Give me, next good, an understanding wife, So fair at least let me imagine her ; ; SONNET II. Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly, Waex forty winters shall besiege thy brow, When summer's breaththeir masked buds discloses; And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field, But, for their virtue only is their show, | Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now, They live unwoo'd, and unrespected fade, ! Will be a tatter'd weed of small worth held ; Die to themselves—Sweet roses do not so, Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies, Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made ; Where all the treasure of thy lusty days And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, To say " within thine own deep sunken eyes,” When that shall fade my verse distils your truth. 1 Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise ; SONNET CXVI. Let me not to the marriage of true minds This were to be new-made when thou art old, Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be Oh! how much more doth Beauty beauteous seem, Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks ! By that sweet ornament which truth doth give ! Within his bending sickle's compass come ; The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. SONNET LIV. SONNET CXLV. Those lips, that Love's own hand did make, Was used in giving gentle doom ; SIR WALTER RALEIGH. [Born, 1562. Died, 1618.) It is difficult exactly to estimate the poetical this period so indignant with him for an amour character of this great man, as many of the which he had with one of her maids of honour, pieces that are ascribed to him have not been that, though he married the lady (she was the authenticated. Among these is the “ Soul's daughter of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton), her Farewell,” which possesses a fire of imagination majesty committed him, with his fair partner, to that we would willingly ascribe to him ; but his the Tower. The queen forgave him, however, claim to it, as has been already mentioned, is at last, and rewarded his services with a grant exceedingly doubtful. The tradition of his having of the manor of Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, written it on the night before his execution, is where he built a magnificent seat. Raleigh's highly interesting to the fancy, but, like many mind was not one that was destined to travel in fine stories, it has the little defect of being untrue, the wheel-ruts of common prejudice. It was as the poem was in existence more than twenty rumoured that he had carried the freedom of his years before his death. It has accordingly been philosophical speculation to an heretical height placed in this collection, with several other on many subjects ; and his acceptance of the pieces to which his name has been conjectur- church lands of Sherborne, already mentioned, ally affixed, among the anonymous poetry of that probably supplied additional motives to the clergy period. to swell the outcry against his principles. He Sir Walter was born at Hayes Farm, in Devon was accused (by the jesuits) of atheism-a charge shire, and studied at Oxford. Leaving the uni- which his own writings sufficiently refute. Whatversity at seventeen, he fought for six years ever were his opinions, the public saved him the under the Protestant banners in France, and trouble of explaining them; and the queen, taking afterwards served a campaign in the Netherlands. it for granted that they must be bad, gave him He next distinguished himself in Ireland during an open, and, no doubt, edifying reprimand. To the rebellion of 1580, under the lord deputy console himself under these circumstances, he Lord Grey de Wilton, with whom his personal projected the conquest of Guiana, sailed thither disputes eventually promoted his fortunes ; for in 1595, and having captured the city of San being heard in his own cause on returning to Joseph, returned and published an account of England, he won the favour of Elizabeth, who In the following year he acted knighted him, and raised him to such honours gallantly under the Earl of Essex at Cadiz, as as alarmed the jealousy of her favourite Lei. well as in what was called the “ Island Voycester. age On the latter occasion he failed of comin the mean time, as early as 1579, he had plete success only through the jealousy of the commenced his adventures with a view to colo favourite. nize America-surveyed the territory now called His letter to Cecil, in which he exhorted that Virginia, in 1584, and fitted out successive fleets statesman to the destruction of Essex, forms but in support of the infant colony. In the destruc too sad and notorious a blot in our hero's memory; tion of the Spanish armada, as well as in the yet even that offence will not reconcile us to behold expedition to Portugal in behalf of Don Antonio, the successor of Elizabeth robbing Raleigh of his he had his full share of action and glory ; and estate to bestow it on the minion Carr ; and on though recalled, in 1592, from the appointment the grounds of a plot in which his participation of general of the expedition against Panama, he was never proved, condemning to fifteen years of must have made a princely fortune by the success imprisonment the man who had enlarged the of his fleet, which sailed upon that occasion, and empire of his country, and the boundaries of returned with the richest prize that had ever * A voyage that was aimed principally at the Spanish been brought to England. The queen was about Plate fleets. his voyage. human knowledge. James could estimate the than avarice. On the 29th of October, 1618, which his commission to Guiana had virtually Thus women welcomed woe, A VISION UPON THE FAIRY QUEEN.' For not knowing that I sue to serve A saint of such perfection As all desire, but none deserve A place in her affection, I rather chuse to want relief Than venture the revealing; Where glory recommends the grief, Despair disdains the healing. Silence in love betrays more woe Than words, though ne'er so witty ; A beggar that is dumb, you know, May challenge double pity. Then wrong not, dearest to my heart, My love for secret passion ; He smarteth most who hides his smart, And sues for no compassion *. METHOUGHT I saw the grave where Laura lay, A NYMPH'S DISDAIN OF LOVE. THE SHEPHERD'S DESCRIPTION OF LOVE. Ascribed to Sir W. Raleigh in England's Helicon.' Hey down a down, did Dian sing, [This poem is attributed to Lord Pembroke,--but it has been ascribed with great probability to Sir Robert Ayton in a MS. and contemporary volume of Ayton's poems once in Mr. Heber's hands.] Melib. SHEPHERD, what's love? I pray thee tell. Where pleasure and repentance dwell; And this is love as I heard tell. It is December match'd with May, JOSHUA SYLVESTER. (Born, 1563. Died, 1614.] Who in his day obtained the epithet of the Sil most thin-skinned enemies so that his travels ver-tongued, was a merchant adventurer, and were probably made more from the hope of died abroad at Middleburgh, in 1618. He was a gain than the fear of persecution. He was an candidate, in the year 1597, for the office of eminent linguist, and writes his dedications in secretary to a trading company at Stade ; on several languages, but in his own he often fathoms which occasion the Earl of Essex seems to have the bathos, and brings up such lines as these to taken a friendly interest in his fortunes. Though king James. esteemed by the court of England (on one occa So much, 0 king, thy sacred worth presume I on, sion he signs himself the pensioner of Prince James, the just heir of England's lawful union. Henry *), he is said to have been driven from home by the enmity which his satires excited. His works are chiefly translations, including that This seems very extraordinary, as there is of the Divine Weeks and Works of Du Bartas. nothing in his vague and dull declamations His claim to the poem of the Soul's Errand, as against vice, that needed to have ruffled the been already mentioned, is to be entirely set aside. STANZAS FROM “ALL IS NOT GOLD THAT GLITTERS." TO RELIGION. Sloth under thee her ease assumes, RELIGION, O thou life of life, And Avarice under thee desires ; Religion, erst so venerable, Not in the church with Simony, SAMUEL DANIEL. [Born, 1569. Died, Oct. 1619.) SAMUEL DANIEL was the son of a music-master, afterwards tutor to the accomplished and spirited and was born at Taunton, in Somersetshire. He Lady Anne Clifford, daughter to the Earl of was patronised and probably maintained at Cumberland, who raised a monument to his Oxford, by the noble family of Pembroke. At memory, on which she recorded that she had the age of twenty-three he translated Paulus been his pupil. At the death of Spenser he furJovius's Discourse of Rare Inventions. He was nished, as a voluntary laureat, several masks and |