LXXXII THE WORLD'S WAY Tired with all these, for restful death I cry As, to behold desert a beggar born, And gilded honor shamefully misplaced, And art made tongue-tied by authority, - Tired with all these, from these would I be gone, Save that, to die, I leave my Love alone. W. Shakespeare LXXXIII A WISH Happy were he could finish forth his fate Of worldly folk, there should he sleep secure; Then wake again, and yield God ever praise; And change of holy thoughts to make him merry: Who, when he dies, his tomb might be the bush R. Devereux, 15 20 25 5 LXXXIV SAINT JOHN BAPTIST The last and greatest Herald of Heaven's King His food was locusts, and what there doth spring, There burst he forth: All ye whose hopes rely - Who listen'd to his voice, obey'd his cry? Only the echoes, which he made relent, W. Drummond ΙΟ BOOK SECOND This division, embracing generally the latter eighty years of the seventeenth century, contains the close of our early poetical style and the commencement of the modern. In Dryden we see the first master of the new; in Milton, whose genius dominates here as Shakespeare's in the former book, the crown and consummation of the early period. Their splendid odes are far in advance of any prior attempts, Spenser's excepted; they exhibit that wider and grander range which years and experience and the struggles of the time conferred on poetry. Our Muses now give expression to political feeling, to religious thought, to a high philosophic statesmanship in writers such as Marvell, Herbert, and Wotton; whilst in Marvell and Milton, again, we find noble attempts, hitherto rare in our literature, at pure description of nature, destined in our own age to be continued and equaled. Meanwhile the poetry of simple passion, although before 1660 often deformed by verbal fancies and conceits of thought, and afterwards by levity and an artificial tone, produced in Herrick and Waller some charming pieces of more finished art than the Elizabethan, until in the courtly compliments of Sedley it seems to exhaust itself and lie almost dormant for the hundred years between the days of Wither and Suckling and the days of Burns and Cowper. That the change from our early style to the modern brought with it at first a loss of nature and simplicity is undeniable; yet the bolder and wider scope which poetry took between 1620 and 1700, and the successful efforts then made to gain greater clearness in expression, in their results have been no slight compensation.-Transferred from Palgrave's Notes. LXXXV ODE ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY This is the month, and this the happy morn That He our deadly forfeit should release, That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable, And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty Wherewith He wont at Heaven's high council table He laid aside; and, here with us to be, And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay. Say, heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein 5 Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain ΙΟ Now while the heaven, by the sun's team untrod, And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright? See how from far, upon the eastern road, The star-led wizards haste with odors sweet: O run, prevent them with thy humble ode And lay it lowly at His blessed feet; Have thou the honor first thy Lord to greet, And join thy voice unto the Angel quire From out His secret altar touch'd with hallow'd fire. THE HYMN It was the winter wild While the heaven-born Child All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies; Nature in awe to Him Had doff'd her gaudy trim, With her great Master so to sympathize: It was no season then for her To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour. Only with speeches fair 30 She woos the gentle air To hide her guilty front with innocent snow; And on her naked shame, Pollute with sinful blame, The saintly veil of maiden white to throw; Confounded, that her Maker's eyes Should look so near upon her foul deformities. 5 But He, her fears to cease, Sent down the meek-eyed Peace; She, crown'd with olive green, came softly sliding His ready harbinger, With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing; And waving wide her myrtle wand, She strikes a universal peace through sea and land. No war or battle's sound Was heard the world around: ΙΟ 15 The idle spear and shield were high uphung; The hooked chariot stood Unstain'd with hostile blood; The trumpet spake not to the arméd throng; And kings sat still with awful eye, As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by. But peaceful was the night 20 Wherein the Prince of Light His reign of peace upon the earth began: 25 Smoothly the waters kist, Whispering new joys to the mild oceán Who now hath quite forgot to rave, While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave. The stars, with deep amaze, Stand fix'd in steadfast gaze, Bending one way their precious influence; And will not take their flight 30 |