Of life whom late their lady's arrow riv'd;
Forthy the bloody tract they followed fast,
And every one to run the swiftest striv'd;
But two of them the rest far overpast,

And where their lady was arrived at the last.

Where, when they saw that goodly boy with blood
Defouled, and their lady dress his wound,
They wondered much, and shortly understood
How him in deadly case their lady found,
And rescued out of the heavy stound:
Eftsoons his warlike courser, which was stray'd
Far in the woods, whiles that he lay in swownd,
She made those damsels search; which being stay'd,
They did him set thereon, and forthwith them con-
vey'd.

Into that forest far they thence him led,

Where was their dwelling, in a pleasant glade,
With mountains round about environed,
And mighty woods which did the valley shade
And like a stately theatre it made.
Spreading itself into a spacious plain;

And in the midst a little river play'd

Amongst the pumice stones, which seem'd to plain With gentle murmur, that his course they did restrain.

Beside the same a dainty place there lay,
Planted with myrtle trees and laurels green,

In which the birds sang many a lovely lay

Of God's high praise, and of their sweet loves

teen,

As it an earthly paradise had been;

In whose enclosed shadow there was pight

A fair pavilion, scarcely to be seen,

The which was all within most richly dight,
That greatest princes living it mote well delight.

Thither they brought that wounded squire, and laid easy couch his feeble limbs to rest:

In

He rested him a while, and then the maid

His ready wound with better salves new drest;
Daily she dressed him, and did the best

2

His grievous hurt to guarish that she might,

That shortly he his dolour had redrest,
And his foul sore reduced to fair plight;
It she reduced, but himself destroyed quite.

O foolish physic, and unfruitful pain,
That heals up one, and makes another wound;
She his hurt thigh to him recur'd again,
But hurt his heart, the which before was sound,
Through an unwary dart, which did rebound
From her fair eyes and gracious countenance:
What boots it him from death to be unbound,
To be captived in endeless durànce

Of sorrow and despair without allegiance?

Thus warred he long time against his will,
Till that through weakness he was forc'd at last
To yield himself unto the mighty ill,

Which as a victor proud 'gan ransack fast

His inward parts, and all his entrails waste,
That neither blood in face, nor life in heart,
It left, but both did quite dry up and blast,
As piercing levin, which the inner part
Of every thing consumes, and càlcineth by art.

Which seeing, fair Belphœbe 'gan to fear
Least that his wound were inly well not heal'd,
Or that the wicked steel empoison'd were ;
Little she ween'd that love he close conceal'd;
Yet still he wasted as the snow congeal'd,

When the bright sun his beams thereon doth beat; Yet never he his heart to her reveal'd,

But rather chose to die for sorrow great,

Than with dishonourable terms her to entreat.

SINCE I did leave the presence of my love,
Many long weary days I have outworn,
And many nights that slowly seem'd to move
Their sad protract from evening until morn.
For, where as day the heaven doth adorn,

I wish that night the noyous day would end;
And when as night hath us of light forlorn,
I wish that day would shortly reascend.
Thus I the time with expectation spend,
And fain my grief with changes to beguile,
That further seems his term still to extend,
And maketh every minute seem a mile.
So sorrow still doth seem too long to last,
But joyous hours do fly away too fast.

SONNET LXXXVIII.

LIKE as the culver, on the bared bough,
Sits mourning for the absence of her mate,
And in her songs sends many a wishful vow
For his return that seems to linger late;
So I alone, now left disconsolate,
Mourn to myself the absence of my love,

And, wand'ring here and there, all desolate,

Seek with my plaints to match that mournful dove:
Ne joy of aught that under heaven doth hove,
Can comfort me but her own joyous sight,

Whose sweet aspect both God and man can move,
In her unspotted pleasures to delight.

Dark is my day, whiles her fair light I miss,

And dead my life, that wants such lively bliss.

POETRY OF UNCERTAIN AUTHORS

OF

THE END OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

THE SOUL'S ERRAND.

FROM DAVISON'S POETICAL RHAPSODY.

THIS bold and spirited poem has been ascribed to several authors, but to none on satisfactory authority. It can be traced to MS. of a date as early as 1593, when Francis Davison, who published it in his Poetical Rhapsody, was too young to be supposed, with much probability, to have written it; and as Davison's work was a compilation, his claims to it must be very doubtful. Sir Egerton Brydges has published it among Sir Walter Raleigh's poems, but without a tittle of evidence to shew that it was the production of that great man. Mr. Ellis gives it to Joshua Sylvester, evidently by mistake. Whoever looks at the folio vol. of Sylvester's poems, will see that Joshua uses the beautiful original merely as a Text, and has the conscience to print his own stuff in a way that shews it to be interpolated. Among those additions there occur some such execrable stanzas as the following:

Say, soldiers are the sink
Of sin to all the realm,