lay me i' the ground, and pray for me, if you'll let

me come to him.

The DUKE enters with FLAMINEO, and PAGE.

Bra. Was this your handy-work?

Fla. It was my misfortune.

Cor. He lies, he lies; he did not kill him: these have kill'd

him, that would not let him be better look'd to.

Bra. Have comfort, my grieved mother.

Cor. O yon' screech-owl!

Hor. Forbear, good madam.

Cor. Let me go, let me go. [She runs to FLAMINEO with her

I

knife drawn, and coming to him, lets it fall.

The God of heaven forgive thee. Dost not wonder
pray for thee? I'll tell thee what's the reason:
I have scarce breath to number twenty minutes;
I'd not spend that in cursing. Fare thee well:
Half of thyself lies there: and mayst thou live
To fill an hour-glass with his moulder'd ashes,
To tell how thou shouldst spend the time to come
In blest repentance.

Bra. Mother, pray tell me

How came he by his death? what was the quarrel?
Cor. Indeed, my younger boy presumed too much
Upon his manhood, gave him bitter words,

Drew his sword first; and so, I know not how,
For I was out of my wits, he fell with 's head
Just in my bosom.

Page. This is not true, madam.

Cor. I prithee peace.

One arrow's grazed already: it were vain

To lose this, for that will ne'er be found again.

FRANCISCO describes to FLAMINEO the grief of CORNELIA at the funeral

of MARCELLO.

Your reverend mother

Is grown a very old woman in two hours.
I found them winding of Marcello's corse:
And there is such a solemn melody,

'Tween doleful songs, tears, and sad elegies;
Such as old grandames, watching by the dead,

Were wont to outwear the nights with; that, believe me,

I had no eyes to guide me forth the room,
They were so o'ercharged with water.

Funeral Dirge for MARCELLO.

[His MOTHER sings it.

Call for the robin-redbreast, and the wren,
Since o'er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.
Call unto his funeral dole

The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole,

To raise him hillocks that shall keep him warm,
And (when gay tombs are robb'd) sustain no harm;
But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men,
For with his nails he 'll dig them up again'.
Folded Thoughts.

Come, come, my lord, untie your folded thoughts,
And let them dangle loose as a bride's hair.

Your sister's poison'd.

Dying Princes.

To see what solitariness is about dying princes! As heretofore they have unpeopled towns, divorced friends, and made great houses unhospitable! so now, O justice! where are their flatterers now? flatterers are but the shadows of princes' bodies; the least thick cloud makes them invisible.

Natural Death.

O, thou soft natural death! that art joint twin
To sweetest slumber!-no rough-bearded comet
Stares on thy mild departure; the dull owl
Beats not against thy casement; the hoarse wolf
Scents not thy carrion. Pity winds thy corse,
Whilst horror waits on princes'

Vow of Murder rebuked.

Miserable creature,

If thou persist in this, 'tis damnable.

Dost thou imagine thou canst slide on blood,
And not be tainted with a shameful fall?

1 I never saw anything like this Dirge, except the Ditty which reminds Ferdinand of his drowned father in the Tempest. As that is of the water, watery; so this is of the earth, earthy. Both have that intenseness of feeling, which seems to resolve itself into the elements which it contemplates.

Or like the black and melancholic yew-tree,
Dost think to root thyself in dead men's graves
And yet to prosper ?

Dying Man.

See, see how firmly he doth fix his eye
Upon the crucifix !

O, hold it constant.

settles his wild spirits: and so his eyes

Melt into tears.

Despair.

O, the cursed devil,

Which doth present us with all other sins
Thrice candied o'er; despair, with gall and stibium,
Yet we carouse it off!

THE LOVER'S MELANCHOLY, BY JOHN FORD.

Contention of a Bird and a Musician.

Passing from Italy to Greece, the tales
Which poets of an elder time have feign'd
To glorify their Tempe, bred in me

Desire of visiting that paradise.

