Down fell I then upon my knee,
All flat before Dame Beauty's face,
And cried Good Lady pardon me,
Which here appeal unto your grace,
You know if I have been untrue,
It was in too much praising you.

And though this Judge do make such haste,
To shed with shame my guiltless blood:

Yet let your pity first be placed,

To save the man that meant you good,
So shall you show yourself a Queen,
And I may be your servant seen.

(Quoth Beauty) well: because I guess,
What thou dost mean henceforth to be,
Although thy faults deserve no less,
Than Justice here hath judged thee,
Wilt thou be bound to stint all strife
And be true prisoner all thy life?
Yea madam (quoth I) that I shall,

Lo Faith and Truth my sureties :
Why then (quoth she) come when I call,
I ask no better warrantise.

Thus am I Beauty's bounden thrall,
At her command when she doth call.

A STRANGE PASSION OF A LOVER.

Amid my bale I bathe in bliss,
I swim in Heaven, I sink in hell:

I find amends for every miss,

And yet my moan no tongue can tell.
I live and love (what would you more?)

As never lover lived before.

I laugh sometimes with little lust,
So jest I oft and feel no joy:
Mine eye is builded all on trust,
And yet mistrust breeds mine annoy.

I live and lack, I lack and have;
I have and miss the thing I crave.

These things seem strange, yet are they true.
Believe me, sweet, my state is such,

One pleasure which I would eschew,

Both slakes my grief and breeds my grutch'.
So doth one pain which I would shun,
Renew my joys where grief begun.

Then like the lark that passed the night
In heavy sleep with cares oppressed,
Yet when she spies the pleasant light,
She sends sweet notes from out her breast;
So sing I now because I think

How joys approach when sorrows shrink.

And as fair Philomene again

Can watch and sing when other sleep,
And taketh pleasure in her pain,

To wray the woe that makes her weep;
So sing I now for to bewray

The loathsome life I lead alway.

The which to thee dear wench I write,
That know'st my mirth but not my moan:

I pray God grant thee deep delight,
To live in joys when I am gone.
I cannot live; it will not be :

I die to think to part from thee.

PIERS PLOUGHMAN.

[From The Steel Glass.]

Behold him, priests, and though he stink of sweat,
Disdain him not for shall I tell you what?
Such climb to heaven before the shaven crowns:
But how? forsooth with true humility.

Not that they hoard their grain when it is cheap,
Nor that they kill the calf to have the milk,

1 grudging.

Nor that they set debate between their lords,
By earing up the balks that part their bounds:
Nor for because they can both crouch and creep
(The guileful'st men that ever God yet made)
When as they mean most mischief and deceit,
Nor that they can cry out on landlords loud,
And say they rack their rents an ace too high,
When they themselves do sell their landlord's lamb
For greater price than ewe was wont be worth.
(I see you Piers, my glass was lately scoured.)
But for they feed with fruits of their great pains
Both king and knight and priests in cloister pent:
Therefore I say that sooner some of them
Shall scale the walls which lead us up to heaven,
Than cornfed beasts, whose belly is their God,
Although they preach of more perfection.

EPILOGUS.

Alas, (my lord), my haste was all too hot,
I shut my glass before you gazed your fill,
And at a glimpse my seely self have spied
A stranger troop than any yet were seen :
Behold, my lord, what monsters muster here,
With angels face, and harmful hellish hearts,
With smiling looks and deep deceitful thoughts,
With tender skins, and stony cruel minds,
With stealing steps, yet forward feet to fraud.
Behold, behold, they never stand content,
With God, with kind, with any help of Art,

But curl their locks with bodkins and with braids,
But dye their hair with sundry subtle sleights,

But paint and slick till fairest face be foul,

But bumbast, bolster, frizzle and perfume:

They marr with musk the balm which nature made,

And dig for death in delicatest dishes.

The younger sort come piping on apace,

In whistles made of fine enticing wood,

Till they have caught the birds for whom they brided,
And on their backs they bear both land and fee,
Castles and towers, revenues and receipts,

Lordships and manors, fines, yea farms and all.
What should these be? (speak you my lovely lord)
They be not men: for why they have no beards.
They be no boys which wear such sidelong gowns.
They be no Gods, for all their gallant gloss.

They be no devils (I trow) which seem so saintish.
What be they? women? masking in men's weeds?
With dutchkin doublets, and with jerkins jagged?
With Spanish spangs and ruffs set out of France,
With high copt hats and feathers flaunt a flaunt?
They be so sure even woe to Men in deed.

Nay then, my lord, let shut the glass apace,
High time it were for my poor Muse to wink,
Since all the hands, all paper, pen and ink,
Which ever yet this wretched world possest,
Cannot describe this sex in colours due.
No, No, my lord, we gazed have enough,
(And I too much; God pardon me therefore),
Better look off than look an ace too far:
And better mum than meddle overmuch,
But if my glass do like my lovely lord,
We will espy some sunny summers day,
To look again and see some seemly sights.
Meanwhile my muse right humbly doth beseech,
That my good lord accept this vent'rous verse
Until my brains may better stuff devise.

6

THOMAS SACKVILLE.

[THOMAS SACKVILLE was born in 1536 at Buckhurst in Sussex, where his family had been settled since the Conquest. After some time spent at Oxford and Cambridge, he entered parliament (1557-58), and in the beginning of Elizabeth's reign he became known as a poetical writer. Between 1557 and 1563 he took part in The Tragedy of Gorboduc, and also planned a work called The Mirror of Magistrates, a series of poetical examples, showing with how grievous plagues vices are punished in Great Princes and Magistrates, and how frail and unstable worldly prosperity is found, where fortune seemeth most highly to favour.' He wrote the Induction, a preface, and the Story of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. But he soon threw himself into the risks of public life. On the whole he was successful. In 1567 he was created Lord Buckhurst. He experienced the fitful temper of the Queen in various public employments. He sat on several of the great state trials of the time-those of the Duke of Norfolk, Mary Queen of Scots, the Earl of Essex. In 1599 he was made Lord High Treasurer. James I created him Earl of Dorset in 1604. In 1608 he died, while sitting at the council table at Whitehall.']

The scanty remains of Sackville's poetry are chiefly interesting because they show a strong sense of the defects of the existing poetical standard, and a craving after something better. They show an effort after a larger and bolder creation of imagery; as where the poet, copying Dante, imagines himself guided by the Genius of Sorrow through the regions of the great Dead, there to hear from their own mouths the sad vicissitudes of their various stories. There is a greater restraint and severity than had yet been seen in the choice of language and ornament, though stiffness and awkwardness of phrase, and the still imperfect sense of poetical fitness and grace, show that the writer could not yet reach in execution what he aimed at in idea. And there is visible both in the structure of the seven-line stanzas, and in the flow of the verses themselves, a feeling for rhythmic stateliness and majesty corresponding to his solemn theme. In their cadences, as well as in the allegorical figures and pathetic moralising of Sackville's verses, we see a faint anticipation of Spenser, who inscribed one of the prefatory Sonnets of the Faery Queene to one who may have been one of his masters in his art.

R. W. CHURCH.