SONG FROM "VALENTINIAN." Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes, ON THE TOMBS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. FRANCIS BEAUMONT, Mortality, behold and fear! What a change of flesh is here! Think how many royal bones Sleep within these heaps of stones! Who now want strength to stir their hands, That the earth did e'er suck in, Since the first man died for sin: Buried in dust, once dead by fate. SONG FROM "ROLLO, DUKE OF NORMANDY." That so sweetly were forsworn, Lights that do mislead the morn! Hide, oh hide those hills of snow, Which thy frozen bosom bears, On whose tops the pinks that grow Are of those that April wears: But first set my poor heart free, Bound in those icy chains by thee. FROM "THE HUMOROUS LIEUTENANT." Seleucus. Let no man fear to die: we love to sleep all, And death is but the sounder sleep: all ages, Nor keeps the brow of Fortune one smile for us. FROM "THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY." This pure unspotted love, the Child of Heaven, Philip Massinger. Massinger (circa 1584-1640) began to write plays in the reign of James I. Like many of his literary brethren, he was poor, and one morning was found dead in his bed at Southwark. No stone marks his neglected restingplace, but in the parish register appears this brief memorial: "March 20, 1639-1640.-Buried Philip Massinger, a STRANGER." His sepulchre was like his life-obscure. Like the nightingale, he sang darkling-it is to be feared, like the nightingale of the fable, with his breast against a thorn. Eighteen of his plays are in print; and one of these, "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," is still often played at our theatres. Sir Giles Overreach, a greedy, crafty money-getter, is the great character of this powerful drama. This part was among the best personations of Kean and Booth. FROM "A NEW WAY TO PAY OLD DEBTS." Mary. Your pleasure, sir? Overreach. Ha! this is a neat dressing! How like you your new woman, Mary. Well for a companion, Not for a servant. * ** I pity her fortune. Mary. You know your own ways; but for me, When I command her, that was once attended Over. In birth? Why, art thou not my daugh ter, The blest child of my industry and wealth? I will adopt a stranger to my heir, And throw thee from my care! do not provoke me! WAITING FOR DEATH. FROM "THE EMPEROR OF THE EAST." Why art thou slow, thou rest of trouble, Death, That calls on thee, and offers her sad heart I am nor young nor fair; be, therefore, bold. John Ford. Ford (1586-1639), a Devonshire man, belonged to the brilliant dramatic brotherhood of his period. He united authorship with practice as a lawyer. Hallam says that Ford has "the power over tears;" but his themes are often painful and even revolting. MUSICAL CONTEST WITH A NIGHTINGALE. FROM "THE LOVER'S MELANCHOLY." Menaphon. Passing from Italy to Greece, the tales To Thessaly I came; and living private, Men. I shall soon resolve you. A sound of music touched mine ears, or, rather, This youth, this fair-faced youth, upon his lute, Men. A nightingale, Nature's best-skilled musician, undertakes own. He could not run divisions with more art That such they were than hope to hear again. For they were rivals, and their mistress, harmony. Whom art had never taught cliffs, moods, or notes, Concord in discord, lines of differing method Amet. Now for the bird. Men. The bird, ordained to be Music's first martyr, strove to imitate These several sounds; which when her warbling throat Failed in, for grief down dropt she on his lute, And brake her heart. It was the quaintest sadness To see the conqueror upon her hearse To weep a funeral elegy of tears: That, trust me, my Amethus-I could chide Amet. I believe thee. Men. He looked upon the trophies of his art, Then sighed, then wiped his eyes; then sighed and cried, "Alas! poor creature, I will soon revenge William Drummond. Drummond (1585-1649), "the first Scotch poet who wrote well in English" (according to Southey), was born at Hawthornden, near Edinburgh. His father, Sir John Drummond, held a situation about the person of James VI. (afterward James I. of England). The poet studied law, but relinquished it, as his delight was in literature. Drayton and Ben Jonson were among his friends; and he says of the latter, "He dissuaded me from poetry for that she had beggared him when he might have been a rich lawyer, physician, or merchant." Drummond reproduced the conventional Italian sonnet with success. He died, it is said, of grief at the execution of Charles I. THE UNIVERSE. Of this fair volume which we World do name, tame, His providence extending everywhere, His justice which proud rebels doth not spare, In every page and period of the same. 1 Crashaw has versified this incident in his "Music's Duel," which, like most imitations, is far inferior, in simplicity and point, to the original. But silly we, like foolish children, rest Well pleased with colored vellum, leaves of gold, Leigh Hunt, and Charles Lamb. He was styled by Philips (1675) "a most profuse pourer forth of English rhyme." A vein of honesty, or at least earnestness in present conviction, seems to run through his inconsistencies. He died in misery and obscurity, at the age of seventy-nine. MAN'S STRANGE ENDS. A good that never satisfies the mind, A beauty fading like the April flowers, A sweet with floods of gall that runs combined, A pleasure passing ere in thought made ours, An honor that more fickle is than wind, A glory at opinion's frown that lowers, A treasury which bankrupt time devours, A knowledge than grave ignorance more blind, THE HUNT. This world a hunting is; The prey, poor man; the Nimrod fierce is Death; His speedy greyhounds are, Lust, Sickness, Envy, Care, Strife that ne'er falls amiss, With all those ills which haunt us while we breathe. Now, if by chance we fly Of these the eager chase, Old Age with stealing pace Casts on his nets, and there we, panting, die. George Wither. Wither (1588-1667) was a native of Hampshire, and a prolific writer in James's reign. In 1613 he was impris oned in the Marshalsea for having written a satire called "Abuses Stript and Whipt." He was a Royalist under Charles I., but changed his politics, and, having sold his estate, raised a troop of horse for the Parliament. Taken prisoner by the Royalists in 1642, he is said to have owed his life to Sir John Denham, who requested the king not to hang Wither, because, while he lived, Denham would not be thought the worst poet in England. Wither has been highly praised by Campbell, Sir Egerton Brydges, She doth tell me where to borrow To her presence be a grace; By her help, I also now, The strange music of the waves, She hath taught me by her might Therefore, thou best earthly bliss, I will cherish thee for this: Poesie, thou sweet'st content That e'er Heaven to mortals lent, Though they as a trifle leave thee, Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee; Though thou be to them a scorn, That to naught but earth are boru,— Let my life no longer be Than I am in love with thee! Though our wise ones call it madness, What makes kuaves and fools of them. THE HEAVENLY FATHER AND HIS ERRING CHILD. Yet I confess in this my pilgrimage, I like some infant am, of tender age. For as the child who from his father hath So in this life, this grove of ignorance, As to my homeward, I myself advance, Sometimes aright, and sometimes wrong I go, I doubt and hope, and doubt and hope again, VANISHED BLESSINGS. The voice which I did more esteem Than music in her sweetest key, Those eyes which unto me did seem More comfortable than the dayThose now by me, as they have been, Shall never more be heard or seen; But what I once enjoyed in them Shall seem hereafter as a dream. All earthly comforts vanish thus; If present mercies we despise ; I WILL SING AS I SHALL PLEASE. Pedants shall not tie my strains Know to love, but not to praise; I will sing as I shall please, As the best before have done. I disdain to make my song For their pleasure short or long: If I please I'll end it here, If I list I'll sing this year, |