Then by that happy blissful day,
More peaceful pilgrims I shall see,
That have cast off their rags of clay,
And walk apparelled fresh like me.
I'll take them first

To quench their thirst

And taste of nectar suckets,

At those clear wells

Where sweetness dwells,

Drawn up by saints in crystal buckets.

And when our bottles and all we
Are filled with immortality,

Then the blessed paths we'll travel,
Strowed with rubies thick as gravel;
Ceilings of diamonds, sapphire floors,
High walls of coral and pearly bowers.
From thence to heaven's bribeless hall,
Where no corrupted voices brawl;
No conscience molten into gold,
No forged accuser bought or sold,

No cause deferred, no vain-spent journey,
For there Christ is the king's Attorney,
Who pleads for all without degrees,
And He hath angels, but no fees.
And when the grand twelve-million jury
Of our sins, with direful fury,

Against our souls black verdicts give,
Christ pleads His death, and then we live.

Be Thou my speaker, taintless pleader,
Unblotted lawyer, true proceeder !
Thou givest salvation even for alms;
Not with a bribed lawyer's palms.

And this is mine eternal plea

To Him that made heaven, earth, and sea,
That, since my flesh must die so soon,
And want a head to dine next noon,

Just at the stroke, when my veins start and spread, Set on my soul an everlasting head!

Then am I ready, like a palmer fit,

To tread those blest paths which before I writ.

Of death and judgment, heaven and hell,
Who oft doth think, must needs die well.

XVIII.1

HAT is our life? The play of passion.
Our mirth? The music of division:
Our mothers' wombs the tiring-houses

be,

Where we are dressed for life's short comedy.
The earth the stage; Heaven the spectator is,
Who sits and views whosoe'er doth act amiss.
The graves which hide us from the scorching sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus playing post we to our latest rest,
And then we die in earnest, not in jest.

Sr W. R.

1 From a MS. formerly belonging to the late Mr. Pickering. It was printed anonymously in a music-book of 1612; "Censura Lit.," vol. ii. p. 103, 2nd edition; and is found also in MS. Ashm. 36, p. 35, and MS. Ashm. 38, fol. 154.

see

XIX.

TO THE TRANSLATOR OF LUCAN.1

(1614.)

AD Lucan hid the truth to please the time, He had been too unworthy of thy pen, Who never sought nor ever cared to climb By flattery, or seeking worthless men. For this thou hast been bruised; but yet those scars Do beautify no less than those wounds do, Received in just and in religious wars;

Though thou hast bled by both, and bearest them too.

Change not! To change thy fortune 'tis too late :
Who with a manly faith resolves to die,
May promise to himself a lasting state,

Though not so great, yet free from infamy.
Such was thy Lucan, whom so to translate,
Nature thy muse like Lucan's did create.

W. R.

1 Prefixed to Sir A. Gorges' translation of Lucan's "Pharsalia," 1614.

XX.

CONTINUATION OF THE LOST
POEM, CYNTHIA;

NOW FIRST PUBLISHED FROM THE HATFIELD MSS.1 (1604-1618?)

I.

F Cynthia be a Queen, a princess, and

supreme,

Keep these among the rest, or say it

a dream;

was

For those that like, expound, and those that loathe,

express

Meanings according as their minds are moved more or less.

For writing what thou art, or showing what thou were,

Adds to the one disdain, to the other but despair. Thy mind of neither needs, in both seeing it exceeds.

II.

My body in the walls captived

Feels not the wounds of spiteful envy ;

But my thralled mind, of liberty deprived, Fast fettered in her ancient memory,

Doth nought behold but sorrow's dying face:

Such prison erst was so delightful,

As it desired no other dwelling place : But time's effects and destinies despiteful

Hatfield MSS., vol. cxliv., fol. 238, sqq. "In Sir Walter's own hand."

Have changed both my keeper and my fare. Love's fire and beauty's light I then had store;

But now, close kept, as captives wonted are, That food, that heat, that light, I find no more. Despair bolts up my doors; and I alone Speak to dead walls; but those hear not my moan.

III.

THE 21ST AND LAST BOOK OF THE

OCEAN, TO CYNTHIA.

UFFICETH it to you, my joys interred, In simple words that I my woes complain;

You that then died when first my fancy erred,

Joys under dust that never live again?

If to the living were my muse addressed,
Or did my mind her own spirit still inhold,
Were not my living passion so repressed

As to the dead the dead did these unfold,

Some sweeter words, some more becoming verse Should witness my mishap in higher kind; But my love's wounds, my fancy in the hearse, The idea but resting of a wasted mind,

The blossoms fallen, the sap gone from the tree, The broken monuments of my great desires,From these so lost what may the affections be? What heat in cinders of extinguished fires?