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

The end of the books of the " Ocean's Love to Cynthia," and the beginning of the 22nd book, entreating of Sorrow.

My days' delights, my spring-time joys fordone, 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.

My times that then ran o'er themselves in these, And now run out in other's happiness,

Bring unto those new joys and new-born days. So could she not if she were not the sun,

Which sees the birth and burial of all else, And holds that power with which she first begun, Leaving each withered body to be torn

By fortune, and by times tempestuous,

Which, by her virtue, once fair fruit have born; Knowing she can renew, and can create

Green from the ground, and flowers even out of stone, By virtue lasting over time and date,

Leaving us only woe, which, like the moss,

Having compassion of unburied bones,

Cleaves to mischance, and unrepaired loss.

For tender stalks

(MS. abruptly ends here.)

XXI.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH'S PETITION TO THE QUEEN

(ANNE OF DENMARK).1

(1618.)

HAD truth power, the guiltless could
not fall,

Malice win glory, or revenge triumph;
But truth alone cannot encounter all.

Mercy is fled to God, which mercy made;
Compassion dead; faith turned to policy;

Friends know not those who sit in sorrow's shade.

For what we sometime were, we are no more : Fortune hath changed our shape, and destiny Defaced the very form we had before.

All love, and all desert of former times, Malice hath covered from my sovereign's eyes, And largely laid abroad supposed crimes.

But kings call not to mind what vassals were, But know them now, as envy hath described them: So can I look on no side from despair.

1 Hawthornden MSS. in the Library of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland; vol. viii. "Drummond Miscellanies," II. First printed by Mr. D. Laing in "Archæol. Scot.," vol. iv. pp. 236-8. The original title runs: “S. W. Raghlies Petition to the Queene. 1618."

Cold walls! to you I speak; but you are senseless: Celestial Powers! you hear, but have determined, And shall determine, to my greatest happiness.

Then unto whom shall I unfold my wrong, Cast down my tears, or hold up folded hands? To Her, to whom remorse doth most belong;

To Her who is the first, and may alone Be justly called the Empress of the Bretanes. Who should have mercy if a Queen have none?

Save those that would have died for your defence! Save him whose thoughts no treason ever tainted! For lo destruction is no recompense.

If I have sold my duty, sold my faith
To strangers, which was only due to One;
Nothing I should esteem so dear as death.

But if both God and Time shall make you know
That I, your humblest vassal, am oppressed,
Then cast your eyes on undeserved woe;

That I and mine may never mourn the miss Of Her we had, but praise our living Queen, Who brings us equal, if not greater, bliss.

XXII.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH'S VERSES,

FOUND IN HIS BIBLE IN THE GATE-HOUSE AT WESTMINSTER.1

. (1618.)

VEN such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;

But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust!

W. R.

'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.

XXIII.

FRAGMENTS AND EPIGRAMS.

I.

HIS made him write in a glass window, obvious to the Queen's eye

"Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.' Her Majesty, either espying or being shown it, did under-write

666

'If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all.'" 1

II.

"SIR WA. RAWLEY made this rhyme upon the name of a gallant, one Mr. Noel:

"Noe. L.

"The word of denial and the letter of fifty Makes the gentleman's name that will never be thrifty.'

"And Noel's answer :-
“Raw. Ly.

"The foe to the stomach and the word of disgrace Shews the gentleman's name with the bold face.""?

Fuller, "Worthies of England," Devonshire, p. 261. 2 Manningham's "Diary," under date Dec. 30, 1602; Camden Society edition, p. 109; and Collier's "Hist. Dram. Poetry," i. 336, note. Somewhat different in MS. Malone 19, p. 42.