FROM “GONDIBERT," CANTO IV.

The Father of Rhodalind offering her to Duke Gondibert, and the Duke's subsequent interview with Birtha,

to whom he is attached. The king (who never time nor power misspent Since this is you, and Rhodalind (the light

In subject's bashfulness, whiling great deeds By which her sex fled virtue find) is yours ; Like coward councils, who too late consent) Your diamond, which tests of jealous sight, Thus to his secret will aloud proceeds :

The stroke, and fire, and Oisel's juice endures ; If to thy fame, brave youth, I could add wings, Since she so precious is, I shall appear

Or make her trumpet louder by my voice, All counterfeit, of art's disguises made ; I would (as an example drawn for kings)

And never dare approach her lustre near, Proclaim the cause, why thou art now my choice. Who scarce can hold my value in the shade.

Forgive me that I am not what I seem ; For she is yours, as your adoption free;

But falsely have dissembled an excess
And in that gift my remnant life I give ; Of all such virtues as you most esteem ;
But 'tis to you, brave youth ! who now are she; But now grow good but as I ills confess.
And she that heaven where secondly I live.

Far in ambition's fever am I gone !
And richer than that crown (which shall be thine Like raging flame aspiring is my love ;

When life's long progress I have gone with fame) Like flame destructive too, and, like the sun, Take all her love ; which scarce forbears to shine Does round the world tow'rds change of objects

And own thee, through her virgin-curtain, shame. Thus spake the king ; and Rhodalind appear’d Nor is this now through virtuous shame confess'd;

Through publish'd love, with so much bashfulness, But Rhodalind does force my conjured fear, As young kings show, when by surprise o’erheard, As men whom evil spirits have possessid, Moaning to fav’rite ears a deep distress.

Tell all when saintly votaries appear. For love is a distress, and would be hid

When she will grace the bridal dignity, Like monarch's griefs, by which they bashful It will be soon to all young monarchs known; And in that shame beholders they forbid ; (grow; Who then by posting through the world will Since those blush most, who most their blushes

try show.

Who first can at her feet present his crown.

move.

And Gondibert, with dying eyes, did grieve Then will Verona seem the inn of kings ;

At her vail'd love (a wound he cannot heal), And Rhodalind shall at her palace gate As great minds mourn, who cannot then relieve Smile, when great love these royal suitors The virtuous, when through shame they want brings ; conceal.

Who for that smile would as for empire wait. And now cold Birtha's rosy looks decay ;

Amongst this ruling race she choice may take Who in fear's frost had like her beauty died, For warmth of valour, coolness of the mind, But that attendant hope persuades her stay Eyes that in empire's drowsy calms can wake,

A while, to hear her duke ; who thus replied. In storms look out, in darkness dangers find; Victorious king! abroad your subjects are A prince who more enlarges power than lands,

Like legates, safe ; at home like altars free! Whose greatness is not what his map contains ; Even by your fame they conquer, as by war ; But thinks that his where he at full commands,

And by your laws safe from each other be. Not where his coin does pass, but power remains. A king you are o'er subjects so, as wise

Who knows that power can never be too high And noble husbands seem o'er loyal wives ; When by the good possest, for 'tis in them Who claim not, yet confess their liberties, The swelling Nile, from which though people Ay,

And brag to strangers of their happy lives. They prosper most by rising of the stream. To foes a winter storm ; whilst your friends bow, Thus, princes, you should choose ; and you will find,

Like summer trees, beneath your bounty's load; Even he, since men are wolves, must civilize To me (next him whom your great self, with low (As light does tame some beasts of savage kind) And cheerful duty serves) a giving God.

Himself yet more, by dwelling in your eyes.

Orgo I so receive as I am taught

And calls him to that triumph which he fears By duty to esteem whate'er you love ;

So as a saint forgiven (whose breast does all And hope the joy he in this jewel brought Heaven's joys contain) wisely loved pomp forbears,

Will luckier than his former triumphs prove. Lest tempted nature should from blessings fall. For though but twice he has approach'd my sight, He often takes his leave, with love's delay,

He twice made haste to drown me in my tears : And bids her hope he with the king shall find, But now I am above his planet's spite,

By now appearing forward to obey, And as for sin beg pardon for my fears."

