When, leaping first from earth, he did begin To climb his angels' wings: then open hang Your crystal doors!" So all the chorus sang Hark, how the floods clap their applauding hands, The trees laugh with their blossoms; and the sound Out leap the antique Patriarchs, all in haste, After them flew the Prophets, brightly stoled1 To which the Saints victorious carols sung, Down from their thrones the Domnations flow, Nor can the Martyrs' wounds them stay behind; Come dancing forth, and making joyous play: So Him they led into the Courts of Day, At quieting the souls that knew before 1 Robed. Their way to heaven through their own blood to score; But now, estrangèd from all misery, As far as heaven and earth dis-coasted1 lie, Swelter in quiet waves of immortality. PHINEAS FLETCHER. (1584-1650.) THE Purple Island of Phineas, the elder of the brothers Fletcher, was not published until 1633, after the death of Giles and many years after it was written. It is a long allegory, in the course of which the physical and mental parts of Man are described. The stanza, like that of Giles's Christ's Victory, is formed upon the Spenserian; but Phineas omitted two, instead of one, of Spenser's lines, namely the fifth and seventh. There is enough of Spenser in the plan of this poem, and in various passages of it, to have brought upon its author, had he lived in our own day, the charge of bold-faced plagiarism. But all our old poets were in some sense plagiarists. Nor was it uncommon for a singer to proclaim with pride the source of his inspiration, while his readers were amply satisfied if he sang the old song in a new strain, with some inherent touch of genius that made it more than it was before his own and theirs. The Purple Island had been preceded in 1631 by a piscatory play called Sicelides; but, although Phineas outlived his brother Giles twenty-seven years and produced a good deal of verse, it is only for his physiological Allegory that he is remembered. FROM THE PURPLE ISLAND. STRIFE. Next him Erithius, most unquiet swain, That all in law and foul contention spent. 1 Sundered. His will his law; he weighed not wrong or right; Much scorned to bear, much more forgive, a spite; Patience he "the ass's load," and "coward's virtue," hight.1... Upon his belt, fastened with leather laces, Black boxes hung, sheaths of his paper swords, His word2 was this:-" I live, I breathe, I feed, on flame.” FORTITUDE. By him Andreos paced: of middle age, His mind as far from rashness as from fears; That longer fears to live as he that fears to die. Worst was his civil war, where deadly fought He with himself till passion yields or dies; His rage well-tempered is; no fear can daunt Well may he strength in death, but never courage want! But, like a mighty rock whose unmoved sides The hostile sea assaults with furious wave, And 'gainst his head the boisterous north wind rides ; Such was this knight's undaunted constancy. No mischief weakens his resolvèd mind; None fiercer to a stubborn enemy, But to the yielding none more sweetly kind. Which dances light while Neptune wildly raves. His word was this: "I fear but heaven; nor winds, nor waves." PARTHENIA, OR CHASTITY. With her, her sister went, a warlike maid, Ever the same but new in newer date; And underneath was writ "Such is chaste single state." Thus hid in arms she seemed a goodly knight, But, when she list lay down her armour bright, Or let them waving hang with roses fair beset. . . . Upon her forehead Love his trophies fits, A thousand spoils in silver arch displaying; And in the midst himself full proudly sits, Himself in awful majesty arraying. Upon her brows lies his bent ebon bow And ready shafts: deadly those weapons show, Yet sweet that death appeared, lovely that deadly blow.... A bed of lilies flower upon her cheek, And in the midst was set a circling rose; Whose sweet aspèct would force Narcissus seek New liveries and fresher colours choose To deck his beauteous head in snowy tire. But all in vain; for who can hope to aspire To such a fair, which none attain but all admire? . . . Yet all these stars, which deck this beauteous sky, By force of the inward sun both shine and move: Throned in her heart sits Love's high majesty, WILLIAM DRUMMOND. (1585-1649.) ANOTHER eminent junior Spenserian was the Scottish poet William Drummond, eldest son of the first Laird of Hawthornden, and distantly connected with the Drummonds of Stobhall, Earls of Perth. He graduated at Edinburgh University in 1605, and succeeded his father in the lairdship in 1610. His first publication was a poem written on the occasion of Prince Henry's death in 1612. This was followed in 1616 by a volume entitled Poems: Amorous, Funerall, Divine, Pastorall: in Sonnets, Songs, Sextains, Madrigals; and in 1617, when King James visited Edinburgh, by Forth Feasting, A Panegyric to the King's most Excellent Majesty. In the year 1619 Ben Jonson paid his memorable visit to Drummond at Hawthornden, and Drummond's Notes1 of their talk on that occasion afford us vivid glimpses of the literary world of that day and of Jonson's own stupendous figure, half grand, half burlesque, in the midst. Some of Jonson's critical remarks referred to Drummond himself. He told his host that his verses "were all good . . . save that they smelled too much of the schools, and were not after the fancy of the time." He said Drummond was too good and simple," "and,” adds Drummond, "he dissuaded me from poetry, for that she had beggared him when he might have been a rich lawyer, physician, or merchant." Jonson's criticism was extremely honest and clever, but scarcely just. Four years later Drummond published another volume containing his Flowers of Sion and Cypress Grove. His life had been in the meantime saddened by an unhappy loveaffair, and the songs and madrigals of his youth were replaced by strains of religious and philosophic reflection; and in a few of his finest pieces, written late in his life, there is something of Milton's own lofty sadness. Drummond's sonnets are considered his masterpieces, and they are with 66 1 Notes of Ben Jonson's Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden, January 1619. Edited by David Laing (Shakespeare Society's Publications, 1842). |