Some Longer Elizabethan Poems

The Crier.

A. H. Bullen

Ood folk, for gold or hire,

But help me to a Crier!

For my poor Heart is run astray

After two Eyes, that passed this way.

Oh yes! O yes! O yes!

If there be any man,

In town or country, can

Bring me my Heart again;

I'll please him for his pain.

And by these marks, I will you show

That only I this Heart do owe [own]:

It is a wounded Heart,

Wherein yet sticks the dart.

Every piece sore hurt throughout it:

Faith and Troth writ round about it.

It was a tame Heart, and a dear;

And never used to roam:

But having got this haunt, I fear

'Twill hardly stay at home

For God's sake, walking by the way,

If you my Heart do see;

Either impound it for a Stray.

Or send it back to me!

To his coy Love.

A Canzonet.

pray thee leave! Love me no more!

Call home the heart you gave me!

I but in vain that Saint adore

That can, but will not, save me.

These poor half kisses kill me quite!

Was ever man thus servÈd?

Amidst an ocean of delight,

For pleasure to be starvÈd.

Show me no more those snowy breasts

With azure riverets branchÈd!

Where whilst mine Eye with plenty feeds,

Yet is my thirst not staunchÈd.

O Tantalus, thy pains ne'er tell!

By me thou art prevented:

'Tis nothing to be plagued in Hell;

But, thus, in Heaven, tormented!

Clip me no more in those dear arms;

Nor thy "Life's Comfort" call me:

O these are but too powerful charms;

And do but more enthrall me.

But see how patient I am grown,

In all this coil about thee!

Come, nice Thing, let thy heart alone!

I cannot live without thee!

A Hymn to his Lady's Birth-place.

oventry, that dost adorn

The country [County] wherein I was born:

Yet therein lies not thy praise;

Why I should crown thy Towers with bays?

Coventry finely walled.

'Tis not thy Wall, me to thee weds;

Thy Ports; nor thy proud Pyramids;

Nor thy trophies of the Boar:

But that She which I adore,

(Which scarce Goodness's self can pair)

First there breathing, blest thy air.

The shoulder-bone of a Boar of mighty bigness.

Idea; in which name I hide

Her, in my heart deified.

For what good, Man's mind can see;

Only her ideas be:

She, in whom the Virtues came

In Woman's shape, and took her name.

She so far past imitation

As (but Nature our creation

Could not alter) she had aimed

More than Woman to have framed.

She whose truly written story,

To thy poor name shall add more glory,

Than if it should have been thy chance

T'have bred our Kings that conquered France.

Had she been born the former Age,

Two famous Pilgrimages: one in Norfolk, the other in Kent.

That house had been a Pilgrimage;

And reputed more Divine

Than Walsingham, or Becket's Shrine.

Godiva, Duke Leofric's wife, who obtained the freedom of the city of her husband, by riding through it naked.

That Princess, to whom thou dost owe

Thy Freedom (whose clear blushing snow

The envious sun saw; when as she

Naked rode to make thee free),

Was but her type: as to foretell

Thou shouldst bring forth One should excel

Her bounty; by whom thou shouldst have

More Honour, than she Freedom gave.

Queen Elizabeth.

And that great Queen, which but of late

Ruled this land in peace and State,

Had not been; but Heaven had sworn

A Maid should reign when She was born.

Of thy streets, which thou hold'st best,

And most frequent of the rest;

A noted street in Coventry.

His Mistress's birthday.

Happy Mich Park! Every year,

On the Fourth of August there,

Let thy Maids, from Flora's bowers,

With their choice and daintiest flowers

Deck thee up! and from their store,

With brave garlands crown that door!

The old man passing by that way,

To his son, in time, shall say:

"There was that Lady born: which

Long to after Ages shall be sung."

Who, unawares being passed by,

Back to that house shall cast his eye;

Speaking my verses as he goes,

And with a sigh shut every Close.

Dear City! travelling by thee,

When thy rising Spires I see,

Destined her Place of Birth;

Yet methinks the very earth

Hallowed is, so far as I

Can thee possibly descry.

Then thou, dwelling in this place,

(Hearing some rude hind disgrace

Thy city, with some scurvy thing

Which some Jester forth did bring)

Speak these Lines, where thou dost come,

And strike the slave for ever dumb.

[Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Ben Jonson (Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden) took exception to the opening lines:—

'He scorned such verses as could be transponed—

Where is the man that never yett did hear

Of faire Penelope, Ulisses Queene?

Of faire Penelope Ulisses Queene,

Wher is the man that never yett did hear?'

[2] The passage is thus rendered by Jasper Mayne (Part of Lucian, made English ... in the year 1638):—'Nor were it amiss, having passed through India and Aethiopia, to draw our discourse down to their neighbouring Aegypt. Where the ancient fiction which goes of Proteus, methinks, signifies him only to be a certain dancer and mimic; who could transform and change himself into all shapes, sometimes acting the fluidness of water, sometimes the sharpness of fire, occasioned by the quickness of its aspiring motion, sometimes the fierceness of a lion, and fury of a libbard, and waving of an oak, and whatever he liked.'

[3] Cf. also Arnold's "Obermann once more":—

'"Poor World," she cried, "so deep accurst,

That runn'st from pole to pole

To seek a draught to quench thy thirst,

Go seek it in thy soul."'

[4] The poems of Barnfield were not in the original Garner and are now incorporated for the first time.

[5] Prince in his Worthies of Devon(1701) quotes this couplet as an epitaph, by an anonymous writer, on Drake.

[6] There is a better epitaph on Drake in Wit's Recreations(1640):—

'Sir Drake, whom well the world's end knew,

Which thou didst compasse round.

And whom both Poles of Heaven once saw,

Which North and South do bound:

The Stars above would make thee known

If men here silent were:

The Sun himselfe cannot forget

His fellow-passenger.'

[7] On March 31, 1605, Captain George Weymouth started from the Downs with a crew of twenty-nine to discover a North-West Passage to the East Indies. On May 14 he 'descries land in 41° 30' N. in the midst of dangerous rocks and shoals. Upon which he puts to sea, the wind blowing south-south-west and west-south-west many days' (Prince's New England Chronology ap. Garner, ii. 356). Drayton advises the Virginian voyagers to keep the west-by-south course and so avoid misadventures. He had not reckoned on the Spanish fleet.

[8] Several of Drayton's works have been reprinted by the Spenser Society, and an excellent Introduction to them has been written by Professor Oliver Elton (1895).

[9] Diogenes.

[10] Chaucer.

[11] pincers.

[12] In Warwickshire.

Transcriber notes:

P.18. 'aad' changed to 'and' in stanza #53.

P.80. Sidenote: 'sensative' changed to 'sensitive'.

P.82. Sidenote: 'Unerstanding' changed to 'Understanding'.

P.110. 'Astrea' changed to 'AstrÆ' in Hymn II.

Fixed various punctuation.

Clyx.com