow,

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh Love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er

The sad account of fore-bemoanëd moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restored, and sorrows end.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

*

44

SUNSHINE AND CLOUD.

ULL many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,

Kissing with golden face the meadows green,

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,

And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all-triumphant splendour on my brow;
But, out, alack! he was but one hour mine,

The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.

Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth ;

Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth