If thou wert summoned to the realms of day,
Who in thy mortal state put’st us to shame?
Better it is to feel and mutter ‘hush,’
Than what is difficult to say, aloud to say.
This is not a masterpiece in little, nor even a marvel of adroitness; but it is highly interesting as the earliest extant effort of one who was destined to become a master, and, moreover, it supplies us with his favourite poetical formulæ. In his description of the Queen as the
[143]general refuge of Christendom,
Whose fame for piety can never fail;
in his allusion to the
Illustrious King of the broad lands of Spain,
Who fortune and the world holds in his baile;