Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days:
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
The Lord shall raise me up, I trust!”
Raleigh’s prose has been described as “some of the most flowing and modern-looking prose of the period;” and there can be no doubt that, if he had given himself entirely to literature, he would have been one of the greatest poets and prose-writers of his time. His style is calm, noble, and melodious. The following is the last sentence of the History of the World:—
“O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words Hic jacet.”
[3.] Francis Bacon (1561-1626), one of the greatest of English thinkers, and one of our best prose-writers, was born at York House,