Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

siderations of interest, not on aught that time can destroy: now indeed Time is defeated; not by offspring, not by verse, but by that which is alone free from time and fortune, by Love. Yetthus the series closes-let us not be lifted up above measure; however fair life and love may be, there is at last, for thee even as for me, the quietus of the grave.

Of the exquisite songs scattered through Shakespeare's plays it is almost an impertinence to speak. If they do not make their own way, like the notes in the wildwood, no words will open the dull ear to take them in. There is little song in the historical dramas; how should there be much amid the debates of the council-chamber, the clash of swords, the tug of rival interests, the plotting of courtiers, the ambitious hypocrisies of priests? To hear dainty snatches set to some clear-hearted tune-' Green Sleeves' perhaps or 'Light o' love'-we must haunt the palace of the enamoured Duke of Illyria, or wander under green boughs in Arden, or stray along the yellow sands of the enchanted island, or lurk behind the hedge while light-footed and lightfingered Autolycus sets the country air a-ringing with his sprightly tirra-lirra. In the tragedies Shakespeare has made use of song -his own or another's-always with deliberate forethought, always with the inevitable rightness of genius, to make the pity more rare and of a finer edge, to touch the skirts of darkness with a pathetic gleam, or to mingle some keen irony with the transitory triumph of life. We remember the wild and bitter gaiety, hiding so deep a sorrow, of Lear's poor boy quavering out weak notes across the tempest; thought and affliction turned to prettiness in the distracted Ophelia's singing; the rough ditty keeping time to strokes of the mattock as it tosses out the earth which is to lie on Ophelia's breast; the high-pitched joviality of honest Iago 'And let me the canakin clink, clink'; the volleying chorus, 'Cup us till the world go round,' shouted in Pompey's galley, while Menes stands by ready to fall to the triumvirs' throats; the old song of willow sung by maid Barbara when Desdemona was a girl, and coming back to her on that night when a sad wife she goes bedward with eyes ripe for weeping, and with a heart still meek and innocent as the heart of a little child. But to hear songs, which 'dally with the innocence of love like the old age,' one should be silent.

EDWARD DOWDEN.

POEMS.

[From Venus and Adonis.]

O, what a sight it was, wistly to view
How she came stealing to the wayward boy!
To note the fighting conflict of her hue,
How white and red each other did destroy!
But now her cheek was pale, and by and by
It flash'd forth fire, as lightning from the sky.

Now was she just before him as he sat,
And like a lowly lover down she kneels;
With one fair hand she heaveth up his hat,
Her other tender hand his fair cheek feels:
His tenderer cheek receives her soft hand's print,
As apt as new-fall'n snow takes any dint.

O, what a war of looks was then between them!
Her eyes petitioners to his eyes suing;
His eyes saw her eyes as they had not seen them;
Her eyes woo'd still, his eyes disdain'd the wooing:

And all this dumb play had his acts made plain
With tears, which, chorus-like, her eyes did rain.

Full gently now she takes him by the hand,

A lily prison'd in a gaol of snow,

Or ivory in an alabaster band;

So white a friend engirts so white a foe:

This beauteous combat, wilful and unwilling,

Show'd like two silver doves that sit a-billing

[blocks in formation]

'Thou hadst been gone,' quoth she, 'sweet boy, ere this, But that thou told'st me thou wouldst hunt the boar.

O, be advised! thou know'st not what it is

With javelin's point a churlish swine to gore,

Whose tushes never sheathed he whetteth still,
Like to a mortal butcher bent to kill.

'On his bow-back he hath a battle set

Of bristly pikes, that ever threat his foes;

His eyes, like glow-worms, shine when he doth fret ;
His snout digs sepulchres where'er he goes;

Being moved, he strikes whate'er is in his way,
And whom he strikes his crooked tushes slay.

'His brawny sides, with hairy bristles arm'd,
Are better proof than thy spear's point can enter;
His short thick neck cannot be easily harm'd ;
Being ireful, on the lion he will venture:

The thorny brambles and embracing bushes,
As fearful of him, part, through whom he rushes.
'Alas, he nought esteems that face of thine,
To which Love's eyes pay tributary gazes;
Nor thy soft hands, sweet lips and crystal eyne,
Whose full perfection all the world amazes ;

But having thee at vantage,-wondrous dread!
Would root these beauties as he roots the mead.

'O, let him keep his loathsome cabin still;
Beauty hath nought to do with such foul fiends:
Come not within his danger by thy will;

They that thrive well take counsel of their friends.
When thou didst name the boar, not to dissemble,
I fear'd thy fortune, and my joints did tremble.'

[blocks in formation]

'But if thou needs wilt hunt, be ruled by me; Uncouple at the timorous flying hare,

Or at the fox which lives by subtlety,

Or at the roe which no encounter dare:

Pursue these fearful creatures o'er the downs,

And on thy well-breathed horse keep with thy hounds. 'And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare, Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles How he outruns the wind and with what care He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles: The many musets through the which he goes Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.

'Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep,

To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell,
And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,
To stop the loud pursuers in their yell,

And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer:
Danger deviseth shifts; wit waits on fear:

'For there his smell with others being mingled,
The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt,
Ceasing their clamorous cry till they have singled
With much ado the cold fault cleanly out;

Then do they spend their mouths: Echo replies,
As if another chase were in the skies.

'By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill,
Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear,
To hearken if his foes pursue him still:
Anon their loud alarums he doth hear;

And now his grief may be compared well
To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell.

'Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch
Turn, and return, indenting with the way;
Each envious brier his weary legs doth scratch,
Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay:
For misery is trodden on by many,

And being low never relieved by any.'

[blocks in formation]

With this, he breaketh from the sweet embrace,
Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast,
And homeward through the dark laund runs apace;
Leaves Love upon her back deeply distress'd.

Look, how a bright star shooteth from the sky,
So glides he in the night from Venus' eye;

Which after him she darts, as one on shore
Gazing upon a late-embarked friend,

Till the wild waves will have him seen no more,
Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend:
So did the merciless and pitchy night
Fold in the object that did feed her sight.

Whereat amazed, as one that unaware
Hath dropp'd a precious jewel in the flood,
Or stonish'd as night-wanderers often are,
Their light blown out in some mistrustful wood,
Even so confounded in the dark she lay,
Having lost the fair discovery of her way.

And now she beats her heart, whereat it groans,
That all the neighbour caves, as seeming troubled,
Make verbal repetition of her moans;

Passion on passion deeply is redoubled:

'Ay me! she cries, and twenty times 'Woe, woe!' And twenty echoes twenty times cry so.

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

She looks upon his lips, and they are pale ;
She takes him by the hand, and that is cold;
She whispers in his ears a heavy tale,

As if they heard the woeful words she told;
She lifts the coffer-lids that close his eyes,

Where, lo, two lamps, burnt out, in darkness lics;

Two glasses, where herself herself beheld,

A thousand times, and now no more reflect;
Their virtue lost, wherein they late excell'd,

And every beauty robb'd of his effect:

'Wonder of time,' quoth she, 'this is my spite, That, thou being dead, the day should yet be light.

'Since thou art dead, lo, here I prophesy :
Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend:
It shall be waited on with jealousy,
Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end,
Ne'er settled equally, but high or low,

That all love's pleasure shall not match his woc.

'It shall be fickle, false and full of fraud,
Bud and be blasted in a breathing-while;
The bottom poison, and the top o'erstraw'd
With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile :
The strongest body shall it make most weak,
Strike the wise dumb and teach the fool to speak.

« PredošláPokračovať »