FROM THE SONNETS.

153

he was betrothed; he spent several years in seeking by travel a refuge from his sorrow. He married late in life Elizabeth Logan, attracted to her, it is said, by her resemblance to his first love. He was warmly attached to Charles I., and grief for the king's death, it is alleged, shortened his life.

Drummond's works consist of sonnets, madrigals, and religious and occasional poems; among the latter is the ludicrous Latin doggrel "Polemo-Middinia." His sonnets are among the finest in the language, and approach nearest to the Italian model. Drummond's fancy is luxuriant, but tinctured with conceits. His versification is flowing and harmonious. Ben Jonson wished he had been the author of Drummond's poem, "The Forth feasting," and Milton did not disdain to copy some of his images.

FROM THE SONNETS.

SPRING.

Sweet Spring, thou com'st with all thy goodly train,
Thy head with flames, thy mantle bright with flowers,
The zephyrs curl the green locks of the plain,
The clouds for joy in pearls weep down their showers.
Sweet Spring, thou com'st-but, ah! my pleasant hours,
And happy days, with thee come not again;1

The sad memorials only of my pain

Do with thee come, which turn my sweets to sours.
Thou art the same which still thou wert before,
Delicious, lusty, amiable, fair;

But she whose breath embalm'd thy wholesome air
Is gone; nor gold, nor gems can her restore.
Neglected virtue, seasons go and come,
When thine forgot lie closed in a tomb!

TO A NIGHTINGALE

Sweet bird, that sing'st away the early hours
Of winters past, or coming, void of care,
Well pleased with delights which present are,
Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers:
To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowers
Thou thy Creator's goodness dost declare,
And what dear gifts on thee he did not spare,—
A stain to human sense in sin that lowers.
What soul can be so sick, which by thy songs
(Attired in sweetness) sweetly is not driven
Quite to forget Earth's turmoils, spites, and wrongs,
And lift a reverend eye and thought to Heaven?
Sweet, artless songster, thou my mind dost raise
To airs of spheres, yes, and to angels' lays.

1 Compare Michael Bruce's Ode on Spring.

EASTER.

Rise from those fragrant climes,1 thee now embrace;
Unto this world of ours, O haste thy race,

Fair Sun, and though contràry ways all year
Thou hold thy course, now with the highest share,
Join thy blue wheels to hasten time that lowers,
And lazy minutes turn to perfect hours;

The night and death too long a league have made,
To stow the world in horror's ugly shade.
Shake from thy locks a day with saffron rays
So fair, that it outshine all other days;
And yet do not presume, great eye of light,
To be that which this day must make so bright.
See, an eternal Sun hastes to arise;

Not from the eastern blushing seas or skies,

Or any stranger worlds Heaven's concaves have,
But from the darkness of an hollow grave.

And this is that all-powerful Sun above

That crown'd thy brows with rays, first made thee move.
Light's trumpeters, ye need not from your bowers
Proclaim this day; this the angelic powers

Have done for you: but now an opal hue
Bepaints Heaven's crystal to the longing view:
Earth's late-hid colours shine, light doth adorn
The world, and, weeping joy, forth comes the morn;
And with her, as from a lethargic trance,
The breath return'd, that bodies doth advance,
Which two sad nights in rock lay coffin'd dead,
And with an iron guard environéd :

Life out of death, light out of darkness springs,
From a base jail forth comes the King of kings;
What late was mortal, thrall'd to every woe
That lackeys life, or upon sense doth grow,
Immortal is, of an eternal stamp,

Far brighter beaming than the morning lamp.
So from a black eclipse out-peers the Sun;
Such (when her course of days have on her run,
In a far forest in the pearly east,

And she herself hath burnt, and spicy nest), 2
The lovely bird with youthful pens and comb,
Doth soar from out her cradle and her tomb:
*
*

*

*

The world, that wanning late and faint did lie,

Applauding to our joys thy victory,

To a young prime essays to turn again,

1 Supply which: a frequent ellipsis, e. g. "What art thou dare ?" i. e. who dare.

-Fletcher, Faithful Shepherdess, Act IV. Sc. 4.

2 The Phoenix.-See Herod. ii. 73. Ovid, Met. xv. 392-407.

FROM THE RIVER FORTH FEASTING. 155

And as ere soil'd with sin yet to remain ;
Her chilling agues she begins to miss ;
All bliss returning with the Lord of bliss.

With greater light, Heaven's temples open'd shine;
Morns smiling rise, evens blushing do decline,
Clouds dappled glister, boisterous winds are calm,
Soft zephyrs do the fields with sighs embalm,
In silent calms the sea hath hush'd his roars,
And with enamour'd curls doth kiss the shores.
All-bearing Earth, like a new-married queen,
Her beauties heightens in a gown of green;
Perfumes the air; her meads are wrought with flowers,
In colours various, figures, smelling, powers;
Trees wanton in the groves with leafy locks;
Here hills enamell'd stand; the vales, the rocks,
Ring peals of joy; here floods and prattling brooks
(Stars' liquid mirrors), with serpènting crooks,
And whispering murmurs, sound unto the main,-
"The golden age returnéd is again!"

