ROSADER'S DESCRIPTION OF ROSALYND. Like to the clear in highest sphere, Whether unfolded or in twines; Her cheeks are like the blushing cloud Or like the silver-crimson shroud That Phoebus' smiling looks doth grace; Her lips are like two budded roses, Whom ranks of lilies neighbour nigh, Within whose bounds she balm encloses Apt to entice a deity. Her neck like to a stately tower, Her paps are centres of delight, With orient pearl, with ruby red, Yet soft to touch, and sweet in view; The gods are wounded in her sight, And Love forsakes his heavenly fires, And at her eyes his brand doth light. Then muse not, Nymphs, though I bemoan The absence of fair Rosalynd; Since for her fair there's fairer none, Nor for her virtues so divine. Heigh ho! fair Rosalynd! Heigh ho! my heart, would God that she were mine! THE HARMONY OF LOVE. A very phoenix, in her radiant eyes I leave mine age, and get my life again; True Hesperus, I watch her fall and rise, And with my tears extinguish all my pain; My lips for shadows shield her springing roses, Mine eyes for watchmen guard her while she sleepeth, My reasons serve to 'quite her faint supposes; Her fancy, mine; my faith her fancy keepeth; PHILLIS' SICKNESS. How languisheth the primrose of Love's garden! O spare, and plague thou me for her offences! Blush through the milk-white veil that holds you covered; If heat or cold may mitigate your anguish, I'll burn, I'll freeze, but you shall be recovered. To mercy should opinion's fort surrender; LOVE'S WANTONNESS. Love guides the roses of thy lips, Love in thine eyes doth build his bower, And from their orbs shoot shafts divine. Love works thy heart within his fire, And of my plaints doth make a game. Love, let me cull her choicest flowers, WILLIAM WARNER. [WILLIAM WARNER was born in Oxfordshire about the middle of the sixteenth century, and died on the 9th of March, 1609, at Amwell. His chief work is Albion's England, 1586. It was at first prohibited, for reasons unknown, but afterwards became very popular. He perhaps translated the Menaechmi of Plautus 1595; and certainly wrote a prose collection of moralized stories, entitled Syrinx, 1597-] Warner's chief and only poetical work is Albion's England, a curious medley of partly traditional history, with interludes of the fabliau kind. By some accident it has, since the author's death, secured an audience, not indeed wide, but much wider than that enjoyed by the work of contemporaries of far greater power. The pastoral episode of Argentile and Curan hit the taste of the eighteenth century, and Chalmers reprinted the whole poem in his Poets, very injudiciously following Ellis in dividing the fourteen-syllable lines into eights and sixes. In this form much of it irresistibly reminds the reader of Johnson's injurious parody of that metre: but in the original editions it appears to much greater advantage. The ascending and descending slope of the long lines is often managed with a good deal of art ; and as the following extract, giving the speeches of Harold and William before Hastings, will show, there is sometimes dignity in the sentiments and vigour in their expression. The author is too prone to adopt classical constructions, especially absolute cases, which often throw obscurity over his meaning. Warner is not, as he has been called, a 'good, honest, plain writer of moral rules and precepts'; nor is his work, as another authority asserts, ' written in Alexandrines.' But though he will not bear comparison with the better, even of the second-rate Elizabethans, such as Watson, Barnes, and Constable, much less with his fellow historians Drayton and Daniel, the singularity of the plan of his book, and some vigorous touches here and there, raise him above the mass. There is, moreover, one thing in his work which is of considerable literary interest. Unlike almost all his contemporaries, he is hardly at all'Italianate.' The Italian influence, which for a full century coloured English poetry, is scarcely discernible in him, and he is thus an interesting example of an English poet with hardly any foreign strain in him except, as has been said, a certain tinge of classical study. G. SAINTSBURY. |