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sorrowful. In 1598 the Irish rising took place, his castle was burnt, and he and his family fled for their lives to England. Broken-hearted, poor, but not forgotten, the poet died in a London tavern. All his fellows went with his body to the grave where, close by Chaucer, he lies in Westminster Abbey. London, his most kindly nurse,' takes care also of his dust, and England keeps him in her love."

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BIBLIOGRAPHY. SPENSER.-G. L. Craik's Spenser and his Poetry; Eng. Men of Letters Series; Ward's Anthology; Disraeli's Amen. of Lit.; Howitt's Homes of the Brit. Poets, vol. 1; Lowell's Among my Books, 2d ser.; Whipple's Lit. of the age of Eliz.; Clar. Press Ed. of Faerie Queen; Minto's Char. of Eng. Poets; Atlantic, v. 2, 1858; West. Rev., v. 87, 1867; Allibon, v. 2.

From Spenser's Faerie Queen.

Thus being entred, they behold around

A large and spacious plaine, on every side

Strowed with pleasauns;1 whose faire grassy ground

Mantled with greene, and goodly beautifide

With all the ornaments of Floraes pride,

Wherewith her mother Art, as halfe in scorne

Of niggard Nature, like a pompous bride

Did decke her, and too lavishly adorne,

When forth from virgin bowre she comes in th' early morne.

Thereto the hevens alwayes joviall

Lookt on them lovely, still in stedfast state,
Ne suffred storme nor frost on them to fall,
Their tender buds or leaves to violate:

Nor scorching heat, nor cold intemperate,

T'afflict the creatures which therein did dwell;

But the milde aire with season moderate

Gently attempred, and disposed so well

That still it breathed forth sweet spirit and holesome smell:

More sweet and holesome then3 the pleasaunt hill

4

Of Rhodope, on which the nimphe that bore

A gyaunt babe her selfe for griefe did kill;
Or the Thessalian Tempe,5 where of yore
Faire Daphne Phoebus hart with love did gore;

1 Pleasantness.

2 Wholesome.

3 Than.

4 On the frontier of Thrace.

A long, deep defile.

Or Ida1 where the gods lov'd to repaire,
Whenever they their hevenly bowres forlore;
Or sweet Parnasse,' the haunt of muses faire;
Or Eden selfe, if ought with Eden mote compaire.

Much wondred Guyon at the faire aspect
Of that sweet place, yet suffred no delight
To sincke into his sence nor mind affect;

But passed forth, and lookt still forward right,
Bridling his will and maistering his might:

Till that he came unto another gate;

No gate, but like one, being goodly dight

With boughes and braunches, which did broad dilate Their clasping armes in wanton wreathings intricate.

There the most daintie paradise on ground
Itselfe doth offer to his sober eye,

In which all pleasures plenteously abownd,
And none does others happinesse envye;

The painted flowres, the trees upshooting hye,
The dales for shade, the hilles for breathing space,
The trembling groves, the christall running by;
And that, which all faire workes doth most aggrace,3
The art which all that wrought appeared in no place.

One would have thought, so cunningly the rude
And scorned partes were mingled with the fine,
That nature had for wantonesse ensude4

Art, and that art at nature did repine;
So striving each th' other to undermine,
Each did the others worke more beautifie;
So diff'ring both in willes agreed in fine:5
So all agreed, through sweete diversitie,
This gardin to adorne with all varietie.

And in the midst of all a fountaine stood
Of richest substance that on earth might bee,

So pure and shiny that the silver flood

Through every channell running one might see;
Most goodly it with curious imageree

1 Hill of Phrygia.

2 Hill sacred to the Muses.

3 Lend favor to.

4 Followed after.

5 End.

Was over-wrought, and shapes of naked boyes,
Of which some seemed with lively jollitee
To fly about, playing their wanton toyes,1
Whylest others did themselves embay2 in liquid joyes.

And over all of purest gold was spred
A trayle of yvie in his native hew;
For the rich metall was so coloured

That wight who did not well avis'd it vew,
Would surely deeme it to bee yvie trew:
Low his lascivious armes adown did creepe,
That themselves dipping in the silver dew
Their fleecy flowres they fearfully did steepe,

Which drops of christall seemed for wantones to weepe.