To Thessaly I came, and living private,
Without acquaintance of more sweet companions
Than the old inmates to my love, my thoughts,
I day by day frequented silent groves
And solitary walks. One morning early
This accident encounter'd me: I heard
The sweetest and most ravishing contention
That art or nature ever were at strife in.
A sound of music touch'd mine ears, or rather
Indeed entranced my soul: as I stole nearer,
Invited by the melody, I saw

This youth, this fair-faced youth, upon his lute
With strains of strange variety and harmony
Proclaiming (as it seem'd) so bold a challenge
To the clear quiristers of the woods, the birds,
That as they flock'd about him, all stood silent,
Wondering at what they heard. I wonder❜d too.
A nightingale,

Nature's best skill'd musician, undertakes

The challenge; and, for every several strain

The well-shaped youth could touch, she sung her down;
He could not run division with more art

Upon his quaking instrument, than she

The nightingale did with her various notes
Reply to.

Some time thus spent, the young man grew at last
Into a pretty anger; that a bird,

Whom art had never taught cliffs, moods, or notes,
Should vie with him for mastery, whose study
Had busied many hours to perfect practice:
To end the controversy, in a rapture

Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly,
So many voluntaries, and so quick,

That there was curiosity and cunning,

Concord in discord, lines of differing method
Meeting in one full centre of delight.

The bird (ordain'd to be

Music's first martyr) strove to imitate

These several sounds: which when her warbling throat

Fail'd in, for grief down dropt she on his lute

And brake her heart. It was the quaintest sadness,
To see the conqueror upon her hearse

To weep a funeral elegy of tears.

He looks upon the trophies of his art,

Then sigh'd, then wiped his eyes, then sigh'd, and cried, "Alas! poor creature, I will soon revenge

This cruelty upon the author of it.

Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood,

Shall never more betray a harmless peace

To an untimely end:" and in that sorrow,
As he was pashing it against a tree,

I suddenly stept in.

[This story, which is originally to be met with in Strada's Prolusions, has been paraphrased in rhyme by Crashaw, Ambrose Phillips, and others: but none of those versions can at all compare for harmony and grace with this blank verse of Ford's: it is as fine as anything in Beaumont and Fletcher; and almost equals the strife which it celebrates.]

THE LADIES' TRIAL, BY JOHN FORD.

AURIA, in the possession of honours, preferment, fame, can find no peace in his mind while he thinks his Wife unchaste.

AURIA. AURELIO.

Auria. Count of Savona, Genoa's admiral,
Lord governor of Corsica, enroll'd

A worthy of my country, sought and sued to,
Praised, courted, flatter'd!-

My triumphs

Are echoed under every roof, the air

Is streighten'd with the sound, there is not room
Enough to brace them in; but not a thought
Doth pierce into the grief that cabins here:
Here through a creek, a little inlet, crawls
A flake no bigger than a sister's thread,
Which sets the region of my heart a-fire.
I had a kingdom once, but am deposed
From all that royalty of blest content,
By a confederacy 'twixt love and frailty.
Aurelio. Glories in public view but add to misery,
Which travails in unrest at home.

Auria. At home!

That home, Aurelio speaks of, I have lost:
And which is worse, when I have roll'd about,
Toil'd like a pilgrim, round this globe of earth,
Wearied with care, and over-worn with age,
Lodged in the grave, I am not yet at home.
There rots but half of me: the other part
Sleeps, Heaven knows where. Would she and I, my wife
I mean; but what, alas! talk I of wife?
The woman, would we had together fed

On any outcast parings coarse and mouldy,
Not lived divided thus!

LOVE'S SACRIFICE: A TRAGEDY, BY JOHN FORD. BIANCHA, Wife to CARAFFA, Duke of Pavia, loves and is loved by FERNANDO the Duke's favourite. She long resists his importunate suit; at length, she enters the room where he is sleeping, and awakens him, to hear her confession of her love for him.

BIANCHA. FERDINAND, sleeping.

Bian. Resolve, and do; 'tis done. What, are those eyes, Which lately were so over-drown'd in tears,