T
Hese Lyric pieces, short, and few,
Most worthy Sir, I send to you;
To read them be not weary!
They may become John Hewes his lyre,
Which oft, at Polesworth,[12] by the fire,
Hath made us gravely merry.
Believe it, he must have the trick
Of Ryming, with Invention quick,
That should do Lyrics well:
But how I have done in this kind,
Though in myself I cannot find,
Your judgment best can tell.
Th' old British Bards (upon their harps
For falling Flats, and rising Sharps,
That curiously were strung)
To stir their Youth to warlike rage,
Or their wild fury to assuage,
In these loose Numbers sung.
No more I, for fools' censure pass,
Than for the braying of an ass;
Nor once mine ear will lend them:
If you but please to take in gree
These Odes, sufficient 'tis to me:
Your liking can commend them.
Yours,
Michael Drayton.

WITH OTHER LYRIC POESIES.

To his Valentine.

M
Use, bid the Morn awake!
Sad Winter now declines,
Each bird doth choose a Make;
This day's Saint Valentine's.
For that good Bishop's sake
Get up, and let us see
What Beauty it shall be
That Fortune us assigns!
But, lo, in happy hour,
The place wherein she lies;
In yonder climbing Tower,
Gilt by the glitt'ring Rise.
O, Jove, that in a shower
(As once that Thunderer did,
When he in drops lay hid)
That I could her surprise!
Her canopy I'll draw,
With spangled plumes bedight:
No mortal ever saw
So ravishing a sight;
That it the Gods might awe,
And pow'rfully transpierce
The globy Universe,
Outshooting every light.
My lips I'll softly lay
Upon her heavenly cheek,
Dyed like the dawning day,
As polished ivory sleek;
And in her ear I'll say:
"O thou bright Morning Star!
'Tis I, that come so far,
My Valentine to seek.
"Each little bird, this tide,
Doth choose her lovèd pheere;
Which constantly abide
In wedlock all the year,
As Nature is their guide;
So may we Two be true
This year, nor change for new;
As turtles coupled were.
"The sparrow, swan, the dove,
Though Venus' birds they be;
Yet are they not for love,
So absolute as we!
For reason us doth move;
But they by billing woo.
Then try what we can do!
To whom each sense is free.
"Which we have more than they,
By livelier organs swayed;
Our Appetite each way
More by our Sense obeyed.
Our Passions to display,
This season us doth fit;
Then let us follow it,
As Nature us doth lead!
"One kiss in two let's breathe!
Confounded with the touch,
But half words let us speak!
Our lips employed so much,
Until we both grow weak:
With sweetness of thy breath,
O smother me to death!
Long let our joys be such!
"Let's laugh at them that choose
Their Valentines by lot;
To wear their names that use,
Whom idly they have got."
Saint Valentine, befriend!
We thus this Morn may spend:
Else, Muse, awake her not!

The Heart.

I
F thus we needs must go;
What shall our one Heart do,
This One made of our Two?
 
Madam, two Hearts we brake;
And from them both did take
The best, one Heart to make.
Half this is of your Heart,
Mine in the other part;
Joined by an equal Art.
Were it cemented, or sewn;
By shreds or pieces known,
We might each find our own.
But 'tis dissolved and fixed;
And with such cunning mixed,
No diff'rence that betwixt.
But how shall we agree,
By whom it kept shall be:
Whether by you or me?
It cannot two breasts fill;
One must be heart-less still,
Until the other will.
It came to me to-day:
When I willed it to say,
With Whether would it stay?
It told me, "In your breast,
Where it might hope to rest:
For if it were my guest,
"For certainty, it knew
That I would still anew
Be sending it to you!"
Never, I think, had two
Such work, so much, to do:
A Unity to woo!
Yours was so cold and chaste:
Whilst mine with zeal did waste;
Like Fire with Water placed.
How did my Heart intreat!
How pant! How did it beat,
Till it could give yours heat!
Till to that temper brought,
Through our perfection wrought,
That blessing either's thought.
In such a height it lies
From this base World's dull eyes;
That Heaven it not envies.
All that this Earth can show.
Our Heart shall not once know!
For it's too vile and low.

The Sacrifice to Apollo.

P
Riests of Apollo, sacred be the room
For this learned meeting! Let no barbarous groom,
How brave soe'er he be,
Attempt to enter!
But of the Muses free,
None here may venture!
This for the Delphian Prophets is prepared:
The profane Vulgar are from hence debarred!
And since the Feast so happily begins;
Call up those fair Nine, with their violins!
They are begot by Jove.
Then let us place them
Where no clown in may shove,
That may disgrace them:
But let them near to young Apollo sit;
So shall his foot-pace overflow with wit.
Where be the Graces? Where be those fair Three?
In any hand, they may not absent be!
They to the Gods are dear:
And they can humbly
Teach us, ourselves to bear,
And do things comely.
They, and the Muses, rise both from one stem:
They grace the Muses; and the Muses, them.
Bring forth your flagons, filled with sparkling wine
(Whereon swollen Bacchus, crownèd with a vine,
Is graven); and fill out!
It well bestowing
To every man about,
In goblets flowing!
Let not a man drink, but in draughts profound!
To our god Phœbus, let the Health go round!
Let your Jests fly at large; yet therewithal
See they be Salt, but yet not mixed with Gall!
Not tending to disgrace:
But fairly given,
Becoming well the place,
Modest and even,
That they, with tickling pleasure, may provoke
Laughter in him on whom the Jest is broke.
Or if the deeds of Heroes ye rehearse:
Let them be sung in so well-ordered Verse,
That each word have its weight,
Yet run with pleasure!
Holding one stately height
In so brave measure
That they may make the stiffest storm seem weak;
And damp Jove's thunder, when it loud'st doth speak.
And if ye list to exercise your vein,
Or in the Sock, or in the Buskined strain;
Let Art and Nature go
One with the other!
Yet so, that Art may show
Nature her mother:
The thick-brained audience lively to awake,
Till with shrill claps the Theatre do shake.
Sing Hymns to Bacchus then, with hands upreared!
Offer to Jove, who most is to be feared!
From him the Muse we have.
From him proceedeth
More than we dare to crave.
'Tis he that feedeth
Them, whom the World would starve. Then let the lyre
Sound! whilst his altars endless flames expire.

To his Rival.

H
Er loved I most,
By thee that's lost,
Though she were won with leisure;
She was my gain:
But to my pain,
Thou spoilest me of my treasure
The ship full fraught
With gold, far sought,
Though ne'er so wisely helmèd,
May suffer wrack
In sailing back,
By tempest overwhelmèd.
But She, good Sir!
Did not prefer
You, for that I was ranging:
But for that She
Found faith in me,
And She loved to be changing.
Therefore boast not
Your happy lot;
Be silent now you have her!
The time I knew
She slighted you,
When I was in her favour.
None stands so fast
But may be cast
By Fortune, and disgracèd:
Once did I wear
Her garter there,
Where you her glove have placèd.
I had the vow
That thou hast now,
And glances to discover
Her love to me;
And She to thee,
Reads but old lessons over.
She hath no smile
That can beguile;
But, as my thought, I know it:
Yea to a hair,
Both when, and where,
And how, she will bestow it.
What now is thine
Was only mine,
And first to me was given;
Thou laugh'st at me!
I laugh at thee!
And thus we two are even.
But I'll not mourn,
But stay my turn;
The wind may come about, Sir!
And once again
May bring me in;
And help to bear you out, Sir!

The Crier.

G
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.

I
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.

C
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.