LI.
Another part became the well of sense,
The tender, well-armed feeling brain, from whence
Those sinew strings which do our bodies tie
Are ravelled out; and fast there by one end
Did this Soul limbs, these limbs a Soul attend;
And now they joined, keeping some quality
Of every past shape; she knew treachery,
Rapine, deceit, and lust, and ills enough
To be a woman: Themech she is now,
Sister and wife to Cain, Cain that first did plough.
LII.
Whoe'er thou beest that read'st this sullen writ,
Which just so much courts thee as thou dost it,
Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me
Why ploughing, building, ruling, and the rest,
Or most of those arts whence our lives are blest,
By cursed Cain's race invented be,
And blest Seth vexed us with astronomy.
There's nothing simply good nor ill alone;
Of every quality Comparison
The only measure is, and judge Opinion.
MICHAEL DRAYTON,
The author of 'Polyolbion,' was born in the parish of Atherston, in Warwickshire, about the year 1563. He was the son of a butcher, but displayed such precocity that several persons of quality, such as Sir Walter Aston and the Countess of Bedford, patronised him. In his childhood he was eager to know what strange kind of beings poets were; and on coming to Oxford, (if, indeed, he did study there,) is said to have importuned his tutor to make him, if possible, a poet. He was supported chiefly, through his life, by the Lady Bedford. He paid court, without success, to King James. In 1593 (having long ere this become that 'strange thing a poet') he published a collection of his Pastorals, and afterwards his 'Barons' Wars' and 'England's Heroical Epistles,' which are both rhymed histories. In 1612-13 he published the first part of 'Polyolbion,' and in 1622 completed the work. In 1626 we hear of him being styled Poet Laureate, but the title then implied neither royal appointment, nor fee, nor, we presume, duty. In 1627 he published 'The Battle of Agincourt,' 'The Court of Faerie,' and other poems; and, three years later, a book called 'The Muses' Elysium.' He had at last found an asylum in the family of the Earl of Dorset; whose noble lady, Lady Anne Clifford, subsequently Countess of Pembroke, and who had been, we saw, Daniel's pupil, after Drayton's death in 1631, erected him a monument, with a gold-lettered inscription, in Westminster Abbey.
The main pillar of Drayton's fame is 'Polyolbion,' which forms a poetical description of England, in thirty songs or books, to which the learned Camden appended notes. The learning and knowledge of this poem are exten- sive, and many of the descriptions are true and spirited, but the space of ground traversed is too large, and the form of versification is too heavy, for so long a flight. Campbell justly remarks,—'On a general survey, the mass of his poetry has no strength or sustaining spirit equal to its bulk. There is a perpetual play of fancy on its surface; but the impulses of passion, and the guidance of judgment, give it no strong movements or consistent course.'
Drayton eminently suits a 'Selection' such as ours, since his parts are better than his whole.
DESCRIPTION OF MORNING.
When Phoebus lifts his head out of the winter's wave,
No sooner doth the earth her flowery bosom brave,
At such time as the year brings on the pleasant spring,
But hunts-up to the morn the feather'd sylvans sing:
And in the lower grove, as on the rising knoll,
Upon the highest spray of every mounting pole,
Those choristers are perch'd with many a speckled breast.
Then from her burnish'd gate the goodly glitt'ring east
Gilds every lofty top, which late the humorous night
Bespangled had with pearl, to please the morning's sight:
On which the mirthful choirs, with their clear open throats,
Unto the joyful morn so strain their warbling notes,
That hills and valleys ring, and even the echoing air
Seems all composed of sounds, about them everywhere.
The throstle, with shrill sharps; as purposely he sung
T'awake the lustless sun, or chiding, that so long
He was in coming forth, that should the thickets thrill;
The woosel near at hand, that hath a golden bill;
As nature him had mark'd of purpose, t'let us see
That from all other birds his tunes should different be:
For, with their vocal sounds, they sing to pleasant May;
Upon his dulcet pipe the merle doth only play.
When in the lower brake, the nightingale hard by,
In such lamenting strains the joyful hours doth ply,
As though the other birds she to her tunes would draw,
And, but that nature (by her all-constraining law)
Each bird to her own kind this season doth invite,
They else, alone to hear that charmer of the night,
(The more to use their ears,) their voices sure would spare,
That moduleth her tunes so admirably rare,
As man to set in parts at first had learn'd of her.