It is however in the long poems only that the ' manner better suiting prose,' of which Daniel has been accused, appears. His minor work is in the main admirable, and displays incessantly the purity and felicity of language already noticed. His Sonnet to Sleep became a kind of model to younger writers, and imitations of it are to be found in the sonneteers of the time, sometimes with the opening epithet literally borrowed. The whole indeed of the Sonnets to Delia are excellent, and throughout Daniel's work single expressions and short passages of exquisite grace abound. The opening line, for instance, of the Address to Lady Anne Clifford,
Upon the tender youth of those fair eyes,'
is perfect in its kind. So is the distich which begins one of the Sonnets:
'The star of my mishap imposed this pain,
To spend the April of my years in grief;'
and the invocation of Apollo :—
'O clear-eyed rector of the holy hill.'
It is in such things as these that the greater part of Daniel's charm consists, and they are scattered abundantly about his works. The rest of that charm lies in his combination of moral elevation with a certain picturesque peacefulness of spirit not often to be found in the perturbed race of bards. The Epistle to the Countess of Cumberland is unmatched before Wordsworth in the expres sion of this.
His two tragedies and his Defence of Rhyme, though neither of them falling strictly within our limits, are too important in connection with English poetry to be left unnoticed.. Cleopatra and Philotas are noteworthy among the rare attempts to follow the example of Jodelle and Garnier in English. They contain much harmonious verse, and the choruses are often admirable of their kind. The Defence of Rhyme, directed against the mania which for a time infected Spenser and Sidney, which Webbe endeavoured to render methodic, and of which traces are to be found ir Milton, is thoroughly sound in principle and conclusion, though that conclusion is supported by arguments which are as ofte bad as good.
SONNET LI. TO DELIA.
Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born:
Relieve my languish and restore the light;
With dark forgetting of my care, return,
And let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth:
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn
Without the torment of the night's untruth.
Cease dreams, the images of day desires,
To model forth the passions of the morrow;
Never let rising sun approve you liars,
To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow.
Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain,
And never wake to feel the day's disdain.
[From History of the Civil War, Bk. vi.]
So much true resolution wrought in those
Who had made covenant with death before,
That their small number (scorning so great foes)
Made France most happy, that there were no more,
And Fortune doubt to whom she might dispose
That weary day; or unto whom restore
The glory of a conquest dearly bought,
Which scarce the conqueror could think well got.
For as with equal rage, and equal might,
Two adverse winds combat, with billows proud,
And neither yield (seas, skies maintain like fight,
Wave against wave oppos'd, and cloud to cloud);
So war both sides with obstinate despite,
With like revenge; and neither party bow'd:
Fronting each other with confounding blows,
No wound one sword unto the other owes.
Whilst Talbot (whose fresli ardour having got
A marvellous advantage of his years)
Carries his unfelt age as if forgot,
Whirling about where any need appears.
His hand, his eye, his wits all present wrought
The function of the glorious part he bears:
Now urging here, now cheering there, he flies;
Unlocks the thickest troops where most force lies.
In midst of wrath, of wounds, of blood, and death
There is he most, where as he may do best;
And there the closest ranks he severeth,
Drives back the stoutest powers that forward press'd,
There makes his sword his way. There laboureth
The infatigable hand that never ceas'd;
Scorning unto his mortal wounds to yield,
Till Death became best master of the field.
Then like a sturdy oak, that having long
Against the wars of fiercest winds made head,
When (with some forc'd tempestuous rage more strong
His down-borne top comes overmastered)
All the near bord'ring trees he stood among
Crushed with his weighty fall lie ruined:
So lay his spoils, all round about him slain,
T'adorn his death, that could not die in vain
On th' other part, his most all-daring son
(Although the inexperience of his years
Made him less skill'd in what was to be done;
And yet did carry him beyond all fears),
Flying into the main battalion
Near to the king, amidst the chiefest peers,
With thousand wounds became at length oppress'd,
As if he scorned to die but with the best.
Who thus both having gained a glorious end,
Soon ended that great day; that set so red,
As all the purple plains that wide extend
A sad tempestuous season witnessed.
So much ado had toiling France to rend
From us the right so long inherited;
And so hard went we from what we possessed,
As with it went the blood we loved best.
Which blood not lost, but fast laid up with heed
In everlasting fame, is there held dear
To seal the memory of this day's deed;
Th' eternal evidence of what we were:
To which our fathers, we, and who succeed,
Do owe a sigh, for that it touched us near;
Nor must we sin so much as to neglect
The holy thought of such a dear respect.
TO THE LADY MARGARET, COUNTESS OF CUMBERLAND.
He that of such a height hath built his mind,
And rear'd the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,
As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame
Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same,
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey!
And with how free an eye doth he look down
Upon these lower regions of turmoil!
Where all the storms of passion mainly beat
On flesh and blood; where honour, power, renown
Are only gay afflictions, golden toil;
Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet
As frailty doth, and only great doth seem
To little minds, who do it so esteem.
He looks upon the mightiest monarch's wars
But only as on stately robberies;
Where evermore the fortune that prevails
Must be the right: the ill-succeeding mars
The fairest and the best-faced enterprise.
Great pirate Pompey lesser pirates quails:
Justice, he sees, (as if seduced) still
Conspires with power, whose cause must not be ill.
He sees the face of right t' appear as manifold
As are the passions of uncertain man;
Who puts it in all colours, all attires,
To serve his ends and make his courses hold.
He sees, that let deceit work what it can,
Plot and contrive base ways to high desires,
That the all-guiding Providence doth yet
All disappoint, and mocks this smoke of wit.
Nor is he mov'd with all the thunder cracks
Of tyrants' threats, or with the surly brow
Of Pow'r, that proudly sits on others' crimes,
Charg'd with more crying sins than those he checks.
The storms of sad confusion, that may grow
Up in the present for the coming times,
Appal not him, that hath no side at all
But of himself, and knows the worst can fall.
Although his heart (so near allied to earth)
Cannot but pity the perplexed state
Of troublous and distress'd mortality,
That thus make way unto the ugly birth
Of their own sorrows, and do still beget
Affliction upon imbecility;
Yet seeing thus the course of things must run,
He looks thereon not strange, but as foredone.
And whilst distraught ambition compasses,
And is encompass'd; whilst as craft deceives,
And is deceiv'd; whilst man doth ransack man,
And builds on blood, and rises by distress;
And th' inheritance of desolation leaves
To great-expecting hopes: he looks thereon
As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye,
And bears no venture in impiety.
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