A means to serve him less in Rhodalind. Thus spake she : and with fix'd continued sight, She weeping to her closet window hies,

The duke did all her bashful beauties view ; Where she with tears doth Rhodalind survey ; Then they with kisses seald their sacred plight, As dying men, who grieve that they have eyes,

Like flowers, still sweeter as they thicker grew. When they through curtains spy the rising day*. Yet must these pleasures feel, though innocent, [* Sir William Davenant's Gondibert is not a good The sickness of extremes, and cannot last ; poem, you

take it on the whole; but there are a great For pow'r (love's shunn'd impediment) has sent

many good things in it.-Pope to Spence.] To tell the duke, his monarch is in haste :

SIR JOHN DENHAM.

(Born, 1615. Died, 1668.)

Sir John DENHAM was born in Dublin, where tame a production would not perhaps have been his father was chief-baron of the Irish Exchequer. regarded as astonishing, even from a dreaming On his father's accession to the same office in the

young man.

He was soon after appointed highEnglish Exchequer, our poet was brought to sheriff of Surrey, and made governor of Farnham London, and there received the elements of his Castle for the king : but being unskilled in mililearning. At Oxford he was accounted a slow, tary affairs, he resigned his command, and joined dreaming young man, and chiefly noted for his his majesty at Oxford, where he published his attachment to cards and dice. The same propen- Cooper's Hilla. In the civil wars he served the sity followed him to Lincoln's Inn, to such a royal family, by conveying their correspondence ; degree, that his father threatened to disinherit but was at length obliged to quit the kingdom, him. To avert this, he wrote a penitentiary Essay and was sent as ambassador, by Charles II. in his on Gaming ; but after the death of his father he exile, to the king of Poland. At the Restoration returned to the vice that most easily beset him, he was made surveyor of the king's buildings, and irrecoverably injured his patrimony. In and knighted, with the order of the Bath ; but 1641, when his tragedy of The Sophy appeared, it his latter days were embittered by a second marwas regarded as a burst of unpromised genius. riage, that led to a temporary derangement of In the better and bygone days of the drama, so mind.

COOPER'S HILL T.

Crown'd with that sacred pile, so vast, so high,
That whether 'tis a part of earth or sky

(* The earliest edition known was printed at London

in 1642.)

Sure there are poets which did never dream
Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream
Of Helicon ; we therefore may suppose
Those made not poets, but the poets those,
And as courts make not kings, but kings the court,
So where the Muses and their train resort,
Parnassus stands ; if I can be to thee
A poet, thou Parnassus art to me.
Nor wonder if (advantaged in my flight,
By taking wing from thy auspicious height)
Through untraced ways and airy paths I fly,
More boundless in my fancy than my eye ;
My eye, which swift as thought contracts the space
That lies between, and first salutes the place

[t Denham has been frequently imitated in this kind of local poetry as Johnson calls it, and since Cooper's Hill appeared we have had Waller's St. James's Park; Pope's Ifindsor Forest ; Garth's Claremont ; Tickell's Kensington Garden : Dyer's Grongar Hill; Jago's Edge-Hill: Scott's Amuell; Michael Bruce's Lochleren, and Kirke White's Clifton Grove. There are others, but these alone merit notice. Beaumont's Bosworth Field, though prior in date to Cooper's Hill, is local more in its title than its treatment. Drayton's panoramic plan in his Poly-olbion would have included Cooper's Hill and indeed every corner of the island.)

!

Uncertain seems, and may be thought a proud But thee, great Edward ! and thy greater son,
Aspiring mountain, or descending cloud; [flight | (The lilies which his father wore he won)
Paul's, the late theme of such a Muse *, whose And thy Bellona, who the consort came
Has bravely reach'd and soar'd above thy height ; | Not only to thy bed but to thy fame,
Now shalt thou stand, though sword, or time, or She to thy triumph led one captive king,
fire,

And brought that son which did the second bring
Or zeal, more fierce than they, thy fall conspire, Then didst thou found that Order (whether love
Secure, whilst thee the best of poets sings, Or victory thy royal thoughts did move :)
Preserved from ruin by the best of kings.

