Where thou hast loved so long, with heart and all thy power,
I see thee fed with feigned words, &c.
I see her pleasant cheer in chiefest of thy suit:
When thou art gone, I see him come who gathers up the fruit;
And eke in thy respect, I see the base degree
Of him to whom she gives the heart, that promised was to thee![67]
The fair Geraldine must have been a practised coquette to have sat for a picture so finished and so strongly marked: yet before we blame her for this disdainful trifling, it should be remembered that Lord Surrey, at the time he was wooing her with "musicke vows," was either married or contracted to another,[68]—a circumstance quite in keeping with the fashionable system of Platonic gallantry introduced from Italy—
O Plato! Plato! you have been the cause, &c.
and so forth. I forbear to continue the apostrophe.
According to the old tradition, repeated by all Surrey's biographers, he visited on his travels the famous necromancer Cornelius Agrippa, who in a magic mirror revealed to him the fair figure of his Geraldine, lying dishevelled on a couch, and, by the light of a taper, reading one of his tenderest sonnets.
Fair all the pageant, but how passing fair
The slender form that lay on couch of Ind!
O'er her white bosom strayed her hazel hair,
Pale her dear cheek, as if for love she pined.
All in her night-robe loose, she lay reclined,
And pensive read from tablet eburnine,
Some strain that seemed her inmost soul to find;—
That favoured strain was Surrey's raptured line,
That fair and lovely form, the Lady Geraldine![69]
This beautiful incident is too celebrated, too touching, not to be one of the articles of our poetical faith. It was believed by Surrey's contemporaries, and in the age immediately following was gravely related by a grave historian. It shows at least the celebrity which his poetry, unequalled at that time, had given to his love, and the object of it. In fact, when divested of the antique spelling, which, at the first glance, revolts by the impression it gives of difficulty and obscurity, some of the lyrics of Surrey have not since been surpassed either in elegance of sentiment, or flowing grace of expression:—for example—
A Praise of his Love, wherein he reproveth them that compare
their Ladies with his.
Give place ye lovers here before,
That spent your boastes and braggs in vain,
My ladye's beauty passeth more
The best of yours, I dare well sayne,
Then doth the sun the candle light,
Or brightest day the darkest night.
And thereto hath a truth as just,
As had Penelope the fair:
For what she sayeth you may it trust.
As it by writing sealed were;
And virtues hath she many moe,
Than I with pen have skill to show.
The following sonnet is rather a specimen of versification than of sentiment: the subject is borrowed from Petrarch.