Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

CHORUS OF GOOD AND EVIL SPIRITS.

[From Alaham.]

Evil Spirits.

Why did you not defend that which was once your own?
Between us two, the odds of worth, by odds of power is known.
Besides map clearly out your infinite extent,

Even in the infancy of Time, when man was innocent1;
Could this world then yield aught to envy or desire,

Where pride of courage made men fall, and baseness rais'd them higher ?

Where they that would be great, to be so must be least,

And where to bear and suffer wrong, was Virtue's native crest.
Man's skin was then his silk; the world's wild fruit his food;
His wisdom, poor simplicity; his trophies inward good.
No majesty for power; nor glories for man's worth ;

Nor any end, but—as the plants—to bring each other forth.
Temples and vessels fit for outward sacrifice,

As they came in, so they go out with that which you call vice.
The priesthood few and poor; no throne but open air;
For that which you call good, allows of nothing that is fair.
No Pyramids rais'd up above the force of thunder,

No Babel-walls by greatness built, for littleness a wonder,
No conquest testifying wit, with [dauntless] courage mixt;

As wheels whereon the world must run, and never can be fixt.
No arts or characters to read the great God in,

Nor stories of acts done; for these all entered with the sin.
A lazy calm, wherein each fool a pilot is!

The glory of the skilful shines, where men may go amiss.
Till we came in there was no trial of your might,
And since we were in men, yourselves presume of little right.
Then cease to blast the Earth with your abstracted dreams,
And strive no more to carry men against Affection's streams.

*

*

*

*

*

Keep therefore where you are; descend not but ascend:

For, underneath the sun, be sure no brave state is your friend.

1

1i. e. consider the boundless power you enjoyed in the golden age.'

Good Spirits.

What have you won by this, but that curst under Sin,
You make and mar; throw down and raise; as ever to begin;
Like meteors in the air, you blaze but to burn out;

And change your shapes-like phantom'd clouds-to leave weak eyes in doubt.

Not Truth but truth-like grounds you work upon,

Varying in all but this, that you can never long be one:
Then play here with your art, false miracle devise;
Deceive, and be deceivèd still, be foolish and seem wise;
In Peace erect your thrones, your delicacy spread;

The flowers of time corrupt, soon spring, and are as quickly dead.

Let War, which-tempest-like-all with itself o'erthrows, Make of this diverse world a stage of blood-enamelled shows. Successively both these yet this fate follow will,

That all their glories be no more than change from ill to ill

SEED-TIME AND HARVEST.

[From Caelica, Sonnet XL.]

The nurse-life wheat within his green husk growing
Flatters our hopes and tickles our desire;

Nature's true riches in sweet beauties shewing,
Which set all hearts with labour's love on fire.
No less fair is the wheat when golden ear,
Shews unto hope the joys of near enjoying:
Fair and sweet is the bud; more sweet and fair
The rose, which proves that Time is not destroying.
Caelica, your youth, the morning of delight,
Enamel'd o'er with beauties white and red,

All sense and thoughts did to belief invite,

That love and glory there are brought to bed;

And your ripe years, Love, now they grow no higher,

Turn all the spirits of man into desire'.

1 The reading of these last two lines is conjectural.

ELIZABETHA REGINA.

[From Caelica, Sonnet LXXXII.]

Under a throne I saw a virgin sit,

The red and white rose quartered in her face,
Star of the North!-and for true guards to it,
Princes, church, states, all pointing out her grace.
The homage done her was not born of Wit;
Wisdom admir'd, Zeal took Ambition's place,
State in her eyes taught Order how to fit
And fix Confusion's unobserving race.

Fortune can here claim nothing truly great,
But that this princely creature is her seat.

SONNET.

[From Caelica, Sonnet CX.]

Sion lies waste, and Thy Jerusalem,
O Lord, is fall'n to utter desolation;
Against Thy prophets and Thy holy men,
There sin hath wrought a fatal combination :
Profan'd Thy name, Thy worship overthrown,
And made Thee, living Lord, a God unknown.

Thy powerful laws, Thy wonders of creation,
Thy word incarnate, glorious heaven, dark hell,
Lie shadowed under man's degeneration;
Thy Christ still crucified for doing well;
Impiety, O Lord, sits on Thy throne,

Which makes Thee living Lord, a God unknown.

Man's superstition hath Thy truth entombed,
His atheism again her pomps defaceth;

That sensual, insatiable vast womb,

Of thy seen Church, Thy unseen Church disgraceth; There lives no truth, with them that seem Thine own, Which makes Thee, living Lord, a God unknown.

Yet unto Thee, Lord-mirror of transgression-
We who for earthly idols have forsaken,
Thy heavenly image-sinless, pure impression-
And so in nets of vanity lie taken,

All desolate implore that to Thine own,
Lord, Thou no longer live a God unknown.

Yea, Lord, let Israel's plagues not be eternal,
Nor sin for ever cloud Thy sacred mountains,
Nor with false flames spiritual but infernal,
Dry up Thy Mercy's ever springing fountains:
Rather, sweet Jesus, fill up time and come,
To yield to sin her everlasting doom.

AN ELEGY ON SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'

Silence augmenteth grief, writing increaseth rage,

Staled are my thoughts, which loved and lost the wonder of

our age;

Yet quickened now with fire, though dead with frost ere now, Enraged I write, I know not what; dead-quick—I know not how.

Hard-hearted minds relent and Rigour's tears abound,

And Envy strangely rues his end, in whom no fault she found.
Knowledge her light hath lost, Valour hath slain her knight,
Sidney is dead, dead is my friend, dead is the world's delight.

Place pensive wails his fall, whose presence was her pride,
Time crieth out, my ebb is come; his life was my spring-tide!
Fame mourns in that she lost the ground of her reports,
Each living wight laments his lack, and all in sundry sorts.

He was (woe worth that word!) to each well-thinking mind
A spotless friend, a matchless man, whose virtue ever shined,
Declaring in his thoughts, his life and that he writ,
Highest conceits, longest foresights, and deepest works of wit.

[blocks in formation]

1 The authorship of this poem is by no means certain. Lamb however believed it to be by Lord Brooke.

Farewell to you my hopes, my wonted waking dreams,
Farewell sometimes enjoyèd joy, eclipsèd are thy beams,
Farewell self-pleasing thoughts, which quietness brings forth,
And farewell friendship's sacred league, uniting minds of worth.

And farewell merry heart, the gift of guiltless minds,
And all sports, which for life's restore, variety assigns:
Let all that sweet is void; in me no mirth may dwell;
Philip the cause of all this woe, my life's content, farewell!

Now rhyme, the son of rage, which art no kin to skill,
And endless grief, which deads my life yet knows not how to kill,
Go, seek that hapless tomb, which if ye hap to find,

Salute the stones that keep the limbs, that held so good a mind.

« PredošláPokračovať »