The which he will not every hour survey,
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
Since, seldom coming, in the long year set,
Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,
Or captain jewels in the carcanet.

So is the time that keeps you as my chest,
Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,
To make some special instant special-bless'd,
By new unfolding his imprison'd pride.

Blessed are you, whose worthiness gives scope,
Being had, to triumph, being lack'd, to hope.

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tir'd;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body's work 's expir'd:
For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,

And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see.
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,

Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
Lo, thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

How can I then return in happy plight,
That am debarr'd the benefit of rest?
When day's oppression is not eas'd by night,
But day by night and night by day oppress'd?
And cach, though enemics to either's reign,
Do in consent shake hands to torture me,
The one by toil, the other to complain
How far I toil, still farther off from thee.

I tell the day, to please him, thou art bright,

And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven,

So flatter I the swart-complexion'd night;

When sparkling stars twire not, thou gild'st the even.
But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,

And night doth nightly make grief's length seem stronger.

Is it thy will thy image should keep open

My heavy eyelids to the weary night!

Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,

While shadows, like to thee, do mock my sight?

Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
So far from home, into my deeds to pry;
To find out shames and idle hours in me,

The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?

O no! thy love, though much, is not so great;
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake

Mine own true love that aoth my rest defeat,
To play the watchman ever for thy sake:

For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere
From me far off, with others all-too-near.

When most I wink, then do mine eyes best sce,
For all the day they view things unrespected:
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And, darkly bright, are bright in dark directed;
Then thou whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow's form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so?
How would (I say) mine eyes be blessed made
By looking on thee in the living day,
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay?
All days are nights to see, till I see thee,

And nights, bright days, when dreams do show thee me.
If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
Injurious distance should not stop my way;
For then despite of space, I would be brought
From limits far remote, where thou dost stay.
No matter then, although my foot did stand
Upon the farthest earth remov'd from thee,
For nimble thought can jump both sca and land,
As soon as think the place where he would be.
But ah! thought kills me, that I am not thought,
To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,
But that, so much of earth and water wrought,
I must attend time's leisure with my moan;
Receiving nought by elements so slow
But heavy tears, badges of either's woe:
The other two, slight air and purging fire,
Are both with thee, wherever I abide ;
The first my thought, the other my desire,
These present-absent with swift motion slide.
For when these quicker elements are gone
In tender embassy of love to thee,

My life, being made of four, with two alone,
Sinks down to death, oppress'd with melancholy;
Until life's composition be recur'd

By those swift messengers return'd from thee,
Who even but now come back again, assur'd

Of thy fair health, recounting it to me:

This told, I joy; but then no longer glad,

I send them back again, and straight grow sad.

813.-THE DEFENCE OF POESY.

SIR P. SIDNEY.

[A clever critic says, "One would think that to write a Defence of Poesy' were something like writing an Apology for the Bible.'" The Editor of Half-Hours' has called at

tention to the circumstances that demanded this Defence. (Williain Shakspere, a Brography.') A little previous to 1580, two or three fanatical writers put forth a succession of the most violent attacks, not only upon the Stage, but against Music and Poetry in all its forms. When Sidney says, "I think truly that, of all writers under the sun, the poet is the least liar," he was answering one Stephen Gosson, and other pamphleteers, who held that a fiction and a lic were the same. But Sidney's Defence' is a logical and eloquent production that may be read with advantage at all times. The high minded writer came, with his chivalrous spirit, to the rescue of divine' Poesy, who was trembling before the great dragon of fanaticism; and manfully did he chase the beast to its hiding place. Sidney was a poet himself: his 'Arcadia,' fantastical as it is, is full of beautiful pictures, such as that wellknown one of "a shepherd's boy piping, as though he should never be old." In the short life of this noble Englishman was crowded as much excellence and glory as might be distri buted amongst a legion of ordinary men, and leave each something worth possessing. “He trod," says one of his biographers, "from his cradle to his grave amid incense and flowers, and died in a dream of glory." He died in no dream-he died in the beauty and holiness of charity. Lord Brooke thus relates what occurred when Sidney fell at the battle of Zutphen, and was carried out of the field: "Being thirsty with excess of bleeding, he called for some drink, which was presently brought him; but, as he was putting the bottle to his mouth, he saw a poor soldier carried along, who had eaten his last at the same feast, ghastly casting up his eyes at the bottle, which Sir Philip perceiving, took it from his head before he drank, and delivered it to the poor man, with these words, Thy necessity is yet greater than mine.'” Sidney died in 1586; he was born in 1551.]

