Mercy is fled to God, which mercy made; Friends know not those who sit in sorrow's shade. For what we sometime were, we are no more : All love, and all desert of former times, Another instance of the invention of a new metre for a poem attributed to Ralegh is referred to in Chapter XIII. P. 354. The beautiful poem which follows appears to be a reproduction in verse of the train of ideas which are found in Ralegh's fantastic letter about the Queen written during his imprisonment in 1592; as to which see the remarks at pp. 425-427 above. It will be noticed that the image of the "withered tree" recurs, and that the love is described as of "all my youth" (cf. remarks at p. 438 above); also that it contains the "angel" convention (cf. Chapter XIV. and pp. 444, 446, and 449 above). AS YOU CAME FROM THE HOLY LAND 2 As you came from the holy land Of Walsinghame, Met you not with my true love How shall I know your true love, That have met many one, As I went to the holy land, That have come, that have gone? 1 Hannah, Courtly Poets, p. 52. 2 "MS. Rawl. 85, fol. 124; signed as infra, and hence claimed for Raleigh by Dr. Bliss, Wood's 'A. O.' vol. ii. p. 248, and inserted in the Oxford edition of Raleigh's Works,' vol. viii. p. 733, with the title False Love and True Love.' There is an anonymous copy in Percy's MS., vol. iii. p. 465, ed. Furnivall; and it is also in Deloney's Garland of Goodwill,' p. 111, Percy Society reprint." (Note by Hannah.) A perusal of Prebendary Hannah's discriminating volume shows how much mystery attaches to the authorship of these poems. A more recent discovery, however, has greatly added to it. It appears that Ralegh's famous eight-line poem, alleged to have been "found in his Bible in the Gate-house at Westminster after his execution in 1618, is really the last stanza (with two lines added) of an indecent (though at the same time philosophical and well-written) poem in MS. entitled “A Poem of Sir Walter Rawleigh's." The addition of the two last lines transfers the stanza into a different sphere of thought, and adapts it to the origin alleged for the poem. The following are the lines, with some alternative readings: a that. a Even such is Time, which takes in trust Our youth, our joys, our all we have, But from this earth, this grave, this dust, earth (the reading adopted by Hannah). • The Lord. The poem from which it has now been discovered that this was taken has six stanzas of six lines each, and is a lament on the destruction of beauty by time and decay. The above, without the last two lines, and beginning "Oh cruell Time," etc., is the last stanza of the poem. It is in any case incredible that Ralegh could have found time or detachment of mind for verse composition on the night before his execution, as may be seen by reading the account of his trial and last hours in Edwards' Life. Nor is it conceivable that he would have troubled himself, even if he was the author of the original poem, with literary jugglery at such a time. It 1 "Printed with Raleigh's 'Prerogative of Parliaments,' 1628, and probably still earlier; also with 'To-day a Man, To-morrow none,' 1643-4 ; in Raleigh's 'Remains,' 1661, &c., with the title given above; and in 'Rel. Wotton,' 1651, &c., with the title, Sir Walter Raleigh the night before his death.' Also found with several variations in many old MS. copies." (Note by Hannah.) The description of the version at the end of The Prerogative of Parliaments, 1628, is "The Authours Epitaph, made by himselfe." is most improbable, however, that he wrote the original poem, as he appears to have been a man of remarkably clean mind (see Edwards, i. 541; comments on the History of the World). Perhaps the explanation of the transformation of the last stanza of the original poem is to be sought in the impression produced on men's minds by Ralegh's demeanour on the scaffold. Under the influence of this impression the mood of materialism which finds expression in the unpublished poem may have given place in the author's mind to different feelings, and in adding the last two lines to the last stanza he would have been at once expressing the change of mood in himself, and enshrining Ralegh in an epitaph which has become immortal. In so doing he may have regarded it (like the verse petition to the Queen) as a set-off against his official action, in which side of his life he was entirely obsequious to the King. He depended, in fact, for his position on Buckingham, and he had been imprudent enough to acknowledge it, and Buckingham, who was a much stronger character and quite untroubled by scruples, took care by the tone he adopted towards him not to let him forget it. Weakness in the face of power, and a temperament which saw every situation in a sort of vision of its own creation rather than in the sober colours of actual life, accounted for much of Bacon's conduct in this and similar crises of his career. It may be said that if Ralegh had sufficient versatility to write the History of the World during his imprisonment, he could have written the occasional poems which pass under his name. But the metrical translations included in that work and collected in Hannah's volume are not of a nature or quality to give any indications as to the author's ability to write original poetry. It is not certain, however, that Ralegh wrote these, or to what extent he was the author of the History. Ralegh had a commanding personality, and had for years held a great position. Such a man would find little difficulty in getting other men to help him in any work which he undertook. There is a memorandum in Bacon's Comentarius Solutus (1608) as follows: The setting on wo. [work] my L of North. and Ralegh, and therefore Haryott, themselves being already inclined to experimts.1 From this two things may be inferred, that Bacon was in touch with Ralegh in the Tower, and that Harriot assisted Ralegh. The evidence bearing on this subject interspersed among Aubrey's notes is important, and is as follows: "Verses W. R. before Spencer's F. Queen." "He was sometimes a poet, not often. Before Spencer's Faery Q. is a good copie of verses, which begins thus: Methinkes I see the grave wher Laura lay; at the bottome W. R.: which, 36 yeares since, I was told were his." "He there (besides compiling his History of the World) studyed chymistry. The Earle of Northumberland was prisoner at the same time, who was the patrone to Mr. . . . Harriot and Mr. Warner, two of the best mathematicians in the world, as also Mr. Hues (who wrote de Globis)." "Serjeant Hoskins (the poet) was a prisoner there too." "When Serjeant Hoskyns was a prisoner in the Tower, he was Sir Walter's Aristarchus.” "An attorney's father (that did my businesse in Herefordshire, before I sold it) maryed Dr. Robert Burhill's widdowe. She sayd that he (Burhill) was a great favourite of Sir Walter Ralegh's (and, I thinke, had been his chaplayne): but all or the greatest part of the drudgery of his booke, for critcismes, chronology, and reading of Greeke and Hebrew authors, was performed by him for Sir Walter Ralegh, whose picture my friend haz as part of the Doctor's goods." "A person so much immerst in action all along and in fabrication of his own fortunes, (till his confinement in the Tower) could have but little time to study, but what he could spare in 1 Spedding, Life, iv. 63. |