Infinit streames continually did well

Out of this fountaine, sweet and faire to see,
The which into an ample laver4 fell,
And shortly grew to so great quantitie

That like a little lake it seemd to bee;

Whose depth exceeded not three cubits hight,

That through the waves one might the bottom see
All pav'd beneath with jasper shining bright,

That seemed the fountaine in that sea did sayle upright.

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Eftsoones1 they heard a most melodious sound,

Of all that mote2 delight a daintie eare,

Such as attonce might not on living ground,
Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere:
Right hard it was for wight, which did it heare,
To read what manner musicke that mote bee;
For all that pleasing is to living eare
Was there consorted in one harmonee;

Birdes, voices, instruments, windes, waters, all agree.

The joyous birdes, shrouded in chearefull shade,
Their notes unto the voyce attempred sweet;
Th' angelicall, soft, trembling voyces made
To th' instruments divine respondence meet;

1 Sports. 2 Bathe. 3 Person. 4 Basin. 5 Forthwith.

• Could.

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Poetry-Love, Patriotic, and Philosophical. 115

The silver sounding instruments did meet
With the base murmure of the waters fall;
The waters fall with difference discreet,1
Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call;
The gentle, warbling wind low answered to all.

FURTHER READINGS-IN BOOK I.-Opening stanzas of Canto I.; some stanzas of Canto II., beginning with the seventh; opening stanzas of Canto III., and of Canto IV.; some stanzas of Canto V., beginning with the eighteenth; some stanzas of Canto X., beginning with the twelfth, and also some beginning with the fifty-first; and concluding stanzas of Canto XII., beginning at the twentieth.

66

LESSON 22.

THE FOUR PHASES OF THE LATER ELIZABETHAN POETRY.— Spenser reflected in his poems the spirit of the English Renaissance. The other poetry of Elizabeth's reign reflected the whole of English Life. The best way to arrange it—omitting as yet the Drama-is in an order parallel to the growth of the national life, and the proof that it is the best way is that on the whole such an order is a true chronological order.

First, then, if we compare England after 1580, as writers have often done, to an ardent youth, we shall find, in the poetry of the first years that followed that date, all the elements of youth. It is a poetry of love and romance and fancy. Secondly, and later on, when Englishmen grew older in feeling, their unsettled enthusiasm, which had flitted here and there in action and literature over all kinds of subjects, settled down into a steady enthusiasm for England itself. The country entered on its early manhood, and parallel with this there is the great outburst of historical plays, and a set of poets whom I will call the patriotic poets. Thirdly, and later still, all enthusiasm died down into a graver and more thoughtful national life, and parallel with this are the tragedies of Shakespeare and the poets whom I will call philosophical. These three classes of Poets overlapped one another, and grew up

1 Varied.

gradually, but on the whole their succession represents a real succession of national thought and emotion.

A fourth and separate phase does not represent, as these do, a new national life, a new religion, and new politics, but the despairing struggle of the old faith against the new. There were numbers of men such as Wordsworth has finely sketched in old Norton in the Doe of Rylstone, who vainly strove in sorrow against all the new national elements. ROBERT SOUTHWELL, of Norfolk, a Jesuit priest, was the poet of Roman Catholic England. Imprisoned for three years, racked ten times, and finally executed, he wrote during his prison time his two longest poems, St. Peter's Complaint, and Mary Magdalene's Funeral Tears, and it marks not only the large Roman Catholic element in the country but also the strange contrasts of the time that eleven editions of poems with these titles were published between 1593 and 1600, at a time when the Venus and Adonis of Shakespeare led the way for a multitude of poems that sang of love and delight and England's glory. To the first three we now turn.

THE LOVE POETRY.-I have called it by this name, because in all its best work (to be found in the first book of Mr. Palgrave's 'Golden Treasury') it is almost limited to that subject—the subject of youth. It is chiefly composed in the form of songs and sonnets, and was published in miscellanies in and after 1600. The most famous of these, in which men like Nicholas Breton, Henry Constable, Rd. Barnefield, and others wrote, are England's Helicon and Davison's Rhapsody and the Passionate Pilgrim. The latter contained some poems of Shakespeare, and he is by virtue of these, and the songs in his Dramas, the best of these lyric writers. The songs themselves are old and plain, and dallying with the innocence of love.' They have natural sweetness, great simplicity of speech, and directness of statement. Some, as Shakespeare's, possess a 'passionate reality;' others a quaint pastoralism like shepherd life in porcelain, such as Marlowe's well known song, 'Come live with

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