The Golden Treasury - Unknown

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substance of this Book, which contains pieces from Wyat under Henry VIII. to Shakespeare midway through the reign of James I., and Drummond who carried on the early manner to a still later period. There is here a wide range of style;—from simplicity expressed in a language hardly yet broken in to verse,—through the pastoral fancies and Italian conceits of the strictly Elizabethan time,—to the passionate reality of Shakespeare: yet a general uniformity of tone prevails. Few readers can fail to observe the natural sweetness of the verse, the single-hearted straightforwardness of the thoughts:—nor less, the limitation of subject to the many phases of one passion, which then characterised our lyrical poetry,—unless when, as with Drummond and Shakespeare, the "purple light of Love" is tempered by a spirit of sterner reflection.

      It should be observed that this and the following Summaries apply in the main to the Collection here presented, in which (besides its restriction to Lyrical Poetry) a strictly representative or historical Anthology has not been aimed at. Great Excellence, in human art as in human character, has from the beginning of things been even more uniform than Mediocrity, by virtue of the closeness of its approach to Nature:—and so far as the standard of Excellence kept in view has been attained in this volume, a comparative absence of extreme or temporary phases in style, a similarity of tone and manner, will be found throughout:—something neither modern nor ancient but true in all ages, and like the works of Creation perfect as on the first day.

      1. SPRING

           Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year's pleasant king;

           Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,

           Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing,

           Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

           The palm and may make country houses gay,

           Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,

           And we hear aye birds tune their merry lay,

             Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

           The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,

           Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,

           In every street these tunes our ears do greet,

             Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

                Spring, the sweet Spring!

T. NASH.

      2. SUMMONS TO LOVE

           Phoebus, arise!

           And paint the sable skies

           With azure, white, and red:

           Rouse Memnon's mother from her Tithon's bed

           That she may thy career with roses spread:

           The nightingales thy coming eachwhere sing:

           Make an eternal spring!

           Give life to this dark world which lieth dead;

           Spread forth thy golden hair

           In larger locks than thou wast wont before,

           And emperor-like decore

           With diadem of pearl thy temples fair:

           Chase hence the ugly night

           Which serves but to make dear thy glorious light.

           —This is that happy morn,

           That day, long wishéd day

           Of all my life so dark,

           (If cruel stars have not my ruin sworn

           And fates not hope betray),

           Which, purely white, deserves

           An everlasting diamond should it mark.

           This is the morn should bring unto this grove

           My Love, to hear and recompense my love.

           Fair King, who all preserves,

           But show thy blushing beams,

           And thou two sweeter eyes

           Shalt see than those which by Penéus' streams

           Did once thy heart surprize.

           Now, Flora, deck thyself in fairest guise:

           If that ye winds would hear

           A voice surpassing far Amphion's lyre,

           Your furious chiding stay;

           Let Zephyr only breathe

           And with her tresses play.

           —The winds all silent are,

           And Phoebus in his chair

           Ensaffroning sea and air

           Makes vanish every star:

           Night like a drunkard reels

           Beyond the hills, to shun his flaming wheels:

           The fields with flowers are deck'd in every hue,

           The clouds with orient gold spangle their blue;

           Here is the pleasant place—

           And nothing wanting is, save She, alas.

WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.

      3. TIME AND LOVE

           When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced

           The rich proud cost of out-worn buried age;

           When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed,

           And brass eternal slave to mortal rage.

           When I have seen the hungry ocean gain

           Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,

           And the firm soil win of the watery main,

           Increasing store with loss, and loss with store.

           When I have seen such interchange of state,

           Or state itself confounded to decay,

           Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate—

           That Time will come and take my Love away.

           —This thought is as a death, which cannot choose

           But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

W. SHAKESPEARE.

      4

           Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,

           But sad mortality o'ersways their power,

           How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,

           Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

           O how shall summer's honey breath hold out,

           Against the wreckful siege of battering days,

           When rocks impregnable are not so stout,

           Nor gates of steel so strong but time decays?

           O fearful meditation, where, alack!

           Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?

          

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