period. He is the type of that warm brood of poetic youth that still sings in chorus from the dells of England's Helicon, or the Paradise of Princely Pleasures. Life and the whole world of youthful pleasures attract him with their delight, and he hastens to clothe himself in a gay silken doublet, and to throw away his forefather's Puritan coat of hodden gray. But anything more specific and definite than this it would scarcely be safe to say. Greene has not Lodge's individuality of style, nor does he approach his finest flights, but he is more nearly allied to him than to any other of his contemporaries. It will probably seem to a careful reader that his ordinary level of writing was sustained at a higher point than Lodge's. In his rapid passages of octosyllabic verse Greene sometimes comes very close to Barnefield, and, through that mysterious and exquisite poet, to the juvenile manner of Shakespeare, with whom, as is well known, he cultivated a lively spirit of rivalry. But the most curious and notable thing, after all, about Greene's poetry is that, in all its sylvan sweetness, it should have proceeded from the lawless bully, whose ruffled hair and long red beard became a beacon and terror to all good citizens, till in the midst of his 'villainous cogging and foisting,' and all his rascally sleights, he was carried off in the thirty-second year of his life by a surfeit of Rhenish wine and pickled herrings. Upon the poor dishonoured head of this strange genius, the wretched woman who was with him when he died set a garland of bay-leaves, in a happy prescience of the tenderness with which posterity would pardon all his sins for the sake of his pure and beautiful verses. EDMUND W. GOSSE. SEPHESTIA'S SONG TO HER CHILD. Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee; Father's sorrow, father's joy; Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee, Like pearl drops from a flint, Father's sorrow, father's joy. Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee, When thou art old there's grief enough for thee. The wanton smiled, father wept, Mother cried, baby leapt ; More he crowed, more we cried, He must go, he must kiss Father's sorrow, father's joy. Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee, When thou art old there's grief enough for thee. SAMELA. Like to Diana in her summer weed, Girt with a crimson robe of brightest dye, Whiter than be the flocks that straggling feed, When washed by Arethusa faint they lie, As fair Aurora in her morning grey, Decked with the ruddy glister of her love, Like lovely Thetis on a calmèd day, When as her brightness Neptune's fancy move, Shines fair Samela; Her tresses gold, her eyes like glassy streams, Her teeth are pearl, the breasts are ivory Of fair Samela ; Her cheeks, like rose and lily yield forth gleams, Her brow's bright arches framed of ebony; Thus fair Samela Passeth fair Venus in her bravest hue, And Juno in the show of majesty, For she's Samela, Pallas in wit; all three, if you well view, Yield to Samela. FAWNIA. Ah, were she pitiful as she is fair, Or but as mild as she is seeming so, Then were my hopes greater than my despair, Ah, were her heart relenting as her hand, That seems to melt even with the mildest touch, Then knew I where to seat me in a land, Under wide heavens, but yet [I know] not such. So as she shows, she seems the budding rose, Compassed she is with thorns and cankered flower, Ah, when she sings, all music else be still, She comforts all the world, as doth the sun, O glorious sun, imagine me the west, Shine in my arms, and set thou in my breast! THE PALMER'S ODE IN NEVER TOO LATE.' Old Menalcas, on a day, As in field this shepherd lay, Which he hit with many a stripe, Once was young and full of glee. As I lay and kept my sheep, With her face to feed mine eye; There I saw Desire sit, That my heart with love had hit, Pray and sigh; all would not do: Coy she was, and I 'gan court; Was a brond of love's fire, At this saw, back I start, Beat Desire from my heart, Shook off Love, and made an oath Old I was when thus I fled Such fond toys as cloyed my head, SONG. Sweet are the thoughts. that savour of content; The poor estate scorns fortune's angry frown: |