mortal group of poets, he was solitary and poor. His grave is in the north aisle of Westminster Abbey. England was too busy in those years to build him a monument; but a young squire from Oxfordshire, visiting the spot, gave eighteenpence to a workman to engrave upon the flagstone that covered him this epitaph:-0 Rare Ben Jonson!
Where dost thou careless lie?
Buried in ease and sloth?
Knowledge that sleeps doth die;
And this security,
It is the common moth
That eats on wits and arts, and so destroys them both.
Are all the Aonian springs
Dried up? Lies Thespia waste?
Doth Clarius' harp want strings,
That not a nymph now sings?
Or droop they as disgraced,
To see their seats and bowers by chattering pies defaced?
If hence thy silence be,
As 'tis too just a cause,
Let this thought quicken thee:
Minds that are great and free
Should not on fortune pause;
'Tis crown enough to virtue still, her own applause.
What though the greedy fry
Be taken with false baits
Of worded balladry,
And think it poesy ?
They die with their conceits,
And only piteous scorn upon their folly waits.
Then take in hand thy lyre,
Strike in thy proper strain,
With Japhet's line aspire
Sol's chariot for new fire
To give the world again :
Who aided him will thee, the issue of Jove's brain.
And, since our dainty age
Cannot endure reproof,
Make not thyself a page
To that strumpet the stage,
But sing high and aloof,
Safe from the wolf's black jaw and the dull ass's hoof.1
It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make men better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear :
A lily of a day
Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be.
O, do not wanton with those eyes,
Lest I be sick with seeing;
Nor cast them down, but let them rise,
Lest shame destroy their being.
O, be not angry with those fires,
For then their threats will kill me ;
Nor look too kind on my desires,
For then my hopes will spill me.
O, do not steep them in thy tears,
For so will sorrow slay me ;
Nor spread them as distract with fears:
Mine own enough betray me.
1 This scornful mood was characteristic of Jonson, especially in his early life. The last line of the "Ode," evidently a favourite with its author, occurs also at the close of the Epilogue to The Poetaster, written in 1601 :
I, that spend half my nights and all my days
Here in a cell, to get a dark pale face,
To come forth worth the ivy or the bays,
And, in this age, can hope no other grace
Leave me! There's something come into my thought
That must and shall be sung high and aloof,
Safe from the wolf's black jaw and the dull ass's hoof.
THE SONG OF HESPERUS.1
Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep:
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright!
Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia's shining orb has made
Heaven to clear when day did close:
Bless us then with wishèd sight,
Goddess excellently bright!
Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
And thy crystal shining quiver;
Give unto the flying hart
Space to breathe, how short soever :
Thou that mak'st a day of night,
Goddess excellently bright!
TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED, MASTER WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE, AND WHAT HE HATH LEFT US.
To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor Muse can praise too much.
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage.
But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise :
For silliest ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin where it seemed to raise. . . .
But thou art proof against them, and, indeed,
Above the ill fortune of them, or the need.
I, therefore, will begin :-Soul of the age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!
My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further off, to make thee room :
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still, while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses,-
I mean with great, but disproportioned, muses;
For, if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers;
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line;
And, though thou had'st small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee I will not seek
For names: but call forth thundering Æschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles, to us,
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To live again, to hear thy buskin tread,
And shake a stage: or, when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain! thou hast one to show,
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time:
And all the Muses still were in their prime
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or, like a Mercury, to charm.
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines;
Which were so richly spun and woven so fit
As twice she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated and deserted lie,
As they were not of Nature's family.
Yet must I not give Nature all: thy art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For, though the poet's matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion: and that he1
Who casts to write a living line must sweat
Such as thine are, and strike the second heat
Upon the Muse's anvil, turn the same,
And himself with it that he thinks to frame :
Or, for the laurel, he may gain a scorn.
For a good poet's made as well as born.
And such wert thou! Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue: even so the race
Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well turnèd and true filèd lines;
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandished at the eyes of Ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our water yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames
That so did take Eliza and our James!
But stay! I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanced, and made a constellation there.
Shine forth, thou star of poets! and, with rage
Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage,
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned like night,
And despairs day, but for thy volume's light.
Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show
Of touch or marble, nor canst boast a row
Of polished pillars, or a roof of gold;
Thou hast no lantern whereof tales are told,
Or stair, or courts; but stand'st an ancient pile,
And, these grudged at, art reverenced the while.
Thou joy'st in better marks, of soil, of air,
Of wood, of water; therein thou art fair.
Thou hast thy walks for health as well as sport :
Thy Mount, to which thy dryads do resort,
Where Pan and Bacchus their high feasts have made
Beneath the broad beech and the chestnut shade:
That taller Tree,2 which of a nut was set
At his great birth where all the Muses met.
There, in the writhèd bark, are cut the names
Of many a sylvan taken with his flames;
And thence the ruddy satyrs oft provoke
The lighter fauns to reach thy Ladies' Oak.
Thy copse, too, named of Gamage,3 thou hast there,
That never fails to serve thee seasoned deer
When thou wouldst feast or exercise thy friends.
The lower land, that to the river bends,
1 Formerly Pencester, in Kent: the ancient seat of the Sidneys.
2 Sir Philip Sidney's Oak.
3 Gamage's Bower.
|