Is it, then, the Pastoral poem which is misliked? (for, perchance, where the hedge is lowest, they will soonest leap over) is the poor pipe disdained, which sometimes, out of Melibus's mouth, can show the misery of people under hard lords and ravening soldiers? And again, by Tityrus, what blessedness is derived to them that lie lowest, from the goodness of them that sit highest? Sometimes, under the pretty tales of wolves and sheep, can include the whole considerations of wrong doing and patience; sometimes show that contentions for trifles can get but a trifling victory; where, perchance, a man may see, that even Alexander and Darius, when they strove who should be cock of this world's dunghill, the benefit they got was, that the after livers may say,

"Hæc memini et victum frustra contendere Thyrsim;

Ex illo Corydon, Corydon est tempore nobis." *

Or is it the lamenting Elegiac, which in a kind heart, would move rather pity than blame, who bewaileth, with the great philosopher Heraclitus, the weakness of mankind, and the wretchedness of the world; who, surely is to be praised, either for compassionately accompanying just cause of lamentations, or for rightly painting out how weak be the passions of wofulness?

Is it the bitter, but wholesome Iambic, who rubs the galled mind, in making shame the trumpet of villany, with bold and open crying out against naughtiness? Or the Satiric, who,

"Omne vafer vitium ridenti tangit amico," +

Who sportingly never leaveth, until he make a man laugh at folly, and at length, ashamed to laugh at himself; which he cannot avoid, without avoiding the folly! who, while circum præcordia ludit (plays about the heart), giveth us to feel how many head-aches a passionate life bringeth to? How, when all is done,

"Est Ulubris, animus si nos non deficit æquus?"

* Virgilius.-These things I remember, and that Thyrsis vainly contended, and was conquered, and, after him, Corydon, Corydon, who belongs to our times.

+ Who slily touches the faults of his friend, who laughs the while. ↑ It is at Ulubræ, if we lack not equanimity.

No, perchance it is the Comic, whom naughty play-makers and stage-keepers have justly made odious. To the arguments of abuse, I will after answer; only this much now is to be said, that the comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life, which he representeth in the most ridiculous and scornful sort that may be; so as it is impossible that any beholder can be content to be such a one. Now, as in geometry the oblique must be known as well as the right, and in arithmetic the odd as well as the even; so, in the actions of our life, who seeth not the filthiness of evil, wanteth a great foil to perceive the beauty of virtue. This doth the comedy handle so in our private and domestical matters, as, with hearing it, we get, as it were, an experience of what is to be looked for of a niggardly Demea, of a crafty Davus, of a flattering Gnatho, of a vain-glorious Thraso: and not only to know what effects are to be expected, but to know who be such, by the signifying badge given them by the comedian. And little reason hath any man to say that men learn the evil by seeing it so set out, since, as I said before, there is no man living, but, by the force truth hath in nature, no sooner secth these men play their parts, but wisheth them in Pistrinum, although, perchance, the sack of his own faults lie so behind his back, that he seeth not himself to dance to the same measure whereto, yet, nothing can more open his eyes, than to see his own actions contemptibly set forth. So that the right use of comedy will, I think, by nobody be blamed.

And much less of the high and excellent Tragedy, that openeth the greatest wounds, and showeth forth the ulcers that are covered with tissue; that maketh kings fear to be tyrants, and tyrants to manifest their tyrannical humours; that, with stirring the affections of admiration and commiseration, teacheth the uncertainty of this world, and upon how weak foundations gilded roofs are builded: that maketh us know, Qui sceptra savus duro imperio regit, Timet timentes; metus in authorem redit. But how much it can move, Plutarch yieldeth a notable testimony of the abominable tyrant Alexander Pheræus, from whose eyes a tragedy, well made and represented, drew abundance of tears, who, without all pity, had murthered infinite numbers, and some of his own blood; so as he that was not ashamed to make matters for tragedies, yet would not resist the sweet violence of a tragedy. And if it wrought no farther good in him, it was that he, in despite of himself, withdrew himself from hearkening to that which might mollify his hardened heart. But it is not the tragedy which they do mislike, for it were too absurd to cast out so excellent a representation of whatsoever is most worthy to be learned.

