Leave them, or lay them up with thy despairs!

She hath resolved, and judged thee long ago. Thy lines are now a murmuring to her ears, Like to a falling stream, which, passing slow,

Is wont to nourish sleep and quietness ;

So shall thy painful labours be perused,
And draw on rest, which sometime had regard;
But those her cares thy errors have excused.

Thy days fordone have had their day's reward;
So her hard heart, so her estranged mind,
In which above the heavens I once reposed;
So to thy error have her ears inclined,

And have forgotten all thy past deserving,
Holding in mind but only thine offence;
And only now affecteth thy depraving,

And thinks all vain that pleadeth thy defence.

Yet greater fancy beauty never bred ;

A more desire the heart-blood never nourished ; Her sweetness an affection never fed,

Which more in any age hath ever flourished.

The mind and virtue never have begotten

A firmer love, since love on earth had power ; A love obscured, but cannot be forgotten;

Too great and strong for time's jaws to devour;

Containing such a faith as ages wound not,
Care, wakeful ever of her good estate,
Fear, dreading loss, which sighs and joys not,
A memory of the joys her grace begat;

A lasting gratefulness for those comforts past,
Of which the cordial sweetness cannot die;
These thoughts, knit up by faith, shall ever last;
These time assays, but never can untie,

Whose life once lived in her pearl-like breast,

Whose joys were drawn but from her happiness, Whose heart's high pleasure, and whose mind's true rest, Proceeded from her fortune's blessedness;

Who was intentive, wakeful, and dismayed
In fears, in dreams, in feverous jealousy,
Who long in silence served, and obeyed
With secret heart and hidden loyalty,

Which never change to sad adversity,

Which never age, or nature's overthrow,
Which never sickness or deformity,

Which never wasting care or wearing woe,
If subject unto these she could have been,—

Which never words or wits malicious,

Which never honour's bait, or world's fame,
Achieved by attempts adventurous

Or aught beneath the sun or heaven's frame

Can so dissolve, dissever, or destroy

The essential love of no frail parts compounded,
Though of the same now buried be the joy,

The hope, the comfort, and the sweetness ended,

But that the thoughts and memories of these

Work a relapse of passion, and remain
Of my sad heart the sorrow sucking bees;

The wrongs received, the frowns persuade in vain.

Every line of this passage seems to me to apply to Bacon's case. In spite of all his "painful" efforts Queen Elizabeth had formed the opinion that he was not suitable for high office. It seems probable from the correspondence given in Chapter XV. that she made his speech in Parliament partly the pretext for her attitude towards him, owing to reluctance (for she had a certain sweetness of nature) to appear to reject him on his merits. over, she continued to use him in unofficial ways. The writer describes his service and loyalty as "silent," "secret and "hidden"; mentions his

care wakeful ever of her good estate,

and that he was "intentive, wakeful and dismayed."

More

In a letter to King James, offering his services in regard to the King's business in Parliament on the death of the Lord Treasurer (Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury) in 1612, Bacon writes:

Your Majesty may truly perceive that though I cannot challenge to myself either invention, or judgment, or elocution, or method, or any of those powers, yet my offering is care and observance and as my good old mistress was wont to call me

her watch-candle, because it pleased her to say I did continually burn (and yet she suffered me to waste almost to nothing), so I must much more owe the like duty to your Majesty, by whom my fortunes have been settled and raised.1

Bacon always took credit for "care" and watchfulness in forestalling events in the King's service.

It

It may be said that the reference to "attempts adventurous" in the passage above quoted is inapplicable to Bacon. I do not think so, if my view as to his early writings in advocacy of Western enterprise is correct. is also quite possible, and may account to some extent for his pecuniary embarrassments, that he was an adventurer in the sense in which the word was used of those who put money into expeditions. Ralegh, for instance, did not go to Virginia himself, though, of course, he did much more than merely find money.