The honey people leave their golden bowers,
And innocently prey on budding flowers;
In gloomy shades, perch'd on the tender sprays,
The painted singers fill the air with lays:
Seas, floods, earth, air, all diversely do sound,
Yet all their diverse notes hath but one ground,
Re-echo'd here down from Heaven's azure veil;
"Hail, holy Victor! greatest Victor, hail !"

FROM "THE RIVER FORTH FEASTING.”1

EULOGY OF KING JAMES.

Oh, virtue's pattern, glory of our times,
Sent of past days to expiate the crimes.

Great King, but better far than thou art great,
Whom state not honours but who honours state;
By wonder2 born, by wonder first install'd,
By wonder after to new kingdoms call'd;
Young, kept by wonder from home-bred alarms,
Old, saved by wonder from pale traitor's harms,*
To be for this thy reign, which wonder brings.
A King of wonder, wonder unto kings.

If Pict, Dane, Norman, thy smooth yoke had seen,
Pict, Dane, and Norman had thy subjects been ;
If Brutus knew the bliss thy rule doth give,

Even Brutus joy would under thee to live.

1 Composed on the occasion of the visit of James I. to Scotland in 1617. The

Forth speaks.

2 Miracle.

3 The youth of James was disturbed by factions.

• Alluding probably to the Gowrie Conspiracy and the Gunpowder Plot.

For thou thy people dost so dearly love,
That they a father more than prince thee prove.
O days to be desired! Age happy thrice,
If you your heaven-sent good could duly prize!1
But we, half palsy-sick, think never right
Of what we hold, till it be from our sight ;2
Prize only summer's sweet and muskéd breath,
When armed winters threaten us with death;
In pallid sickness do esteem of health,
And by sad poverty discern of wealth.
I see an age, when, after some few years
And revolutions of the slow-paced spheres,
These days shall be 'bove other far esteem'd,
And like Augustus' palmy reign be deem'd.3

This is that king who should make right each wrong,
Of whom the bards and mystic sybils sung,*

The man long promised by whose glorious reign
This isle should yet her ancient name regain,"

And more of Fortunate deserve the style,

Than those where heavens with double summers smile.
Run on, great Prince, thy course in glory's way!

The end of life, the evening, crowns the day.
Heap worth on worth, and strongly soar above

Those heights, which made the world thee first to love.
Surmount thyself, and make thine actions past

Be but as gleams or lightnings of thy last.

*

*

*

*

Through this thy empire range, like world's bright eye,
That once each year surveys all earth and sky.

.6

The wanton wood-nymphs of the verdant spring,
Blue, golden, purple flowers to thee shall bring ;
Pomona's fruits, the Panisks: Thetis' girls
The Thule's amber, with the ocean pearls.
The Tritons,10 herdsmen of the glassy field,

9

1 Virgil, Georg. ii. 458.

2 Compare Shakespeare's Much ado about Nothing, Act IV. Sc. 1-"that what we have," etc.

3 The poet lived to have bitter experience of the groundlessness of his flattering prophecy.

1 Alluding probably to the prophecies known under the names of Merlin, Thomas the Rhymer, Sybilla, Berlington and others; a very early reference to these prophecies if this be the case.

5 and 6 Compare Virgil, Eclog. iv.

7 The Greek diminutive of Pan; young Fauns, the sylvan gods; the wood nymphs, the Dryads: Pomona, the fruit-goddess.

8 The Nereids, the sea-nymphs, were the Daughters of Nereus and Doris; Thetis was one of them.

9 For Scandinavia, the region whence amber was supposed to have floated. Tacit. De Mor. Germ. 45. Thule, the Roman extremity of the world, is variously localized as Greenland, Iceland, Shetland, Norway. The British ocean pearls are mentioned by Tacitus, Agric. XII.; by Suetonius, Julius, XLVII.; and by Camden.

10 The Tritons were Neptune's trumpeters; the proper ocean-herdsman is Proteus. -Virg. Georg. IV. 395.

FROM THE RIVER FORTH FEASTING.

Shall give thee what far distant shores can yield,
The Serian1 fleeces, Erythrean* gems,
Vast Plata's silver, gold of Peru streams,
Antarctic3 parrots, Ethiopian plumes,
Sabaean odours, myrrh, and sweet perfumes.
And I myself, wrapt in a watchetR gown,
Of reeds and lillies on mine head a crown,
Shall incense to thee burn, green altars raise,
And yearly sing due Paeans in thy praise."

157

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

(BEAUMONT, 1586-1615. FLETCHER, 1576—1625.) FRANCIS BEAUMONT and JOHN FLETCHER were "the most inviolable of friends; the Orestes and Pylades of the poetical world."(Biographia Dramatica.) Both were gentlemen of good descent.

Beau

1 Virgil second Georgic (115, etc.) furnishes most of the succeeding splendour. Serian fleeces may be translated Chinese silk, supposed to have been combed from the tree leaves.-See Georg. II. 120, 121.

The Mare Erythraeum is the Indian Ocean; the name implies Red.

8 Southern.

4 Ostrich Feathers; they were regarded as the richest and rarest of ornaments. $ Arabian.

Azure is the dress of river-gods. Chaucer writes the word waget (Millor's Tale); Skinner conjectures it to be from the blue dye woad.

James did not often regale on confections of flattery so elegant as this, compounded as it is from Virgil's sweetmeats.

H