Each was a noble cause, and nothing less
Under his proud survey the city lies,

Than the design has been the great success,
And like a mist beneath a hill doth rise,

Which foreign kings and emperors esteem
Whose state and wealth, the business and the crowd, The second honour to their diadem.
Seems at this distance but a darker cloud, Had thy great destiny but given thee skill
And is, to him who rightly things esteems, To know, as well as pow'r to act her will,
No other in effect than what it seems ;

That from those kings, who then thy captives were
Where, with like haste, though several ways they In after-times should spring a royal pair
Some to undo, and some to be undone ; [run, Who should possess all that thy mighty pow'r,
While luxury and wealth, like war and peace, Or thy desires more mighty, did devour ;
Are each the other's ruin and increase ;

To whom their better fate reserves whate'er
As rivers lost in seas, some secret vein

The victor hopes for or the vanquish'd fear : Thence reconveys, there to be lost again.

That blood which thou and thy great grandsiri Oh ! happiness of sweet retired content !

And all that since these sister nations bled, (shed To be at once secure and innocent.

Had been unspilt, and happy Edward known
Windsor the next (where Mars with Venus dwells, That all the blood he spilt had been his own,
Beauty with strength) above the valley swells When he that patron chose in whom are join'd
Into my eye, and doth itself present

Soldier and martyr, and his arms confined
With such an easy and unforced ascent,

Within the azure circle, he did seem
That no stupendous precipice denies

But to foretel and prophecy of him
Access, no horror turns away our eyes ;

Who to his realms that azure round hath join'd,
But such a rise as doth at once invite

Which nature for their bound at first design'd ;
A pleasure and a reverence from the sight : That bound which to the world's extremest ends,
Thy mighty master's emblem, in whose face Endless itself, its liquid arms extends.
Sat meekness, heightend with majestic grace ;

Nor doth he need those emblems which we paint,
Such seems thy gentle height, made only proud But is himself the soldier and the saint.
To be the basis of that pompous load,

Here should my wonder dwell, and here my praise;
Than which a nobler weight no mountain bears, But my fix'd thoughts my wand'ring eye betrays,
But Atlas only, which supports the spheres. Viewing a neighb’ring hill, whose top of late
When Nature's hand this ground did thus advance, A chapel crown'd, till in the common fate
'Twas guided by a wiser power than Chance ; Th' adjoining abbey fell. (May no such storm
Mark'd out for such an use, as if ’twere meant Fall on our times, where ruin must reform !)
T'invite the builder, and his choice prevent. Tell me, my Muse! what monstrous dire offence,
Nor can we call it choice, when what we choose What crime, could any Christian king incense
Folly or blindness only could refuse.

To such a rage? Was't luxury or lust!
A crown of such majestic towers doth grace Was he so temperate, so chaste, so just ? [more ;
The gods' great mother, when her heav'nly race Were these their crimes? they were his own much
Do homage to her ; yet she cannot boast, But wealth is crime enough to him that's poor,
Among that num'rous and celestial host,

Who having spent the treasures of his crown,
More heroes than can Windsor ; nor doth Fame's Condemns their luxury to feed his own ;
Immortal book record more noble names. And yet this act, to varnish o'er the shame
Not to look back so far, to whom this isle

Of sacrilege, must bear devotion's name.
Owes the first glory of so brave a pile,

No crime so bold but would be understood
Whether to Cæsar, Albanact, or Brute,

A real, or at least a seeming good.
The British Arthur, or the Danish C’nute ; Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name,
(Though this of old no less contèst did move And, free from conscience, is a slave to fame.
Than when for Homer's birth seven cities strove) Thus he the church at once protects and spoils ;
(Like him in birth, thou should'st be like in fame, But princes' swords are sharper than their styles :
As thine his fate, if mine had been his flame) And thus to th' ages past he makes amends,
But whosoe'er it was, Nature design’d

Their charity destroys, their faith defends,
First a brave place, and then as brave a mind. Then did Religion in a lazy cell,
Not to recount those sev'ral kings to whom

In empty airy contemplations dwell,
It
gave a cradle, or to whom a tomb;

And like the block unmoved lay ; but ours,
As much too active, like the stork devours.

* Waller.

Is there no temp?rate region can be known Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull ; Betwixt their frigid and our torrid zone ?

Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full *. Could we not wake from that lethargic dream, Heav'n her Eridanus no more shall boast, But to be restless in a worse extreme ?

Whose fame in thine, like lesser current, 's lost : And for that lethargy was there no cure

Thy nobler streams shall visit Jove's abodes, But to be cast into a calenture ?

