Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama Part 10

The popularity of this poem was testified by its widespread influence on the poets of the day. _England's Helicon_ contains 'the Nymphs reply,'

commonly attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh, and also a long imitation; Donne wrote a piscatory version, and Herrick paid it the sincerest form of flattery, while less distinct reminiscences are common in the poetry of the time. Yet Kit Marlowe's verses stand unrivalled.

The pastoral influence in Shakespeare's verse, both lyric and dramatic, is too obvious to need more than pa.s.sing notice. Every reader will recall 'Who is Sylvia,' from the _Two Gentlemen_, and 'It was a lover and his la.s.s,' the song of which, in Touchstone's opinion, 'though there was no great matter in the ditty, yet the tune was very untuneable,' or again the famous speech of the chidden king:

O G.o.d! methinks it were a happy life, To be no better than a homely swain; (3 _Henry VI_, II. v. 21.)

and Arthur's exclamation:

By my christendom So I were out of prison and kept sheep, I should be as merry as the day is long.

(_K. John_, IV. i. 16.)

One poem, bearing a certain resemblance to verses of Barnfield's already discussed, may be quoted here. It was originally printed in the fourth act of _Love's Labour's Lost_ in 1598, reappeared in the _Pa.s.sionate Pilgrim_ in 1599, and again in _England's Helicon_ in 1600.

On a day--alack the day!-- Love, whose month was ever May, Spied a blossom pa.s.sing fair Playing in the wanton air.

Through the velvet leaves the wind All unseen gan pa.s.sage find, That the shepherd, sick to death, Wish'd himself the heaven's breath.

Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow; Air, would I might triumph so!

But, alas, my hand hath sworn Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn; Vow, alack, for youth unmeet, Youth is apt to pluck a sweet.

[Do not call it sin in me That I am forsworn for thee;]

Thou for whom Jove would swear Juno but an Ethiope were, And deny himself for Jove, Turning mortal for thy love.[131]

Lastly, _England's Helicon_ preserves two otherwise unknown poems of Drayton's, one probably an early work, having little to recommend it beyond the pretty though not original conceit:

See where little Cupid lies Looking babies in her eyes!

the other similar in style to the eclogue first published in the collection of c. 1606. About contemporary possibly is the anonymous ballad 'Phillida flouts me,' which in command alike of rhythm and language is remarkably reminiscent of some, and that some of the best, of Drayton's work.

Oh, what a plague is love!

How shall I bear it?

She will unconstant prove, I greatly fear it.

It so torments my mind That my strength faileth; She wavers with the wind, As the ship saileth.

Please her the best you may, She looks another way; Alas and well-a-day!

Phillida flouts me[132].

I have already had occasion to mention the mysterious A. W. in Davison's _Poetical Rhapsody_, but I cannot refrain from calling attention to one other poem of his. It is headed 'A fiction, how Cupid made a nymph wound herself with his arrows,' and is perhaps the nearest thing in English to a Greek _idyllion_, though in the manner of Moschus rather than of Theocritus. The opening scene will give an idea of the style:

It chanced of late a shepherd's swain, That went to seek a strayed sheep, Within a thicket on the plain, Espied a dainty nymph asleep.

Her golden hair o'erspread her face, Her careless arms abroad were cast, Her quiver had her pillow's place, Her breast lay bare to every blast.

The shepherd stood, and gazed his fill; Nought durst he do, nought durst he say; When chance, or else perhaps his will, Did guide the G.o.d of love that way.

And so the long pageant troops by, not without its pa.s.sages of dullness, its moments of pedestrian gait, for it must be borne in mind that the poems quoted above are for the most part the choice of what has survived in a few volumes, and that this in its turn represents the gleanings from a far larger body of verse that once existed. In spite of its perennial freshness the charge of want of originality has not unreasonably been brought even against the best compositions of the kind. It could hardly be otherwise. Except in the rarest cases originality was impossible. The impulse was to write a certain kind of amatory verse, for which the fashionable medium was pastoral; not to write pastoral for its own sake.

The demand was for convention, the familiar, the expected; never for originality or truth. The fault was in the poetic requirements of the age, and must not be laid to the charge of those admirable craftsmen who gave the age what it wanted; especially when in so doing they enriched English poetry with some of its choicest gems.

The pastoral lyric of the next two reigns is far too wide a subject to be entered upon here. Grave or gay, satirical or idyllic, coy or wanton, there is scarcely a poet of note or obscurity who did not contribute his share. Nowhere is a rarer note of pastoral to be found than in _L'Allegro_, with its

every shepherd tells his tale Under the hawthorn in the vale.

Before, however, saying farewell to this, the lighter side of English pastoral verse, I would call attention to a poem which perhaps more than any other ill.u.s.trates the spirit of _volutta idillica_, characteristic of so much that possesses abiding value in pastoral. Unfortunately Carew's _Rapture_ is almost throughout of a nature that forbids reproduction except in a scientific edition, or an admittedly erotic collection. Though its licence is coterminous with the bounds of natural desire, the candour of its appeal to unvitiated nature saves it from reproach, and the perfection of its form makes it an object of never-failing beauty. The idea with which the poem opens, the escape to a land where all conventional restrictions cease to have a meaning, was of course suggested by the first chorus of the _Aminta_:

quel vano Nome senza soggetto, Quell' idolo d' errori, idol d' inganno; Quel che dal volgo insano Onor poscia fu detto-- Che di nostra natura 'l feo tiranno.

I can only extract one short pa.s.sage out of Tom Carew's poem, that which describes how

Daphne hath broke her bark, and that swift foot Which th' angry G.o.ds had fast'ned with a root To the fix'd earth, doth now unfetter'd run To meet th' embraces of the youthful Sun.

She hangs upon him, like his Delphic Lyre; Her kisses blow the old, and breath new, fire; Full of her G.o.d, she sings inspired lays, Sweet odes of love, such as deserve the Bays, Which she herself was. Next her, Laura lies In Petrarch's learned arms, drying those eyes That did in such sweet smooth-paced numbers flow, As made the world enamoured of his woe.

This is not itself pastoral, but it belongs to that idyllic borderland which we previously noticed in dealing with Italian verse. And again, as in Italy, so in England, we find the same spirit infusing the mythological tales. Did time and s.p.a.ce allow it would be an interesting diversion to trace how the pastoral spirit evinced itself in such works as Peele's _Tale of Troy_, Lodge's _Scilla's Metamorphosis_, Drayton's _Man in the Moon_, Brathwaite's _Narcissus Change_ (in the _Golden Fleece_), and found articulate utterance in the voluptuous cadences of _Venus and Adonis_.

VI

There are two specimens of English pastoral verse which I have reserved for separate discussion in this place, namely, _Lycidas_ and _Britannia's Pastorals_. The one is probably the most perfect example of the allegorical pastoral produced since first the form was invented by Vergil, the other the longest and most ambitious poem ever composed on a pastoral theme.[133]

Milton's poem was written on the occasion of the death of Edward King, fellow of Christ's College, who was drowned on his way to Ireland during the long vacation of 1637, and first appeared in a collection of memorial verses by his Cambridge friends published in 1638. It gathers together within its narrow compa.s.s as it were whole centuries of pastoral tradition, fusing them into an organic whole, and inspiring the form with a poetic life of its own.

Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once more Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never sear, I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude, And with forc'd fingers rude, Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.

For Lycidas is dead and claims his meed of song.

Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well, That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring; Begin, and somwhat loudly sweep the string.

Sing first their friendship, nursed upon the self-same hill, their youth spent together. But oh! the heavy change; now the very caves and woods mourn his loss. Where then were the Muses, that their loved poet should die? And yet what could they do for Lycidas, who had no power to shield Orpheus himself,

When by the rout that made the hideous roar, His goary visage down the stream was sent, Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian sh.o.r.e.

What then avails the poet's toil? Were it not better to taste the sweets of love as they offer themselves since none can count on reward in this life? The prize, however, lies elsewhere--

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.

But such thoughts are too lofty for the swains of Arethusa and Mincius.

Listen rather as the herald of the sea questions the G.o.d of winds about the fatal wreck. It was no storm drove the ill-starred boat to destruction:

The Ayr was calm, and on the level brine, Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd,

sounds the reply. Next, footing slow, comes the tutelary deity of Alma Mater, and in one sad cry mourns the promise of a life so soon cut short.

Lastly, 'The Pilot of the Galilean lake,' with denunciation of the corrupt hirelings of a venal age, laments the loss of the church in the death of Lycidas. As his solemn figure pa.s.ses by, the gracious fantasies of pastoral landscape shrink away: now

Return Alpheus, the dread voice is past, That shrunk thy streams,

bid the nymphs bring flowers of every hue,

To strew the Laureat Herse where Lycid lies--

and yet indeed even this comfort is denied, we dally with false imaginings,