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66
FROM THE MONARCHIE."

END OF CERTANE TYRANE PRINCIS.

AND SPECYALLYE THE

BEGYNNARIS OF THE FOUR MONARCHIES."

THE princes of thir four great monarchies,
In their maist highest pomp imperials,1
Traisting2 to be maist sure set in their sees,
The fraudful warld gave them to mortal falls;
For their reward, but dirk memorials ;
Thocht ovir the warld they had pre-eminence,
Of it they gat nane other recompense.

Behald how God, ay sen the warld began,
Has made of tyrane kingís instruments,
To scourge people, and to kill mony ane man,
Whilks to his law were inobedients:*
When they had done perfurneis" his intents,
In danting wrangous people shamefully,
He sufferit them be scourgit cruelly.

Gane is the golden warld of Assyrians,
Of whom King Ninus was first and principal;
Gane is the silver warld of Persians;
The copper warld of Greekís now is thrall.
The warld of iron, whilk was last of all,
Comparit to the Romans in their glore,
Are gane right sae-I hear of them no more."

Now is the warld of iron mixt with clay,"
As Daniel at length has done indite.8
The great empires are melted clean away,
Now, is the warld of dolour and despite.
I see nought else but trouble infinite":
Wherefore, my son, I make it to thee kend,
This warld, I wait, is drawand9 to an end.

Tokens of dearth, hunger, and pestilence,
With cruel weiris baith by sea and land;
Realm against realm, with mortal violence,

1 Emperors.

2 Trusting; see note 5, p. 36.

3 Seats.

4 Relatives and adjectives do not now take the sign of the plural; imperials above may be reckoned an adjective, like inobedients.

Finished to perform; completed the execution of; (French, parfournir.)

For the allusions in this stanza, see Daniel ii. For the pagan fable of the four ages, see Ovid, Met. i. 89-150.

The iron mixed with clay," (Daniel ii. 33,) is commonly interpreted as descriptive of the medieval kingdoms that sprung from the ruins of the Roman empire.

The government of the infinitive by the generic verb do is assigned as the origin of the infinitive sign to.

Men in all ages of Christianity have been fond of viewing the remarkable phenomena of the period in which they lived as indications of the approaching judgment.

Whilk signifies the last day is at hand.1
Wherefore, my son, be in thy faith constànd,
Raising thy heart to God, and cry for grace,
And mend thy life while thou has time and space.

CHRIST COMING TO JUDGMENT.

As fireflaucht hastily glancing,

Descend shall the maist heavenly King.
As Phœbus in the orient

Lightens in haste the occident,
Sae pleasandly he shall appear
Amang the heavenly cluddis clear,
With great power and majesty,
Above the country of Judie;
As clerkis3 doth conclude in haill,
Direct above the lusty vale
Of Josaphat and Mount Olivet:
All prophecy there shall complete.
The angels of the orders nine
Environ shall that throne Divine
With heavenly consolation,
Making him ministration.

In his presence there shall be borne
The signs of cross and crown of thorn,
Pillar, naillis, scourgis, and spear,
With everilk thing that did him deir,'
The time of his grim passion;
And, for our consolation,

Appear shall, in his hands and feet

And in his side, the print complete
Of his five woundis precious,

Shining like rubies radious.

1 Matth. xxiv. 6, 7: Luke xxi. 10, 11. Lyndsay had seen the great wars of Charles V. and Francis I.; the distractions of the reformation; and the quarrels with England. 2 A meteor. 3 Scholars (Lat. clericus, an ecclesiastic). Scholarship in the dark ages was always associated solely with the clerical character; hence the phrase "be nefit of clergy," implying the exemption of a criminal from punishment if he could read and write; the clergy claiming independence of civil tribunals.

Luxuriant; see note 19, p. 11.

5 This valley, on the east of Jerusalem, which our Saviour overlooked when, from Mount Olivet, he made the revelation to his disciples of the final doom of the world, was regarded as the destined seat of the last judgment. Even the Mahometans point to the stone on the western side of the valley on which the prophet is to sit when he performs this high function.

"Dionysius the Areopagite, and others, have divided the angels into nine orders, and those they have reduced into three hierarchies.-Spencer speaks of the angels singing in their 'trínal triplicities.' Faery Queen, i. xii. 30.-Milton, perhaps, is the last poet who has used this popular theory. Parad. Lost, v. 748."-Warton. Angels were favourite subjects of speculation with the scholastic philosophers.

1 Torment; Ang.-Sax. derian, to hurt.

HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY.

(1516-1547.)

THE merit of Lydgate has been vindicated; Occleve was esteemed down to the age of Elizabeth and James, but the interval between Chaucer and Henry VIII. is in general a dreary poetical void. In "Anderson's British Poets," the Earl of Surrey immediately follows Chaucer as the first name in an interval of about a century and a-half that deserves a place among the "classical poetry" of England. The son of the Duke of Norfolk, the victor of Flodden in 1513, he was from his youth associated with the court of Henry VIII. in the capacity of companion to the Duke of Richmond, a natural son of that prince. He had imbibed all the romance of the chivalric character which the courts of Henry and Francis I. were destined to be the last to display. His travels on the continent have all the features of the wanderings of a Paladin. The lady of his devotion, whom he celebrates under the appellation of the "Fair Geraldine," is said to have been the daughter of Fitzge rald, Earl of Kildare. Excited by a magical representation of his love by the adept Cornelius Agrippa, he triumphed in a tournament at Florence, in which he had challenged "all who could handle a lance, Turk, Saracen, or cannibal, who should presume to dispute the superiority of Geraldine's beauty." He was subsequently employed by the king in high military commands. But the whole family of Howard fell under Henry's hatred, after the execution of Queen Catharine, Surrey's sister. He and his father were thrown into the tower, and condemned on frivolous accusations. Surrey was executed in 1547: the Duke of Norfolk narrowly escaped the same fate by the death of the tyrant.

Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt,' with whom his name is often associated, are sometimes ranked as the first who polished the English language to the elegance it has since worn. Surrey is deeply imbued with the manner of Petrarch. His pieces are full of natural and beautiful feeling, without any of the affectation of his age. His language is plaintive and musical. He was the first writer of blank verse in English in the translation of a portion of the Æneid. "He also wrote the first English sonnets."-Southey.

SURREY'S REFLECTIONS ON HIS IMPRISONMENT IN WINDSOR

CASTLE. 2

3

So cruel prison how could betide, alas,
As proud Windsor! where I in lust and joy,
With a king's son,5 my childish years did pass
In greater feasts than Priam's sons of Troy :6

Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour,
The large green courts where we were wont to hove,"

1 The son of the Sir Thomas Wyatt executed in the beginning of the reign of Mary. Warton calls him "the first polished English satirist."

2 He had been condemned to this imprisonment for eating flesh in Lent. Henry VIII.'s theology often reduced his subjects to worse straits. 3 Be my lot.

Innate delight. The word has been noticed above. It runs through many applications in many languages, from the Greek lao, downwards.

5 The Earl of Richmond.

A passage in the Iliad, xxiv. 260, seems to imply the gormandizing propensities of Priam's sons. 7 Hover.

With eyes cast up into the Maiden's Tower,1
And easy sighs such as folk draw in love:

The stately seats; the ladies bright of hue,
The dances short, long tales of great delight;
With words and looks that tigers could but rue,"
Where each of us did plead the other's right:

The palm-play, where, despoiléd1 for the game,
With dazed eyes oft we, by gleams of love,
Have missed the ball, and got sight of our dame,
To bait her eyes which kept the leads above:7

The gravels ground, with sleeves tied on the helm,'
On foaming horse, with swords and friendly hearts,
With cheer as tho' one should another whelm,
Where we have fought and chased oft with darts :

The wild forest, the clothed holts10 with green,
With reins avayled,11 and swift ybreathed horse,
With cry of hounds, and merry blasts between,
Where we did chase the fearful hart of force.

NO AGE CONTENT WITH HIS OWN ESTATE.

LAID in my quiet bed, in study as I were,

I saw, within my troubled head, a heap of thoughts appear.
And every thought did show so lively in mine eyes,

That now I sighed, and then I smiled, as cause of thoughts did rise.

I saw the little boy, and thought how oft that he

Did wish of God, to 'scape the rod, a tall young man to be.
The young man eke, that feels his bones with pains oppressed,
How he would be a rich old man, to live and lie at rest;

The rich old man, that sees his end draw on so sore,
How he would be a boy again, to live so much the more.

1 "Maiden, a corruption of the old French magne or mayne, great. Thus Maidenhead (properly Maiden hythe) in Berkshire, is the great port on the river Thames."-Warton. Mai dun are two ancient British words, signifying great hill. Thus the Maiden Castle (Edinburgh), is not castra puellarum, but a castle on a high hill."-Ritson. This is in the style of the exaggerated gallantry of the period; rue, pity; hence ruth, ruthless. 5 Dazzled.

At ball with the palm of the hand.
To catch.

4 Rendered unfit.

7 "The ladies were ranged on the leads or battlements of the castle to see the play."-Warton.

The area of the training lists was strewed with gravel.

The sleeves or gloves of their mistresses were tied on the helmets of the champions. "And in my helmet wear her glove

When gallants ride the ring."-Poems by a Family Circle.

See Shakesp. Henry V. Act iv. Sc. i. vii. viii.

10 See p. 2, note 4.

11 Loosened: from avaller, to cast; to fell down: Barb. Lat. avallare; which, according to Menage, is formed from ad, to, and vallis, a valley: as monter is formed from mons, a mountain.-Richardson.

Whereat full oft I smiled, to see how all those three,

From boy to man, from man to Loy, would chop and change degree.

And, musing thus, I think the case is very strange,

That man from wealth to live in woe, doth ever seek to change. Thus thoughtful as I lay, I saw my withered skin,

How it doth show my dented chewes; the flesh was worn so thin.

And eke my toothless chaps, the gates of my right way,"
That opes and shuts as I do speak, do thus unto me say,
"The white and hoarish hairs, the messengers of age
That show, like lines of true belief, that this life doth assuage,

"Bids thee lay hand and feel them hanging on thy chin,
The which doth write, to ages past, the third now coming in.
Hang up therefore the bit of thy young wanton time;
And thou, that therein beaten art, the happiest life define:"

Whereat I sighed, and said, "Farewell, my wonted Toy,
Truss up thy pack and trudge from me, to every little boy,
And tell them thus from me, their time most happy is,
If, to their time, they reason had to know the truth of this."

SPRING.

THE Sweet season, that bud and bloom forth brings,
With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale.
The nightingale, with feathers new, she sings;
The turtle to her mate hath told her tale;
Summer is come, for every spray now springs.
The hart hath hung his old heads on the pale;
The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;
The fishes fleet with new repairéd scale;
The adder all her slough away she flings;
The swift swallow pursueth the flies small;
The busy bee her honey how she mings !6
Winter is worn, that was the flowers' bale.
And thus I see among these pleasant things
Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.

1 Or chaws, now written jaws; dented, indented.
3 Draw to a close.

Shed their horns.

2 True philosophy. Used like the Scripture phrase, "stricken in years." • Mingles: see note 3, p. 38; and note 14, p. 11,

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