To shine among the stars, and bathe the gods. Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance Here Nature, whether more intent to please So far, to make us wish for ignorance,

Us for herself with strange varieties, And rather in the dark to grope our way,

(For things of wonder give no less delight Than led by a false guide to err by day?

To the wise Maker's than beholder's sight; Who sees these dismal heaps but would demand Though these delights from several causes move, What barbarous invader sack'd the land ?

For so our children, thus our friends, we love) But when he hears no Goth, no Turk, did bring Wisely she knew the harmony of things, This desolation, but a Christian king ;

As well as that of sounds, from discord springs. When nothing but the name of zeal appears Such was the discord which did first disperse 'Twixt our best actions and the worst of theirs ; Form, order, beauty, through the universe ; What does he think our sacrilege would spare, While dryness moisture, coldness heat resists, When such th' effects of our devotions are ? All that we have, and that we are, subsists ; Parting from thence 'twixt anger, shame, and While the steep horrid roughness of the wood fear,

Strives with the gentle calmness of the flood, Those for what's past, and this for what's too near, Such huge extremes when Nature doth unite, My eye, descending from the Hill, surveys Wonder from thence results, from thence delight. Where Thames among the wanton valleys strays. The stream is so transparent, pure, and clear, Thames ! the most loved of all the Ocean's sons, That had the self-enamour'd youth gazed here, By his old sire, to his embraces runs,

So fatally deceived he had not been, Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,

While he the bottom, not his face had seen. Like mortal life to meet eternity ;

But his proud head the airy mountain hides Though with those streams he no resemblance Among the clouds ; his shoulders and his sides hold,

A shady mantle clothes ; his curled brows Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold * : Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows, His genuine and less guilty wealth t explore, While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat ; Search not his bottom, but survey his shore, The common fate of all that's high or great. O'er which he kindly spreads his spacious wing, Low at his foot a spacious plain is placed, And hatches plenty for th’ ensuing spring ; Between the mountain and the stream embraced, Nor then destroys it with too fond a stay,

Which shade and shelter from the Hill derives, Like mothers which their infants overlay ; While the kind river wealth and beauty gives, Nor with a sudden and impetuous wave,

And in the mixture of all these appears
Like profuse kings, resumes the wealth he gave. Variety, which all the rest endears.
No unexpected inundations spoil

This scene had some bold Greek or British bard The mower's hopes, nor mock the ploughman's Beheld of old, what stories had we heard

Of fairies, satyrs, and the nymphs their dames, But godlike his unwearied bounty flows;

Their feasts, their revels, and their am'rous flames? First loves to do, then loves the good he does. 'Tis still the same, although their airy shape Nor are his blessings to his banks confined, All but a quick poetic sight escape. But free and common as the sea or wind;

There Faunus and Sylvanus keep their courts, When he, to boast or to disperse his stores, And thither all the horned host resorts Full of the tributes of his grateful shores,

[* Swift has ridiculed the herd of imitators of these Visits the world, and in his flying tow'rs

noble lines: Brings home to us, and makes both Indies ours ;

“ If Anna's happy reign you praise, Finds wealth where 'tis, bestows it where it wants, Pray not a word of halcyon days! Cities in deserts, woods in cities, plants.

Nor let my votaries show their skill So that to us no thing, no place, is strange,

In'aping lines from Cooper's Hill;

For, know I cannot bear to hear While his fair bosom is the world's Exchange.

The mimicry of deep yet clear.'"- Apollo's Edict. 0, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream

In this, one of the earliest of our descriptive poems, My great example, as it is my theme !

Denham from time to time made great alterations and

additions, and every insertion and every change was made (* Originally:

with admirable judgment. Popo collated his copy with And though his clearer sand no golden veins

an early edition, and marked the variations; thinking it, Like Tagus or Pactolus stream contains

as he said in a note at the end of the volume, "a very

useful lesson for a poet to compare the editions, and conwhich we quote to make good the couplet in Waller: sider at each alteration how and why it was altered."

The four famous lines on the Thames were an after Poets lose half the praise they should have got, insertion, and in Mr. Moore's opinion one of the happiest Could it be known what they discreetly blot.]

of recorded instances.- Life of Byron, vol. ü. p. 193]

toil ;