Six Centuries of English Poetry Part 35

TO CYNTHIA.

Queen and huntress, chaste and fair, Now the sun is laid to sleep; Seated in thy silver chair, State in wonted manner keep; Hesperus entreats thy light, G.o.ddess excellently bright.

Earth, let not thy envious shade Dare itself to interpose; Cynthia's shining orb was made Heaven to clear, when day did close; Bless us then with wished sight, G.o.ddess excellently bright.

Lay thy bow of pearl apart, And thy crystal-shining quiver; Give unto the flying heart s.p.a.ce to breathe, how short soever; Thou that mak'st a day of night, G.o.ddess excellently bright.

TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED MASTER WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, AND WHAT HE HATH LEFT US.

To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name, Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;{1} While I confess thy writings to be such, As neither Man nor Muse can praise too much.

'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise; For seeliest{2} ignorance on these may light, Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right; Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance; Or crafty malice might pretend this praise, And think to ruin where it seemed to praise.

But thou art proof against them and, indeed, Above the ill fortune of them, or the need.

I therefore will begin: Soul of the age!

The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!

My SHAKESPEARE rise! I will not lodge thee by Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room:{3} Thou art a monument without a tomb, And art alive still while thy book doth live, And we have wits to read, and praise to give.

That I not mix thee so my brain excuses,-- I mean with great, but disproportioned Muses; For if I thought my judgment were of years, I should commit thee surely with thy peers, And tell how far thou didst our Lyly{4} outshine, Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line.

And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek, From thence to honor thee I would not seek For names, but call forth thund'ring aeschylus,{5} Euripides, and Sophocles to us, Pacuvius, Accius,{6} him of Cordova dead, To life again, to hear thy buskin tread, And shake a stage; or when thy socks{7} were on, Leave thee alone for a comparison Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.

Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show, To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.

He was not of an age, but for all time!

And all the Muses still were in their prime, When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm!

Nature herself was proud of his designs, And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines, Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit, As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.

The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes, Neat Terence, witty Plautus,{8} now not please; But antiquated and deserted lie, As they were not of Nature's family.

Yet must I not give Nature all; thy Art, My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.

For though the poet's matter nature be, His art doth give the fashion; and that he{9} Who casts to write a living line, must sweat (Such as thine are) and strike the second heat Upon the Muses' anvil, turn the same, And himself with it, that he thinks to frame; Or for the laurel he may gain to scorn; For a good poet's made, as well as born.

And such wert thou! Look, how the father's face Lives in his issue, even so the race Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines In his well-turned and true filed lines, In each of which he seems to shake a lance, As brandished at the eyes of ignorance.

Sweet Swan of Avon!{10} what a sight it were To see thee in our waters yet appear, And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, That so did take Eliza and our James!

But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere{11} Advanced, and made a constellation there!

Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage Or influence chide or cheer the drooping stage, Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned like night, And despairs day but for thy volume's light.

NOTES.

This poem was prefixed to the first folio edition of Shakespeare, 1623, and is also printed in Ben Jonson's "Underwoods."

1. The meaning of these two lines would seem to be: "To show that I am not envious, Shakespeare, of thy name, I thus write fully of thy works and fame."

2. =seeliest.= Silliest, simplest. From A.-S. _saelig_, foolish. See note 23, page 190.

3. In allusion to W. Ba.s.se's elegy on Shakespeare, beginning:

"Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh To learned Chaucer; and rare Beaumont, lie A little nearer Spenser, to make room For Shakespear in your threefold, fourfold tomb."

4. =Lyly, Kyd, Marlowe.= Contemporaries of Shakespeare. See Biographical Dictionary.

5. =aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles.= The founders of the Greek tragical drama.

6. =Pacuvius, Accius.= Celebrated Roman tragic poets.

=him of Cordova.= Seneca, the great rhetorician, was born at Cordova, in Spain, B.C. 61.

7. =socks were on.= The socks indicated comedy, and the buskins tragedy.

Compare Milton's "L'Allegro," 131:

"Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-note wild."

Also, "Il Penseroso," 97. See note on _buskin_, page 139.

8. =Aristophanes, Terence, Plautus.= Ancient writers of comedy.

9. =that he.= That man.

10. =Swan of Avon.= So Cowper calls Virgil "the Mantuan swan."

11. =hemisphere.= The celestial hemisphere.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

BEN JONSON was born in Westminster, in 1573. His early life was full of hard and varied experiences. He was educated at Westminster School, and entered St. John's College, Cambridge. Being obliged to leave his university course unfinished, he worked for a time with his step-father as a brick-layer. At the age of eighteen he enlisted as a volunteer in the Low Countries; but in 1596 he settled in London, as a playwright.

His first comedy, "Every Man in his Humour," did not meet with immediate success. It was remodelled, at Shakespeare's suggestion, and when afterwards presented was received with marked favor. His first tragedy, "Seja.n.u.s," was acted in 1603. His masques, of which there are thirty-six, were written during the reign of James I. His miscellaneous works, embracing a variety of odes, elegies, epigrams, and other lyrics and epistles, are included in two collections, the first of which, called _The Forest_, was published in 1616, and the second posthumously, in 1641. He died in London, August 6, 1637.

One of the last and most beautiful of Jonson's dramas is the unfinished pastoral comedy, "The Sad Shepherd." It was written while in the sick-chamber, with a keen sense and remembrance of the disappointments which had followed him through life; and to these he touchingly refers in the prologue:

"He that hath feasted you these forty years, And fitted fables for your finer ears, Although at first he scarce could hit the bore; Yet you, with patience, hearkening more and more, At length have grown up to him, and made known The working of his pen is now your own: He prays you would vouchsafe, for your own sake, To hear him this once more, but sit awake.

And though he now present you with such wool As from mere English flocks his muse can pull, He hopes when it is made up into cloth, Not the most curious head here will be loth To wear a hood of it, it being a fleece, To match or those of Sicily or Greece.

His scene is Sherwood, and his play a tale Of Robin Hood's inviting from the vale Of Belvoir, all the shepherds to a feast; Where, by the casual absence of one guest, The mirth is troubled much, and in one man As much of sadness shown as pa.s.sion can."

Robert Herrick wrote of him thus:

"Ah Ben!

Say how or when Shall we, thy guests, Meet at those lyric feasts, Made at the Sun, The Dog, the Triple Tun; Where we such cl.u.s.ters had, As made us n.o.bly wild, not mad?

And yet each verse of thine Out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine.

"My Ben!

Or come again, Or send to us Thy wit's great overplus; But teach us yet Wisely to husband it, Lest we that talent spend; And having once brought to an end That precious stock,--the store Of such a wit the world should have no more."

The Sixteenth Century.