This roundelay has always, and most justly, been greatly admired for its true pathos, and that fine harmony which charms us so much in the fragments of similar songs preserved by Shakspeare. Not less beautiful is the chorus in Godwin. There is something singularly great and majestic in its imagery.
CHORUS IN GODWIN.
"When Freedom, dressed in blood-stained vest,
To every knight her war-song sung,
Upon her head wild weeds were spread;
A gory anlace by her hung:
She danced upon the heath;
She heard the voice of death;
Pale-eyed Affright, his heart of silver hue,
In vain assailed her bosom to acale;[13]
She heard unmoved the shrieking voice of woe,
And Sadness in the owlet shake the dale.
She shook the pointed spear,
On high she reared her shield;
Her foemen all appear,
And fly along the field.
Power, with his head aloft unto the skies,
His spear a sunbeam, and his shield a star,
Like two fierce flaming meteors rolled his eyes,
Chafes with his iron feet and sounds to war.
She sits upon a rock,
She bends before his spear,
She rises with the shock,
Wielding her own in air.
Hard as the thunder doth she drive it on;
Wit, closely mantled, guides it to his crown,
His long, sharp spear, his spreading shield is gone:
He falls, and falling, rolleth thousands down.
War, gore-faced War, by Envy armed, arist,[14]
His fiery helmet nodding to the air.
Ten bloody arrows in his straining fist."
*...*...*...*
Next let us take a poem whose truest criticism is contained in its own title:
AN EXCELLENT BALLAD OF CHARITY.
"From Virgo did the sun diffuse his sheen,
And hot upon the meads did cast his ray;
Red grew the apple from its paly green,
And the soft pear did bend the leafy spray;
The piéd goldfinch sung the livelong day:
'Twas now the pride, the manhood of the year,
And eke the ground was dight in its most deft aumere.[15]
"The sun was gleaming in the midst of day,
Dead still the air, and eke the welkin blue,
When from the sea arose in drear array
A heap of clouds of sable, sullen hue;
The which full fast unto the woodlands drew,
Hiding at once the sun's rejoicing face,
And the black tempest swelled and gathered up apace.
"Beneath an holm fast by a pathway side,
Which did unto St. Godwin's convent lead,
A hapless pilgrim moaning did abide;
In aspect poor, and wretched in his weed.
Long filléd with the miseries of need,
Where from the hailstone could the almer[16] fly?
He had no house at hand, nor any convent nigh.