But 'gainst my batteries if I find

Thou storm, or vex me sore,
As if thou set me as a blind,
I'll never love thee more.

And in the empire of thy heart,
Where I should solely be,
If others do pretend a part,
Or dare to share with me ;
Or committees if thou erect,
Or go on such a score,
I'll smiling mock at thy neglect,
And never love thee more.

But if no faithless action stain
Thy love and constant word,
I'll make thee famous by my pen,
And glorious by my sword.
I'll serve thee in such noble ways
As ne'er was known before;

I'll deck and crown thy head with bays,
And love thee more and more.

The Marquis of Montrose.

42

ELIZABETH OF BOHEMIA

You meaner beauties of the night,
That poorly satisfy our eyes

More by your number than your light,
You common people of the skies,
What are you, when the moon shall rise?

You curious chanters of the wood

That warble forth dame Nature's lays, Thinking your passions understood

By your weak accents; what's your praise When Philomel her voice doth raise?

You violets that first appear,

By your pure purple mantles known Like the proud virgins of the year,

As if the spring were all your own,-
What are you, when the rose is blown?

So when my Mistress shall be seen
In form and beauty of her mind,
By virtue first, then choice, a Queen,
Tell me, if she were not designed
Th' eclipse and glory of her kind?

43

Sir Henry Wotton.

WINTER

(Love's Labour's Lost.)

WHEN icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipped and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whit, Tu-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marian's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit,

Tu-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

William Shakespeare.

44

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

So now is come our joyfull'st feast,
Let every man be jolly;

Each room with ivy leaves is drest
And every post with holly.
Though some churls at our mirth repine,
Round your foreheads garlands twine,
Drown sorrow in a cup of wine,

And let us all be merry.

Now every lad is wondrous trim,
And no man minds his labour;
Our lasses have provided them
A bag-pipe and a tabor.

Young men and maids and girls and boys
Give life to one another's joys,
And you anon shall by their noise

Perceive that they are merry.

Rank misers now do sparing shun,
Their hall of music soundeth ;

And dogs thence with whole shoulders run,
So all things here aboundeth.

The country folk themselves advance,

For Crowdy-mutton's come out of France,
And Jack shall pipe, and Jill shall dance,
And all the town be merry.

Ned Swash hath fetched his bands from pawn,
And all his best apparel;

Brisk Nell hath bought a ruff of lawn

With droppings of the barrel.

And those that hardly all the year

Had bread to eat or rags to wear,

Will have both clothes and dainty fare,

And all the day be merry.

The wenches with their wassail-bowls
About the street are singing,

The boys are come to catch the owls,
The wild-mare in is bringing.

Our kitchen-boy hath broke his box,
And to the dealing of the ox

Our honest neighbours come by flocks,
And here they will be merry.

Then wherefore in these merry days
Should we, I pray, be duller?
No, let us sing our roundelays

To make our mirth the fuller:
And whilest thus inspired we sing
Let all the streets with echoes ring :
Woods, and hills, and everything

Bear witness we are merry.

George Wither.

45

IL PENSEROSO

HENCE, vain deluding joys,

The brood of Folly without father bred! How little you bested,

Or fill the fixèd mind with all your toys! Dwell in some idle brain,

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless

As the gay motes that people the sun-beams; Or likest hovering dreams,

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.
But hail, thou goddess sage and holy,
Hail, divinest Melancholy !
Whose saintly visage is too bright

To hit the sense of human sight,
And therefore to our weaker view

O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue;

Black, but such as in esteem

Prince Memnon's sister might beseem,
Or that starred Ethiop queen that strove
To set her beauty's praise above

The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended.
Yet thou art higher far descended ;
Thee bright-haired Vesta, long of yore,

To solitary Saturn bore;

His daughter she; in Saturn's reign
Such mixture was not held a stain.
Oft in glimmering bowers and glades
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove.
Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestic train,
And sable stole of cypress lawn,
Over thy decent shoulders drawn.
Come, but keep thy wonted state,
With even step, and musing gait,
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes :
There, held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble, till

With a sad leaden downward cast

Thou fix them on the earth as fast.

And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet,
Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet,
And hears the Muses in a ring

Aye round about Jove's altar sing:
And add to these retired Leisure,

That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.
But first, and chiefest, with thee bring,
Him that yon soars on golden wing,
Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne,
The cherub Contemplation;
And the mute Silence hist along,