O my thought, my thoughts surcease, My life melts with too much thinking; Till thou shalt revived be, At her lips my nectar drinking. [From the collection of Miscellaneous Poems first published in the Arcadia of 1595, under the heading of Certain Sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney never before printed.] PHILOMELA. The nightingale, as soon as April bringeth a Unto her rested sense a perfect waking, While late bare earth, proud of new clothing, springeth, Her throat in tunes expresseth b What grief her breast oppresseth For Tereus' force on her chaste will prevailing. O Philomela fair, O take some gladness, That here is juster cause of plaintful sadness: C a Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth. 1 share, exchange (Spanish departir). A DIRGE. Ring out your bells, let mourning shews be spread; For Love is dead: All Love is dead, infected With plague of deep disdain : Worth, as nought worth, rejected, And Faith fair scorn doth gain. From so ungrateful fancy, From such a female frenzy, From them that use men thus, Good Lord, deliver us! Weep, neighbours, weep; do you not hear it said That Love is dead? His death-bed, peacock's folly; His winding-sheet is shame ; His will, false-seeming wholly ; His sole executor, blame. From so ungrateful fancy, From such a female frenzy, From them that use men thus, Good Lord, deliver us! Let dirge be sung, and trentals rightly read, For Love is dead; Sir Wrong his tomb ordaineth My mistress' marble heart; Which epitaph containeth, From so ungrateful fancy, Good Lord, deliver us! Alas, I lie rage hath this error bred; Love is not dead; Love is not dead, but sleepeth Where she his counsel keepeth, Thou blind man's mark, thou fool's self-chosen snare, 2. Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust ; O take fast hold; let that light be thy guide In this small course which birth draws out to death, Who seeketh heaven, and comes of heavenly breath. FROM THE 'ARCADIA.' Dorus to Pamela. My sheep are thoughts, which I both guide and serve ; Their pasture is fair hills of fruitless love, On barren sweets they feed, and feeding starve. I wail their lot, but will not other prove; My sheephook is wan hope, which all upholds ; My weeds Desire, cut out in endless folds; What wool my sheep shall bear, whilst thus they live, In you it is, you must the judgment give, Night. O Night, the ease of care, the pledge of pleasure, Who hath our sight with too much sight infected; FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE. [FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE, born 1554, was the school-fellow and friend of Sidney. He held two important offices under Elizabeth's government, that of Secretary to the Principality of Wales (1583), and that of Treasurer of Marine Causes (1597). He seems to have spent the early years of James' reign in retirement, returning to Court about 1614, in which year he was made Chancellor of the Exchequer and Privy Councillor. In 1620 he was created Baron Brooke of Beauchamp's Court, and died in 1628 from the effects of a wound given him by a servant. The only works published in his lifetime were an elegiac poem on Sidney in Phoenix Nest (1593), a poem in Bodenham's Belvedere (1600), three poems in England's Helicon, and the Tragedy of Mustapha in 1609. An edition of his works, excluding the Poems of Monarchy and Religion (published 1670) appeared in 1633. In 1870 his complete works, prose and verse, were edited in the Fuller Worthies Library by the Rev. A. B. Grosart.] The poems of Lord Brooke, written for the most part 'in his youth and familiar exercise with Sir Philip Sidney,' according to the title page of the 1633 editions, have a real and permanent value, though they can never hope to appeal to any other than a limited and so to speak professional audience. They are the work of a man of great thinking power, and of singular nobility and uprightness of character. The sheer power of mind shewn in these strange plays and treatises and so-called sonnets is undeniable. Every now and then it leads their author to a genuine success, to a fine chorus, a speech of weird and concentrated passion as impressive as a speech of Ford's, though even less human, a shorter poem of real and fanciful beauty. But generally we find this inborn power struggling with a medium of expression so cumbrous and intricate and stumbling, that neither thought nor fancy can find their way through it. Words are taxed beyond what they can bear; all thoughts, whether great or trivial, are tortured into the same over-laboured dress; there is no ease, no flow, no joy. More than this; not only is the manner far removed from the true manner of poetry, but in |