It is not often that De Vere leaves the lofty pinnacles of thought or the pleasant hills of fancy for sterner fields, but here for once he swoops from his eyrie into the following scathing lines. They are the last of five very spirited sonnets on Colonization, each of which is worth quoting, did but our space permit:
"England, magnanimous art thou in name;
Magnanimous in nature once thou wert;
But that which ofttimes lags behind desert,
And crowns the dead, as oft survives it—fame.
Can she whose hand a merchant's pen makes tame,
Or sneer of nameless scribe—can she whose heart
In camp or senate still is at the mart,
A nation's toils, a nation's honors claim?
Thy shield of old torn Poland twice and thrice
Invoked; thy help as vainly Ireland asks,
Pointing with stark, lean linger from the West—
Of western cliffs plague-stricken, from the West—
Gray-haired though young. When heat is sucked from ice,
Then shall a Firm discharge a national task."
This speaks for itself. It sums up the faults of the English nation better in a dozen lines than a congress of vaporers about British tyranny or essayists on perfide Albion could do in a month of mouthings. There is not a weak line or phrase in it, or one that is not auxiliary to the general effect intended. This, in short, is what we call masterly.
There are a score of other sonnets that we would wish to quote in illustration of the refined thought and elegant delicacy of diction which characterize them all; but we are constrained to content ourselves with one also noticed by Landor for its singular felicity and beauty. It is from his first book, page 268:
"Flowers I would bring. If flowers could make thee fairer.
And make, if the muse were dear to thee;
(For loving these would make thee love the bearer.)
But sweetest songs forget their melody,
And loveliest flowers would but conceal the wearer:
A rose I marked, and might have plucked; but she
Blushed as she bent, imploring me to spare her,
Nor spoil her beauty by such rivalry.
Alas! and with what gifts shall I pursue thee.
What offerings bring, what treasures lay before thee;
When earth with all her floral train doth woo thee,
And all old poets and old books adore thee;
And love to thee is naught; from passionate mood
Secured by joy's complacent plenitude?"
This poem is remarkable to us as containing one of the few recognitions we have ever seen of that beauty which rises above the province of passion, and strikes a dim awe into admiration. They are not many who can feel it, and few, indeed, who have expressed it. The same thought occurs in another passage referred to by Landor:
"Men loved; but hope they deemed to be
A sweet impossibility."
But we have a further reason for preferring this to several equally fine. It is to note what may be another of De Vere's unconscious adaptations. The well-known scholar, Henry of Huntington, addressed to Queen Adelicia of Louvaine some lines which hinge upon the very same turn of thought. The real excellence of the verses emboldens us to subjoin a few of them, that the reader may observe the resemblance:
"Anglorum regina, tuos, Adeliza, decores
Ipsa rcferre parans Musa stupore riget.
Quid diadema tibi, pulcherrima? quid tibi gemma?
Pallet gemma tibi, nec diadema nitet.
Ornamenta cave; nec quicquam luminis inde
Accipis; illa nitent lumine clara tuo . . . ."
We are not sure but the mediaeval poet, having no further idea beyond mere laudation, has rather the better of the complimenting. But then praise to a queen would be flattery to a subject.