Whereof when he was wakened with the noyse, and saw the beast so small: Whats this (quoth he) that gives so great a voyce, that wakens men withall? In angry wize he flies about, and threatens all with corage stout. To whom his mother closely smiling sayd, twixt earnest and twixt game: See, thou thyselfe likewise art lyttle made, if thou regard the same. And yet thou suffrest neyther gods in sky, nor men in earth to rest: And when thou art disposed cruelly, him caught for to subdue. I wounded am full sore; The fly that I so much did scorne, hath hurt me with his little horne. Unto his mother straight he weeping came, and of his grief complayned: Who could not choose but laugh at his fond game, though sad to see him pained. Think now (quod she) my sonne, how great the smart, of those whom thou dost wound: Full many thou hast pricked to the hart, that pitty never found; Therefore henceforth some pitty take, when thou dost spoil of lovers make. She took him streight full pitiously lamenting, and wrapt him in her smock; She wrapt him softly, all the while repenting, that he the fly did mock. She drest his wound and it embaulmed wel with salve of soveraine might; And then she bath'd him in a dainty well, the well of deare delight. Who would not oft be stung as this, to be so bath'd in Venus bliss ? his former cruelty. And since that time he wounded hath myselfe with his sharp darte of love, And now forgets the cruel careless elfe his mother's hest to prove. So now I languish till he please my pining anguish to appease. The men of Elizabethan days were not men of one or a few ideas: this England was alive with thought and action which the lyrics reflect. An instance may be found in the grave and beautiful poem which the playwright George Peele addressed to Queen Elizabeth. He had been at the University; he had written tales as well as plays; but here he speaks of himself as a soldier and courtier: His golden locks time hath to silver turn'd; His helmet now shall make a hive for bees; And when he saddest sits in homely cell, To be your beadsman now that was your knight. If, after the lapse of centuries, we no longer regard Queen Elizabeth either as a Goddess or a Saint, we may still have imagination enough to understand why her courtiers could so write. If it were an age of exaggeration, at any rate the fine poem Integer Vitæ sometimes allotted to Francis Bacon, but probably with more justice to Thomas Campion-shows the strong, sober moral sense which grew up amidst the variety and brilliant adventures of Elizabethan life. It is the consolatory song of a man whose life is whole, unstained : The man of life upright Whose guiltless heart is free The man whose silent days That man needs neither towers He only can behold Thus scorning all the cares Good thoughts his only friends, On a more spiritual note, Robert Southwell-the Jesuit priest, imprisoned, often racked, and finally, in 1595, executed by Queen Elizabeth's orders wrote this lyric, The Burning Babe, a poem on our Lord's birth, so beautiful that rare Ben Jonson declared that he would ،، have destroyed many of his own poems had he, could he have, written this one: As I in hoary winter's night Stood shivering in the snow, To view what fire was near, Who, scorched with excessive heat, As though His floods should quench His flames, In fiery hearts I fry, Yet none approach to warm their hearts Or feel My fire but I! My faultless Breast the furnace is; Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke; The fuel Justice layeth on, And Mercy blows the coals, The metal in this furnace wrought Are men's defilèd souls: To wash them in My blood." And swiftly shrunk away, In 1652, there appeared in " S. Victor's Street at the Golden Sun," in Paris, from the press of Peter Tarza, printer to the Archbishop of Paris, a collection of Sacred Poems, by an English exile, Richard Crashaw. He was driven out of his Fellowship, at Peterhouse, Cambridge, because he would not subscribe to the Puritans' Covenant. There is, in this slender volume, a Nativity Hymn of Shepherds, of whom, in its course, two sing this verse together: We saw Thee in Thy balmy nest, Young Dawn of our Eternal Day! We saw Thee and we blest the sight, Then one shepherd, aghast at this world's reception of the Holy Babe, sings alone: Poor world (said I) what wilt thou do, Is this the best thou canst bestow ? A cold, and not too cleanly, manger ? Then the full chorus of shepherds bursts into lyrical praise of the Divine Child: Welcome, all wonders in one sight! Summer in Winter, Day in Night! Heaven in Earth, and God in man! Thus the Nativity Songs of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries show us that no religious strife, fierce punishment, nor hardship, nor any other injury, can crush out a man's faith, if he " holds on," as Beowulf, long ages before, would have him do. The beginning of the English seventeenth century saw the making of the imperishable Translation of the Old and New Testaments which we still call the " Authorised Version" of the Bible, in English. Prose is its style, though of the many books which make it up, many, specially in the Old Testament, were in the Original poetical. Though we may call it all prose, there are many lyrical passages which have all the quality of true song. Of course, as all translations do, such passages owe their beauty of meaning to the originals; but in this case, English lyrical prose gorgeous, stately, pathetic or whatever else it may have been in Elizabethan days |