Hoist up sail while gale doth last,

Tide and wind stay no man's pleasure; Seek not time when time is past,

Sober speed is wisdom's leisure.
After-wits are dearly bought,
Let thy forewit guide thy thought.
Time wears all his locks before,

Take thy hold on his forehead;
When he flies he turns no more,
And behind his scalp's naked.
Works adjourn'd have many stays,
Long demurs breed new delays.
Seek thy salve while sore is green,
Fester'd wounds ask deeper lancing;
After-cures are seldom seen,

Often sought, scarce ever chancing.
Time and place give best advice,
Out of season, out of price.

Crush the serpent in the head,

Break ill eggs ere they be hatch'd; Kill bad chickens in the tread,

Fledged, they hardly can be catch'd. In the rising stifle ill,

Lest it grow against thy will.

Drops do pierce the stubborn flint,

Not by force but often falling;

Custom kills with feeble dint,

More by use than strength and vailing.

Single sands have little weight,
Many make a drawing freight.

Tender twigs are bent with ease,

Aged trees do break with bending;

Young desires make little prease 1,

Growth doth make them past amending Happy man, that soon doth knock

Babel's babes against the rock!

THE BURNING BABE,

As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,

A pretty babe all burning bright did in the air appear,
Who scorched with exceeding heat such floods of tears did shed,
As though His floods should quench His flames with what His
tears were fed;

Alas! quoth He, but newly born in fiery heats of fry,

Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns;
Love is the fire and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals;
The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls ;
For which, as now on fire I am, to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath, to wash them in my blood:
With this He vanish'd out of sight, and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas-day.

FROM 'ST. PETER'S COMPLAINT.'

Like solest swan, that swims in silent deep,
And never sings but obsequies of death,
Sigh out thy plaints, and sole in secret weep,
In suing pardon spend thy perjur'd breath;
Attire thy soul in sorrow's mourning weed,
And at thine eyes let guilty conscience bleed.

Still in the 'lembic of thy doleful breast

Those bitter fruits that from thy sins do grow;

For fuel, self-accusing thoughts be best;

Use fear as fire, the coals let penance blow;
And seek none other quintessence but tears,
That eyes may shed what enter'd at thine ears.

Come sorrowing tears, the offspring of my grief,
Scant not your parent of a needful aid;
In you I rest the hope of wish'd relief,

By you my sinful debts must be defray'd:
Your power prevails, your sacrifice is grateful,
By love obtaining life to men most hateful.

Come good effect of ill-deserving cause,

Ill gotten imps, yet virtuously brought forth; Self-blaming probates of infringed laws,

Yet blamed faults redeeming with your worth; The signs of shame in you each eye may read, Yet, while you guilty prove, you pity plead.

O beams of mercy! beat on sorrow's cloud,

Pour suppling showers upon my parched ground; Bring forth the fruit to your due service vow'd, Let good desires with like deserts be crown'd: Water young blooming virtue's tender flow'r, Sin did all grace of riper growth devour.

Weep balm and myrrh, you sweet Arabian trees, With purest gums perfume and pearl your rine; Shed on your honey-drops, you busy bees,

I, barren plant, must weep unpleasant brine:
Hornets I hive, salt drops their labour plies,
Suck'd out of sin, and shed by showering eyes.

If David, night by night, did bathe his bed,
Esteeming longest days too short to moan;
Tears inconsolable if Anna shed,

Who in her son her solace had foregone;
Then I to days and weeks, to months and years,
Do owe the hourly rent of stintless tears.

If love, if loss, if fault, if spotted fame,

If danger, death, if wrath, or wreck of weal, Entitle eyes true heirs to earned blame,

That due remorse in such events conceal : That want of tears might well enrol my name, As chiefest saint in kalendar of shame.

RALEIGH.

[BORN 1552, executed 1618. No early collected edition of his poems exists; such as were printed at all appeared for the most part in the Miscellanies of the time.]

Amongst all the restless, fervid, adventurous spirits of the Elizabethan age, perhaps there is none so conspicuous for those characteristics as Sir Walter Raleigh. A soldier from his youth; at an early period connected with the great maritime movements of his time; ever the foremost hater and antagonist of Spain and all its works; one of the first, if not the first, to fully conceive the idea of colonisation and to attempt to realise it, and at the same time taking an active-too active-part in the party intrigues and contentions of a court where the struggle for place and favour never ceased raging, yet amidst all his schemes and enterprises, noble and ignoble, finding leisure also for far other interests and pursuits; capable of a keen enjoyment of poetry; himself a poet of a true and genuine quality,—he is in a singular degree the representative of the vigorous versatility of the Elizabethan period.

His high imaginativeness is perceptible in the political conceptions and dreams which abounded in his busy brain. It can scarcely be doubted that, had his energies received a different direction, he would have won a distinguished place amongst the distinguished poets of his day. He whom Spenser styles 'the summer's nightingale' might have poured forth a full volume of song of rare strength and sweetness. But, as it was, he found little time for singing; the wonder is he found any-that one so cumbered about much serving did not become altogether of the world worldly, that so occupied with actualities he still was visited even transiently by visions of divine things.

We are apt to pity his misfortunes; and yet it may be they were the blessings of his chequered life. His disgraces and confinements in the Tower would after all seem to have been the times

when his nobler self was asserted, and he communed with his own heart.

'Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage.'

We have no pleasanter picture of him than that Spenser draws, when 'faultless' debarred from the presence of his 'Cynthia, the Lady of the Sea,' he had withdrawn himself to his Irish estate and thence visited his neighbour the poet.

'He sitting me beside in that same shade,
Provoked me to play some pleasant fit;
And when he heard the music which I made,
He found himself full greatly pleased at it.

Yet æmuling my pipe, he took in hand

My pipe, before that emuled of many,

And played thereon (for well that skill he conn'd),
Himself as skilful in that art as any.

He pip'd, I sang; and when he sang I pip'd;
By change of turns each making other merry;
Neither envying other, nor envied ;

So piped we, until we both were weary.'

It is impossible not to connect two at least of his most famous pieces-The Lie and The Pilgrimage-with similar passages of his life, when, for one reason or another, he was 'under a cloud,' as he thought, but really in a clearer air. His imprisonments were in fact his salvations. Through the Traitor's Gate he passed to a tranquillity and thoughtfulness for which there seemed no opportunity outside. In his cell in the White Tower his soul found and enjoyed a real freedom.

'Then, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then whets and claps its silver wings,
And till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.'

It is a significant tradition attached to several of his verses, that they were written the night before he was beheaded. Of only one poem is it likely to be true; in respect of several it can be certainly disproved; but it illustrates the impression often produced by his poetry. The sweet clear voice comes to us, as it were, through a barred and grated window; and calls up the image of a solitary