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SAPPHO'S SONG.

[From Sappho and Phao.]

O cruel Love! on thee I lay

My curse, which shall strike blind the day;
Never may sleep with velvet hand

Charm thine eyes with sacred wand;
Thy jailors still be hopes and fears;

Thy prison-mates groans, sighs, and tears;
Thy play to wear out weary times,
Fantastic passions, vows, and rhymes;
Thy bread be frowns; thy drink be gall;
Such as when you Phao call

The bed thou liest on be despair;

Thy sleep, fond dreams; thy dreams, long care;
Hope (like thy fool) at thy bed's head,

Mock thee, till madness strikes thee dead,
As Phao, thou dost me, with thy proud eyes.

In thee poor Sappho lives, in thee she dies.

APELLES' SONG.

[From Alexander and Campaspe.]

Cupid and my Campaspe played
At cards for kisses-Cupid paid.
He stakes his quiver, bows and arrows,
His mother's doves and team of sparrows:
Loses them too; then down he throws

The coral of his lip, the rose

Growing on's cheek (but none knows how);
With these the crystal of his brow,
And then the dimple of his chin-
All these did my Campaspe win.

At last he set her both his eyes.-
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
O Love, has she done this to thee?
What shall, alas! become of me?

PAN'S SONG.

[From Midas.]

Pan's Syrinx was a girl indeed,
Though now she's turned into a reed.
From that dear reed Pan's pipe doth come,
A pipe that strikes Apollo dumb ;
Nor flute, nor lute, nor gittern can
So chant it, as the pipe of Pan.
Cross-gartered swains, and dairy girls,
With faces smug and round as pearls,
When Pan's shrill pipe begins to play,
With dancing wear out night and day;
The bag-pipe drone his hum lays by
When Pan sounds up his minstrelsy.
His minstrelsy! O base! This quill
Which at my mouth with wind I fill
Puts me in mind though her I miss
That still my Syrinx' lips I kiss.

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[GEORGE PEELE was probably born in 1558. He was 'a most noted poet in the University' of Oxford, and taking up his residence in London became one of the band of University writers for the stage, with whom the 'player' Shakespeare's first efforts as a dramatist brought him into conflict. His first published play was a 'pastoral,' The Arraignment of Paris, which had been performed before Queen Elizabeth in 1584. It is supposed that he wrote more plays for the public stage than have been preserved. He also composed pageants for the great city festivals, making a precarious living by his wits. Occasional verses of Peele's appear in the poetic collections of the period. He died before 1598.]

Peele was one of the singers before the great Elizabethan sunrise, and his notes contain no anticipatory vibration of the burst of song that was to follow him. His University friends,

even after Marlowe had made his voice heard, spoke of him as the Atlas of poetry, inferior to none, and in some respects superior to all; but this partial verdict can now be recorded only as an example of how contemporary criticism is sometimes mistaken. In reading his plays now one is more astonished that Greene and Nash should have considered him worthy to be named in the same breath with Marlowe, than that the theatrical managers of the time, so much to their indignation, should have rejected his plays in favour of the productions of non-academic workmen. Peele's blank verse, which was so much admired by his academic contemporaries, gives us a fair idea of the environment out of which Marlowe emerged, and increases our admiration of that mighty genius. It deserves the praise of 'smoothness' which it received from Campbell; it is graceful and elegant, but it has neither sinew nor majesty. I have quoted what seems to me to be the most favourable example of his use of this instrument, an address prefixed to one of his plays, The Tale of Troy, published in 1599, two years after the production of Tamburlaine.

The

inspiration of the subject seems to have contributed a fire and a freedom of movement which is generally lacking in Peele's blank verse. In using this form at all, Peele essayed an instrument which was beyond his powers and unsuited to his bent of feeling. His was an adroit, subtle, versatile mind, without massiveness or passionate intensity, and he is seen at his best in the expression of graceful and humorous fancies. He was not however a follower of Marlowe in the application of blank verse to tragic purposes. In the Arraignment of Paris, the prologue spoken by Ate is in that metre, and it is also adopted by Paris in his speech before the council of the Gods, and by Diana in her description of the nymph Eliza, a 'figure' of Queen Elizabeth. This seems to show that among the University poets, from whose circle Marlowe burst to reform the common stage, blank verse was considered the appropriate instrument for tragic and stately speeches. But it was not apparently till after the production of Tamburlaine that Peele wrote whole plays in blank verse. David and Bethsabe is the best of these, and is full of happy touches in the tender scenes, but the firmness of a masterly hand is wanting. The verse seldom moves far without having recourse to the crutch of weak and superfluous epithets. In the Battle of Alcazar Peele tried, perhaps at the instigation of his hard taskmasters the theatrical managers, to make up by sound and fury for his want of natural strength in the expression of passion, and thereby furnished Shakespeare with the model for some of the best-known extravagances of Pistol. Peele has also left us in Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes an example of the jigging measure of fourteen syllables, from which Marlowe aspired to redeem the stage. It cannot be said that Peele helped forward the great literary movement of his time; he is perhaps the best illustration of the utmost that could be done by a cultured man of facile talent and poetic temperament before the advent of the great Elizabethans.

W. MINTO.

A FAREWELL TO SIR JOHN NORRIS AND SIR FRANCIS
DRAKE.

Have done with care, my hearts! aboard amain,
With stretching sails to plough the swelling waves;
Bid England's shore and Albion's chalky cliffs
Farewell; bid stately Troynovant adieu,
Where pleasant Thames from Isis silver head
Begins her quiet glide, and runs along

To that brave bridge, the bar that thwarts her course,
Near neighbour to the ancient stony tower,

The glorious hold that Julius Caesar built.

Change love for arms; girt to your blades, my boys!
Your rests and muskets take, take helm and targe,
And let God Mars his consort make you mirth-
The roaring cannon, and the brazen trump,
The angry-sounding drum, the whistling fife,
The shrieks of men, the princely courser's neigh.
Now vail your bonnets to your friends at home;
Bid all the lovely British dames adieu,
That under many a standard well-advanced
Have hid the sweet alarms and braves of love;
Bid theatres and proud tragedians,

Bid Mahomet, Scipio, and mighty Tamburlaine,
King Charlemagne, Tom Stukely, and the rest,
Adieu. To arms, to arms, to glorious arms!
With noble Norris, and victorious Drake,
Under the sanguine cross, brave England's badge,
To propagate religious piety

And hew a passage with your conquering swords

By land and sea, wherever Phoebus' eye,

Th' eternal lamp of Heaven, lends us light;
By golden Tagus, or the western Ind,
Or through the spacious bay of Portugal,
The wealthy ocean-main, the Tyrrhene sea,
From great Alcides' pillars branching forth,
Even to the gulf that leads to lofty Rome;
There to deface the pride of Antichrist,
And pull his paper walls and popery down-
A famous enterprise for England's strength,

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