is typical of late Elizabethan mannerism. "Heaves" is used to rhyme to "leaves"; "the dust of sin" is apparently the redeemed soul, why the sky is "industrious," except as a kind of pun on the preceding "dust," is not apparent; we are to wonder why the dust of sin is not allowed "to fly to dust and ashes,"—in short a solemn and sacred poem can hardly be written in a style more unhappily out of keeping. When the fate of fallen man is trembling in the balance, Mercy "smooths the wrinkles of the Fathers brow," and Justice, observing this with displeasure (it is like a Homeric quarrel of Athene and Aphrodite!), throws herself between Mercy and the Father, like "a vapour from a moory slough," and begins a virulent invective against
That wretch, beast, caitiff, Monster-Man,
who, in Egypt, is disgracing himself by animal worship, while in Greece,
Neptune spews out the lady Aphrodite.
Your songs exceed your matter—
says Giles to other poets,—
this of mine
The matter which it sings, shall make divine.
Alas! the poem, though it has fine occasional passages, some music, and much energy, is written in a style of conceits, and of ingenious antitheses, which are wholly out of accord with "the matter". We cannot but see that the poet, in regard to taste, is wholly lost, is too much a child of his time, so rich in everything but perception of form and limit, so fantastically over-adorned in verse as in vesture.
Giles wrote of Phineas as
the Kentish lad, that lately taught
His oaten reed the trumpet's silver sound.