Who, at twice ten, have sung more
Than some will do at four score.
Cheer thee, honest Willy! then,
And begin thy song again.
Fain I would, but I do fear,
When again my lines they hear,
If they yield they are my rhymes,
They will feign some other crimes;
And 'tis no safe vent'ring by,
Where we see Detraction lie;
For, do what I can, I doubt
She will pick some quarrel out;
And I oft have heard defended,
Little said is soon amended.
See'st thou not, in clearest days,
Oft thick fogs cloud Heaven's rays?
And that vapours which do breathe
From the Earth's gross womb beneath,
Seem unto us with black steams
To pollute the Sun's bright beams,
And yet vanish into air,
Leaving it, unblemish'd, fair?
So, my Willy! shall it be
With Detraction's breath on thee:
It shall never rise so high,
As to stain thy poesy.
As that sun doth oft exhale.
Vapours from each rotten vale,
Poesy so sometime drains
Gross conceits from muddy brains;
Mists of envy, fogs of spite,
'Twixt men's judgments and her light;
But so much her power may do,
That she can dissolve them too.
*If thy verse do bravely tower,
As she makes wing, she gets power;
Yet the higher she doth soar,
She's affronted still the more,
Till she to the high'st hath past;
Then she rests with Fame at last.
Let nought therefore thee affright;
But make forward in thy flight.
* If thy verse do bravely tower. A long line is a line we are long in repeating. Mark the time which it takes to repeat these lines properly! What slow movements could Alexandrines express more than these? "As she makes wing, she gets power." One makes a foot of every syllable. Wither was certainly a perfect master of this species of verse.
For if I could match thy rhyme,
To the very stars I'd climb;
There begin again, and fly
Till I reach'd eternity.
But, alas! my Muse is slow:
For thy place she flags too low;
Yea, the more's her hapless fate,
Her short wings were clipt of late;
And poor I, her fortune ruing,
Am myself put up a mewing.
But if I my cage can rid,
I'll fly where I never did;
And though for her sake I'm crost,
Though my best hopes I have lost,
And knew she would make
Ten times more than ten times double;
I should love and keep her too,
'Spite of all the world could do.
For though banish'd from my flocks,
And confin'd within these rocks,
Here I waste away the light,
And consume the sullen night:
She doth for my comfort stay,
And keeps many cares away.
Though I miss the flow'ry fields,
With those sweets the spring-tide yields ;
Though I may not see those groves,
Where the shepherds chaunt their loves,
And the lasses more excel
Than the sweet-voic'd Philomel;
Though of all those pleasures past,
Nothing now remains at last,
But Remembrance, poor relief!
That more makes than mends my grief:
*She's my mind's companion still,
Maugre envy's evil will;
Whence she should be driven too,
Were't in mortal's power to do.
She doth tell me where to borrow
Comfort in the midst of sorrow,
Makes the desolatest place
To her presence be a grace,
And the blackest discontents
To be pleasing ornaments.
In my former days of bliss,
Her divine skill taught me this,
+That from every thing I saw,
I could some invention draw;
* She's my mind's companion still. These lines cannot fail to remind the poetical reader of the Ballad in Dr. Percy's Collection, of "My mind to me a Kingdom is," &c. &c.
+ That from every thing I saw,
I could some invention draw. There is the same transmuting power of Fancy in the Duke, in As You Like It:
"Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing."
And raise pleasure to her height
Through the meanest object's sight;
By the murmur of a spring,
Or the least bough's rustling;
By a daisie, whose leaves spread,
Shut when Titan goes to bed;
Or a shady bush or tree;
She could more infuse in me,
Than all Nature's beauties can
In some other wiser man.
By her help I also now
Make this churlish place allow
Some things, that may sweeten gladness.
In the very gall of sadness:
The dull loneness, the black shade
That these hanging-vaults have made;
The strange music of the waves,
Beating on these hollow caves;
This black den, which rocks emboss,
Over-grown with eldest moss ;
The rude portals that give light,
More to terror than delight;
This my chamber of neglect,
Wall'd about with disrespect;
*From all these, and this dull air,
A fit object for despair,
* From all these, and this dull air. Drayton's verses at the
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