The heaven shows lively art and hue, The mountains high, and how they stand; Save I, alas! whom neither sun, Nor aught that God hath wrought and done, A thing not made for comfort here." The Earl of Surrey was the eldest son of the Duke of Norfolk, in the time of Henry VIII. He was born in 1516, and was early contracted to marry Lady Frances Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford. In 1542, he was made a knight of the garter, and appears to have been one of the gayest ornaments of the court; but he fell under the displeasure of the King, and was in consequence beheaded in the flower of life. It is proper, however, to observe, that although he has been regarded as the author of the poem quoted, it is certainly not at all like the ordinary style of his poetry, of which the following descriptive effusion, written during one of his imprisonments in Windsor Castle, is a favourable specimen. With somewhat of the general stiffness of his style, it possesses much of the grace and gallant spirit of his chivalrous character, and affords altogether an advantageous view of his powers and talents as a poet: "So cruel prison how could betide, alas! As proud Windsor, where I in lust and joy, With a king's son my childish years did pass, In greater feast than Priam's sons of Troy. Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour; The large green courts, where we were wont to hove, With eyes cast up unto the maiden's tower, And easy sighs, such as folks draw in love; With words, and looks, that tigers could but rue, Of pleasant plaint, and of our ladies praise, Recording soft what grace each one had found, What hope of speed, what dread of long delays; The wild forest, the clothed holts with green; With rains availed, and swift y-breathed horse With cry of hounds, and merry blasts between, Where we did chase the fearful hart of force; The void walls eke that harboured us each night; Wherewith, alas ! revive within my heart The sweet accord, such sleeps as yet delight, The pleasant dreams, the quiet bed of rest, The secret thoughts imparted with such trust, The wanton talk, the divers change of play, The friendship sworn, each promise kept so just,Wherewith we past the winter nights away. And with this thought the blood forsakes the face; The tears berain my cheeks of deadly hue: The which, as soon as sobbing sighs, alas! Up-supped have, thus I my plaint renew : "O place of bliss! renewer of my woes! Give me account, where is my noble fere? Whom in thy walls thou didst each night enclose, To banish the less, I find my chief relief." If the muse of Surrey, the first noble English poet, be imbued with the romantic spirit of his time, perhaps in the more emphatic verse of Byron, the latest and the greatest, we may trace the chartered and fiercer energies that are supposed to have affected the moral temperament of our own time. One of the very finest passages in all his voluminous works is an address to Napoleon, the individual in whom whatever was peculiar, to the revolutionary period that has just passed, may be said to have been embodied. After adverting to the singular combination of magnanimity and meanness, which formed the brightness and the blackness of that extraordinary political phenomenon, the author proceeds: "Yet well thy soul hath brook'd the turning tide Which, be it wisdom, coldness, or deep pride, When the whole host of hatred stood hard by, To watch and mock thee shrinking, thou hast smiled With a sedate and all-enduring eye ;— When Fortune fled her spoil'd and favourite child, He stood unbowed beneath the ills upon him piled. 2 c "Sager than in thy fortunes; for in them And spurn the instruments thou wert to use "But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell, And there hath been thy bane; there is a fire "This makes the madmen who have made men mad By their contagion; Conquerors and Kings, Founders of sects and systems, to whom add Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs, And are themselves the fools to those they fool; Envied, yet how unenviable ! what stings Are theirs! One Breast laid open were a school Which would unteach mankind the lust to shine or rule: "Their breath is agitation, and their life A storm whereon they ride, to sink at last; |