Is it the Lyric that most displeaseth, who, with his tuned lyre and well-accorded voice, giveth praise, the reward of virtue, to virtuous acts? who giveth moral precepts and natural problems? who sometimes raiseth up his voice to the height of the heavens, in singing the lauds of the immortal God? Certainly, I must confess mine own barbarousness, I never heard the old song+ of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet; and yet is it sung but by some blind crowder, with no rougher voice than rude stile: which being so evil apparelled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivil age, what would it work trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar ? In Hungary, I have seen it the manner at all feasts, and other such-like meetings, to have songs of their ancestors' valour, which that right soldier-like nation think one of the chiefest kindlers of brave courage. The incomparable Lacedæmonians did not only carry that kind of music ever with them to the field, but even at home, as such songs were made, so were they all content to be singers of them: when the lusty men were to tell what they The cruel prince who sways the sceptre of a severe government, fears those who fear him, and terror returns upon its author.

The Ballad of Chevy Chase.

did, the old men what they had done, and the young, what they would do. And where a man may say, that Pindar, many times, praiseth highly victories of small moment, rather matters of sport than virtue; as may it be answered, It was the fault of the poet, and not of the poetry; so, indeed, the chief fault was in the time and custom of the Greeks, who set those toys at so high a price, that Philip of Macedon reckoned a horse-race, won at Olympus, among his three fearful felicities. But as the inimitable Pindar often did, so is that kind most capable and most fit to awake the thoughts from the sleep of idleness, to embrace honourable enterprises. There rests the Heroical, whose very name, I think, should daunt all backbiters. For by what conceit can a tongue be directed to speak evil of that which draweth with him no less champions than Achilles, Cyrus, Æneas, Turnus, Tydeus, Rinaldo? Who doth not only teach and move to truth, but teacheth and moveth to the most high and excellent truth? Who maketh magnanimity and justice shine through all misty fearfulness and foggy desires? Who, if the saying of Plato and Tully be true, that who could see virtue would be wonderfully ravished with the love of her beauty. This man setteth her out, to make her more lovely, in her holiday apparel, to the eye of any that will deign not to disdain until they understand. But, if anything be already said in the defence of sweet poetry, all concurreth to the maintaining the Heroical, which is not only a kind, but the best and most accomplished kind of poetry. For, as the image of each action stirreth and instructeth the mind, so the lofty image of such worthies most inflameth the mind with desire to be worthy, and informs with counsel how to be worthy. Only let Eneas be worn in the tablet of your memory, how he governeth himself in the ruin of his country, in the preserving his old father, and carrying away his religious ceremonies; in obeying God's commandments, to leave Dido, though not only all passionate kindness, but even the human consideration of virtuous gratefulness, would have craved other of him: how in storms, how in sports, how in war, how in peace, how a fugitive, how victorious, how besieged, how besieging, how to strangers, how to allies, how to enemies, how to his own; lastly, how in his inward self, and how in his outward government; and I think, in a mind most prejudiced with a prejudicating humour, he will be found in excellency fruitful. Yea, as Horace saith, melius Chrysippo et Crantore: but truly, I imagine it falleth out with these poet-whippers as with some good women, who often are sick, but, in faith, they cannot tell where. So the name of Poetry is odious to them, but neither his cause nor effects, neither the sum that contains him, nor the particularities descending from him, give any fast handle to their carping dispraise.

Since, then, poetry is of all human learning the most ancient, and of most fatherly antiquity, as from whence other learnings have taken their beginnings; since it is so universal, that no learned nation doth despise it, nor barbarous nation is without it since both Roman and Greek gave such divine names unto it, the one of prophesying, the other of making, and that, indeed, that name of making is fit for him, considering that where all other arts retain themselves within their subjects, and receive, as it were, their being from it, the poet only bringeth his own staff, and doth not learn a conceit out of the matter, but maketh matter for a conceit. Since, neither his description nor end containing any evil, the thing des scribed cannot be evil; since his effects be so good as to teach goodness, and delight the learners of it; since therein (namely, in moral doctrine, the chief of all knowledge) he doth not only far pass the historian, but, for instructing, is well-nigh conparable to the philosopher; for moving, leaveth him behind him. Since the holy Scripture (wherein there is no uncleanness) hath whole parts in it poetical, and that even our Saviour Christ vouchsafed to use the flowers of it: since all his kinds