Down fell I then upon my knee, And though this Judge do make such haste, To save the man that meant you good, (Quoth Beauty) well: because I guess, Thus am I Beauty's bounden thrall, A STRANGE PASSION OF A LOVER. Amid my bale I bathe in bliss, I find amends for every miss, And yet my moan no tongue can tell. I laugh sometimes with little lust, I live and lack, I lack and have ; These things seem strange, yet are they true. One pleasure which I would eschew, Both slakes my grief and breeds my grutch. Then like the lark that passed the night, How joys approach, when sorrows shrink. And as fair Philomene again Can watch and sing when other sleep; To wray the woe that makes her weep. The loathsome life I lead alway. The which to thee dear wench I write, I pray God grant thee deep delight, I die to think to part from thee. PIERS PLOUGHMAN. [From The Steel Glass.] Behold him, priests, and though he stink of sweat, Not that they hoard their grain when it is cheap, Nor that they set debate between their lords, EPILOGUS. Alas, (my lord), my haste was all too hot, But curl their locks with bodkins and with braids, But paint and slick till fairest face be foul, But bumbast, bolster, frizzle and perfume: They marr with musk the balm which nature made, And dig for death in delicatest dishes. The younger sort come piping on apace, In whistles made of fine enticing wood, Till they have caught the birds for whom they brided, And on their backs they bear both land and fee, Castles and towers, revenues and receipts, Lordships and manors, fines, yea farms and all. What should these be? (speak you my lovely lord) They be not men: for why they have no beards. They be no boys which wear such sidelong gowns. They be no Gods, for all their gallant gloss. They be no devils (I trow) which seem so saintish. Nay then, my lord, let shut the glass apace, THOMAS SACKVILLE. [THOMAS SACKVILLE was born in 1536 at Buckhurst in Sussex, where his family had been settled since the Conquest. After some time spent at Oxford and Cambridge, he entered parliament (1557-58), and in the beginning of Elizabeth's reign he became known as a poetical writer. Between 1557 and 1563 he took part in The Tragedy of Gorboduc, and also planned a work called The Mirror of Magistrates, a series of poetical examples, showing‘with how grievous plagues vices are punished in Great Princes and Magistrates, and how frail and unstable worldly prosperity is found, where fortune seemeth most highly to favour.' He wrote the Induction, a preface, and the Story of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. But he soon threw himself into the risks of public life. On the whole he was successful. In 1567 he was created Lord Buckhurst. He experienced the fitful temper of the Queen in various public employments. He sat on several of the great state trials of the time-those of the Duke of Norfolk, Mary Queen of Scots, the Earl of Essex. In 1599 he was made Lord High Treasurer. James I created him Earl of Dorset in 1604. In 1608 he died, while sitting at the council table at Whitehall.'] The scanty remains of Sackville's poetry are chiefly interesting because they show a strong sense of the defects of the existing poetical standard, and a craving after something better. They show an effort after a larger and bolder creation of imagery; as where the poet, copying Dante, imagines himself guided by the Genius of Sorrow through the regions of the great Dead, there to hear from their own mouths the sad vicissitudes of their various stories. There is a greater restraint and severity than had yet been seen in the choice of language and ornament, though stiffness and awkwardness of phrase, and the still imperfect sense of poetical fitness and grace, show that the writer could not yet reach in execution what he aimed at in idea. And there is visible both in the structure of the seven-line stanzas, and in the flow of the verses themselves, a feeling for rhythmic stateliness and majesty corresponding to his solemn theme. In their cadences, as well as in the allegorical figures and pathetic moralising of Sackville's verses, we see a faint anticipation of Spenser, who inscribed one of the prefatory Sonnets of the Faery Queene to one who may have been one of his masters in his art. R. W. CHURCH. |