Then by that happy blissful day, 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 Then the blessed paths we'll travel, No cause deferred, no vain-spent journey, Against our souls black verdicts give, Be Thou my speaker, taintless pleader, And this is mine eternal plea To Him that made heaven, earth, and sea, 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, XVIII.1 HAT is our life? The play of passion. be, Where we are dressed for life's short comedy. 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 : Though not so great, yet free from infamy. W. R. 1 Prefixed to Sir A. Gorges' translation of Lucan's "Pharsalia," 1614. XX. CONTINUATION OF THE LOST 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, 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? |