2

Lastly, the author of the poem refers to the enduring element in his love, which he describes as "essential love of no frail parts compounded," " and he proceeds to develop this thought in a philosophic passage of great beauty:

But in my mind so is her love inclosed,

And is thereof not only the best part,

But into it the essense is disposed:

Oh love! (the more my woe) to it thou art

Even as the moisture to each plant that grows;
Even as the sun unto the frozen ground;
Even as the sweetness to the incarnate rose ;
Even as the centre in each perfect round;

As water to the fish, to men as air,

As heat to fire, as light unto the sun;
Oh love! it is but vain to say thou were;
Ages and times cannot thy power outrun

1 Spedding, Life, iv. 280. Compare with this the note in the Comentarius Solutus (1608): "Regularly to know the Ks pleasure before every Term and agayn before every Vacation, The one for service to be executed, ye other for service to be p'pared, Tam otii ratio quam negotii .Q. Eliz. watch candell." (Spedding, Life, iv. 93.)

Compare also the opening words of his youthful Letter of Advice to Queen Elizabeth, probably written in 1584: “Care, one of the natural and truebred children of unfeigned affection. (Ibid. i. 47.)

دو

2 Cf. Spenser's Amoretti, Sonnet lxxxiii.

Thou art the soul of that unhappy mind

Which, being by nature made an idle thought,
Began even then to take immortal kind,

When first her virtues in thy spirits wrought.

It seems to me that only a very great poet could have written these lines.

The writer closes the poem with a passage of great interest and poetical power, though (like Spenser's Complaints) hard to understand in relation to the ostensible theme and authorship :

Thou lookest for light in vain, and storms arise;

She sleeps thy death, that erst thy danger sighed ; 1
Strive then no more; bow down thy weary eyes—
Eyes which to all these woes thy heart have guided.
She is gone, she is lost, she is found, she is ever fair :
Sorrow draws weakly, where love draws not too :
Woe's cries sound nothing, but only in love's ear.
Do then by dying what life cannot do.

Unfold thy flocks and leave them to the fields,

To feed on hills, or dales, where likes them best,
Of what the summer or the spring-time yields,

For love and time hath given thee leave to rest.

Thy heart which was their fold, now in decay
By often storms and winter's many blasts,
All torn and rent becomes misfortune's prey;
False hope my shepherd's staff, now age hath brast
My pipe, which love's own hand gave my desire
To sing her praises and my woe upon,—
Despair hath often threatened to the fire,

As vain to keep now all the rest are gone.

Thus home I draw, as death's long night draws on ;
Yet every foot, old thoughts turn back mine eyes:
Constraint me guides, as old age draws a stone
Against the hill, which over-weighty lies.

For feeble arms or wasted strength to move :
My steps are backward, gazing on my loss,
My mind's affection and my soul's sole love,

Not mixed with fancy's chaff or fortune's dross.

1 A condensation of thought only possible to one practised in the use of language. The line evidently means that she is indifferent to his present outcast condition who formerly sighed when he ran risks.

To God I leave it, who first gave it me,

And I her gave, and she returned again,
As it was hers; so let His mercies be
Of my lost comforts the essential mean.

But be it so or not, the effects are past;
Her love hath end; my woe must ever last.

With these lines the poem ends and is followed by an entry, "The end of the books of the 'Ocean's Love to Cynthia,' and the beginning of the 22nd book, entreating of Sorrow." In this the writer uses the broken stanza of three lines to which I have referred above (p. 447), and the MS. abruptly ends in the middle of a phrase after the seventh stanza. The first two only need be noticed :

My days' delights my spring-time joy's foredone,
Which in the dawn and rising sun of youth

Had their creation and were first begun,

Do in the evening and the winter sad

Present my mind, which takes my time's account
The grief remaining of the joy it had.

A similar thought occurs in the former poem:

Witness those withered leaves left on the tree,

The sorrow-worn face, the pensive mind.

Such lines, if written sincerely, are inapplicable to the case of Ralegh in 1592 or 1593, but they do represent the mood in which Francis Bacon thought of himself at that time as "old." Compare Shakespeare, sonnet 73.

The metrical experiment in this poem is an interesting one. The effect might be described as that of a broken speech or sob, and the form is used with great effect in Ralegh's supposed petition to the Queen (Anne of Denmark) in 1618, as to which see further at pp. 441 and 458. It is of twelve stanzas, the first four of which are as follow:

O had truth power, the guiltless could not fall,
Malice win glory, or revenge triumph;

But truth alone cannot encounter all.