3 Walks and ways which winter marr'd
By the winds are swept and dried;
Moorish grounds are now so hard
That on them we safe may ride:

Warmth enough the sun doth lend us,
From his heat the shades defend us;
And thereby we share in these
Safety, profit, pleasure, ease.

4 Other blessings, many more,
At this time enjoyed may be,
And in this my song therefore
Praise I give, O Lord! to Thee :
Grant that this my free oblation
May have gracious acceptation,
And that I may well employ
Everything which I enjoy.

THE PRAYER OF OLD AGE.

[Third part of Hallelujah.]

As this my carnal robe grows old,
Soil'd, rent, and worn by length of years,
Let me on that by faith lay hold
Which man in life immortal wears:
So sanctify my days behind,
So let my manners be refined,
That when my soul and flesh must part,
There lurk no terrors in my heart.

So shall my rest be safe and sweet
When I am lodgèd in my grave;
And when my soul and body meet,
A joyful meeting they shall have;

Their essence then shall be divine, This muddy flesh shall starlike shine, And God shall that fresh youth restore Which will abide for evermore.

GILES FLETCHER.

[BORN about 1588, died 1623. Christ's Victory and Triumph in Heaven and Earth over and after Death was published in 1640.]

Giles, the brother of Phineas, and cousin of John Fletcher, is one of the chief poets of what may be called the Spenserian School, which 'flourished' in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Spenser and Chaucer were the supreme names in nondramatic poetry till Milton arose; and in the Jacobean period the Plantagenet .poet was eclipsed by the Elizabethan; and thus it was Spenser that the lesser poetic spirits of the age looked up to as their master, and upon their writings his influence is deeply impressed. Amongst these retainers of 'Colin' must be counted Milton when young, before he had developed his own style and become himself an original power, himself a master; and not the least of the interests that distinguish Giles Fletcher and his fellow Spenserians is that Milton extended to them the study and attention which he gave with no ordinary sympathy to 'our sage and serious Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus and Aquinas.'

These words of Milton's suggest some leading characteristics of the Spenserian school. It too proposed to be 'sage and serious.' It inclined indeed to be didactic. In that notorious production, 'The Purple Island,' we have in fact a lecture on Anatomy. More commonly its purpose was directly ethical; and it must be allowed that the artist is at times lost in the moralist.

Giles Fletcher is eminently a religious poet-in the technical sense of the word, as happily also in the more general sense. He deals with Christian themes: Christ's Victory in Heaven,' 'Christ's Victory on Earth,' 'Christ's Triumph over Death,' 'Christ's Triumph after Death'; and it is his special distinction, that in handling such themes he does not sink into a mere rhyming dog. matist, but writes with a genuine enthusiasm and joy. For certainly what has commonly been written for 'religious' poetry has been 'religious' rather than poetical. Its orthodoxy may have

been unimpeachable; but no less so its prosiness. How few hymns are worthy of the name of poems! The cause of this frequent failure is probably to be looked for in the writer's relation to his subject. It is not, and cannot be, one of sufficient freedom. His mind is in a sense subdued and fettered by the very conditions of the case. He is dealing with a certain definite interpretation of profound mysteries; and the mysteries themselves are such as to overpower and paralyse the free movement of his intelligence. How can he sing at ease? He is like one with a lesson set him, which he must reproduce as best he may. It is rather his faith and his memory that are called into action than his imagination. At all events his imagination has an inferior part assigned her; she is not to create but rather to decorate and glorify what is created. To worship and adore and love-these are real movements and impulses of the poet's mind, and may have and have had their expression in lyrics that may be fully styled divine; but, when the details of a creed are celebrated, then for the most part the sweet enthusiasm dies away out of the poet's eyes, the rapture chills and freezes, and we are reminded of the Thirty-nine Articles rather than of the Beatific Vision.

Giles Fletcher's success as a 'religious' poet, so far as he succeeds, is due first to the selection of themes which he makes, and secondly to the genuine religious ardour that inspired him. He delighted to contemplate the career of the central Hero of his Christian faith and love-His ineffable self-sacrifice, His leading captivity captive, His complete and irreversible triumph. That career he conceived and beheld vividly and intensely with a pure unalloyed acceptance; it thrilled and inspired him with a real passion of worship and delight. So blissfully enthralled and enraptured, what else could he sing of? His heart was hot within him; while he was musing, the fire burned; then spake he with his tongue.

It was the tongue of one highly cultured and accomplished, of a rich and clear imagination, with a natural gift of eloquence, with a fine sense of melody, and metrical skill to express it.

JOHN W. HALES,

CHRIST'S VICTORY IN HEAVEN.

But Justice had no sooner Mercy seen
Smoothing the wrinkles of her Father's brow,
But up she starts, and throws her self between:
As when a vapour, from a moory slough,

Meeting with fresh Eoüs, that but now

Open'd the world, which all in darknesse lay, Doth heav'n's bright face of his rayes disarray, And sads the smiling Orient of the springing day.

She was a Virgin of austere regard;

Not as the world esteems her, deaf and blind;
But as the eagle, that hath oft compar'd

Her eye with Heav'n's, so, and more brightly shin'd
Her lamping sight; for she the same could wind
Into the solid heart, and with her ears

The silence of the thought loud speaking hears,
And in one hand a paire of even scales she wears.

No riot of affection revel kept

Within her brest, but a still apathy

Possessed all her soule, which softly slept

Securely, without tempest; no sad cry

Awakes her pity, but wrong'd poverty,

Sending her eyes to heav'n swimming in tears,
With hideous clamours ever struck her ears,

Whetting the blazing sword, that in her hand she bears.

The winged lightning is her Mercury,

And round about her mighty thunders sound:

Impatient of himself lies pining by

Pale Sickness with his kercher'd head upwound,

And thousand noisome plagues attend her round;
But if her cloudy brow but once grow foul,
The flints do melt, and rocks to water roll,

And airy mountaines shake, and frighted shadows howl

Famine, and bloodless Care, and bloody War,
Want, and the want of knowledge how to use
Abundance; Age, and Fear that runs afar
Before his fellow Grief, that aye pursues
His wingèd steps; for who would not refuse
Grief's company, a dull and rawboned sprite,

That lanks the cheeks, and pales the freshest sight,
Unbosoming the cheerful breast of all delight?

Before this cursed throng goes Ignorance,
That needs will lead the way he cannot see:
And, after all, Death doth his flag advance,
And, in the midst, Strife still would roguing be,
Whose ragged flesh and clothes did well agree:
And round about amazèd Horror flies,
And ouer all, Shame veils his guilty eyes,

And underneath, Hell's hungry throat still yawning lies.

Upon two stony tables, spread before her,
She lean'd her bosom, more than stony hard;
There slept th' unpartial Judge, and strict restorer
Of wrong or right, with pain or with reward;
There hung the score of all our debts, the card

Where good, and bad, and life, and death were painted:

Was never heart of mortal so untainted,

But when that scroll was read, with thousand terrors fainted.

Witness the thunder that mount Sinai heard,
When all the hill with fiery clouds did flame,
And wandering Israel, with the sight afeard,
Blinded with seeing, durst not touch the same,
But like a wood of shaking leaves became.

On this dead Justice, she, the Living Law,
Bowing herself with a majestic awe,

All heav'n, to hear her speech, did into silence draw.